Thus Was The Tongue Of A Dog Made Useful*
The beggar lay at the rich man's gate.
The rich get richer saving crumbs,
letting beggars hang by their thumbs.
Let the dog's rough tongue grate
the sores on the body of the poor
who lay in pain by a rich man's door.
Safe now calmed by the Heavenly choir
you forget he who left you by his door
sent his dogs to sooth your sores.
He burns now in the Devil's fire.
You don't wet a finger to damp his thirst.
Who'll say which of you is worst?
*Cotton Mather: Marginal Christi Americana (1702)
Cotton Mather officiated at the marriage of Thomas Chute
and Mary Curtis in Boston several years before they moved to
Maine.
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