Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,

I struck him, and dismiss'd

With hard words and unkiss'd,

-His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,

But found him slumbering deep,

With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,

He had put, within his reach,

A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells,

A bottle with bluebells,

And two French copper coins, ranged there with care

ful art,

To comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I pray'd

To God, I wept, and said:

Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,

Not vexing Thee in death,

And Thou rememberest of what toys

We made our joys,

How weakly understood

Thy great commanded good,

Then, fatherly not less

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

"I will be sorry for their childishness.”

TO MY GODCHILD

Francis M. W. Meynell

(Extract)

BY FRANCIS THOMPSON

And when, immortal mortal, droops your head,
And you, the child of deathless song, are dead;
Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance
The ranks of Paradise for my countenance,
Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod
Among the bearded counsellors of God;
For, if in Eden as on earth are we,

I sure shall keep a younger company:
Pass where beneath their rangèd gonfalons
The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns,
The dreadful mass of their enridgèd spears;
Pass where majestical the eternal peers,

The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet-
A silvern segregation, globed complete

In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet;

Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,

Your cousined clusters, emulous to share

With you the roseal lightnings burning 'mid their hair; Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven :

Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.

THE FLOWER FACTORY

BY FLORENCE WILKINSON EVANS

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,

They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one,

Little children who have never learned to play;

Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache to-day; Tiny Fiametta nodding when the twilight slips in, gray.

High above the clattering street, ambulance and firegong beat.

They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by

one.

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,

They have never seen a rosebush nor a dewdrop in the

sun.

They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, Fiametta, Of a Black Hand and a face behind a grating; They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocating,

Never of a wild-rose thicket nor the singing of a cricket,

But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams,

And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams.

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,

They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by

one.

Let them have a long, long playtime, Lord of Toil, when toil is done,

Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses of the sun!

THE FACTORIES

BY MARGARet WiddemeR

I have shut my little sister in from life and light, (For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair,)

I have made her restless feet still until the night, Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air;

I who roamed the meadowlands, free from sun to sun, Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly,

I have bound my sister till her playing-time is doneOh, my little sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood, (For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket's restless spark,)

Shut from Love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know

good,

How shall she go scatheless through the sunlit dark?

I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,

I who could have love and mirth before the light

went by,

I have shut my sister in her mating time away-
Sister, my young sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast, (For a coin, for the weaving of my children's lace

and lawn,)

Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot rest, How can she know motherhood, whose strength is

gone?

I, who took no heed of her, starved and labour-worn, I, against whose placid heart my sleepy gold-heads lie,

Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn-
Creator!
Creator! It was I! It was I!

God of Life!

THEY WILL SAY

BY CARL SANDBURG

Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this: You took little children away from the sun and the

dew,

And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,

And the reckless rain; you put them between walls To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages, To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.