When I my grave have made,

Let winds and tempests beat:
Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay.
True love doth pass away!

II.

THE FIRST SONG OF INNOCENCE.

PIPING down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,

And he, laughing, said to me:

"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer
"Piper, pipe that song again";
So I piped: he wept to hear

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe:
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!"
So I sang the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read."
So he vanished from my sight,
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

III.

THE LITTLE BLACK BOY.

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O, my soul is white. White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,

And, pointing to the East, began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives this light, and gives His heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

"And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love; And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

"For when our souls have learned the heat to bear, The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice, Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care, And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.""

Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me,

And thus I say to little English boy:

When I from black, and he from white cloud free,

And round the tent of God like lambs we joy;

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

IV.

THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER.

WHEN my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry, "Weep! weep! weep! weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet, and that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight;

That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind;
And the angel told Tom, if he 'd be a good boy,
He 'a have God for his father, and never want joy,

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,

And got with our bags and our brushes to work:

Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm: So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

VI.

ON ANOTHER'S SORROW.

CAN I see another's woe,

And not be in sorrow too?

Can I see another's grief,

And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,

And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear

An infant groan, an infant fear?
No! no! never can it be !
Never, never can it be!

And can He, who smiles on all,
Hear the wren, with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief and care,
Hear the woes that infants bear?

And not sit beside the nest,
Pouring Pity in their breast?
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant's tear?

And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
O, no! never can it be !
Never, never can it be!