Yet what to thee is summer's golden smile?
And what to thee the flower-enamell'd plain?
Will gratitude reward thy daily toil?
No, no; thou workest for reward in vain.
Thy honied wealth is soon no longer thine;
Rapacity shall force thy little door:
Those treasures with thy life thou must resign,
A breathless victim, on thy fragrant store.
55. The Orphan Beggar.
Ah, pity, kind ladies, a poor little boy,
Whose father and mother are dead;
Who hungry and shiv'ring approaches you now,
To beg for a mouthful of bread.
Oh, think what it is to parade the wide world,
And to have neither friend nor a home;
To be rated and forc'd from each half-open'd door,
With a rudely said, "Beggar, begone!"
Yet once I was happy and cheerful as you,
My father he work'd at his mill,
My mother she busily spun at her wheel,
And we thought not of danger or ill.
But the cholera came, and my father fell sick,
My mother stood by at his death;
Then she too was seized, and within a few hours
Convulsively gasp'd her last breath.
