CHILDREN. COME to me, O ye children! And the questions that perplexed me Ye open the eastern windows, That look towards the sun, Where thoughts are singing swallows And the brooks of morning run. In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine, In your thoughts the brooklet's flow, But in mine is the wind of Autumn And the first fall of the snow. Ah! what would the world be to us We should dread the desert behind us What the leaves are to the forest, Ere their sweet and tender juices Have been hardened into wood, That to the world are children; Than reaches the trunks below. And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing In your sunny atmosphere. For what are all our contrivings, Ye are better than all the ballads For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead. SANDALPHON. HAVE you read in the Talmud of old, In the Legends the Rabbins have told Of the limitless realms of the air, Have you read it, the marvellous story Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory, How, erect, at the outermost gates With his feet on the ladder of light, That, crowded with angels unnumbered, By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered Alone in the desert at night? The Angels of Wind and of Fire With the song's irresistible stress; But serene in the rapturous throng, With eyes unimpassioned and slow, To sounds that ascend from below; From the spirits on earth that adore, From the hearts that are broken with losses, And weary with dragging the crosses Too heavy for mortals to bear. |