Lost faces, gleaming there,
Where misery blasphemes the sacred young!
Mute outcry, most, of those
Small suffering hands defrauded of their rose;
Faces the daylight shuns;
Ruinous faces of the little ones,--
Pale witness, unaware.
Starved lips, and withering blood--
O broken in the bud!--
Blank eyes, and blighted hair._

(_O golden, golden tree!
Bear yet awhile with me._)

So is it, haply, when
Dull eyes look up, and then
Dull eyes look down again.
Waste no vain holiday on such as these;
For them there is no joy in blossomed trees.


V

For them there is no joy in blossomed trees.
And with what eye-shut ease
We leave them, at the last, for company,
The Tree,
Whose two stark boughs no springtime yet unfurled,
Ever, since time began;
Nor bloom so strange to see!--