auper plates,
To be hosts at the workhouse banquet
They've paid for--with the rates.

Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly
With their "Thank'ee kindly, mum's";
So long as they fill their stomachs,
What matter whence it comes?
But one of the old men mutters,
And pushes his plate aside:
"Great God!" he cries; "but it chokes me;
For this is the day _she_ died."

The guardians gazed in horror,
The master's face went white:
"Did a pauper refuse their pudding?"
"Could their ears believe aright?"
Then the ladies clutched their husbands
Thinking the man would die,
Struck by a bolt, or something,
By the outraged One on high.

But the pauper sat for a moment,
Then rose 'mid a silence grim,
For the others had ceased to chatter,
And trembled in every limb.
He looked at the guardians' ladies,
Then, eyeing their lords, he said:
"I eat not the food of villains
Whose hands are foul and red,

"Whose victims cry for vengeance
From their dark unhallowed graves."
"He's drunk!" said the workhouse master,
"Or else he's mad, and raves."
"Not drunk or mad," cried the pauper,
"But only a hunted beast,
Who, torn by the hounds and mangled,
Declines the vulture's feast.

"I care not a curse for the guardians,
And I won't be dragged away.
Just let me have the fit out,
It's only on Christmas day
That the black past comes to goad me,
And prey on my burning brain,
I'll tell you the rest in a whisper,--
I swear I won't shout again,

"Keep your hands off me, curse you!
Hear me right out to the end,
You come here to see how paupers
The season of Christmas spend.
You come here to watch us feeding,
As they watch the captured beast,
Hear why a penniless pauper
Spits on your palfry feast.

"Do you think I will take your bounty,
And let you smile and think
You're doing a noble action
With the parish's meat and drink?
Where is my wife, you traitors--
The poor old wife you slew?
Yes, by the God above us,
My Nance was killed by you!

"Last winter my wife lay dying,
Starved in a filthy den;
I had never been to the parish,--
I came to the parish then.
I swallowed my pride in coming,
For, ere the ruin came.
I held up my head as a trader,
And I bore a spotless name.

"I came to the parish, craving
Bread for a starving wife,
Bread for the woman who'd loved me
Through fifty years of life;
And what do you think they told me,
Mocking my awful grief?
That 't