Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A PLEA FOR THE CHILDREN, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A PLEA FOR THE CHILDREN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Shall woman's pitying love
Last Line: This thrice accursed wrong!
Subject(s): Children; Childhood


SHALL woman's pitying love
Its object seek in vain?
Comes there to-day our hearts to move
No hopeless, innocent pain?
The dull world speeds on its unbending course --
No law there seems but Force! --
And those whose tender hearts would seek
To aid the helpless weak,
Too oft, with folded hands, sit impotent
Waiting the dark event.

So loud the doubting voices are,
We scarce may stir at all,
Though at the shock of ruthless war
The young battalions fall!
Over all lands in vain
The toiling worker's pain
Speaks, with a terrible voice unheard,
Its awful Sibylline word!
Hardly we dare assuage
The ever-growing ills of Age,
Who, knowing how the lifelong sufferers live,
Know, too, how hard the task to wisely give.
The homes of healing languish for the gold
The rich, perplexed, withhold:
Since hardly may our minds discern the clue
To separate the false need from the true --
So hard to tell if that we strive to do
Make not the tangle worse,
And bring, indeed, no blessing, but a curse!

One cause there is, indeed --
Alas for all the Christian centuries! --
Calls clear from childish lives that bleed
With daily miseries.
Within a thousand homeless homes today
The sot, the savage, bear remorseless sway --
Vile souls, and hearts of stone!
With none to heed the helpless children moan --
Starved, beaten, prisoned, drugged, tormented, slain:
In life a burden, but in death a gain!

Shall these still suffer? Shall the State's tired arm,
Too slow to save from harm,
Its dim eye, by a thousand cares, grown blind,
No willing helpers find?
These little ones! Shall they unaided pine?
Who, fresh from the creative Hand Divine,
Bring to our sad, laborious earth
Bright memories of their birth!
Who 'neath a happier, juster fate
May give strong, willing workers to the State!
Here no doubt comes; here is our duty plain:
Soothe, tender women, soothe their hopeless pain!
And trample, with a righteous anger strong,
This thrice accursed wrong!





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