Because he was a butcher and thereby <br />Did earn an honest living (and did right), <br />I would not have you think that Reuben Bright <br />Was any more a brute than you or I; <br />For when they told him that his wife must die, <br />He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, <br />And cried like a great baby half that night, <br />And made the women cry to see him cry. <br /> <br />And after she was dead, and he had paid <br />The singers and the sexton and the rest, <br />He packed a lot of things that she had made <br />Most mournfully away in an old chest <br />Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs <br />In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.<br /><br />Edwin Arlington Robinson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/reuben-bright/
