"Oh! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweetWith the sky above my head,

And the grass beneath my feet, For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want

And the walk that costs a meal!

"Oh! but for one short hour!

A respite however brief!

No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for Grief!

A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed

My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,Would that its tone could reach the Rich!She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

1843

Thomas Hood.

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THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my

brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows The young flowers are blowing toward the

west

But the young, young children, O my brothers. They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others. In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the

sorrow

Why their tears are falling so?

The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago;

The old tree is leafless in the forest,

The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost:

But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their

mothers,

In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see,

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For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy;

"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary,
Our young feet," they say, "are very weak;
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary-
Our grave-rest is very far to seek:

Ask the aged why they weep, and not the
children,

For outside the earth is cold,

And we young ones stand without, in our be

wildering,

And the graves are for the old."

"True," say the children," it may happen

That we die before our time:

Little Alice died last year, her grave is shapen Like a snowball, in the rime.

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We looked into the pit prepared to take her: Was no room for any work in the close clay! From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,

Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.'

If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries:

Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,

For the smile has time for growing in her

eyes:

And merry go her moments, lull'd and still'd in The shroud by the kirk-chime.

It is good when it happens," say the children, "That we die before our time."

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, “Are your cowslips of the meadows

Like our weeds anear the mine?

Leave us quiet in the dark of the coalshadows,

From your pleasures fair and fine!

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"For oh," say the children, we are weary, And we cannot run or leap;

If we car'd for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep.

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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:

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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,

ye wheels (break 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!

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