Zinzendorff and Other Poems/Imprisonment for Debt
IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.
Why do ye tear
Yon lingering tenant from his humble home?
His children cling about him, and his wife
Regardless of the wintery storm, doth stand
Watching his last, far footsteps with a gaze
Of speechless misery. What is his crime?
The murderer's steel in headlong passion rais'd?
Or the red flame, in stealthy malice touch'd
To some unguarded roof? Ah no, ye say
His crime is poverty.
Disease, perchance,
Hath paralyzed his arm, or adverse skies
Withheld his harvest, or the thousand ills
That throng the hard lot of the sons of toil
Drank up his spirit. Ye indeed may hold
His form incarcerate, but will that repair
The trespass on your purse? To take away
The means of labor, yet require the fruits
Savoreth, methinks, of Pharaoh's policy.
Doth Themis sanction what the code of Christ
Condemns? "How readest thou?" Are there, who deem
The smallest[1] portion of their drossy gold
Full counterpoise for liberty and health,
And God's free air, and home's sweet charities?
'Mid the gay circle round their evening fire
Sit they in luxury, while warbled song,
And guest, and wine-cup speed the flying hours,
Unmindful of the prison'd one who droops
Within his close barr'd cell, or of the storm
That hoarsely round his distant dwelling sweeps,
Where she who in a lowly bed hath laid
Her famish'd babes, kneels shivering at their side,
Mingling the tear-gush with her lonely prayer?
—Revenge may draw a subsidy from pain,
Wringing stern usury from woman's woe,
And infancy's distress; but is it well
For souls that hasten to a dread account
Of motive and of deed at Heaven's high bar,
To break their Saviour's law?
Up, cleanse yourselves
From this dark vestige of a barbarous age,
Sons of the Gospel's everlasting light!
Nor let a brother of your own blest clime
Rear'd in your very gates, participant
Of freedom and salvation's birthright, find
Less favor than the heathen.
It would seem
That man who for the fleeting breath he draws
Is still a debtor and hath nought to pay,
He, who to cancel countless sins expects
Unbounded clemency, 'twould seem that he
Might to his fellow-man be pitiful,
And show that mercy which himself implores.
- ↑ Among the facts embodied in the deeply interesting Reports of the "Prison Discipline Society," it is related that in the city of Baltimore alone, during the year 1829, seven hundred and twelve persons suffered imprisonment for debts under the sum of twenty dollars; that in Philadelphia, during a period of fifteen months, five hundred and eighty-four were imprisoned for sums lower than five dollars, and that one man for a debt of two cents, lay in prison thirty-two days.