At five o'clock one April morn I met them making tracks, Young Benjamin and Abel Horn, With bundles on their backs. Young Benjamin is seventy-five, Young Abel, seventy-seven -- The oldest innocents alive Beneath that April heaven. I asked them why they trudged about With crabby looks and sour -- "And does your mother know you're out At this unearthly hour?" They stopped: and scowling up at me Each shook a grizzled head, And swore; and then spat bitterly, As with one voice they said: "Homeless, about the country-side We never thought to roam; But mother, she has gone and died, And broken up the home." |