Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In an Old Art Gallery

Before the statue of a giant Hun,
    There stood a dwarf, misshapen and uncouth.
    His lifted eyes seemed asking: 'Why, in sooth,
Was I not fashioned like this mighty one?
Would God show favour to an older son
    Like earthly kings, and beggar without ruth
    Another, who sinned only by his youth?
Why should two lives in such divergence run?'

Strange, as he gazed, that from a vanished past
    No memories revived of war and strife,
       Of misused prowess, and of broken law.
That old Hun's spirit, in the dwarf re-cast,
    Lived out the sequence of an earthly life.
       It was the statue of himself he saw! 

1. At the Boro Boedoer
2. Sonnets of Sorrow. 18. The wise ones tell me that my heart's wild clamour
3. Applause
4. The Beggar Cat
5. Bless the Babies

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