Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, 'O ye wheels, (breaking out in a mad moaning) Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals: Let them prove their living souls against the notion Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark. Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others, They answer, " Who is God that He should hear us, Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him, "Two words, indeed, of praying we remember, 'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm. We know no other words except 'Our Father,' And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, The Cry of the Children God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within his right hand which is strong. 'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely (For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 'Come and rest with me, my child.' "But no!" say the children, weeping faster, And they tell us, of His image is the master Go to!" say the children,-"Up in Heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. For God's possible is taught by His world's loving, And well may the children weep before you! They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory They know the grief of man, without its wisdom; The harvest of its memories cannot reap,- They look up, with their pale and sunken faces, For they mind you of their angels in high places, "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation, 273 Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,— Stifle down with a mailèd heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, And your purple shows your path; But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] LUCY GRAY OR SOLITUDE OFT I had heard of Lucy Gray: No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; You yet may spy the fawn at play, "To-night will be a stormy night,— And take a lantern, Child, to light "That, Father, will I gladly do: At this the Father raised his hook, Lucy Gray Not blither is the mountain roe: Her feet disperse the powdery snow, The storm came on before its time: The wretched parents all that night At daybreak on the hill they stood And thence they saw the bridge of wood, They wept, and, turning homeward, cried, "In heaven we all shall meet; When in the snow the mother spied The print of Lucy's feet. Then downwards from the steep hill's edge And then an open field they crossed- They followed from the snowy bank Into the middle of the plank; And further there were none! 275 -Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living child; That you may see sweet Lucy Gray O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind. William Wordsworth [1770-1850) ALICE FELL OR POVERTY THE post-boy drove with fierce career, For threatening clouds the moon had drowned; When, as we hurried on, my ear Was smitten with a startling sound. As if the wind blew many ways, I heard the sound,—and more and more; At length I to the boy called out; The boy then smacked his whip, and fast But, hearing soon upon the blast The cry, I bade him halt again. Forthwith alighting on the ground, "Whence comes," said I, "this piteous moan?" And there a little Girl I found, Sitting behind the chaise, alone. |