"THESE ARE MY JEWELS."
Timour-Mammon's triumph's full
In this grace-abandoned creature.
Look at her! A tawdry trull,
Blear of eye and blurred of feature
From the cult of her god—Drink!
Herod's cruel self might shrink
From a—Mother, calculating
On her children's loss, awaiting
With impatience their last breath,
And the devilish gains of Death.
Such as she, her cronies cry,
Are "In luck when children die!"
Luck! The luck of willing loss.
Children dead bring in the dross.
Little Sarah's pale and sickly;
Death is near, but comes not quickly,
Art may hasten his slow tread.
Blows, exposure, hunger, pain,
Are auxiliaries of gain,
Gain that comes "when Sarah's dead,"
When to death her "friends" have done her.
"We have got four pounds upon her,"
Babbles little Sarah's brother,
Echoing the modern Mother.
Wemyss the wise advises "thrift,"
As the only thing to lift
Labour from the Sweater's slough.
Laws, he swears, are wholly vain;
Thought may scheme, and Love may strain
Fruitlessly to raise the brow
Of the poor above the slime
Of starvation, suffering, crime.
Thrift's the thing! Well, here is thrift!
Children,—they are fortune's gift.
Motherhood to rear them strives?
Not so; it insures their lives!
Burial Insurance comes
As a boon unto the slums.
The insurance love may fix
At five pounds, or even six;
A child's funeral costs a pound,
And the balance means—drinks round!
Here's the luck of loss, a luck
Care may hasten. Blows are struck,
Raiment stinted, food denied,
Hunger and exposure tried;
Infants overlain—by chance!
Is it not a Moloch dance?
Modern Motherhood, plus Drink,
Beats old Moab, will not shrink
From child-sacrifice to win,
Not a false god's smile, but Gin!
Children are possessions, truly,
To be sold, and paid for, duly,
Pledged like other property,
Bringing interest—when they die.
Modern Cornelia! That is she,
With a semi-drunken glee
Aping, all unconsciously,
The proud Roman mother's vaunt.
"See my jewels! What I want—
Dress, and drink, and selfish ease,
I can win at will—through these."
What was it little Bobby said?
"We'll get four pounds when Sarah's dead!"
Golden-tongued Peterborough, flay
The harpies with your burning breath;
And you, brave Waugh, assist to stay
This plague of fiends who thrive on death.
Cut short the course of callous crime
Of this Cornelia of our time!
