| |
| COME to me, O ye children! | |
| For I hear you at your play, | |
| And the questions that perplexed me | |
| Have vanished quite away. | |
| |
| Ye open the eastern windows, | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| But in mine is the wind of Autumn | |
| And the first fall of the snow. | |
| |
| Ah! what would the world be to us | |
| If the children were no more? | |
| We should dread the desert behind us | 15 |
| Worse than the dark before. | |
| |
| What the leaves are to the forest, | |
| With light and air for food, | |
| Ere their sweet and tender juices | |
| Have been hardened into wood,— | 20 |
| |
| That to the world are children; | |
| Through them it feels the glow | |
| Of a brighter and sunnier climate | |
| Than reaches the trunks below. | |
| |
| Come to me, O ye children! | 25 |
| And whisper in my ear | |
| What the birds and the winds are singing | |
| In your sunny atmosphere. | |
| |
| For what are all our contrivings, | |
| And the wisdom of our books, | 30 |
| When compared with your caresses, | |
| And the gladness of your looks? | |
| |
| Ye are better than all the ballads | |
| That ever were sung or said; | |
| For ye are living poems, | 35 |
| And all the rest are dead. | |
| |
