Poets Corner. GOD PITY THE POOR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 203, 23 February 1877, Page 5

Poets Corner.

GOD PITY THE POOR.

The wild rushing wings of the tempest are sweeping The frost fettered land like a spirit of wrath; J The fierce, icy breath with keen arrows is piercing The breasts of the wand'rers who stand in his path; The earth in a trance lies enshrouded in silence, The storm king knocks loudly at window and door; The prayer of the pitiful fervently risesGod shelter the homeless and pity the poor ! God pity the poor who are wearily sitting By desolate hearth-stones, cold, cheerless, and bare, From which the last ember's pale flicker has faded, Like Hope dying out in the midst of despair ; Who look on the wide world and see it a desert, Where ripple no waters, no green branches wave, Who see in a future as dark as the present No rest but the death-bed, no home but the grave. God pity the poor when the eddying snow-drifts Are whirled by the wrath of the winter winds by, Like showers of leaves from the pale-eyed star-lilies That float in the depths of the blue lake on high; For though they are draping the broad earth in beauty, And veiling sonifi flaw in each gossamer fold, That beauty is naught to the mother whose children Are crouching around her in hunger and cold. God pity the poor, for the wealthy are often As hard as the winter, and cold as its snow; While fortune makes sunshine and summer around them, They care not for others, nor think of their woe ; Or if from their plenty a trifle be given, So doubtingly, grudgingly, often 'tis doled, That to the receiver their " charity" seemeth More painful than hunger, more bitter than cold. God pity the poor ! for though all men are brothers, Though all say " Our Father," not mine, when they pray, The proud ones of earth turn aside from the lowly, As if they were fashioned of different clay; They see not in those who in meekness and patience Toil, poverty, pain, without murmur endure, The ima-e of Him whose first couch was a manger, Who chose for our sakes to be homeless and poor.

— • Young Crusader.'