Poems (Henley)/Enter Patient

by William Ernest Henley

IN HOSPITAL

 

1873-1875

On ne saurait dire a quel point un homme, seul dans sonlit et malade, devient personnel.—Balzac.

I ENTER PATIENT

The morning mists still haunt the stony street;The northern summer air is shrill and cold;And lo, the Hospital, grey, quiet, old,Where Life and Death like friendly chafferers meet.Thro' the loud spaciousness and draughty gloomA small, strange child—so aged yet so young!—Her little arm besplinted and beslung,Precedes me gravely to the waiting-room.I limp behind, my confidence all gone.The grey-haired soldier-porter waves me on,And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail:A tragic meanness seems so to environThese corridors and stairs of stone and iron,Cold, naked, clean—half-workhouse and half-jail.