Explore "The Lady Poverty" by Alice Meynell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Lady Poverty was fair:
But she lost her looks of late,
With change of times and change of air.
Ah slattern! she neglects her hair,
Her gown; her shoes; she keeps no state
As once when her pure feet were bare.
Or -- almost worse, if worse can be --
She scolds in parlours, dusts and trims,
Watches and counts. O is this she / Whom Francis met, whose step was free, / Who with Obedience carolled hymns, / In Umbria walked with Chastity?
Where is her ladyhood? Not here, / Not among modern kinds of men; / But in the stony fields, where clear / Through the thin trees the skies appear, / In delicate spare soil and fen, / And slender landscape and austere.