THE WORLD FROM THE SIDE-WALK.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 350, 25 November 1879, Page 2

THE WORLD FROM THE SIDE-WALK.

(From the New York Evening Post.) Did you ever stand in the crowded street, In the glare of the city lamp, And list to the tread of the million feet, In their quaintly musical tramp ? • As the surging crowd go to and fro, 'Tis a pleasant sight, I ween, ' To mark the figures that come and go In the ever changing scene. Here the publican walks with the sinner proud, And the priest in his gloomy cowl, And Dives walks in the motley crowd, With Lazarus, cbeek by jowl, And the daughter of toil, with her fresh ' young heart, ■As pure as her spotless fame, Keeps step with the woman who makes her mart In the haunts of sin and shame. How lightly trips the country lass In the midst of the city's illsl Aβ freshly pure aa the daisied grass That grows on her native MUB. And the beggar, too, with hie hungry eye And his lean, wan face and crutch, Gives a blessing tbe same to the passer by, As he gives him little or much. When Time has beaten the world's tattoo, And in dusky armor digbt, Is treading with echoless footsteps through The gloom of the silent night, How many of these shall be daintily fed' And shall sink to sjumbers sweet, While many will go to a sleepless" bed And never a crumb to eat! Ah me! when the hours go joyfullyby^ How little we stop , to heed ' - Our brothers' and sisters' despairing cry - In their woe and their bitter need 1 ; ■ [ Yet such a world as the angels sought This world of ours we'd call, If the brotherly love that the father taught Was felt by each for all. Yet a few short years, and. this motley throng j Will all have passed away, | And the rich and the poor, and the old and the young, Will be undistinguished clay. And lips that laugh and lips that moan Shall in silence alike be sealed, And some will lie under a stately, stone, And some in the Potter's Field I But the sun will be shining just as • bright And so will the silver moon, i ... ~ And juat.such ; a crowd will be here to night, And just such a crowd at noon. And men will be wicked arid women will shy ■'•: .-, , >■'.■:-. ■■ i. 'i\

; As ever since .Adam'a fall With" the same old world to labor in, And'the same G64 over all. .