all.
[88] There comes no word to tell us
Why this and that should be,
Why you should live with sorrow,
And joy should live with me.
MIND AND MATTER
[89]
Great was his soul and high his aim,
He viewed the world, and he could trace
A lofty plan to leave his name
Immortal 'mid the human race.
But as he planned, and as he worked,
The fungus spore within him lurked.
Though dark the present and the past,
The future seemed a sunlit thing.
Still ever deeper and more vast,
The changes that he hoped to bring.
His was the will to dare and do;
But still the stealthy fungus grew.
[90] Alas the plans that came to nought!
Alas the soul that thrilled in vain!
The sunlit future that he sought
Was but a mirage of the brain.
Where now the wit? Where now the will?
The fungus is the master still.
DARKNESS
[91]
A gentleman of wit and charm,
A kindly heart, a cleanly mind,
One who was quick with hand or purse,
To lift the burden of his kind.
A brain well balanced and mature,
A soul that shrank from all things
base,
So rode he forth that winter day,
Complete in every mortal grace.
And then the blunder of a horse,
The crash upon the frozen clods,
And Death? Ah! no such dignity,
But Life, all twisted and at odds!
[92] At odds in body and in soul,
Degraded to some brutish state,
A being loathsome and malign,
Debased, obscene, degenerate.
Pathology? The case is clear,
The diagnosis is exact;
A bone depressed, a haemorrhage,
The pressure on a nervous tract.
Theology? Ah, there's the rub!
Since brain and soul together fade,
Then when the brain is dead enough!
Lord help us, for we need Thine aid!
III MISCELLANEOUS VERSES
[93]
A WOMAN'S LOVE
[95]
I am not blind I understand;
I see him loyal, good, and wise,
I feel decision in his hand,
I read his honour in his eyes.
Manliest among men is he
With every gift and grace to clothe
him;
He never loved a girl but me —
And I I loathe him! loathe him!
The other! Ah! I value him
Precisely at his proper rate,
A creature of caprice and wh
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