Page:Poems Greenwell.djvu/15

Vain will it be to shun Him, to forget—
In the next world ye may not do without Him:
Seek God, run after Him, for ye must die!"
Oh! then, I thought, if one like me might speak,
If I might find a voice, now would I raise
A yet more bitter and exceeding cry,
"Seek God, rub after Him, for ye must live!
I know not what it may be in that world,
The future world, the wide unknown hereafter,
That waits for us, to be afar from God;
Yet can I witness of a desolation
That I have known; can witness of a place
Where spirits wander up and down in torment,
And tell you what it is to want Him here."

 I had no friends, no parents. I was poor
In all but beauty, and an innocence
That was not virtue—failing in the trial.
Mine is a common tale, and all the sadder
Because it is so common: I was sought
By one that wore me for a time, then flung
Me off; a rose with all its sweetness gone,
Yet with enough of bloom to flaunt awhile,
Although the worm was busy at its core.
So I lived on in splendour, lived through years
Of scorning, till my brow grew hard to meet it;
Though all the while, behind that brazen shield,
My spirit shrank before each hurtling arrow
That sang and whistled past me in the air.
On every wall methought I saw a Hand