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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
NO ROOM, by WINNIFRED ELLIOT
First Line: Across a wintry windswept plain
Last Line: No room in men's hearts is a sadder thing!
Subject(s): Children; Homeless; Hunger; Childhood
First Line: Across a wintry windswept plain
Last Line: No room in men's hearts is a sadder thing!
Subject(s): Children; Homeless; Hunger; Childhood
Across a wintry wind-swept plain
All white with drifts and misty frost,
There stole a solitary child
Who seemed in search of someone lost.
When I asked whence he came
And what he sought,
He replied he scarce knew
And it mattered naught.
He was a forlorn and sorrowing thing
Like a timid bird with a twisted wing.
Athirst for water, he munched the snow,
And faint with hunger his steps were slow
Until, as his thirst was quenched a bit,
He told his story -- and this is it.
"More than a thousand years ago
I came, like new-fallen snow,
So quiet and still --
Like new-fallen snow on a lonely hill
Love came again to the firmament
And all the air was with music rent.
"Now my heart is the world's
As it throbs with pain
And bleeds for the wounds
Of the sick and the slain;
I have left the noise of greed and strife
In search of hope on the path of life.
"For I sought Joy in a home begun
Only to find that Love was done.
Then seeking Rest in an old man's heart,
Found it querulous from the start.
Alas, I sought Peace in a holy place,
But there too was quarreling and disgrace.
"They have tossed me out to the wind," he said,
"And I have nowhere to lay my head."
No room in the inn though a child were king?
No room in men's hearts is a sadder thing!
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
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