The Lost Back Yard.

The modern city child has lost his most precious birthright, the back yard.American paper.
Reeking court and alley, narrow city slum,
Life, beneath its burden, hopeless, crushed and dumb,
Little children playing in the ftid yard
Never plucked a daisy from the grassy sward
That is how it once was, now the case is worse.
!"er that #oyless playground spreads the brick$built curse.
Room, more room for business% Room for toil and trade%
&laces where the sunlight lingered, half afraid,
'ield to the grim darkness, pent and walled about,
(ll the bricks of progress drive the children out,
)very gathered million in the city"s purse
*raws the city"s children deeper +neath the curse.
,earken, ! (ustralia, e"en such things are known
-n your sun$warm cities, pent and overgrown.
.ricks are more than children, trade is more than life.
/oes of older peoples in your streets are rife
0tay the hand and ponder e"er the growing curse
To your narrow gateways draws the white man"s hearse.
Narrow are your gateways, but the seas are wide
1any ports unpeopled front the ocean tide.
2rom the dwarfing bondage of your blindness wake.
3se your larger sea$board for the children"s sake,
2or the white man"s honor that is yours to nurse
.urst the chains that bind you, spurn the city"s curse.
*avid 1c4ee /right.
N.0./.
The Bulletin, 56 !ctober 7879.