XXXV.

Christ hath sent us down the angels;
And the whole earth and the skies
Are illumined by altar candles
Lit for blessed mysteries;

And a priest's hand through creation
Waveth calm and consecration-

Truth is large our aspiration
Scarce embraces half we be.
Shame, to stand in his creation
And doubt truth's sufficiency!
To think God's song unexcelling
The poor tales of our own telling-

When Pan is dead.

XXXVIII.

What is true and just and honest,
What is lovely, what is pure,
All of praise that hath admonisht,
All of virtue shall endure,-

These are themes for poets' uses,
Stirring nobler than the Muses,

Ere Pan was dead.

XXXIX.

O brave poets, keep back nothing,
Nor mix falsehood with the whole;
Look up Godward; speak the truth in
Worthy song from earnest soul:
Hold in high poetic duty

Truest truth the fairest beauty!

Pan, Pan, is dead.

THE CRY OF CHILDREN.

(ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.)

I.

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 flowers are blowing towards 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.

II.

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 st;

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?

III.

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

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 the outside earth is cold,

And we young ones stand without in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old."

IV.

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

That we die before our time:

Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen
Like a snowfall in the rime,

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, lulled and stilled in
The shroud by the kirk-chime.

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

V.

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 coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine.

"For oh!"

VI.

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.