University of Virginia Library

Oh Poverty! hard featured dame,
Whence grow the terrors of thy name?
'Tis said that from thy serious eye,
The laughing train of pleasures fly.
That deep within thy mansion rude,
Lurks the black fiend, ingratitude.
That toil, and want, and shame are known
To make thy heartless hours their own,
'Till guilt, his phrenzied eye on fire,
Bids the last famished hope expire.
Thus speaks the world,—to mammon true,
While wrongs thy pleading worth pursue;
To me—and I have seen thee near,
Though harsh thy withering look appear;
Though stern the teachers of the poor,
And hard the lesson, to endure,
Yet many a virtue born of thee,
Lives sundered from prosperity.
Religion, that on heaven relies,
The moral of thy mind supplies.
—Pity, with plaintive accent, kind,
And patience, to her fate resigned;
Are seen thy lowly cot to share,
While temperance dwells an inmate there.
Love joined by truth—no rival's eye
Wakes to the wish of poverty,
But all the blest affections twine
Round many a rustic home of thine.
Close circling with the nuptial tie,
Joys, which a monarch could not buy,
Though boonless, and to praise unknown.
Oft is the lustre'd life thy own:
To thee, the priests of God belong,
And thine the Poet's deathless song:
Thee, toiling science lives to claim,
Thou lead'st his thorny steps to fame.
Creative genius feels thy power,
Coeval with his natal hour;
On him the rays of glory shine
Too late—his parting breath is thine.

Let me thy simple glances meet,
Near the green hamlet's calm retreat;
Not where the city, throng'd with sin,
Bids all the monster crimes begin.
Thence will thy timid virtues fly,
Scared by seduction's serpent eye.
Their fate, each murdered hope to see,
While every suffering lives to thee.

Not that along the wintry shore,
The fisher plies the wearying oar,
Not that amid the sultry plain,
The peasant piles the laboured grain,
Wilt thou with frowning brow appear,
To wring the grief-extorted tear.
But when to wrongs thy sufferings lead,
While shame, and false reproach succeed;
When genius, doomed with thee to mourn,
Sees his unsheltered laurels torn.
While ignorant malice, rushing by,
Quick glances with insidious eye.
When all thy cultured virtues move,
Nor sense to feel, nor heart to love;
While treachery under friendship's guise,
Bids the pernicious rumour rise,
Still aiming with envenomed dart,
To reach the life-pulse of thy heart.
Then Poverty, hard featured dame,
We feel the miseries of thy claim,
Would from thy close embraces fly,
Or in their palsying pressure die.