8o LONDON CHILDREN 



fashioning their bottle nest, so happy in 

 the sunshine, is a wiser and more profound 

 utterance than all the philosophy collected 

 from the books of the world. . . . 



The tram drew nearer London with its 

 ragged children; had I doubted it before, 

 no longer was the ideal of the artist obscured 

 from me you must hear it. It must be 

 the ideal of man to beautify the lives of 

 those who pass nearly all their days in the 

 places whence the wild birds and the flowers 

 have gone for evermore. 



I thought of these things as the voice of 

 the brook mingled with the love-whisper 

 of my little bottle-birds, and the bees 

 droned their anthem to the pealing chimes 

 of the bluebells. For every year the 

 flowers come, the migrants travel across 

 the great dim sea, the wheat sways and 

 bends as the wind rushes over, and the 

 silver-burning sun swings across the sky; 

 but never enough of these do the little ones 

 in the city see ; life does not remain for 



