When Truth Comes Home Poem by Samuel Alfred Beadle

Once in a while in the hush of night,
Comes to hope's altar out of the dark,
A wanderer seeking light.
A wretched waif, in a wretched plight,
Comes to hope's altar out of the dark,
Once in a while at night.
She's not the blond and blue-eyed queen,
Whom Anglo-Saxon bards all sing,
With gauzy tresses of flaxen hair,
Falling in golden ringlets fair
Over a marble bust.


But simply stumbling in the dark,
Alone o'er desert, waste and wild,
She comes a child of the dark;
Poor queen, bewildered and beguiled,
Deserted, outraged and reviled,
She comes a child of the dark
Pleading for mercy's pitiful care,
Her weary eyes lose their leering light
Uplift from their awful dark despair,
A wistful beam o'er a luring dream
In prayer for charity.


No powder flash for her has burned,
Nor cannon roared, nor boomed for her,
Nor sword in scabbard turned,
Blood of her bardel chief to spill
But all have sought to ruin her,
However much she's yearned
The aid of power's bristling steel,
That shields the pride of Dixie's dame,
And keeps her pure; lest she might reel,
And every cur that meets with her
Might satiate his lust.


The waif queen doth in horror drain
The dregs of shame, her woeful plight
Tells how the iron reign
Blights sire and son of Dixie's might
Their matron-spouse and lassies bright,
Their lords of State and fane,
In spite of caste, by thraldom's chain.
The moral blight which this entails
On human soul and human brain,
Is like a frightful destiny,
In tyranny run mad.


Alike the lord of wealth and fane,
The renegade and plunderer,
The libertine inane;
When my waif queen appeals to such
They lead a dual life with her,
And ravish while they feign
To be immaculate in creed,
In utterance, infallible,
Par excellence in deed;
The vile and chaste, they foul and waste,
In harem and in church.


The iron hand her actions tone,
And mammon leads to perfidy,
Away from all her own,
When comes the lordly heir of caste,
Triumphant in his lechery,
To sow his oats upon
The fallow of the Under World;
And then at morn, what blasting horn?
What banners to the breeze unfurled?
He spurns the spouse of his carouse,
Murders when truth comes home.