ROBERT'S DEATH



Heavily rolleth the wintry clouds,
And the ceaseless snow is falling, falling,
While the frost king's troops in their icy shrouds
Whistle and howl like lost spirits calling.

In a scantily furnished tenement room.
Through which the same frost troops are sighing,
Churlishly gloweth the charcoal flame,
While a man lies there in penury dying.

Nothing new on this beautiful earth,
Are hunger and nakedness, cold and pain,
Over God's sinless creation of love
The serpent glides with his poisonous train.

"Where is Aimee?" here I lie all alone in this wretched hole,
I who was reared as a gentleman's son, an aristocrat to the soul,
Could drink more wine at my father's board than the best man out of a
score;
Rode with the hounds at ten years old, and played high in a few years
more.
A man can live without love, but he can't get along without gold,