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 That they live in you, or under you, O Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, 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, To look up to Him and pray; 100 So the blessed 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 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? 112 "Two words, indeed, of praying we remember, And at midnight's hour of harm, '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, 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. Do not mock us; grief has made us un believing: We look up for God, but tears have made Do you hear the children weeping and dis- O my brothers, what ye preach? For God's possible is taught by His world's loving, And the children doubt of each. 124 136 And well may the children weep before you! They are weary ere they run; They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory Which is brighter than the sun. They know the grief of man, without its They sink in man's despair, without its Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, They look up with their pale and sunken faces And their look is dread to see, For they mind you of their angels in high places, With eyes turned on Deity. “How long," they say, “how long, O cruel Will you stand, to move the world, on a Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation. the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, 1843 Elizabeth Barrett Brownine 1832. SIT DOWN, SAD SOUL SIT down, sad soul, and count How many smiles?-a score? Then laugh, and count no more; Lie down, sad soul, and sleep, And no more measure But here, by this lone stream, We dream: do thou the same: We laugh; yet few we shame, The gentle, never. Stay, then, till Sorrow dies; Are thine forever! Bryan Waller Procter. 14 21 AT THE MID HOUR OF NIGHT Ar the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye; And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air, To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there, And tell me our love is remember'd, even in the sky. Then I sing the wild song 't was once such pleasure to hear! When our voices commingling, breathed, like one on the ear; And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls, I think, O my love! 't is thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls, Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear. 10 1813. Thomas Moore. |