What country has the poor to claim?
What boots to me your corn and wine,
Your busy toil, your vaunted fame,
The senate where your speakers shine?
Once, when your homes, by war o'erswept,
Saw strangers battening on your land,
Like any puling fool, I wept!
The aged wretch was nourished by their hand.
Mankind! why trod you not the worm,
The noxious thing, beneath your heel?
Ah! had you taught me to perform
Due labor for the common weal!
Then, sheltered from the adverse wind,
The worm and ant had learned to grow;
Ay,--then I might have loved my kind;--
The aged beggar dies your bitter foe!
From the French of PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER.
THE BEGGAR.
Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span,
O, give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.
These tattered clothes my poverty bespeak,
These hoary locks proclaim my lengthened years;
And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek
Has been the channel to a stream of tears.
Yon house, erected on the rising ground,
With tempting aspect drew me from my road,
For plenty there a residence has found,
And grandeur a magnificent abode.
(Hard is the fate of the infirm and poor!)
Here craving for a morsel of their bread,
A pampered menial drove me from the door,
To seek a shelter in the humble shed.
O, take me to your hospitable dome,
Keen blows the wind, and piercing is the cold!
Short is my passage to the friendly tomb,
For I am poor and miserably old.
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