The Easter Children (From “The Frozen Grail and other Poems”) by Elsa Barker. Upton Sinclair, ed. 1915. The Cry for Justice

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Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968).
The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

The Easter Children
(From “The Frozen Grail and other Poems”)

By Elsa Barker

(Contemporary American poet and novelist. Catherine Breshkovsky, called “Little Mother” by the Russian peasants, was sentenced to a long term of exile in Siberia when seventy-seven years of age)


“CHRIST the Lord is risen!”
Chant the Easter children,
Their love-moulded faces
Luminous with gladness,
And their costly raiment	5
Gleaming like the lilies.

But last night I wandered
Where Christ had not risen,
Where love knows no gladness,
Where the lord of Hunger	10
Leaves no room for lilies,
And no time for childhood.

And today I wonder
Whether I am dreaming;
For above the swelling	15
Of their Easter music
I can hear the murmur,
“Suffer all the children.”

Nay, the world is dreaming!
And my seeing spirit	20
Trembles for its waking,
When their Saviour rises
To restore the lilies
To the outcast children.

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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