Hence These Years

To charitable deeds I'm not addicted, For sentiment I do not care a prune, And yet I weep at poverty depicted In any illustration or cartoon. My heart, though flinty, beats a little faster; I choke, I sob, I simply have to bawl When I behold that bit of broken plaster -- That patch of broken plaster on the wall. I am not touched when halted by privation, By frowzy tramps and hollow-chested hags, Nor moved by the familiar illustration Of starvelings in exaggerated rags. The tiny tot with toes and elbows showing, The widow in the super-tattered shawl Affect me not, but one thing gets me going -- The patch of broken plaster on the wall. Denuded laths, forlornly emblematic Of penury, and hopelessness, and gloom! I see the pallid poet in his attic, The seamstress in her six-by-seven room. And like the wall my heart is always broken, I weep like Mr Southey's waterfall; For always I observe that tell-tale token -- The patch of broken plaster on the wall. Oh sign of bitter pill and persecution! Oh symbol of the wolf beyond the door! Oh hallmark of the direst destitution! I howl -- I've howled a thousand times before. Ah, would I were a Vanderbilt or Astor! -- I'd carry joy to every humble hall, I'd take to each a nickel's worth of plaster -- And patch that broken plaster on the wall.