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A Wish

Great dignity ever attends great grief,

And silently walks beside it;

And I always know when I see such woe

That Invisible Helpers guide it.

And I know deep sorrow is like a tide,

It cannot ever be flowing;

The high-water mark in the night and the dark -

Then dawn, and the outward going.

But the people who pull at my heart-strings hard

Are the ones whom destiny hurries

Through commonplace ways to the end of their days,

And pesters with paltry worries.

The peddlers who trudge with a budget of wares

To the door that is slammed unkindly;

The vendor who stands with his shop in his hands

Where the hastening hosts pass blindly;

The woman who holds in her poor flat purse

The price of her rent-room only,

While her starved eye feeds on the comfort she needs

To brighten the lot that is lonely;

The man in the desert of endless work,

Unsoftened by islands of leisure;

And the children who toil in the dust and the soil,

While their little hearts cry for pleasure;

The people who labour, and scrimp, and save,

At the call of some thankless duty,

And carefully hide, with a mien of pride,

Their ravening hunger for beauty;

These ask no pity, and seek no aid,

But the thought of them somehow is haunting;

And I wish I might fling at their feet everything

That I know in their hearts they are wanting.