I have seen multitudes of commercial burglars, wealthy villains, who fought so valiantly to save their own lives that they have received the commercial V.C. for valour—and penniless, profligate angels, fighting side by side in the battle of nations—that battle wherein the bullets cause mortal wounds, though many years pass before they send the bloodless corpses to heaven—or hell.
I have seen old, ragged, hideous, long-dead women still sitting by the attic’s hearth fire, sipping the gin bottle—sweet-fumed opium for their spectral dreams. As they stare at the embers burning in the red glow they see their own girlhood faces smile once more back into their bleared eyes, with remembered beauty, happiness and glorious faith. Old roués too dream somewhere—the men who made the vows to those drunken old women and never kept them—may they sleep well, but never wake!
I have heard the majestic cathedral organ thunder its rolling music to the roof as the beggar passed by the massive, nail-studded door on swollen feet, rubbed his cold skeleton hands together and spat viciously. No food in his body, and his soul—well, why should he worry about his soul?
I have seen the great shocked multitude open their eyes aghast, and heard the tremendous crash, the clatter of the hail of stones, when the voice said: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” O wonderful goodness! O icy, stony virtue.
Ah! not only in the wild Australasian bush or in the Southern Seas is the great drama of life enacted; the great drama that makes your heart cold, and the old warm belief become encrusted with icicles, as you dream over the strange lot of the wandering, lost children.
I’ve laid me down deep in the bush to sleep,
And wrapt my body in the sunset’s blaze.
Then wondered why He made sad wings for days
To fly away—and all our world to weep.
Like to a myriad birds blown round sunset