Classic Poem

The field or the garden—the grain or the grape!
But can I—a peddler—my life-path re-shape,
And run from my fate, and the city escape?

The ghetto-slums nursed me, and there I was bred;
No grass under foot, and no sun overhead;
I sweated, I peddled, I bartered for bread.

For pennies, for pennies, my life I have sold,
I never have known that the heaven had gold,
That meadows had pearls unsearched for, untold.

In rags, and in bones, and in scraps was my trade,
I knew not the blessing of blossom and blade,
To toil, and to rest after toil in the shade.

When thirsty—to drink from a crystal-clear spring,
And gaze at the grain in the breezes aswing,
And hear in the distance the harvesters sing.

I knew not the bliss and the blessing of toil,
The pride of the man who has conquered the soil,
And shared in the booty, and ate of its spoil.

From city to city forever I'm thrown,
Brick of its brick and stone of its stone,
A peddler, a peddler—despised and alone.

And yet there is something still left in my blood,
That tells me the blade and the blossom are good,
And I will go back to the field and the wood!