| Mark the faces of the children Flooded with sweet innocence! God’s smile on their foreheads glisten Ere their heart-strings have grown tense. |
| And they know not of the sadness, Of the palpitating pain Drawn through arid veins of manhood, Or the lusts that life disdain. |
| Little reek they of the shadows Fallen through the steep world’s space God hath touched them with His chrism And their sunlight is His grace. |
| And the green grooves of the meadows They are fair to look upon; And the silver thrush and robin Sing most sweetly on and on. |
| But the faces of the children— They are fairer far than these; And the songs they sing are sweeter Than the thrushes’ in the trees. |
| Little hands, our God has given All the flower-bloom for you; Gather violets in the meadows, Trailing your sweet fingers through. |
| The swift tears that sometimes glisten On their faces dashed with pain Weave a rosy bow of promise, Like the afterglow of rain. |
| The soft, verdant fields of childhood, Certes, are the softer for The dissolving dew of morning, Noon’s elate ambassador. |
| Looking skyward, do they wonder— They, the children palm to palm— What is out beyond the azure In the infinite of calm? |
| Though they murmur soft “Our Father,” Angel wings to speed it on Past the bright wheels of the Pleiads, Have they thought of benison? |
| Nay! the undefiled children Say it bound by ignorance; But the saying is the merit, And the loving bans mischance. |
| Oh the mountain heights of childhood, And the waterfalls of dreams, And the sleeping in the shadows Of the willows by the streams! |
| Toss your gleaming hair, O children, Back in waving of the wind! Flash the starlight ‘heath your eyelids From the sunlight of the mind! |
| See, we strain you to our bosoms, And we kiss your lip and brow; Human hearts must have some idols, And we shrine you idols now. |
| Time, the ruthless idol-breaker, Smileless, cold iconoclast, Though he rob us of our altars, Cannot rob us of the past. |
| Dull and dead the gods’ bright nectar, Disencrowned of its foam; Duller, deader far the empty, Barren hearthstone of a home. |
| Smile out to our age and give us, Children, of the dawn’s desire; We have passed morn’s gold and opal, We have lost life’s early fire. |