THE ORPHANS

At five o'clock one April morn

I met them making tracks,

Young Benjamin and Abel Horn,

With bundles on their backs.

Young Benjamin is seventy-five,

Young Abel, seventy-seven —

The oldest innocents alive

Beneath that April heaven.

I asked them why they trudged about

With crabby looks and sour —

“And does your mother know you're out

At this unearthly hour?”

They stopped: and scowling up at me

Each shook a grizzled head,

And swore; and then spat bitterly,

As with one voice they said:

“Homeless, about the country-side

We never thought to roam;

But mother, she has gone and died,

And broken up the home.”