II
Byway, ambushed with the dark,
Byway, where the ears may hark;
Live and fierce when day is done,
You, that do without the Sun:—
What's this game you bring to nought?—
Muttering like a thing distraught,
Reckoning like a simpleton?
(Since the hearing must be brief,—
Living or a dying thief!)
Cobbled with the anguished stones
That the thoroughfare disowns;
Stones they gave you for your bread
Of the disinherited!
Where the Towers of Hunger loom,
Crowding in the dregs of doom;
Where the lost sky peering through
Sees no more the grudging grass,—
Only this mud-mirrored blue,
Like some shattered looking-glass.
(Under, with the sorry reaping!
Underneath the stones of weeping,
For the Dark to have in keeping.)
Byway, you, so foully marred;
You, whose sodden walls and scarred,
See no light, but only where
Fevered lamps are set to stare
In the eyes of such despair!
Tell me—as a Byway can—
Was this Beggar once a Man?
'Rich man—Poor man—Beggar man—Thief!'
Like and lost as leaf and leaf.
Stammering out your wrongs and shames,
Must you cry their very names?
Must you sob your shame, your grief?
—'Poor man—Poor man!—Beggar—Thief.'