University of Virginia Library

At times it is my choice to go
Where spread the city's regions rude,
Where poverty clasps hands with woe
And all is dingy desuetude.
Nor do I nurse this nomad mood
When night hangs dark o'er lairs forlorn,
But when day's full divulging glow
Smiles ignorance and sin to scorn.
I seem at hours like these to know
The miseries and misdeeds of man
In piteous nudity that means
How slight a variance intervenes
To part myself from those I ban
As bordering on barbarian.

I mark a hundred coarser throes
Of mind and heart than one may meet
Where sweeps the daintier-tended street
Below patrician porticoes.
Here greed forgets its fang to hide;
Black envy scowls with hardier hate;
Here from the inclement eyes of pride
A fiercer flame will scintillate.
In raw contempt of codes that chide,
The quick curse leaves the reckless lip;
More frequent fume the froths of strife;
More blunt the jeers, more bold the lies,
As though from loins and limbs of life
Rough candor strove with zeal to strip
Its best expedients of disguise.

Yet even amid such movements made
By poverty's drear masquerade,
Continually I discern
Similitudes at every turn
Between the souls with want o'er-weighed
And those whom kindlier fate has lent
Prosperity's enfranchisement...
This trundling dame, with ragged gown,
Who prowls in gutters to secure
Stray refuse purer than the impure
Flotsam and jetsam of the town,—
What feint of fancy bids me find
The imperfect portraiture in her
Of caste's contented dowager?
Environment, with sombre thrall,
Has bid her forage thus for bread;
One stroke of change, and lo, she had led
Serene gentility in all
The proud pomp of its choicest ball,
Brocaded and bediamonded!..
Or yet the inactive tramp who lolls,
Enticed of drink he cannot buy,
Near some blurred window that outrolls
What lures hot thirst through avid eye—
How light the differences that lie
Between this idling sot and him
Who courts the drunkard's death where trim
Attendants wait, in club-rooms fine,
With walls and floors of rich array,
And pour from crystal flasks the wine
That helps him hurl his life away!..
Or yet the pale worn girl you see
Go hurrying with her bundled work
To them whose niggard wages free
Her days from penury's worst irk—
How easy amid that chestnut hair
And in those tired eyes' wistful gaze
Where stars inalienably dwell,
To mark the beauty a ball-room belle
Might nurture with unceasing care
For fashion's poor brief hour of praise!..
What touch of foppery may we note
In this mere tatterdemalion's air
Who sticks a dropped flower in his coat,
A rusty hat-brim sideways tips,
Winks gaily, and smiles with unshorn lips,
And shows that through some grave mischance
In evolution's onward flow
By nature he was born a beau,—
This rowdy of random circumstance!..
Or, yonder, watch the itinerant wag
Extol his trumpery curbstone ware
With copious words that never flag,
As witty as they are debonair.
What embryo orator is there!
One push, and destiny's dark hands
Had lifted him to shine elate
In senatorial debate,
The idol of constituent bands—
Not then, as now, with railleries rank,
The street-boy's peddling mountebank!

Even thus, in countless ways like these,
Resemblances, analogies,
Loom clear between the limits twain
Of rich and poor, of toil and ease,
Of bitter need and bounteous gain.
Alas! that equal sunbeams rain
Sweet largess on all men alike,
While men themselves to ruin strike
Those bonds of kinship that should bind
Their race in one consentient kind!