Yet, by one right tender tie,
Hope held him yet.  The fathers coarse and dull,
Vile mothers hard, and boys and girls profane,
His soul drew back from.  He had worked for them,—­
Work without joy:  but, in his heart of hearts,
He loved the little children; and whene’er
He heard their prattle innocent, and heard
Their tender voices lisping sacred words
That he had taught them,—­in the cleanly calm
Of decent school, by decent matron held,—­
Then would he say, “I shall have pleasure yet,
In these.”

But now, when he pushed back that door
And mounted up a flight of ruined stairs,
He said not that.  He said, “Oh! once I thought
The little children would make bright for me
The crown they wear who have won many souls
For righteousness; but oh, this evil place! 
Hard lines it gives them, cold and dirt abhorred,—­
Hunger and nakedness, in lieu of love,
And blows instead of care.

“And so they die,
The little children that I love,—­they die,—­They
turn their wistful faces to the wall,
And slip away to God.”

With that, his hand
He laid upon a latch and lifted it,
Looked in full quietly, and entered straight.

What saw he there?  He saw a three-years child,
That lay a-dying on a wisp of straw
Swept up into a corner.  O’er its brow
The damps of death were gathering:  all alone,
Uncared for, save that by its side was set
A cup, it waited.  And the eyes had ceased
To look on things at hand.  He thought they gazed
In wistful wonder, or some faint surmise
Of coming change,—­as though they saw the gate
Of that fair land that seems to most of us
Very far off. 
                When he beheld the look,
He said, “I knew, I knew how this would be! 
Another!  Ay, and but for drunken blows
And dull forgetfulness of infant need,
This little one had lived.”  And thereupon
The misery of it wrought upon him so,
That, unaware, he wept.  Oh! then it was
That, in the bending of his manly head,
It came between the child and that whereon
He gazed, and, when the curate glanced again,
Those dying eyes, drawn back to earth once more,
Looked up into his own, and smiled. 
                                      He drew
More near, and kneeled beside the small frail thing,
Because the lips were moving; and it raised
Its baby hand, and stroked away his tears,
And whispered, “Master! master!” and so died.

Now, in that town there was an ancient church,
A minster of old days which these had turned
To parish uses:  there the curate served. 
It stood within a quiet swarded Close,
Sunny and still, and, though it was not far
From those dark courts where poor humanity
Struggled and swarmed, it seemed to wear its own
Still atmosphere about it, and to hold
That old-world calm within its precincts pure
And that grave rest which modern life foregoes.