Man’s mind the flower of action and of time,
I was one day where beggars come to take
Doles ere they die. An Indian mother there,
Young, but so wretched that her staring eyes
Shone like the winter wolf’s with ravening glare
Of hunger, struck me. For to much surprise
A three-year child well nourish’d at her breast,
Wither’d with famine, still she fed and press’d—
For she was dying. ‘I am too poor,’ she said,
‘To feed him otherwise’; and with a kiss