Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NOTHING AT ALL IN THE PAPER TO-DAY, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NOTHING AT ALL IN THE PAPER TO-DAY, by                    
First Line: Nothing at all in the paper today
Last Line: There was nothing at all in the paper to-day?
Subject(s): News


NOTHING at all in the paper to-day!
Only a murder somewhere or other;
A girl who has put her child away,
Not being a wife as well as a mother;
Or a drunken husband beating a wife,
With the neighbors lying awake to listen,
Scarce aware he has taken a life,
Till in at the window the dawn rays glisten.
But that is all in the regular way --
There's nothing at all in the paper to-day.

Nothing at all in the paper to-day!
To be sure, there's a woman died of starvation,
Fell down in the street, as so many may
In this very prosperous Christian nation;
Or two young girls, with some inward grief
Maddened, have plunged in the inky waters;
Or father has learnt that his son's a thief,
Or mother been robbed of one of her daughters.
Things that occur in their regular way --
There's nothing at all in the paper to-day.

There's nothing at all in the paper to-day,
Unless you care about things in the city --
How great rich rogues for their crimes must pay
(Though all gentility cries out, "Pity!")
Like the meanest shop-boy that robs a till.
There's a case to-day, if I'm not forgetting,
The lad only "borrowed" -- as such lads will --
To pay some money he lost in betting;
But there's nothing in this that's out of the way --
There's nothing at all in the paper to-day.

Nothing at all in the paper to-day
But the births and bankruptcies, deaths and marriages,
But life's events in the old survey,
With Virtue begging, and Vice in carriages;
And kindly hearts under ermine gowns,
And wicked breasts under hodden gray;
For goodness belongs not only to clowns,
And o'er others than lords does sin bear sway.
But what do I read? "Drowned! wrecked!" Did I say
There was nothing at all in the paper to-day?





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