Never think of us who struggle in the tempest and the night;
Spread your nostrils to the incense, hearken to the murmured hymn
Of the praising people, rising from the temple fair and dim.
Ah, but we here in the tempest, we here struggling in the night,
See the worshippers out-stealing; see the temple emptying quite;
See the godhead turning ghostlike; see the pride of name and fame
Paling slowly, sad and sickly, with forgetfulness and shame! . . .
Darker, darker grows the night now, louder, louder cries the wind;
I can hear the dash of breakers and the deep sea moves behind,
I can see the ghostlike phalanx rushing on the crumbling shore,
Slowly but surely shattering its rampart evermore.
And my comrade’s voice is calling, and his solitary cry
On the great dark swift air-currents like Fate’s summons sweepeth by.
Farewell, then, whom once I loved so, whom a boy I thrilled to hear
Urging courage and reliance, loathing acquiescent fear.
I must leave you; I must wander to a strange and distant land,
Facing all that Fate shall give me with her hard unequal hand—
I once more anew must face them, toil and trouble and disease,
But these a man may face and conquer, for there waits him death and peace
And the freedom from dishonour and denial e’er confessed
Of what he knows is truest, what most beautiful and best!
O farewell, then! I must leave you. You have chosen. You are right.
You have made the great refusal; you have shunned the wind and night.
You have won your soul, and won it—No, not lost it, as they tell—
Happy, blest of gods and monarchs, O a long, a long farewell!
Freshwater, Isle of Wight.
FAREWELL TO THE MARKET.
“susannah and mary-jane.”
Two little darlings alone,
Clinging hand in hand;
Two little girls come out
To see the wonderful land!
Here round the flaring stalls
They stand wide-eyed in the throng,
While the great, the eloquent huckster
Perorates loud and long.
They watch those thrice-blessed mortals,
The dirty guzzling boys,
Who partake of dates, periwinkles,
Ices and other joys.
And their little mouths go wide open
At some of the brilliant sights
That little darlings may see in the road
Of Edgware on Saturday nights.
The eldest’s name is Susannah;
She was four years old last May.
And Mary-Jane, the youngest,
Is just three years old to-day.
And I know all about their cat, and
Their father and mother too,
And “Pigshead,” their only brother,
Who got his head jammed in the flue.
And they know several particulars
Of a similar sort of me,
For we went up and down together
For over an hour, we three.