To the Makers of Sentimental Idyls.
Did you but know, fine dandy,
The people’s life of misery
You would not use such pretty phrases,
Nor give to God such empty praises.
At our tears you’re laughing,
And our sorrows chaffing,
Slave’s cot in a shady spot—
You call it heaven! Rot!
I lived once in such a shanty,
Of childhood’s tears I shed a plenty,
In bitter sorrows we were wise,
Home that you call paradise.
No paradise I call thee,
Little cottage in the wood,
With the water pure beside thee
Close by the village rude!
There my mother bore me,
Singing she tended me;
My child’s heart drank in her pain.
Cottage in the shady dell,
Heaven outside, inside hell; [[110]]
But slavery there,
with labor weary,
Nor time for prayer
in life so dreary.
My mother good to her early grave
Was hurled by sorrows wave on wave.
The father weeping o’er his young,
(little and naked were we),
Sank ’neath the weight of fated wrong
And died in slavery.
The children, we, of home bereft
Like little mice ’mong neighbors crept.
Water drawer was I at school,
My brothers toiled ’neath landlord’s rule.
For my sisters an evil fate must be,
Though little doves they seemed to me;
Into life as serfs they’re born,
And die they must in that lot forlorn.
I shudder yet, where’er I roam,
When I think of life in that village home.
Evil-doers, Oh God, are we,
An earthly heaven we had from Thee,
Turned it into hell have we,
And a second heaven is now our plea.
[[111]]
Gently we live with our brothers now,
With their lives our fields we plough;
Fields that with their tears are wet,
And yet—
What do we know?
yet it seems as if Thou!
(For without Thy will
Should we suffer ill?)
Dost Thou, Oh Father in heaven holy
Laugh at us the poor and lowly?
Advise with them of noble birth
How so cleverly to rule the earth?
For see the woods their branches waving,
And there beyond, the white pool gleaming
And willows o’er the water bending,
Garden of Eden it is in sooth,
But of its deeds enquire the truth.
This wondrous earth should tell a story
Of endless joy, and praise, and glory
To Thee, Oh God, unique and holy.
Unhallowed spot,
Whence praise comes not!
A world of tears where curses rise,
To heaven above the hopeless skies.
[[112]]