What They Saw by Ella Wheeler Wilcox — Read

_Sad man_, _Sad man_, _tell me_, _pray_, / _What did you see to-day_?

I saw the unloved and unhappy old, waiting for slow delinquent death / to come; / Pale little children toiling for the rich, in rooms where sunlight is / ashamed to go; / The awful almshouse, where the living dead rot slowly in their hideous / open graves. / And there were shameful things. / Soldiers and forts, and industries of death, and devil-ships, and / loud-winged devil-birds, / All bent on slaughter and destruction. These and yet more shameful / things mine eyes beheld: / Old men upon lascivious conquest bent, and young men living with no / thought of God, / And half-clothed women puffing at a weed, aping the vices of the / underworld, / Engrossed in shallow pleasures and intent on being barren wives. / These things I saw. / (How God must loathe His earth! )