Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/120

116 And proud, brave Poland's broken-hearted sons,

Whose lives were wasted on a foreign shore,

In exile, bitterness, and want, that shuns

To be confessed, since man the burden bore.

And there were those whose lives of crime and shame

Began in want and ended in despair;

Wild, fierce, half-demon creatures, whom to name

Made the world shudder, crouching in their lair;

Hunted and hated, dreaded and reviled,

Outlawed and outcast from the face of earth,

From friendship and from sympathy exiled,

Dreading their death, and cursing more their birth.

From motley groups of women, many came

Who told the story of their lives with tears;

And many covered up their brows for shame,

Shunning the mem'ry of false virtue's sneers.

These clenched their hands as if the tale awoke

In their imperfect minds a sense of wrong,

Forcing their words as if they feared to choke

With the emotions they dared not prolong.

Of all I saw these made my heart most sore,

So irretrievable and dark their doom,

So much existence gave them to deplore,

And left for light and hope so little room.

But the whole scene was sad enough, God knows!

Though mixed with fancies foreign and grotesque;

And deep enough and true enough its woes,

Even relieved with something of burlesque.

All, all had suffered; every wretched heart

Had throbbed with agony, and broke, or changed;

Had borne for virtue's sake oppression's smart,

And struggling died, or lived to be estranged,