| |
| BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and aims, | |
| Permit the one brief word the occasion claims; | |
| —When mumming and grave projects are allied, | |
| Perhaps an Epilogue is justified. | |
| |
| Our under-purpose has, in truth, to-day | 5 |
| Commanded most our musings; least the play: | |
| A purpose futile but for your good-will | |
| Swiftly responsive to the cry of ill: | |
| A purpose all too limited!—to aid | |
| Frail human flowerets, sicklied by the shade, | 10 |
| In winning some short spell of upland breeze, | |
| Or strengthening sunlight on the level leas. | |
| |
| Who has not marked, where the full cheek should be, | |
| Incipient lines of lank flaccidity, | |
| Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow, | 15 |
| And where the throb of transport, pulses low?— | |
| Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line, | |
| O wondering child, unwitting Time’s design, | |
| Why should Art add to Nature’s quandary, | |
| And worsen ill by thus immuring thee? | 20 |
| —That races can do despite to their own, | |
| That Might supernal do indeed condone | |
| Wrongs individual for the general ease, | |
| Instance the proof in victims such as these. | |
| |
| Launched into thoroughfares too thronged before, | 25 |
| Mothered by those whose protest is “No more!” | |
| Vitalized without option: who shall say | |
| That did Life hang on choosing—Yea or Nay— | |
| They had not scorned it with such penalty, | |
| And nothingness implored of Destiny? | 30 |
| |
| And yet behind the horizon smile serene | |
| The down, the cornland, and the stretching green— | |
| Space—the child’s heaven: scenes which at least ensure | |
| Some palliative for ill they cannot cure. | |
| |
| Dear friends—now moved by this poor show of ours | 35 |
| To make your own long joy in buds and bowers | |
| For one brief while the joy of infant eyes, | |
| Changing their urban murk to paradise— | |
| You have our thanks!—may your reward include | |
| More than our thanks, far more: their gratitude. | 40 |
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