Have you ever read all of the Dickens works?  I know most of us are familiar with A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and perhaps a few more.  But, what a time and age to live through with all of its issues in giving voice to the lives lived then.  In one part magical and another tragic – all of it bears on the world we live today.

A Victorian Legacy
by Michael Romani

Snow falls on the city street
While a carriage comes to meet
Two who know love and travails
Only certain that love must prevail

Even in squalor and poverty 
There is found cause for joy in its delicacy
An orphaned boy is taught the value of a penny
While house is not a home when its empty

No longer filled by the soul of the hearth
Who once inhabited it fully and in mirth
Hearts won and lost in this cold city
Know the meaning of deep winter's pity

Death comes to demand its respect
With Christmas Eve refusing its own neglect
All of this is consumed inside a library
That holds its treasured Dickensian legacy

All of debt kept close in Scrooge's ledger
Is diminished into contempt hungering and eager
That its demands must be circumspected
As long as society finds itself lost and neglected

(c) January 22, 2020  Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved