weep,
Let one most loving of you all
Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall!
He giveth his beloved sleep."

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

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 young flowers are blowing toward 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 their 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;
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 snowball 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,