Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PATIENCE OF THE POOR, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PATIENCE OF THE POOR, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: When leisurely the man of ease
Last Line: Its thirst in an undoubted heaven.
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Patience; Poverty


WHEN leisurely the man of ease
His morning's daily course begins,
And round him in bright circle sees
The comforts Independence wins,
He seems unto himself to hold
An uncontested natural right
In Life a volume to unfold
Of simple ever new delight.

And if, before the evening close,
The hours their rainbow wings let fall,
And sorrow shakes his bland repose,
And too continuous pleasures pall,
He murmurs, as if Nature broke
Some promise plighted at his birth,
In bending him beneath the yoke
Borne by the common sons of earth.

They starve beside his plenteous board,
They halt behind his easy wheels,
But sympathy in vain affords
The sense of ills he never feels.
He knows he is the same as they,
A feeble piteous mortal thing,
And still expects that every day
Increase and change of bliss should bring.

Therefore, when he is called to know
The deep realities of pain,
He shrinks, as from a viewless blow,
He writhes as in a magic chain:
Untaught that trial, toil, and care,
Are the great charter of his kind,
It seems disgrace for him to share
Weakness of flesh and human mind.

Not so the People's honest child,
The field-flower of the open sky,
Ready to live while winds are wild,
Nor, when they soften, loth to die;
To him there never came the thought
That this his life was meant to be
A pleasure-house, where peace unbought
Should minister to pride or glee.

You oft may hear him murmur loud
Against the uneven lots of Fate,
You oft may see him inly bowed
Beneath affliction's weight on weight: --
But rarely turns he on his grief
A face of petulant surprise,
Or scorns whate'er benign relief
The hand of God or man supplies.

Behold him on his rustic bed,
The unluxurious couch of need,
Striving to raise his aching head,
And sinking powerless as a reed:
So sick in both he hardly knows
Which is his heart's or body's sore,
For the more keen his anguish grows
His wife and children pine the more.

No search for him of dainty food,
But coarsest sustenance of life, --
No rest by artful quiet wooed,
But household cries and wants and strife;
Affection can at best employ
Her utmost of unhandy care,
Her prayers and tears are weak to buy
The costly drug, the purer air.

Pity herself, at such a sight,
Might lose her gentleness of mien,
And clothe her form in angry might,
And as a wild despair be seen;
Did she not hail the lesson taught,
By this unconscious suffering boor,
To the high sons of lore and thought,
-- The sacred Patience of the Poor.

-- This great endurance of each ill,
As a plain fact whose right or wrong
They question not, confiding still,
That it shall last not overlong;
Willing, from first to last, to take
The mysteries of our life, as given,
Leaving the time-worn soul to slake
Its thirst in an undoubted Heaven.





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