| |
| NOW the earth in fields and hills | |
| Stirs with pulses of the Spring, | |
| Nest embowering hedges ring | |
| With interminable trills; | |
| Sunlight runs a race with rain, | 5 |
| All the world grows young again. | |
| |
| Young as at the hour of birth: | |
| From the grass the daisies rise | |
| With the dew upon their eyes, | |
| Sun-awakened eyes of earth; | 10 |
| Fields are set with cups of gold; | |
| Can this budding world grow old? | |
| |
| Can the world grow old and sere, | |
| Now when ruddy-tasselled trees | |
| Stoop to every passing breeze, | 15 |
| Rustling in their silken gear; | |
| Now when blossoms pink and white | |
| Have their own terrestrial light? | |
| |
| Brooding light falls soft and warm, | |
| Where in many a wind-rocked nest, | 20 |
| Curled up ’neath the she-bird’s breast | |
| Clustering eggs are hid from harm; | |
| While the mellow-throated thrush | |
| Warbles in the purpling bush. | |
| |
| Misty purple bathes the Spring: | 25 |
| Swallows flashing here and there | |
| Float and dive on waves of air, | |
| And make love upon the wing; | |
| Crocus-buds in sheaths of gold | |
| Burst like sunbeams from the mould. | 30 |
| |
| Chestnut leaflets burst their buds, | |
| Perching tiptoe on each spray, | |
| Springing toward the radiant day, | |
| As the bland, pacific floods | |
| Of the generative sun | 35 |
| All the teeming earth o’errun. | |
| |
| Can this earth run o’er with beauty, | |
| Laugh through leaf and flower and grain, | |
| While in close-pent court and lane, | |
| In the air so thick and sooty, | 40 |
| Little ones pace to and fro, | |
| Weighted with their parents’ woe? | |
| |
| Woe-predestined little ones! | |
| Putting forth their buds of life | |
| In an atmosphere of strife, | 45 |
| And crime-breeding ignorance; | |
| Where the bitter surge of care | |
| Freezes to a dull despair. | |
| |
| Dull despair and misery | |
| Lie about them from their birth | 50 |
| Ugly curses, uglier mirth, | |
| Are their earliest lullaby; | |
| Fathers have they without name, | |
| Mothers crushed by want and shame. | |
| |
| Brutish, overburthened mothers, | 55 |
| With their hungry children cast | |
| Half-nude to the nipping-blast; | |
| Little sisters with their brothers | |
| Dragging in their arms all day | |
| Children nigh as big as they. | 60 |
| |
| Children mothered by the street: | |
| Shouting, flouting, roaring after | |
| Passers-by with gibes and laughter, | |
| Diving between horses’ feet, | |
| In and out of drays and barrows, | 65 |
| Recklessly like London sparrows. | |
| |
| Mudlarks of our slums and alleys, | |
| All unconscious of the blooming | |
| World behind those housetops looming, | |
| Of the happy fields and valleys, | 70 |
| Of the miracle of Spring | |
| With its boundless blossoming. | |
| |
| Blossoms of humanity! | |
| Poor soiled blossoms in the dust! | |
| Through the thick defiling crust | 75 |
| Of soul-stifling poverty, | |
| In your features may be traced | |
| Childhood’s beauty half effaced— | |
| |
| Childhood, stunted in the shadow | |
| Of the light-debarring walls: | 80 |
| Not for you the cuckoo calls | |
| O’er the silver-threaded meadow; | |
| Not for you the lark on high | |
| Pours his music from the sky. | |
| |
| Ah! you have your music too! | 85 |
| And come flocking round that player | |
| Grinding at his organ there, | |
| Summer-eyed and swart of hue, | |
| Rattling off his well-worn tune | |
| On this April afternoon. | 90 |
| |
| Lovely April lights of pleasure | |
| Flit o’er want-beclouded features | |
| Of these little outcast creatures, | |
| As they swing with rhythmic measure, | |
| In the courage of their rags, | 95 |
| Lightly o’er the slippery flags. | |
| |
| Little footfalls, lightly glancing | |
| In a luxury of motion, | |
| Supple as the waves of ocean | |
| In your elemental dancing, | 100 |
| How you fly, and wheel, and spin, | |
| For your hearts, too, dance within. | |
| |
| Dance along with mirth and laughter, | |
| Buoyant, fearless, and elate, | |
| Dancing in the teeth of fate, | 105 |
| Ignorant of your hereafter, | |
| That with all its tragic glooms | |
| Blindly on your future looms. | |
| |
| Past and future, hence away! | |
| Joy, diffused throughout the earth, | 110 |
| Centre in this moment’s mirth | |
| Of ecstatic holiday: | |
| Once in all their lives’ dark story, | |
| Touch them, Fate! with April glory. | |
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