WHEN leisurely the man of ease His morning's daily course begins, And round him in bright circle sees The comforts Independence wins, He seems unto himself to hold An uncontested natural right In Life a volume to unfold Of simple ever new delight. And if, before the evening close, The hours their rainbow wings let fall, And sorrow shakes his bland repose, And too continuous pleasures pall, He murmurs, as if Nature broke Some promise plighted at his birth, In bending him beneath the yoke Borne by the common sons of earth. @3They@1 starve beside his plenteous board, @3They@1 halt behind his easy wheels, But sympathy in vain affords The sense of ills he never feels. He knows he is the same as they, A feeble piteous mortal thing, And still expects that every day Increase and change of bliss should bring. Therefore, when he is called to know The deep realities of pain, He shrinks, as from a viewless blow, He writhes as in a magic chain: Untaught that trial, toil, and care, Are the great charter of his kind, It seems disgrace for him to share Weakness of flesh and human mind. Not so the People's honest child, The field-flower of the open sky, Ready to live while winds are wild, Nor, when they soften, loth to die; To him there never came the thought That this his life was meant to be A pleasure-house, where peace unbought Should minister to pride or glee. You oft may hear him murmur loud Against the uneven lots of Fate, You oft may see him inly bowed Beneath affliction's weight on weight: -- But rarely turns he on his grief A face of petulant surprise, Or scorns whate'er benign relief The hand of God or man supplies. Behold him on his rustic bed, The unluxurious couch of need, Striving to raise his aching head, And sinking powerless as a reed: So sick in both he hardly knows Which is his heart's or body's sore, For the more keen his anguish grows His wife and children pine the more. No search for him of dainty food, But coarsest sustenance of life, -- No rest by artful quiet wooed, But household cries and wants and strife; Affection can at best employ Her utmost of unhandy care, Her prayers and tears are weak to buy The costly drug, the purer air. Pity herself, at such a sight, Might lose her gentleness of mien, And clothe her form in angry might, And as a wild despair be seen; Did she not hail the lesson taught, By this unconscious suffering boor, To the high sons of lore and thought, -- The sacred Patience of the Poor. -- This great endurance of each ill, As a plain fact whose right or wrong They question not, confiding still, That it shall last not overlong; Willing, from first to last, to take The mysteries of our life, as given, Leaving the time-worn soul to slake Its thirst in an undoubted Heaven. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...COWSLIPS AND LARKS by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES SONG by ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O'SHAUGHNESSY OLD KING COLE by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON OUR STATE by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER AN OLD CASTLE by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH VAIN EXCUSE by WALTER CONRAD ARENSBERG THE 'STAY AT HOME'S' PLAINT, 1878 by GEORGE AUGUSTUS BAKER JR. |