VII.

'For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning,— Their wind comes in our faces,

Till our hearts turn,—our head, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places.

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,

'O ye wheels,' (breaking out in a mad moaning)
'Stop! be silent for to-day!''

VIII.

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!

Let them feel that this cold metallic motion

Is not all the life God fashions or reveals.

Let them prove their living souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!— Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,

Grinding life down from its mark;

And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark.

IX.

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
To look up to Him and pray;

So the blessed One who blesseth all the others,
Will bless them another day.

They answer, 'Who is God that He should hear us,
While the rushing of the iron wheel is stirred?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us,
Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word.
And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door.

Is it likely God, with angels singing round him,
Hears our weeping any more?

X.

'Two words, indeed, of praying we remember, And at midnight's hour of harm,

'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm.*

We know no other words, except 'Our Father,' And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within his right hand which is strong. 'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely (For they call him good and mild)

Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 'Come and rest with me, my child.'

เ

XI.

But no!' say the children, weeping faster,

'He is speechless as a stone.

And they tell us, of His image is the master
Who commands us to work on.

* A fact rendered pathetically historical by Mr. Horne's report of his commission. The name of the poet of "Orion" and "Cosmo de' Medici" has, however, a change of associations, and comes in time to remind me that we have some noble poetic heat of literature still, however open to the reproach of being somewhat gelid in our humanity.-1844.

Go to!' say the children,-up in Heaven,

Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving— We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.' Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach?

For God's possible is taught by his world's loving, And the children doubt of each.

XII.

And well may the children weep before you!
They are weary ere they run.

They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory,
Which is brighter than the sun.

They know the grief of man, without his wisdom.
They sink in man's despair, without its calm;
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm,—
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly

The harvest of its memories cannot reap,Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly. Let them weep! let them weep!

XIII.

They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,

For they mind you of their angels in high places,
With eyes turned on Deity!-

'How long,' they say, 'how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,

Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path!

But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath.'

A CHILD ASLEEP.

I.

How he sleepeth, having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore!
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures to make room for more-

Sleeping near the withered nosegay which he pulled the day before.

II.

Nosegays! leave them for the waking.

Throw them earthward where they grew. Dim are such, beside the breaking

Amaranths he looks unto.

Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.

III.

Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden
From the palms they sprang beneath,
Now perhaps divinely holden,

Swing against him in a wreath.

We may think so from the quickening of his bloom

and of his breath.

VOL. IL-2

IV.

Vision unto vision calleth,

While the young child dreameth on.
Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth

With the glory thou hast won!

Darker wert thou in the garden, yestermorn by

summer sun.

V.

We should see the spirits ringing
Round thee, were the clouds away.
'Tis the child-heart draws them, singing
In the silent-seeming clay.

Singing!-stars that seem the mutest, go in music all the way.

VI.

As the moths around a taper,
As the bees around a rose,
As the gnats around a vapour,

So the spirits group and close

Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its

repose.

VII.

Shapes of brightness overlean thee,
Flash their diadems of youth

On the ringlets which half screen thee,
While thou smilest. . not in sooth

Thy smile, but the overfair one, dropt from some æthereal mouth.