I beheld with shuddering fear
Wolves' eyes through the windows peer;
Little dream they you are near,
Hunger and Cold!

When the toiler's heart you clutch,
Conscience is not valued much,
He recks not a bloody smutch
On his gold:
Everything to you defers,
You are potent reasoners,
At your whisper Treason stirs,
Hunger and Cold!

Rude comparisons you draw,
Words refuse to sate your maw,
Your gaunt limbs the cobweb law
Cannot hold :

You're not clogged with foolish pride,
But can seize a right denied;
Somehow God is on your side,
Hunger and Cold!

You respect no hoary wrong
More for having triumphed long;
Its past victims, haggard throng,
From the mould

You unbury: swords and spears
Weaker are than poor men's tears,
Weaker than your silent years,
Hunger and Cold!

Let them guard both hall and bower; Through the window you will glower, Patient till your reckoning hour

Shall be tolled:

1844.

Cheeks are pale, but hands are red,
Guiltless blood may chance be shed,
But ye must and will be fed,
Hunger and Cold!

God has plans man must not spoil,
Some were made to starve and toil,
Some to share the wine and oil,
We are told :

Devil's theories are these,

Stifling hope and love and peace,
Framed your hideous lusts to please,
Hunger and Cold!

Scatter ashes on thy head,
Tears of burning sorrow shed,
Earth! and be by pity led
To Love's fold;

Ere they block the very door
With lean corpses of the poor,
And will hush for naught but gore,
Hunger and Cold!

THE LANDLORD.

WHAT boot your houses and your lands ? In spite of close-drawn deed and fence, Like water, 'twixt your cheated hands, They slip into the graveyard's sands

And mock your ownership's pretence.

How shall you speak to urge your right, Choked with that soil for which you lust? The bit of clay, for whose delight

You grasp, is mortgaged, too; Death might Foreclose this very day in dust.

Fence as you please, this plain poor man,
Whose only fields are in his wit,
Who shapes the world, as best he can,
According to God's higher plan,

Owns you and fences as is fit.

Though yours the rents, his incomes wax
By right of eminent domain ;
From factory tall to woodman's axe,
All things on earth must pay their tax,
To feed his hungry heart and brain.

He takes you from your-easy chair,
And what he plans, that you must do ;
You sleep in down, eat dainty fare,—
He mounts his crazy garret-stair

And starves, the landlord cver you

Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil.

Your lands, with force or cunning got,
Shrink to the measure of the grave;
But Death himself abridges not
The tenures of almighty thought,
The titles of the wise and brave.

TO A PINE-TREE.

FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest,
Purple-blue with the distance and vast;
Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest,
That hangs poised on a lull in the blast,
To its fall leaning awful.

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened,
Thou singest and tossest thy branches;
Thy heart with the terror is gladdened,
Thou forebodest the dread avalanches,

When whole mountains swoop valeward.

In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring From the city beneath him.

To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion, Till he longs to be swung 'mid their booming In the tents of the Arabs of ocean,

Whose finned isles are their cattle.

For the gale snatches thee for his lyre,
With mad hand crashing melody frantic,
While he pours forth his mighty desire
To leap down on the eager Atlantic,

Whose arms stretch to his playmate.