The Children's Grass

Wherk the twinkling river pushes
'Thwart the dipping swan.
All his ruffling down
Very softly blown.
Lustrous blue reflects the rushes
Where the cool is gone ;
Thames, an innocent heart of childhood,
Buoying lovers from the wild wood.
Hearing boyish lauihter chime
Where the flashing oars keep time,
Where they quiver
In the river :

In a sunshine sown with song
Of many a merry bird,
Three sunny children bound along,
With many a merry word.
Their eyes blue fountains of delight,
And every cheek a rose,
Their dimpled hands with grasses light
So full, they hardly close.
One fawn-like little maiden falls
Breathless upon her mother.
Telling how yonder elf who calls.
Her tiny wavering brother,
Chose to pull the tender stems
Where the dew-drop lingers,
And marvelled when the limpid gems
Fell upon his fingers.
She tells a soft-eyed rabbit brown
Near a wimpling runnel
Eyed them askance, then hurried down
Through a plantain tunnel.
In the woodland sweetly smell
Fairy grass and clover,
Sensitive in the woodland dell.
Where the bees hum over ;
"Oil love the summer well ;
Mother, will it soon be over ? "

Where the unholy river gleameth,
Deep, and cold, and dun,
Hiding secrets from the sun,
As an awful dream one dreameth,
As Oblivion :

Three little children in the reek
Of the monster town.
With a woman worn and weak,
Ere the sun goes down,
Toil by flare of ghastly light
In a dingy fume :
Two young children carry bright
Grasses in the room :
An elder sister with her mother
Decks the blades with glass,
Sprinkles one and then another.
As with dews of grass.
How the vivid verdure gleams
In the child's old face !
Starved and very pale she seems.
With a hollow place
Dark beneath her eyes, how wearied,
Lashless looking on the bleared
Mimic grass,
Dewed with glass!
Hark ! she gives a feeble cough,
And the withered mother
Glances where some paces off
A cofiin holds another
Maiden very cold and white.
Not yet hidden out of sight.
"Mother, I am very weary!"
So she moans with accents dreary :
" Mother, make my bed !"
"Child," the woman answers, "finish !
Dare not from your task diminish
Aught, for fear a watchful neighbour,
Bidding lower for the labour,
Seize our bitter bread !'"
Ladies in a lustred hall
Wear them gaily for a ball
In their fair
Wavy hair.

" Mother, I can toil no longer ;
After sleep I shall be stronger ! " . . .
. . . After sleep, the child was dead.

There the unholy river gleameth.
Deep, and cold, and dun.
Hiding secrets from the sun,
As an awful dream one dreameth,
As Oblivion :

Are not these thy children, Father ?
These — or only those ?
Are all lost orphans rather?
Of whom — none icnows.