Comforter of the Afflicted (III)

I pray too much for ills of mine,
O Mary, others suffer keen,
Witness the little trees of green
Laid where Your altar candles shine;

For all the joys of kermesse days,
And all the roads that thither wend
Are full of cripples without end,
By night are all the kermesse ways.

And then the season grows too chill
For these consumptive steeds of wood,
Although the drunken organ should,
Alone, keep its illusions still.

Poorer than I have more endured;
Despairing of their hands and feet,
Poor folks that cough and nothing eat,
People too aged to be cured,

With ulcers wherein winter smarts,
O Virgin, meekly, turn by turn,
They come to You and candles burn,
All in a nook of silvered hearts.