Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/76

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 tho young, young children, my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers
In our happy Fatherland?

*****

'For all day the wheels are droning, turning,
Their wind comes in our faces,—
Till our hearts turn,—our heads 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 droppeth down 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!'"

*****

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
That they look 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 wheels 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?

"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.^[1]

1. A fact rendered pathetically historical by Mr. Horne's Report of his Commission