Living Poems Arthur Sullivan

Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away

Ye open the eastern windows
That look towards the sun
Where thoughts are singing swallows
And the brooks of morning run

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine
In your thoughts the brooklet`s flow
But in mine is the wind of Autumn
And the first fall of the snow

Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before

What the leaves are to the forest
With light and air for food
Ere their sweet and tender juices
Have been hardened into wood, -

That to the world are children;
Through them it feels the glow
Of a brighter and sunnier climate
Than reaches the trunks below