Children of the Night

Reuben Bright

     Because he was a butcher and thereby
     Did earn an honest living (and did right),
     I would not have you think that Reuben Bright
     Was any more a brute than you or I;
     For when they told him that his wife must die,
     He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,
     And cried like a great baby half that night,
     And made the women cry to see him cry.

     And after she was dead, and he had paid
     The singers and the sexton and the rest,
     He packed a lot of things that she had made
     Most mournfully away in an old chest
     Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
     In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.