William Barnes: Verses about Children

I'D a dream to-night
   As I fell asleep,
O! the touching sight
   Makes me still to weep:
Of my little lad,
Gone to leave me sad,
Ay, the child I had,
   But was not to keep.

As in heaven high,
   I my child did seek,
There in train came by
   Children fair and meek,
Each in lily white,
With a lamp alight;
Each was clear to sight,
   But they did not speak.

Then, a little sad,
Came my child in turn,
But the lamp he had,
   O it did not burn!
He, to clear my doubt,
Said, half turn'd about,
'Your tears put it out;
   Mother, never mourn.'

When from the child, that still is led
By hand, a father's hand is gone, ---
Or when a few-year'd mother dead
Has left her children growing on, ---
When men have left their children staid,
And they again have boy and maid, ---
O, can they know, as years may roll,
Their children's children, soul by soul?
If this with souls in heaven can be,
Do my fore-elders know of me?

My elders' elders, man and wife,
Were borne full early to the tomb,
With children still in childhood life
To play with butterfly or bloom.
And did they see the seasons mould
Their faces on, from young to old,
As years might bring them, turn by turn,
A time to laugh or time to mourn?
If this with souls in heaven can be,
Do my fore-elders know of me?

How fain I now would walk the floor
Within their mossy porch's bow,
Or linger by their church's door,
Or road that bore them to and fro,
Or nook where once they build their mow,
Or gateway open to their plough
(Though now indeed no gate is swung
That their live hands had ever hung ), ---
If I could know that they would see
Their child's late child, and know of me.

O AYE! they had woone child bezide,
An' a finer your eyes never met,
Twer a dear little fellow that died
In the summer that come wi' such het;
By the mowers, too thoughtless in fun,
He wer then a-zent off vrom our eyes,
Vrom the light ov the dew-dryen zun,-
Aye! vrom days under the blue-hollow'd skies.

He went out to the mowers in meade,
When the zun wer a-rose to his height,
An' the men wer a-swingen the snead,
Wi' their earms in white sleeves, left an' right;
An' out there, as they rested at noon,
O! they drench'd en vrom eale-horns too deep,
Till his thoughts wer a-drown'd in a swoon;
Aye! his life wer a-smother'd in sleep.

Then they laid en there-right on the ground,
On a grass-heap, a-zweltren wi'het,
Wi' his heair all a-wetted around
His young feace, wi' the big drops o' zweat;
In his little left palm he'd a-zet,
Wi' his right hand, his vore-finger's tip;
As vor zome-hat he woulden vorget,-
Aye! zome thought that he woulden let slip.

Then they took en in hwome to his bed,
An' he rose vrom his pillow noo mwore,
Vor the curls on his sleek little head
To be blown by the wind out o' door.
Vor he died while the hay russled grey
On the staddle so leately begun:
Lik' the mown grass a-dried by the day,-
Aye! the zwath-flow'r's a-killed by the zun.