To charitable deeds I'm not addicted, <br />For sentiment I do not care a prune, <br />And yet I weep at poverty depicted <br />In any illustration or cartoon. <br />My heart, though flinty, beats a little faster; <br />I choke, I sob, I simply have to bawl <br />When I behold that bit of broken plaster -- <br />That patch of broken plaster on the wall. <br /> <br />I am not touched when halted by privation, <br />By frowzy tramps and hollow-chested hags, <br />Nor moved by the familiar illustration <br />Of starvelings in exaggerated rags. <br />The tiny tot with toes and elbows showing, <br />The widow in the super-tattered shawl <br />Affect me not, but one thing gets me going -- <br />The patch of broken plaster on the wall. <br /> <br />Denuded laths, forlornly emblematic <br />Of penury, and hopelessness, and gloom! <br />I see the pallid poet in his attic, <br />The seamstress in her six-by-seven room. <br />And like the wall my heart is always broken, <br />I weep like Mr Southey's waterfall; <br />For always I observe that tell-tale token -- <br />The patch of broken plaster on the wall. <br /> <br />Oh sign of bitter pill and persecution! <br />Oh symbol of the wolf beyond the door! <br />Oh hallmark of the direst destitution! <br />I howl -- I've howled a thousand times <br />before. <br />Ah, would I were a Vanderbilt or Astor! -- <br />I'd carry joy to every humble hall, <br />I'd take to each a nickel's worth of plaster -- <br />And patch that broken plaster on the wall.<br /><br />Bert Leston Taylor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hence-these-years/
