Poem for a tired mind

Mass at Dawn

I dropped my sail and dried my dripping seines
Where the white quay is chequered by cool planes
In whose great branches, always out of sight,
The nightingales are singing day and night.

Though all was grey beneath the moon's grey beam,
My boat in her new paint shone like a bride,
And silver in my baskets shone the bream;
my arms were tired, and I was heavy-eyed.

But when with food and rink, at morning light,
The children met me at the water-side,
Never was wine so red or bread so white.

~Roy Campbell

I wonder who the children are. A mother who had lost some children to miscarriage thought they may be the children already in heaven. Perhaps they are the souls of all the child-like, who alone can enter there.