The Donaldsonville Chief

A pale and puny creature,
In rags and dirt forlorn,
What would she want, I questioned
Impatient to be gone;
With trembling voice she answered.
"We live just down the street,
And mamma she's a dying,
And we've nothing left to eat."

Down in a wretched basement,
With foul stench where we wait
Through whose half buried windows,
God's sunshine never falls,
Where want, and cold, and hunger
Crouched near her as she lay
I found a fellow-creature
Gasping her life away
A chair, a broken table
A bed of dirty straw,
A hearth all dark and cheerless,
But these I scarcely saw,
A mournful sight before me;
The sad and sickening scene,
O never had I pictured
A scene so full of woe.
The famished and the naked.
The babe that pined for bread
The squalid group that huddled
Around the dying bed.
All this distressed and sorrow
Should be in lands afar
Was I suddenly transported,
To Burrio-Boola-Ghoy?
Ah, no! the poor and wretched
Were close behind the door,
And I had passed them heedless.
A thousand times before,
Alas, for the cold and hungry,
That meet me every day,
While all my tears were given,
To the suffering far away.

There's work enough for Christians,
In distant lands we know,
Our Lord commands his servants,
Through all the world to go,
Not only for the heathen,
This was the charge to them.
Go preach the word, beginning
First at Jerusalem
Oh, Christians; God has promised,
"Whe'er to the poor has given
A cup of pure cold water,
Shall find reward in heaven."
Would you secure the blessing
You need not seek it far
Go find in yonder hovel,
A Burrio-Boola-Ghoy.