PAUPER PLAINT

WEAK and weary, tattered and torn,
Knees and elbows bare to the blast,—
Of all ambition and spirit shorn,
Beaten at last.

A dreary way is poverty’s road,
A dreary path was the bitter past.
We cry relief from the galling load,
Beaten at last.

The creeds and dogmas are priestly lies,
Into the teeth of the people cast.
And thence it comes that the good, the wise,
Are beaten at last.

We labored while life was in its morn,
Now we are old we faint and fast
We have the husks—but out of the corn
Are beaten at last