Pale coin, what various hands have you passed through
Ere you to-day within my hand were laid?
Perchance a laborer’s well-earned hire you made;
Some miser may have gloated long on you;
Perhaps some pitying hand to Want outthrew;
And, lost and won through devious tricks of trade,
You may have been, alas! the full price paid
For some poor soul that loved you past your due.— Effie Smith
No doubt ’tis well, O imaged Liberty,
You see not where your placid face is thrust,
Nor know how far man is from being free,
Bound as he is by money’s fateful lust,
While to his anxious soul like mockery
Seem those fair, graven words: “In God we trust.”
