C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Author Unknown

THE LADY POVERTY was fair,

But she has lost her looks of late,

With change of times and change of air.

Ah, slattern! she neglects her hair,

Her gown, her shoes; she keeps no state,

As once when her pure feet were bare.

Or—almost worse, if worse can be—

She scolds in parlors, dusts, and trims,

Watches and counts. Oh, is this she

Whom Francis met, whose step was free,

Who with Obedience caroled hymns,

In Umbria walked with Chastity?

Where is her ladyhood? Not here,

Not among modern kinds of men;

But in the stony fields, where clear

Through the thin trees the skies appear,

In delicate spare soil and fen,

And slender landscape and austere.