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,
"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.

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 wisdom;
They sink in man's despair, without its calm;
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm:
Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly

The harvest of its memories cannot reap,-
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly.
Let them weep! let them weep!

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 nation,

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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
Than the strong man in his wrath!"

Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861)

LUCY GRAY

OR SOLITUDE

OFT I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see, at break of day,
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,

The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night,

You to the town must go;

And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."

"That, Father, will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon,-
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!"

At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a fagot-brand.

He plied his work; -and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Lucy Gray

Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke

Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down:
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.

At daybreak on the hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood,

A furlong from their door.

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
They tracked the footmarks small:
And through the broken hawthorn-hedge,
And by the low stone-wall;

And then an open field they crossed—
The marks were still the same-
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,

Into the middle of the plank;

And further there were none!

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-Yet some maintain that to this day

She is a living child;

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.

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;
It seemed to follow with the chaise,
And still I heard it as before.

At length I to the boy called out;
He stopped his horses at the word,
But neither cry, nor voice, nor shout,
Nor aught else like it, could be heard.

The boy then smacked his whip, and fast
The horses scampered through the rain;

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.

Alice Fell

"My cloak!" no other word she spake, But loud and bitterly she wept,

As if her innocent heart would break;

And down from off her seat she leapt.

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"What ails you, child?" She sobbed, "Look here!" I saw it in the wheel entangled,

A weather-beaten rag as e'er

From any garden scarecrow dangled.

There, twisted between nave and spoke,
It hung, nor could at once be freed;
But our joint pains unloosed the cloak,
A miserable rag indeed!

"And whither are you going, child,

To-night along these lonesome ways?" "To Durham," answered she, half wild"Then come with me into the chaise."

Insensible to all relief,

Sat the poor girl, and forth did send Sob after sob, as if her grief

Could never, never have an end.

"My child, in Durham do you dwell?"
She checked herself in her distress,
And said, "My name is Alice Fell;
I'm fatherless and motherless.

"And I to Durham, Sir, belong."
Again, as if the thought would choke
Her very heart, her grief grew strong;
And all was for her tattered cloak!

The chaise drove on; our journey's end
Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,
As if she had lost her only friend,
She wept, nor would be pacified.