HUNGER AND COLD.
SISTERS two! all praise to you,
With your faces pinch'd and blue;
To the poor man you've been true
From of old:
You can speak the keenest word,
You are sure of being heard,
From the point you're never stirr'd,—
Hunger and Cold!
Let sleek statesmen temporize,—
Palsied are their shifts and lies
When they meet your bloodshot eyes,
Grim and bold;
Policy you set at naught,
In their traps you'll not be caught,
You're too honest to be bought,-
Hunger and Cold!
Bolt and bar the palace-door!
While the mass of men are poor,
Naked truth grows more and more
Uncontroll'd;
You had never yet, I guess,
Any praise for bashfulness,
You can visit sans court-dress,-
Hunger and Cold!
While the music fell and rose,
And the dance reel'd to its close,
Where her round of costly woes
Fashion stroll'd,
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:
Every thing 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 clogg'd 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 triumph'd 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 toll'd;
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,
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!
I SAW the twinkle of white feet,
I saw the flash of robes descending;
Before her ran an influence fleet,
That bow'd my heart like barley bending.
As, in bare fields, the searching bees
Pilot to blooms beyond our finding,
It led me on, by sweet degrees,
Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding.
Those graces were that seem'd grim fates
With nearer love the sky lean'd o'er me;
The long-sought secret's golden gates
On musical hinges swung before me.
I saw the brimm'd bowl in her grasp
Thrilling with godhood; like a lover,
I sprang the proffer'd life to clasp:
The beaker fell, the luck was over.
The earth has drunk the vintage up; What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup
Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's?
O spendthrift haste! Await the gods;
Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience.
Haste scatters on unthankful sods
The immortal gift in vain libations.
Coy Hebe flies from those that woo,
And shuns the hands would seize upon
Follow thy life, and she will sue
To pour for thee the cup of honour!
DEAR common flower! that growest beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoy'd that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round
May match in wealth,-thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.
Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;
'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offer'd wealth with unrewarded eye.
Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givèst me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time;
Not in mid June the golden-cuirass'd bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent,
His conquer'd Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.
Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,—
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,-
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind,-of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap,-and of a sky above,
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.
My childhood's earliest thoughts are link'd with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song,
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listen'd as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he did bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears,
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.
How like a prodigal doth Nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.
WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.
GUVENER B. is a sensible man ;
He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;
But John P.
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
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