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74
THE CITY STREETS.

When the winners can keep their golden prize, still darker the day of the laboring poor:
The strong and the selfish are sure to rise, while the simple and generous die obscure.
And these are the virtues and social gifts by which Progress and Property rank over Man!
Look there, O woe! where a lost soul drifts on the stream where such virtues overran:
Stand close—let her pass! from a tenement room and a reeking workshop graduate:
If a man were to break the iron loom or the press she tended, he knows his fate;
But her life may be broken, she stands alone, her poverty stings, and her guideless feet.
Not long since kissed as a father^s own, are dragged in the mire of the pitiless street.

Come back to the light, for my brain goes wrong when I see the sorrows that can't be cured.
If this is all righteous, then why prolong the pain for a thing that must be endured?
We can never have palaces built without slaves, nor luxuries served without ill-paid toil;
Society flourishes only on graves, the moral graves in the lowly soil.