The Story
of Saville
Straight on unseeing across the stretch of wide snow-sprinkled lawn,—
But she was perforce constrained to pause; he wist not that he held up
A visage stamped with an awful need, like a beggar’s holding a cup—
He never knew that he reached his hand, while slowly advanced the maid
And into his fingers eager and worn a bunch of violets laid—
And he tried to mutter a word of thanks, and he heard a quick low sob,
And he sank half stunned to his seat again, afraid of his heart’s wild throb,
And it was over, all over and past! and now for twenty-four hours
He must live like a starving sailor, on a breath and a knot of flowers,
And ever there rang in his weary brain, the roar of the city above,
These words of a laurelled master, till he sickened with terror thereof,
“Hath man not evil enough, O Earth, that thou must lay on him love?”
