The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west-
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!--

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?—

The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago-

The old tree is leafless in the forest

The old year is ending in the frost

The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest-
The old hope is hardest to be lost:

But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,

For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy-

'Your old earth,' they say, 'is very dreary;'
'Our young feet,' they say, 'are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary--
Our grave-rest is very far to seek.

Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,—

And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old.

'True,' say the young children, 'it may happen
That we die before our time.

Little Alice died last year-the grave is shapen
Like a snowball in the rime.

We look'd into the pit prepared to take her-
Was no room for any work in the close clay:
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
Crying, "Get up, little Alice! it is day."

If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,

With your ear down, little Alice never cries!-
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes,-
And merry go her moments, lull'd and still'd in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime !

It is good when it happens,' say the children,
That we die before our time.

6

'For oh,' say the children, we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap-

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.

Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping-
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;

And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.

For, all day, we drag our burden tiring,

Through the coal-dark, underground—
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.

'For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning,—
Their wind comes in our faces,-

Till our hearts turn,—our head, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places-

Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling—
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall-
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling—
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.-
And all day, the iron wheels are droning;

And sometimes we could pray,

"O ye wheels," (breaking out in a mad moaning) Stop! be silent for to-day!"'

66

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
To look up to Him and pray-

So the blesséd One, who blesseth all the others,

Will bless them another day.

They answer, 'Who is God that He should hear us, While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirr'd? When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word!

And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door :

Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,
Hears our weeping any more?

'But, no!' say the children, weeping faster,
'He is speechless as a stone;

And they tell us, of His image is the master
Who commands us to work on.

Go to!' say the children,— Up in Heaven,

Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving— We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.' Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach?

For God's possible is taught by His world's loving— And the children doubt of each.

They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,

For they mind you of their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity;-

'How long,' they say, 'how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's

heart,

Stifle down with a mail'd heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants,

And your purple shows your path;

But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence
Than the strong man in his wrath!'

E. B. Browning

XII

OUR MARY AND THE CHILD MUMMY

When the four quarters of the world shall rise,
Men, women, children, at the Judgment-time,
Perchance this Memphian girl, dead ere her prime,
Shall drop her mask, and with dark new-born eyes

Long might succeed, try lite day:
9, es sa

That the grey stone are grassy cuy

Have closed our anxious care of thee?

The half-form a spoon of ariese thought,
That spore a un exon thy years,
The song, the dance by Nature taught,
The sunny sulies, the transient tears,

The symmetry of face and form,
The eye with light and life repiete,
The little heart so fondly warm,
The voice so musically sweet,—

These, lost to hope, in memory yet
Around the hearts that loved thee cling,
Shadowing with long and vain regret
The too fair promise of thy Spring.

T. L. Peacock

C

And he handled him gently enough; but his voice and his face were not kind,

And it was but a hopeless case, he had seen it and made up his mind,

And he said to me roughly The lad will need little more of your care.'

'All the more need,' I told him, 'to seek the Lord Jesus in prayer;

They are all His children here, and I pray for them all as my own :'

But he turn'd to me, 'Ay, good woman, can prayer set a broken bone?"

Then he mutter'd half to himself, but I know that I heard him say

'All is very well-but the good Lord Jesus has had His day.'

Had? has it come? It has only dawn'd. It will come by and by.

O how could I serve in the wards if the hope of the world were a lie?

How could I bear with the sights and the loathsome smells of disease

But that He said 'Ye do it to Me, when ye do it to these '?

So he went.

And we past to this ward where the younger children are laid:

Here is the cot of our orphan, our darling, our meek little maid;

Empty you see just now! We have lost her who

loved her so much

Patient of pain tho' as quick as a sensitive plant to the touch;

Hers was the prettiest prattle, it often moved me to

tears,

Hers was the gratefullest heart I have found in a child of her years—

Nay you remember our Emmie; you used to send her the flowers;

How she would smile at 'em, play with 'em, talk to 'em hours after hours!