Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking

Death in life, as best to have:

They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,
With a cerement from the grave.

Go out, children, from the mine and from the city,
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty,
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!
But they answer,
your cowslips of the meadows

"Are

Like our weeds anear the mine?

Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine!

"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 heads 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 drops adown 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!""

Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing

For a moment, mouth to mouth!

Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth!

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 wheels!
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;

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 stirred?
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?

"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,
"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, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,— Stifle down with a mailed 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.

[By kind permission of Robert Browning, Esq.]

FIRST LOVE.

My long first year of perfect love,
My deep new dream of joy;
She was a little chubby girl,
I was a chubby boy.

I wore a crimson frock, white drawers,
A belt, a crown was on it;

She wore some angel's kind of dress
And such a tiny bonnet,

Old-fashioned, but the soft brown hair
Would never keep its place;
A little maid with violet eyes,
And sunshine in her face.

O my child-queen, in those lost days
How sweet was daily living!
How humble and how proud I grew,
How rich by merely giving!

But when the hymn came round, with heart

That feared some heart's surprising Its secret sweet, I climb'd the seat 'Mid rustling and uprising;

And there against her mother's arm
The sleeping child was leaning,
While far away the hymn went on,
The music and the meaning.

Oh I have loved with more of pain
Since then, with more of passion,
Loved with the aching in my love

After our grown-up fashion;