Is that trembling cry a song? 
  Can it be a song of joy? 
  And so many children poor? 
  It is a land of poverty!

  And their sun does never shine,
  And their fields are bleak and bare,
  And their ways are filled with thorns: 
  It is eternal winter there.

  For where’er the sun does shine,
  And where’er the rain does fall,
  Babe can never hunger there,
  Nor poverty the mind appal.

  THE GARDEN OF LOVE

  I went to the Garden of Love,
  And saw what I never had seen: 
  A chapel was built in the midst,
  Where I used to play on the green.

  And the gates of this chapel were shut,
  And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;
  So I turned to the Garden of Love,
  That so many sweet flowers bore;

  And I saw it was filled with graves,
  And tombstones where flowers should be;
  And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
  And binding with briars my joys and desires.

  A LITTLE BOY LOST

  ’Nought loves another as itself,
  Nor venerates another so,
  Nor is it possible to Thought
  A greater than itself to know: 

  ’And, Father, how can I love you
  Or any of my brothers more? 
  I love you like the little bird
  That picks up crumbs around the door.’

  The Priest sat by and heard the child,
  In trembling zeal he seized his hair: 
  He led him by his little coat,
  And all admired the priestly care.

  And standing on the altar high,
  ‘Lo! what a fiend is here!’ said he,
  ’One who sets reason up for judge
  Of our most holy Mystery.’

  The weeping child could not be heard,
  The weeping parents wept in vain;
  They stripped him to his little shirt,
  And bound him in an iron chain;

  And burned him in a holy place,
  Where many had been burned before: 
  The weeping parents wept in vain. 
  Are such things done on Albion’s shore?

  THE SCHOOLBOY

  I love to rise in a summer morn
  When the birds sing on every tree;
  The distant huntsman winds his horn,
  And the skylark sings with me. 
  O! what sweet company.

  But to go to school in a summer morn,
  O! it drives all joy away;
  Under a cruel eye outworn,
  The little ones spend the day
  In sighing and dismay.

  Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
  And spend many an anxious hour,
  Nor in my book can I take delight,
  Nor sit in learning’s bower,
  Worn through with the dreary shower.

  How can the bird that is born for joy
  Sit in a cage and sing? 
  How can a child, when fears annoy,
  But droop his tender wing,
  And forget, his youthful spring?

  O! father and mother, if buds are nipped
  And blossoms blown away,
  And if the tender plants are stripped
  Of their joy in the springing day,
  By sorrow—­and care’s dismay,