Ii

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.'