The title of this tragic poem is allegorical; it portrays the social inequality between poor people and others who pray in church and completely ignore the misery of their fellow men. The two contrasts are very imaginatively underlined in the texture of the piano part as can be heard in the opening line: "A little black thing among the snow, crying 'weep' in notes of woe. 'Where are they father and mother, say?' 'They are both gone to church to pray.' " Morawetz achieves a particularly moving and dramatic climax at the end of the song with the words: "And because I am happy and dance and sing, they think they have done me no injury, and are gone to praise God and his Priests and King, who make up Heaven of our misery."