THE CONFESSIONAL
My Sorrow diligent would sweep That dingy room infest With dust (thereby I mean my soul) Because she hath a Guest Who doth require that self-same room Be garnished for His rest.
And Sorrow (who had washed His feet Where He before had been) Took the long broom of Memory And swept the corners clean, Till in the midst of the fair floor The sum of dust was seen.
It lay there, settled by her tears, That fell the while she swept— Light fluffs of grey and earthy dregs; And over these she wept, For all were come since last her Guest Within the room had slept.
And, for nor broom nor tears had power To lift the clods of ill, She called one servant of her Guest Who came with right good will, For, by his sweet Lord’s bidding, he Waiteth on Sorrow still;
Who, seeing she had done her part As far as in her lay And had intent to keep the place More cleanly from that day, Did with his Master’s dust-pan come And take the dust away.
She thankèd him, and Him who sent Such succour, and she spread Fair sheets of Thankfulness and Love Upon her Master’s bed, Then on the new-scoured threshold stood And listened for His tread.
EPITAPH ON A CHILD
RUN OVER AND KILLED BY A
MOTOR-CAR IN THE STREET
Here lies A. B. who, four years from her birth, Found there was nowhere left to play on earth. Strange, for her mother’s child had ever grown In the quaint precincts of a country town, Yet was she one whose small predestined feet Learnt nor forgot to walk upon the street. She might not ramble where the farmer spanned With consecrated quickset all his land To fill her pinafore when mushrooms swell; Nor dare she scale the lovely citadel Of brambles in the lane, for their sweet prize Was spoilt with dust that dimmed the children’s eyes When local gods dispersed the timid crowd And went before in pillars of grey cloud. Nor might a bigger child frequent the edge Of the pebbled stream to plait the flowering sedge, For aught of native life was kept without The chosen haunt of Dives and his trout; His pheasants held the coppice and its nuts, Where bearded men played peep behind their butts And wolvish keepers prowling through the woods Had a short way with all Red Riding Hoods. No blade of wholesome grass shot through the hard And greasy flagstones of the narrow yard At home, nor might the children ever play Through the allotments where, a mile away, The civic cabbages congested stood, Reluctant tenants of a stony rood. One playground, one alone, for such as she, Had planned a grave adult humanity, There where grey asphalt hid the ruder ground And serried spikes begirt the place around; At the one end, of yellow brick and slate, Was reared a sort of female Traitors’ Gate, At t’other end the piety of a nation Had raised a shrine of tin to sanitation. This, thanks to man, was all the children’s share And Nature was allowed to tender air. Hence did it chance (as now and then it may) The Powers that Be decreed a holiday. And reckless childhood, whom it ever galls To sit within the compass of four walls, Loosed from its wonted pen conspired to run At random through the town beneath the sun, Rashly disporting in the common street Its rude hands and unnecessary feet. That day, so many a hooting corner crost, The marvel is that one alone was lost, She to whom poverty no tomb assigns But a low mound and these unworthy lines.— Mourn not at all that Her whose burnished wing Flies on the blissful errands of her King, Whom (by a heavenly law too young to err, Accounted on the earth a Trespasser) He hath resumèd and her footfall white Enfranchised of the liberties of light: But for all those who play the part of Fate To engineer this poor and mirthless state Weep,—and for all who loved that childish hair And saw it stained with Tragedy—one prayer.