Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/673

 But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy; "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary, Our young feet," they say, "are very weak; Few paces have we taken, yet are weary—  Our grave-rest is very far to seek. Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,  For the outside earth is cold, And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,  And the graves are for the old."

"For oh," say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run or leap; If we cared for any meadows, it were merely  To drop down in them and sleep.