Transcript from `Household Words', a weekly magazine published between 1850 - 1859 and edited by Charles Dickens.
MAN HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER.
“Am I my brother’s Keeper?”
Awake from dreams to-day!
Arouse thee, careless sleeper –
Cast not the thought away.
Thou from a golden chalice
Dost drink the ruby wine,
Thine home a stately palace,
Where wealth and splendour shine.
“Art thou they brother’s keeper?”
Life’s page to thee reads fair;
But gaze a little deeper,
And other tales end stolid,
‘Mid wretchedness and strife,
Beneath you roof-tree squalid,
How drags thy brother’s life?
“Art thou thy brother’s keeper?”
Swift as the viewless wind
Speeds on one mighty Reaper,
His harvest-sheaves to bind;
His earliest prey finds shelter
These sordid roofs beneath,
Where vice and misery swelter
In hot-beds ripe for Death.
“Art thou thy brother’s keeper?”
Such homes abut on thine,
The dim eyes of the weeper
Mocked by thy banquet’s shine.
Say’th thou “Such ills are nameless,
They touch not such as we!
Alas! Canst thou be blameless,
That things like this should be!
Thou ART thy brother’s keeper!
This charge thou canst not flee;
The path of right grows steeper
Daily to him – to thee.
A reckoning shall be taken,
A reckoning stern and deep;
Woe unto those who waken
Then first from careless sleep!
Thou ART thy brother’s keeper!
War, pestilence, and dearth,
These besoms of the Sweeper,
Invade the homes of earth.
A blacken’d path and sterile
Conducts them to thy door,
And at thy proper peril
Dost thou neglect the poor!