To change them into curses, craving love,
Who lackest bread? There is no room above
Earth's breast for amorous paupers. Creep below,
And hide thyself from failure!"

                                                     " Is it so?"
She murmur'd, " even so! and yet .... dear heart,
I meant to comfort thee!" Then with a start,
"And he is sick, poor man! No work today . . . .
No work tomorrow .... And the rent to pay
And two small mouths to feed." . . .

                                                    Three tiny elves,
As plump as Puck, at all things, and themselves,
Laughing, ran by her in the rain. They were
Chubby and rosy-cheek'd, with golden hair
Tossing behind (two girls, a boy); they held
Each other's hands, and so contrived to weld
Their gladnesses in one. No rain, though chill,
Could vex their joyous ignorance of ill.
Then, sorrowfully, her thoughts began to stray
Far out of London, many a mile away
Among the meadows:

                                   In green Hertfordshire,
When lanes are white with May, the wreathing briar
Wafts sweet thoughts to our spirits, if we pass
Between the hedges, and the happy grass
Beneath is sprinkled with the o'erblown leaves
Of wild white roses. In the long long eves
The cuckoo calls from every glimmering bower
And lone dim-lighted glade. The small church tower
Smiles kindly at the village underneath.
Ah, God! once more to smell the rose's breath
Among those cottage gardens! There's a field
Past the hill-farm, hard by the little weald,
Was first to fill with cowslips every year;
The children used to play there. Could one hear
Once more that merry brook that leaves the leas
Quiet at eve, but through the low birch-trees
Is ever noisy! Then at nutting-time
The woods are gayer than even in their prime;
And afterwards, there's something—hard to tell—
Full of home-feelings in the healthy smell,
Wide over all the red plough'd uplands spread
From burning weeds, what time the woods are dead.

"We were so young! We loved each other so!
Ah, yet ... if one could live the winter through
(And winter's worst is o'er in March) . . . Who knows?
The times might mend."

                            Then through her thoughts uprose
The menacing image of the imminent need
Of this bleak night.

                                " Two little mouths to feed!
No work! . . . and Willie sick! . . . and how to pay
Tomorrow's rent?"....

                                  She pluck'd herself away
From the bewildering river, and again
Stray'd onwards, onwards, through the endless rain
Among the endless streets, with weary gait
And dreary heart, trailing disconsolate
A draggled skirt with feeble feet slipshod.
The sky seem'd one vast blackness without God,
Or, if a god, a god like some that here
Be gods of earth, who, missing love, choose fear
For henchman, and so rule a multitude
They have subdued, but never understood.
The roaring of the wheels began anew,
And London down its dismal vortex drew
This wandering minion of the misery
Of millions.

III.

                       Grey and grisly 'neath this sky
Of bitter darkness gleam'd the long blind wall
Of that grim institute we English call
The poor-house.

                               We build houses for our poor,
Pay poor-rates, do our best, indeed, to cure
Their general sickness by all special ways,
If not successful, still deserving praise,
Because implying (which, for my part, I
Applaud intensely) that society
Is answerable, as a whole, to man
(Ay, and to Christ, since self-styled Christian!)
For how the poor it brings to birth may fare.
Though some French folks count this in chief the affair
Of government, which pays for its mistakes
To revolution, when grim hunger breaks
His social fetter sometimes. Still, remains
This fact, a sad one,—spite of all our pains,
The poor increase among us faster still
Than means to feed them, though we tax the till
To cram the alms-box. Which is passing strange,
Seeing that this England in the world's wide range
Ranks wealthiest of the nations of the earth.
But thereby hangs a riddle, which is worth
The solving some day, if we can. That's all.

This woman, passing by that poor-house wall,
Shudder'd and thought .... No matter! 'twas a thought
Only that made her shudder, till she caught
Her foot against a heap of something strange,
And wet, and soft, which made that shudder change
To one of physical terror.

                                             'Twas as though
The multitudinous mud, to scare her so,
Had heap'd itself into a hideous heap,
Not human, sure, yet living. With a creep,
The thing, whate'er it was, her chance foot spurn'd
Began to move, like humid earth upturn'd
By a snouted mole, disturb'd; or else, suppose
A swarm of feeding flies, when cluster'd close
About a lump of carrion, or a hive
Of brown-back'd bees. It seem'd to be alive
After this fashion ... a collective mass
Of movement, making from the life it has,
Or seems to have, in common, though so small,
A sort of monstrous individual.
For, from the inward to the outward moved,
The hideous lump heaved slowly; slowly shoved
Layer after layer of soak'd and rotting rags
On each side, down it, to the sloppy flags,
Beneath its headless bulk; thus making space
For the upthrusting of the creature's face,
Or creature's self, whate'er that might have been.
Whence suddenly emerging—to be seen,
One must imagine, rather than to see,
Since it look'd nowhere, neither seem'd to be
Surprised, or even conscious—there was thrust
(As though it came up thus because it must,
And not because it would) a human head,
With sexless countenance, that neither said
'To man, nor woman ... I belong to you,"
But seem'd a fearful mixture of the two
United in a failure horrible
Of features, meant for human you might tell