POETRY.
OUR CHILDREN.
I LOOKED at the happy children
Who gathered around the hearth ; So blithe they were, no children Could happier be on earth ; With their merry plays, and their winsome ways, And the sound of their silvery mirth !
Then I thought of those other children, So wizened, and hard, and bold, Who huddle in slum and cellar, And shiver with want and cold : Not fresh as the dew, or the morning's hue, But haggard, and lean, and old.
But yet may they still, those children, Be taught to forget their pain ; And gathered in arms that love them, Their laughter may come again ; And the stare of woe and the craft may go, And the spirit be washed of stain.
But it is not in cold book-learning Those children's hearts to move ; And the stony eye of the serpent Is death to the stricken dove ; 'Tis an angel alone can touch them, And that angel's name is Love.
For whatever the world may fancy, And whatever the wise men say Of our nineteenth-century progress, Of a new and a better way : Still it takes a soul to make a soul Now, as in the olden day. A. G. B.
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