Byway, ambushed with the dark,
Byway, where the ears may hark;
Live and fierce when day is done,
You, that do without the Sun:--
What's this game you bring to nought?--
Muttering like a thing distraught,
Reckoning like a simpleton?
(Since the hearing must be brief,--
Living or a dying thief!)
Cobbled with the anguished stones
That the thoroughfare disowns;
Stones they gave you for your bread
Of the disinherited!
Where the Towers of Hunger loom,
Crowding in the dregs of doom;
Where the lost sky peering through
Sees no more the grudging grass,--
Only this mud-mirrored blue,
Like some shattered looking-glass.
(_Under, with the sorry reaping!
Underneath the stones of weeping,
For the Dark to have in keeping._)
Byway, you, so foully marred;
You, whose sodden walls and scarred,
See no light, but only where
Fevered lamps are set to stare
In the eyes of such despair!
Tell me--as a Byway can--
Was this Beggar once a Man?
'_Rich man--Poor man--Beggar man--Thief!_'
Like and lost as leaf and leaf.
Stammering out your wrongs and shames,
Must you cry their very names?
Must you sob your shame, your grief?
--'_Poor man--Poor man!--Beggar--Thief._'