She entered Heaven; she climbed the stair,
And knelt down at the mercy-seat.”
Next to these three Ballads I should rank “Thirty Bob A Week.” It is of the solid earth, and has none of the Dantesque weirdness of the Ballads of Hell and Heaven; but it is stronger than either of them in its own way—this monologue of the man who must live on thirty shillings a week, and make the best of it.
“But the difficultest go to understand,
And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek, with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that’s the proper thing for you.
“It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It’s playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It’s walking on a string across a gulf,