Poverty
By Alcaeus
(Greek lyric poet, B.C. 611-580; banished for his resistance to tyrants. Translation by Sir William Jones)
The worst of ills, and hardest to endure,
Past hope, past cure,
Is Penury, who, with her sister-mate
Disorder, soon brings down the loftiest state,
And makes it desolate.
This truth the sage of Sparta told,
Aristodemus old,—
”Wealth makes the man.“ On him that’s poor
Proud Worth looks down, and Honor shuts the door.
The Beggar’s Complaint
(Ancient Japanese classic)
The heaven and earth they call so great,
For me are very small;
The sun and moon they call so bright,
For me ne’er shine at all.
Are all men sad, or only I?
And what have I obtained—
What good the gift of mortal life,
That prize so rarely gained—
If nought my chilly back protects
But one thin grass-cloth coat,
In tatters hanging like the weeds
That on the billows float?
If here in smoke-stained, darksome hut,
Upon the bare cold ground,
I make my wretched bed of straw,
And hear the mournful sound—
Hear how mine aged parents groan,
And wife and children cry,
Father and mother, children, wife,
Huddling in misery—
If in the rice-pan, nigh forgot,
The spider hangs its nest,
And from the hearth no smoke goes up
Where all is so unblest?
Shame and despair are mine from day to day,
But, being no bird, I cannot fly away.