I only hear the brutal curse
Of landlord clamouring for his pay;
And yonder is the pauper's hearse
That comes to take a child away.
Apart, and with the half-grey head
Of sudden age, again I see
The father writing by the dead
To earn the undertaker's fee.
No tear at all is asked for him—
A drunkard well deserves his life;
But voice will quiver, eyes grow dim,
For her, the patient, pure young wife,
The gentle girl of better days,
As timid as a mountain fawn,
Who used to choose untrodden ways,
And place at night her rags in pawn.
She could not face the lighted square,
Or show the street her poor, thin dress;
In one close chamber, bleak and bare,
She hid her burden of distress.
Her happy schoolmates used to drive,
On gaudy wheels, the town about;
The meat that keeps a dog alive
She often had to go without.
I tell you, this not a tale
Conceived by me, but bitter truth;
Bohemia knows it, pinched and pale,
Beside the pyre of burnt-out youth:
These eyes of mine have often seen
The sweet girl-wife, in winters rude,
Steal out at night, through courts unclean,
To hunt about for chips of wood.
Have I no word at all for him
Who used down fetid lanes to slink,
And squat in tap-room corners grim,
