Hell's Half Acre Poem by J.Edgar Middleton

Six years of life in the reek of things
Where love is a fay unknown;
A wolfish boy on the crowded street
Who stoops for the cruel stone;
No laughter-light in his infant eyes,
No joy and no baby shame.
'Tis Hell's Half Acre has made him thus
And we are the ones to blame.

Oh, look you well at the rosy lad
Who sits on your knee to-night,
His arms entwining about your neck,
His big round eyes alight.
Oh, list you well to his silver laugh
Which echoes on Heaven's street,
Till the angels smile as they pause to hear
The sound so glad and sweet.

Your boy is filled with the joy of love;
He knows your protecting hand.
It keeps him out of the Lake of Lies
'Mid the hills of Hopeless Land.
And yet his brother, a child of woe,
Is living in black despair
In Hell's Half Acre, and you and I
Are willing to leave him there.

God help the child of a devil's home
With his broken-hearted sigh.
He cringes low in his filthy rags,
A curse for his lullaby.
Six years of life in the reek of things
Where God is an empty name.
'Tis Hell's Half Acre, beside our doors,
And we are the ones to blame.