Poor Dick

The sun has a Home in the west,
    That laughs in the glory he brings;
The robin has gone to her nest,
    Her babies are under her wings.
The lambies have ended their play
    And close by their mothers they lie;
The chickens are huddled away
    In a feather-bed downy & dry.

The cow has come home to her calf,
    And the great silly thing is so glad
Its gambols would set me to laugh
    If only my heart were less sad.
For I have no nest like the birds,
    No mother to fold me in sleep,
No home like the flocks & the herds,
    No warm, woolly coat, like the sheep.

I go to some scaffold of hay,
    Some cow-hovel littered with straw,
And gather what solace I may
    With the cattle whose turnips I gnaw!
My mother has gone to her grave,
    Too narrow for room for me there!
To a dungeon my father they gave,
    And me they pushed back from the stair!

But he in whose terrible till
    Our cottage, they say, has gone down,
Has a noble white house on the hill,
    And a mint of red gold in the town,
The blood has gone out of my cheek
    That shines in his purple & gold!
And the white of dead faces may speak
    From the walls of his palace so bold!

As I steal to my comfortless bed
    I remember that One over all
Is judge of the living & dead,
    And cares if a lone sparrow fall;
He will see to the heart of Poor Dick,
Through the rags & the lean little face:
He will touch the proud rich to the quick, 
    Through broad-cloth & ruffles & lace!