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.’