Poems (Hoffman)/The Thief

by Martha Lavinia Hoffman

THE THIEF

The sweet wild roses told, told me
While the south wind sobbed in answering grief,
As they clutched with their wary thorns to hold me,
With trembling pink lips they told me, told me,
And the wild birds chanted—"A thief, a thief!"

He came from the streets of a sunset city
Where his name was held in high esteem,
But alas! alas! 'tis the world's great pity
That people are not always what they seem.

She was as rich in nature's beauty
As the sweet wild roses she loved to hold,
Timidly locked in the safe of duty
Lay her heart's rich treasure, her love's pure gold.

Alas! alas! the unguarded minute
When the wild rose maiden crossed his track,
When he spied her treasure and sought to win it,
The thief, who had nothing to give her back.

Did he take her honor, her gems, her money?
No, none of these. Is it nothing worth
That he blighted her youth's bright Eden sunny
And left for her future a dead cold earth?

And what to him was his boasted treasure?
So small the triumph in truth appears—
To feed his pride for a few hours' pleasure
On the happiness of a life's long years.

Is it nothing to walk with a heart that's broken
Through days that grow longer than happy years?
O the worth of earth's gold may be spoken, spoken
But the worth of the heart is not told in tears!

And what would men say if they knew it, knew it?
"They would say to his hurt, his hurt, his hurt,"
Sang the birds and the roses, the brook trilled through it:
"O men would say, 'He's a flirt, a flirt.'"

But God looks down on that sunset city
(The God of nature, of joy and grief)
On the broken bird with a father's pity
And God knows his earth has no baser thief.