Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/119

Rh Had faltered in the race, and sunk and died

Unblest in his dim garret by a prayer;

Not even a friend to stand his bed beside,

And wipe his brow, or straighten his dank hair;

Frail, delicate girls, upon whose cheeks of snow

The bright red hectic of consumption burned

In strange delusive beauty, while the flow

Of life grew fainter as each day returned;

Each weary day of ceaseless toil and care,

And strife for bread that was to eke out time;

Oh! the black darkness of their sick despair

Shook each pale ghost like memory of a crime!

And men whose lives were spent in night-black mines,

Who hardly knew the earth was fair or bright,

Who hardly saw the heaven that o'er it shines,

Or bathed their haggard faces in its light;

And those who searched the ocean's deep for gems,

Or dragged the rivers for their bedded gold,

To garnish thrones and brighten diadems,

Yet wanted food, and covering from the cold;

And those who lived beneath the rich man's eye

In fated Ireland, and yet were not deemed

Worth the cold charity that let them die,

Until with dead the common highways teemed;

And England's million slaves who, toiling, weave

Their very bones and nerves and heart-strings in

The delicate fabrics that they, dying, leave

As monuments alone that they have been;

And the poor wretches, basking in the sun

Of fair Italia's despot-governed soil,

Begging a pittance mean from every one,

Or taking lawlessly the easiest spoil;