THE COLD WITHIN

This was clipped from a church bulletin in 1985:
`
THE COLD WITHIN
`
"Six humans trapped by happenstance
In black and bitter cold
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story is told.
`
Their dying fire was in need of logs
But the first man held his back,
For on the faces around the fire
He noticed that one was black.
`
The next man looking across the way
Saw one not of his church,
And he wouldn't bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.
`
The third man sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch,
Why should he put his log to use
To warm the idle rich?
`
The rich man sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.
`
The black man's face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from sight;
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.
`
The last man of this forlorn group
Did nothing except for gain,
Giving only to those who gave to him,
Was the way he played the game.
`
Their logs held tight in death's still grasp
Is proof of human sin,
They didn't die of the cold without,
They died from the cold within."
                              ~~Author unknown

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