Santa Fe daily New Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1885-1897, 1896-04-22
Poverty.


They that have borne such miseries yet endure;
! They that so often have cried are crying
still.
We learn to name them lightly, these. our poor
As part Of earths irreparable i'll.
| Us their sad voices have slight power to
| thrill;
Their desolate, haggard eyes but family grieye
| Since we. who meet their anguish face to
| face,
Through many year It's rigid truth receive
| As poverty eternal commonplace.
All men. we rinse, in shadow of trouble grope
| Yet these are grit unchangeably from birth
With dubious gloom whereby the star Of hope
| Shines vaguely on harsh crag or sinuous firth.
Yet who may alter this unvarying dearth?
Philosophy's astral splendor cannot light
| Gold wants disheartening dimness Of eclipse,
And science, although she weighs vast worlds
in night,
| Brings no new morsel Of bread to famished
| lips.
Famed thinkers noble alike of brain and deed,
Have grown white haired in pondering how
| to give
These millions, bruised by poignant thorns of
! need,
| Some potent and benign alternative.
| But still their burdening hardsh:ps grimly
live;
Still in the resonant city's careless heart,
| While deep groans pass on the wind like
empty breath,
Cadayerous throngs, mankinds far greater
part
With rags for armor, fight the assaults Of
death.
| At toll they are stabbed with cold or scathed
| with heat.
Tear soaked, blood stained, is scant food they
win.
From earliest youth round their UNDECIDED feet
| Bloom tanglingly the red Powered weeds of
sin.
Whatever bodily pain has worn them thin,
| Whatever sorrow has Dcked them, still they
| Starvation's rancorous wolves behind them
| press,
While vice and ignorance, each with ghostly
leer,
Exult in mockery at thei, Indebtedness.
Child after child, they are born to shame and
| And stained at birth by even mother 8
kiss,
Too briefly pure, like those fair flakes Of snow
| That fall amid the impure metropolis.
| What savage, ineludible curse is this,
o sovereignty, that rules fates'and timer
| Why are these countless lives thus blindly
wrecked
So terrible and SO strangely pre-elect2
Age after age rolls onward. Progress wheels
Her golden chariot over shattered wrong.
Louder the limpid voice of liberty peals,
Gladdening our world with archangelic song
Yet multitudes below the virulent throng
OF this harsh doom go staggering to their
graves
With feet that falter and with shapes that
writhe.
o freedom, poverty has her droves Of slaves.
Thou holdest but humanity g mean tithe
They suffer and die; they starve. burn, freeze
and faint.
We hug our treasures. and the old i'll endures.
How long, o Infinite God, ere this wild plant
Shall pierce the trance in which our spirit
immures
It's best nobility. and the tmine" and
''yours'
Clash with hates fierce antithesis no morep
How long, how long, ere we few, safe on
shore,
Fling spars to drowning myriads there be-
lowf
Have mercy, Ornenl Q We that strength pos
seSs,
Bridge firm. with pity and charity for span,
Tho void of egotism, Of selfishness,
Whose gulf SO sternly sunders man from mani
Help with grand aid the unconsummated plan
OF centuries moving to millennial goals!
Oh, seek that loftier grace, that richer good,
That prouder patriotism, where earthly souls
Meet nightly in sacred brotherhood
Edgar Fawcett