One hundred years ago
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 huddled 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, Bp 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.
The Spectator, 22 December 1888
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