Sonnet 30 (Sonnets, 1833)

What can a poor man do but love and pray ?
But if his love be selfish, then his prayer,
Like noisome vapour, melts in vacant air.
I am a debtor, and I cannot pay.
The alms which drop upon the public way, —
The casual tribute of the good and fair,
With the keen, thriftless avarice of despair
I seize, and live thereon from day to day,
Ingrate and purposeless. — And yet not so :
The mere mendicity of self-contempt
Has not so far debased me, but I know
The faith, the hope, the piety, exempt
From worldly doubt, to which my all I owe.
Since I have nothing, yet I bless the thought ; —
Best are they paid whose earthly wage is nought.