Classic Poem

At five o'clock one April morn
I met them making tracks,
Young Benjamin and Abel Horn
With bundles on their backs.

Young Benjamin is seventy-five,
Young Abel seventy-seven —
The oldest innocents alive
Beneath that April heaven.

I asked them why they trudged about
With crabby looks and sour —
And does your mother know you're out
At this unearthly hour?

They stopped and, scowling up at me,
Each shook a grizzled head,
And swore and then spat bitterly,
As with one voice they said —

Homeless about the countryside
We never thought to roam,
But mother, she has gone and died
And broken up the home.