But never a flower, or field or fern in their leafy homes have my children seen.
The case is different, so they say, for I'm respectable—save the mark!
He works with the sweat of his manly brow, and I with my body and brain—poor Clerk!
Why did I marry? In mercy's name, in the form of my brother was I not born?
Are wife and child to be given to him, and love to be taken from me with scorn?
It is not for them that I plead, for theirs are the only voices that break my sorrow,
That lighten my pathway, make me pause 'twixt the sad to-day and the grim to-morrow.
The Sun and the Sea are not given to me, nor joys like yours as you flit together
Away to the woods and the downs, and over the endless acres of purple heather.