A CONTEMPLATION OF COUNTRY CHILDREN •
Tits world is paved with children, chattering with song, Or overturning spheres of thoughts and words, their heritage of earth Weaving like threads within their minds, their aspirations leading ever on Remoulded to the new desires and phantasies of life. In whose mirth, Beside their tousled heads and dirty knees, we trace significance of other days For of our childhood we children are, descendants of this chanting, leaping throng Who dance in near essential joy and innocence amid their playground roundelays.
And chanting words in broken unison, feel deep, erstwhile unheeded words of life
And breaking chatter flames away a brighter theme, but on their brows
High shadows of a new and vital thought burn on, amid the class- room strife ; Thought too soon extinguished, for ere it can arouse Deep loves, the deeper fears of life sweep on and bidding fair Of evil, like the tendrils of a poisonous vine, they tear within their minds the graceful house Of prophecy. Their schoolroom's independence brings on mankind's despair.
Why giv'st thou them, 0 Lord, so brief a view of Thy design As they walk schoolward through the dawn into a realisation of the world, Have they no mission, ere with years' advance, they lose their purity divine, Whose loves are turned to selfishness, and their blinded words are hurled So soon into the heavens, with a blind and pitiful embrace, longing for the clarity Of sense with which thou didst them all endow. These shall be dazzled with wild rhetoric and fine Words, who find within their hearts the ashes of childhood's warm
Any readers who would be willing to post their copies of THE SPECTATOR to Service men can be supplied by Miss A. Hamilton, The Polytechnic, 309, Regent Street, W.t, with names of soldiers, sailors or airmen who would welcome copies.
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