BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD
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_There, but for the grace of God, goes...._” There is a question that I ask,And ask again:What hunger was half-hidden by the maskThat he wore then? There was a word for me to sayThat I said not;And in the past there was another dayThat I forgot: A dreary, cold, unwholesome day,Racked overhead,--As if the world were turning the wrong way,And the sun dead: A day that comes back well enoughNow he is gone.What then? Has memory no other stuffTo seize upon? Wherever he may wander nowIn his despair,Would he be more contented in the sloughIf all were there? And yet he brought a kind of lightInto the room;And when he left, a tinge of something brightSurvived the gloom. Why will he not be where he is,And not with me?The hours that are my life are mine, not his,--Or used to be. What numerous imps invisibleHas he at hand,Far-flying and forlorn as what they tellAt his command? What hold of weirdness or of worthCan he possess,That he may speak from anywhere on earthHis loneliness? Shall I be caught and held againIn the old net?--He brought a sorry sunbeam with him then,But it beams yet.
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