The Book of the Homeless/The Little Children

by William Dean Howells

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