Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/634

 Yet count our gains; this wealth is but a name, That leaves our useful products still the same. Not so the loss: the man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied; Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds; The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth, Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their growth; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green; Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world supplies; While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all, In barren splendor, feebly waits the fall

Where then, ah! where, shall poverty reside, To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride? If, to some common's fenceless limits strayed, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, And even the bare-worn common is denied. If to the city sped, what waits him there? To see profusion that he must not share; To see ten thousand baneful arts combined To pamper luxury, and thin mankind; To see each joy the sons of pleasure know Extorted from his fellow-creatures' woe. Here while the courtier glitters in brocade, There the pale artist plies the sickly trade; Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign, Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train;