Nancy Campbell

I SAW you hunched and shivering on the stones

The bleak wind piercing to your fragile bones,

Your shabby scarlet all inadequate:

A little ape that had such human eyes

They seemed to hide behind their miseries—

Their dumb and hopeless bowing down to fate—

Some puzzled wonder. Was your monkey soul

Sickening with memories of gorgeous days,

Of tropic playfellows and forest ways,

Where, agile, you could swing from bole to bole

In an enchanted twilight with great flowers

For stars; or on a bough the long night hours

Sit out in rows, and chatter at the moon?

Shuffling you went, your tiny chilly hand

Outstretched for what you did not understand;

Your puckered mournful face begging a boon

That but enslaved you more. They who passed by

Saw nothing sorrowful; gave laugh or stare,

Unheeding that the little antic there

Played in the gutter such a tragedy.