Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,
And that cannot stop their tears.
Who commands us to work on.
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word!
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
Spin on blindly in the dark.
The young flowers are blowing toward the west---
"Two words, indeed, of praying we remember,
And the graves are for the old.
Let them weep! let them weep!
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
The shroud, by the kirk-chime!
"That we die before our time."
We look up for God, but tears have made us blind."
They are weeping bitterly!---
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city---
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
"For oh," say the children, "we are weary,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries!---
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping---
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
"For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning,---
Till our hearts turn,---our head, with pulses burning,
With eyes meant for Deity;---
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling---
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.---
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
And the childrens souls, which God is calling sunward,
Through the coal-dark, underground---
And we cannot run or leap---
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
Strangers speaking at the door:
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly:
For a moment, mouth to mouth---
In the factories, round and round.
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
Our Father! If He heard us, He would surely
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly
They sink in mans despair, without its calm---
No dear remembrance keep,---
And they tell us, of His image is the master
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
And well may the children weep before you;
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall---
Which is brighter than the sun:
Stop! be silent for to-day! "
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals---
Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.
Cry Of The Children, The
But the childs sob curseth deeper in the silence
liberty in Christdom,---