THE LITTLE CHILDREN

“Suffer little children to come unto me,” Christ said, and answering with infernal glee, “Take them!” the arch-fiend scoffed, and from the tottering walls Of their wrecked homes, and from the cattle’s stalls, And the dogs’ kennels, and the cold Of the waste fields, and from the hapless hold Of their dead mothers’ arms, famished and bare, And maimed by shot and shell, The master-spirit of hell Caught them up, and through the shuddering air Of the hope-forsaken world The little ones he hurled, Mocking that Pity in his pitiless might— The Anti-Christ of Schrecklickeit. W. D. Howells