The Pilgrims of Hope | Page 9

was my father, but he skulked ere I was born, And gave my
mother money, but left her life to scorn; And we dwelt alone in our
village: I knew not my mother's "shame," But her love and her wisdom
I knew till death and the parting came. Then a lawyer paid me money,
and I lived awhile at a school, And learned the lore of the ancients, and
how the knave and the fool Have been mostly the masters of earth: yet
the earth seemed fair and good With the wealth of field and homestead,
and garden and river and wood; And I was glad amidst it, and little of
evil I knew As I did in sport and pastime such deeds as a youth might
do, Who deems he shall live for ever. Till at last it befel on a day That I
came across our Frenchman at the edge of the new-mown hay,
A-fishing as he was wont, alone as he always was; So I helped the dark
old man to bring a chub to grass, And somehow he knew of my birth,
and somehow we came to be friends, Till he got to telling me chapters
of the tale that never ends; The battle of grief and hope with riches and
folly and wrong. He told how the weak conspire, he told of the fear of
the strong; He told of dreams grown deeds, deeds done ere time was
ripe, Of hope that melted in air like the smoke of his evening pipe; Of
the fight long after hope in the teeth of all despair; Of battle and prison
and death, of life stripped naked and bare. But to me it all seemed
happy, for I gilded all with the gold Of youth that believes not in death,
nor knoweth of hope grown cold. I hearkened and learned, and longed
with a longing that had no name, Till I went my ways to our village and
again departure came.
Wide now the world was grown, and I saw things clear and grim, That
awhile agone smiled on me from the dream-mist doubtful and dim. I
knew that the poor were poor, and had no heart or hope; And I knew
that I was nothing with the least of evils to cope; So I thought the
thoughts of a man, and I fell into bitter mood, Wherein, except as a
picture, there was nought on the earth that was good; Till I met the
woman I love, and she asked, as folk ask of the wise, Of the root and

meaning of things that she saw in the world of lies. I told her all I knew,
and the tale told lifted the load That made me less than a man; and she
set my feet on the road.
So we left our pleasure behind to seek for hope and for life, And to
London we came, if perchance there smouldered the embers of strife
Such as our Frenchman had told of; and I wrote to him to ask If he
would be our master, and set the learners their task. But "dead" was the
word on the letter when it came back to me, And all that we saw
henceforward with our own eyes must we see. So we looked and
wondered and sickened; not for ourselves indeed: My father by now
had died, but he left enough for my need; And besides, away in our
village the joiner's craft had I learned, And I worked as other men work,
and money and wisdom I earned. Yet little from day to day in street or
workshop I met To nourish the plant of hope that deep in my heart had
been set. The life of the poor we learned, and to me there was nothing
new In their day of little deeds that ever deathward drew. But new was
the horror of London that went on all the while That rich men played at
their ease for name and fame to beguile The days of their empty lives,
and praised the deeds they did, As though they had fashioned the earth
and found out the sun long hid; Though some of them busied
themselves from hopeless day to day With the lives of the slaves of the
rich and the hell wherein they lay. They wrought meseems as those
who should make a bargain with hell, That it grow a little cooler, and
thus for ever to dwell.
So passed the world on its ways, and weary with waiting we were. Men
ate and drank and married; no wild cry smote the air, No great crowd
ran together to greet the day of doom; And ever more and more seemed
the town like a monstrous tomb To