The same old sore breaks out from age to age Destructive, when I had not what I would. I was at school a college in the South: There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit, His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us; We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She, With meditative grunts of much content, Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud. By night we dragged her to the college tower From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow, And on the leads we kept her till she pigged. Large range of prospect had the mother sow, And but for daily loss of one she loved, As one by one we took them—but for thisAs never sow was higher in this world Might have been happy: but what lot is pure? We took them all, till she was left alone Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine, And so returned unfarrowed to her sty. John. They found you out? James. Not they. John. Well-after all What know we of the secret of a man? His nerves were wrong. What ails us who are sound, That we should mimic this raw fool the world, Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites, As ruthless as a baby with a worm, As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows To Pity more from ignorance than will. That we shall miss the mail: and here it comes As you shall see - three pyebalds and a roan. ST. SIMEON STYLITES. ALTHOUGH I be the basest of mankind, I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold Of saintdom, and to clamor, mourn and sob, Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God, In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps, Patient on this tall pillar I have borne Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow; And I had hoped that ere this period closed Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest, The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm. O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe, Not whisper, any murmur of complaint. Pain heaped ten-hundred-fold to this, were still Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crushed O Lord, Lord, Thou knowest I bore this better at the first, And though my teeth, which now are dropt away, I drowned the whoopings of the owl with sound O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul, Who may be saved? who is it may be saved? Who may be made a saint, if I fail here? For not alone this pillar-punishment, Not this alone I bore: but while I lived The rope that haled the buckets from the well, Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee, |