Go, look to yon Judge, in his dark-flowing gown,
With the scales wherein law weighteth equity down;
Where he frowns on the weak and smiles on the strong,
And punishes right whilst he justifies wrong;
Where juries their lips to the Bible have laid,
To render a verdict—they've already made:
Go there, in the court-room, and find, if you can,
Any law for the cause of a Moneyless Man!
Then go to your hovel—no raven has fed
The wife who has suffered too long for her bread;
Kneel down by her pallet, and kiss the death-frost
From the lips of the angel your poverty lost:
Then turn in your agony upward to God,
And bless, while it smites you, the chastening rod,
And you'll find, at the end of your life's little span,
There's a welcome above for a Moneyless Man!
"A MENSÁ ET THORO"
[From Jacob Brown and Other Poems (Cincinnati, 1875)]
Both of us guilty and both of us sad—
And this is the end of passion!
And people are silly—people are mad,
Who follow the lights of Fashion;
For she was a belle, and I was a beau,
And both of us giddy-headed—
A priest and a rite—a glitter and show,
And this is the way we wedded.
There were wants we never had known before,
And matters we could not smother;
And poverty came in an open door,
And love went out at another:
For she had been humored—I had been spoiled,
And neither was sturdy-hearted—
Both in the ditches and both of us soiled,
And this is the way we parted.
A SPECIAL PLEA
[From the same]
Prue and I together sat
Beside a running brook;
The little maid put on my hat,
And I the forfeit took.
"Desist," she cried; "It is not right,
I'm neither wife nor sister;"
But in her eye there shone such light,
That twenty times I kiss'd her.