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The Cry of the Children.

"ϕευ̑, ϕευ̑, τι προσȏερκεσθε μ' ομμασιν, τεκνα"—Medea,

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
    Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
    And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
 The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
 The young flowers are blowing toward the west—
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 grief abhorrent, 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!