It was twenty-five years ago that I lay in my mother's lap New born to life, nor knowing one whit of all that should hap:
That day was I won from nothing to the world of struggle and pain, Twenty-five years ago--and to-night am I born again.
I look and behold the days of the years that are passed away, And my soul is full of their wealth, for oft were they blithe and gay As the hours of bird and of beast: they have made me calm and strong To wade the stream of confusion, the river of grief and wrong.
A rich man 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.
