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.