THE BITTER CRY!
"Few persons have any conception of these pestilential human rookeries where tens of thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which call to mind the middle passage of the slave ship."—[The Bitter Cry of Outcast London.]
Wearily wandering into the winding
Maze of the filthy and festering slums,
Borne on the blast of the hurricane blinding,
Suddenly into my spirit there comes
Bitterest cry of the careworn and dying,
Weeping and wailing of old and of young—
Wailing of women aweary and sighing.
Heavenward? Hear the song that they sung:
"Strive, strive, strive,
With the wolf at the door, in vain,
Tho' the struggle to keep alive
Is worse than a hell of pain.
Gin, gin, gin,
Our cares we'll drown once more;
'Tis but folly to shrink from the spirit of drink,
So, swig till our lives be o'er."
Fiercer than fathomless cry of the weepers,
Wilder than wailing of women and men,
Echoing ever a voice, "O ye sleepers,
Where is the harpy who owneth each den?
Where are the vultures who prey on the living?"
Pitiless dealers of wrong at each breath,
Shedders of blood who each moment are giving
Children and women and strong men to Death:
"Here, here, here,"
Is the loud and bitter cry.
"Oh, heed our sob of fear,
And save us ere we die.
"Rent, rent, rent,
Our cares we'll drown once more,
For there's nothing but gin when the bailiffs are in,
And the baby's dead on the floor."
G. B. BURGIN.
Ashley House, High Barnet, Herts, England.