Little Tip Girl Poem by R. K. Hart

My horses hooves clashed against cobble stone,
As we stepped out each pace, there was a musical tone.
Headed toward the country I pushed my dray,
Rain spat down through a darkened clouded day.
Our load little more than wealthy household wastes.
From people wearing expensive wigs, powdered faces.
As we leave the city at large,
We come to roman bridges, gentle canals and a horse drawn barge.
We are forgiven if we believe that evil does not persist,
Nevertheless, evil is hidden just below surface and does exist.
We move on passed the coal burner's hut where the smoke does choke,
However, on our return we'll take to the city bags of warming coke.
Hours go by and with them landscapes of wooden forests and golden farms,
This picturesque scenery with the greatest of ease disarms.
And lulls the unsuspecting into its pleasures always to expect,
When there lays an ugliness the goodness in man rejects.
You see when a corner is turned these joys will be yearned,
The acrid smells of London town as refuse burns.
Here lays the almost bearable until we see among the dross,
What really causes the stomach churn, which is the true city cast off.
I speak of those who scrape and scratch,
A living from among the rotting food, daub and thatch.
Among these cast offs my eyes are attracted to a girl child,
Left to just it seems to run wild.
As she bent to scratch about hunting for anything of worth,
With something glinting around her neck and a belted girth.
I stopped my dray in front of this young lass,
To give her first choice and not the quickly assembling mass.
Once she had all that she needed I asked what adorned her neck.
She replied, 'Kind sir, a gentleman told me t'was called the cross, a reject'.
I told her off the man of the cross and the blood spilt on this cross,
Holding her little cross, she sighed with great pathos.
My Lord allowed me to lead her down the Roman Road
She accepted the gift of salvation with her young head bowed.
As she understood His washes white and sin, so black taints.
Angels rejoiced as her name was written into the book of the saints.
This little one would die shortly after our meeting,
The taking of the rubbish dump angel was fleeting.
But now when I'm there and a glint I see,
I hear her last words to me, 'So Jesus died on a cross to set me free'
Tears fill my eyes and stream my cheeks,
This little one understood what to others is mystique.