Child-Songs

Still linger in our noon of time     And on our Saxon tongue     The echoes of the home-born hymns     The Aryan mothers sung.     And childhood had its litanies     In every age and clime;     The earliest cradles of the race     Were rocked to poet's rhyme.     Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,     Nor green earth's virgin sod,     So moved the singer's heart of old     As these small ones of God.     The mystery of unfolding life     Was more than dawning morn,     Than opening flower or crescent moon     The human soul new-born.     And still to childhood's sweet appeal     The heart of genius turns,     And more than all the sages teach     From lisping voices learns,     The voices loved of him who sang,     Where Tweed and Teviot glide,     That sound to-day on all the winds     That blow from Rydal-side,     Heard in the Teuton's household songs,     And folk-lore of the Finn,     Where'er to holy Christmas hearths     The Christ-child enters in!     Before life's sweetest mystery still     The heart in reverence kneels;     The wonder of the primal birth     The latest mother feels.     We need love's tender lessons taught     As only weakness can;     God hath His small interpreters;     The child must teach the man.     We wander wide through evil years,     Our eyes of faith grow dim;     But he is freshest from His hands     And nearest unto Him!     And haply, pleading long with Him     For sin-sick hearts and cold,     The angels of our childhood still     The Father's face behold.     Of such the kingdom! Teach Thou us,     O-Master most divine,     To feel the deep significance     Of these wise words of Thine!     The haughty eye shall seek in vain     What innocence beholds;     No cunning finds the key of heaven,     No strength its gate unfolds.     Alone to guilelessness and love     That gate shall open fall;     The mind of pride is nothingness,     The childlike heart is all