"I'd love the fairest and they'd love me;
Yon dame, with a smile that warms my heart,
Might have borne with me life's better part,
But lost to me, here in poverty's ditch,
What were mine if things was only sich."
Thus the old beggar moodily sung,
And his eyes dropped tears as his hands he wrung.
I could but pity to hear him berate,
In dolorous tones the decrees of Fate,
That laid on his back its iron switch,