DIVES.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 409, 9 October 1889, Page 5

DIVES.

Ab you ride through the streets of this city. Through the crowds who are lining the way. With a fair, winsome maiden beside you, Just as fresh as the blossoms of May ; Do tou think of the courts nnd the alleys. Now the strongholds of crime, and of sin ? 'Slid the skowancl the glitter beyond them Do you think of the squalor within ? As you list to the lay of the ocean. Where the wavelets aro kissing: the sands— To tho songs of your own woodland minstrels, In the 3hade of your fur-stretching land*— Do you think of the scenes that may never Boast a song to enchant or al'ure I Of The cries of distress and of hunger That ascend from the homes of the poor ? Do you think of the poor and the homeless, Of the burdens the weak have to bear. As you sit with your frisnds at the table Tliat is laden with luxuries i - are I Do you think of the perishing thousands As they more in life's wearisoma rounds, Who have never such fare on their tables As the food that is thrown to your hounds ? When at night on your coach yon are resting In the slumber unpurchascd by toil— Though methinks you might envy the ploughman Who has won it in turning the soilDo you think of the waifs of the city 'Neatli the arches defying the law I Of the dens where the stricken are lying On a buudlo of rags or of straw ? You may roam o'er tho hill* and tho valloys, You may wandor at will by the sea: And the land 3 which yoi r fathers have left you Unencumbered and fertile may be. But the thousands who toil in the city. Who arc housed in the sickening slums— They have only the graro. or the workhouse, For a shelter when poverty comes. But the shadows will gather around you, And affliction will furrow your brow. And the hand of the Reaper will rob you Of the treasures surrounding you now. Though your hind may have died in a hovel. He is missed from the scenes which he trod Bnt the maw who Joules down on the lowly Is tinhonoured by men and by (4od. E. S. Husband. Auckland.