Hawthorn and Lavender | Page 7

making
His beautiful purpose plain.
But I wait in a horror of strangeness--
A tool on His workshop floor,
Worn to the butt, and banished
His hand for evermore.
L
So let me hence as one
Whose part in the world has been dreamed out
and done:
One that hath fairly earned and spent
In pride of heart
and jubilance of blood
Such wages, be they counted bad or good,

As Time, the old taskmaster, was moved to pay;
And, having warred
and suffered, and passed on
Those gifts the Arbiters preferred and
gave,
Fare, grateful and content,
Down the dim way
Whereby
races innumerable have gone,
Into the silent universe of the grave.
Grateful for what hath been--
For what my hand hath done, mine eyes
have seen,
My heart been privileged to know;
With all my lips in
love have brought
To lips that yearned in love to them, and wrought

In the way of wrath, and pity, and sport, and song:
Content, this
miracle of being alive
Dwindling, that I, thrice weary of worst and
best,
May shed my duds, and go
From right and wrong,
And,

ceasing to regret, and long, and strive,
Accept the past, and be for
ever at rest.
FINALE
_Schizzando ma con sentimento_
A sigh sent wrong,
A kiss that goes astray,
A sorrow the years
endlong--
So they say.
So let it be--
Come the sorrow, the kiss, the sigh!
They are life, dear
life, all three,
And we die.
WORTHING, 1899-1901.
LONDON TYPES
(_To_ S. S. P.)
I. BUS-DRIVER
He's called _The General_ from the brazen craft
And dash with which
he _sneaks a bit of road_
And all its fares; challenged, or chafed, or
chaffed,
_Back-answers_ of the newest he'll explode;
He reins his
horses with an air; he treats
With scoffing calm whatever powers
there be;
He _gets it straight_, puts _a bit on_, and meets
His losses
with both _lip_ and _pounds s. d._;
He arrogates a special taste in
_short_;
Is loftily grateful for a flagrant _smoke_;
At all the smarter
housemaids winks his court,
And taps them for half-crowns; being
_stoney-broke_,
Lives lustily; is ever _on the make_;
And hath, I fear, none other gods
but _Fake_.
II. LIFE-GUARDSMAN
Joy of the Milliner, Envy of the Line,
Star of the Parks, jack-booted,

sworded, helmed,
He sits between his holsters, solid of spine;
Nor,
as it seems, though _WESTMINSTER_ were whelmed,
With the
great globe, in earthquake and eclipse,
Would he and his charger
cease from mounting guard,
This Private in the Blues, nor would his
lips
Move, though his gorge with throttled oaths were charred!
He
wears his inches weightily, as he wears
His old-world armours; and
with his port and pride,
His sturdy graces and enormous airs,
He
towers, in speech his Colonel countrified,
A triumph, waxing statelier year by year,
Of British blood, and bone,
and beef, and beer.
III. HAWKER
Far out of bounds he's figured--in a race
Of West-End traffic pitching
to his loss.
But if you'd see him in his proper place,
Making the
_browns_ for _bub_ and _grub_ and _doss_,
Go East among the
merchants and their men,
And where the press is noisiest, and the
tides
Of trade run highest and widest, there and then
You shall
behold him, edging with equal strides
Along the kerb; hawking in
either hand
Some artful nothing made of twine and tin,
Cardboard
and foil and bits of rubber band:
Some penn'orth of wit-in-fact that,
with a grin,
The careful City marvels at, and buys
For nurselings in the Suburbs
to despise!
IV. BEEF-EATER
His beat lies knee-high through a dust of story--
A dust of terror and
torture, grief and crime;
Ghosts that are _ENGLAND'S_ wonder, and
shame, and glory
Throng where he walks, an antic of old time;
A
sense of long immedicable tears
Were ever with him, could his ears
but heed;
The stern _Hic Jacets_ of our bloodiest years
Are for his
reading, had he eyes to read,
But here, where _CROOKBACK_ raged,

and _CRANMER_ trimmed,
And _MORE_ and _STRAFFORD_
faced the axe's proving,
He shows that Crown the desperate Colonel
nimmed,
Or simply keeps the Country Cousin moving,
Or stays such Cockney pencillers as would shame
The wall where
some dead Queen hath traced her name.
V. SANDWICH-MAN
An ill March noon; the flagstones gray with dust;
An all-round east
wind volleying straws and grit;
_ST. MARTIN'S STEPS_, where
every venomous gust
Lingers to buffet, or sneap, the passing cit;

And in the gutter, squelching a rotten boot,
Draped in a wrap that,
modish ten-year syne,
Partners, obscene with sweat and grease and
soot,
A horrible hat, that once was just as fine;
The drunkard's
mouth a-wash for something drinkable,
The drunkard's eye alert for
casual _toppers_,
The drunkard's neck stooped to a lot scarce
thinkable,
A living, crawling blazoning of Hot-Coppers,
He trails his mildews towards a Kingdom-Come
Compact of
_sausage-and-mash_ and _two-o'-rum_!
VI. 'LIZA
_'LIZA'S old man_'s perhaps a little _shady_,
_'LIZA'S old woman_'s
prone to _booze_ and cringe;
But _'LIZA_ deems herself _a perfect
lady_,
And proves it in her feathers and her fringe.
For _'LIZA_ has
a _bloke_ her heart to cheer,
With _pearlies_ and a _barrer_ and a
_jack_,
So all the vegetables of the year
Are duly represented on
her back.
Her boots are sacrifices to her hats,
Which knock you
speechless--_like