With millstones fore-an-aft about your neck;
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one;
And we fall, face-forward, fighting, on the deck.”
Here is a man to whom nothing human is foreign—who understands because he feels.
It is the “Ballads” rather than the “Songs,” which give to this book its exceptional value, yet some of the Songs are charming—for instance, the two “To the Street Piano,” “A Laborer’s Wife,” and “After the End.” Indeed there is nothing in the volume more deeply imbued with the human sympathy, of which Mr. Davidson’s work is so pregnant, than these two songs. Witness the refrain to the one which the laborer’s wife sings:—
“Oh! once I had my fling!
I romped at ging-go-ring;
I used to dance and sing,
And play at everything.