Old man begging, by Michiel Sweerts (1618–1664).
Part 1 of 2
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 —
Oh! give relief, and Heav’n will bless your store!
These tatter’d clothes my poverty bespeak;
These hoary locks proclaim my lengthen’d years;
And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek
Has been the channel to a flood of tears.
Yon house erected on the rising ground
With tempting aspects 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, as I crav’d a morsel of their bread,
A pamper’d menial drove me from the door,
To seek a shelter in an humbler shed.
Oh! 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.
Précis
Thomas Moss’s poem from 1769 pictured a destitute farmer calling on a grand house to beg. He had gone humbly to the rear, but been turned away by a haughty servant; now he had come to the front because, he said, the owner of such a splendid house would surely have something to spare for a man so old and unfortunate. (60 / 60 words)
Part Two
Head of a beggar or peasant, by Paul-Albert Bartholomé (1848-1928).
Should I reveal the sources of my grief.
If soft humanity e’er touch’d your breast.
Your hands would not withhold the kind relief.
And tears of pity would not be repressed.
Heav’n sends misfortunes; why should we repine?
’Tis Heav’n 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 hail’d the morn;
But, ah! oppression forc’d me from my cot;
My cattle died, and blighted was my corn.
My daughter, once the comfort of my age,
Lur’d by a villain from her native home,
Is cast abandoned on the world’s wide stage,
And doom’d 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 borne him to your door.
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh! give relief, and Heav’n will bless your store!
Précis
The farmer went on to explain that (though he was not questioning the ways of Providence) he had lost his inheritance to a blight on his cattle and grain, that his wife had died of grief, and that his daughter was a wandering outcast thanks to a faithless lover. So saying, he called down heaven’s blessing on every open-handed man. (60 / 60 words)
