I met a preacher there I knew, and said,—
“Ill and o’erworked, how fare you in this scene?”
“Bravely!” said he; “for I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.”
O human soul! as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light,
Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow,
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam,—
Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night!
Thou mak’st the heaven thou hop’st indeed thy home.
WEST LONDON.
Crouched on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square,
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.
Some laboring-men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Passed opposite; she touched her girl, who hied
Across, and begged, and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.
Thought I, “Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.
She turns from that cold succor, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours.”