Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!
Whose trembling limbs have borne him
to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span,
O, give
relief, and Heaven will bless your store.
These tattered clothes my
poverty bespeak,
These hoary locks proclaim my lengthened years;
And many
a furrow in my grief-worn cheek
Has been the channel to a stream of tears.
Yon house, erected on the rising ground,
With tempting aspect drew me
from my road,
For plenty there a residence has found,
And grandeur a
magnificent abode.
(Hard is the fate of the infirm and poor!)
Here
craving for a morsel of their bread,
A pampered menial drove me from the
door,
To seek a shelter in the humble shed.
O, take me to your
hospitable dome,
Keen blows the wind, and piercing is the cold!
Short is
my passage to the friendly tomb,
For I am poor and miserably old.
Should I reveal the source of every grief,
If soft humanity e'er touched your
breast,
Your hands would not withhold the kind relief,
And tears of pity
could not be repressed.
Heaven sends misfortunes, -- why should we
repine?
'T is Heaven has brought me to the state you see:
And your
condition may be soon like mine,
The child of sorrow and of misery.
A
little farm was my paternal lot,
Then, like the lark, I sprightly hailed the
morn;
But ah! oppression forced me from my cot;
My cattle died, and
blighted was my corn.
My daughter, -- once the comfort of my age!
Lured by a villain from her native home,
Is cast, abandoned, on the world's
wild stage,
And doomed in scanty poverty to roam.
My tender wife, --
sweet soother of my care! --
Struck with sad anguish at the stern decree,
Fell, -- lingering fell, a victim to despair,
And left the world to
wretchedness and me.
Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!
Whose
trembling limbs have born him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the
shortest span,
O, give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.