C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
John Davidson (1857–1909)
A Loafer
I
At night I hang about;
I sleep a little when I may,
But rise betimes the morning’s scout;
For through the year I always hear
Afar, aloft, a ghostly shout.
My skin shows here and there;
About my face like seaweed droops
My tangled beard, my tangled hair;
From cavernous and shaggy brows
My stony eyes untroubled stare.
Through Fleet Street and the Strand;
And as the pleasant people press,
I touch them softly with my hand,
Perhaps to know that still I go
Alive about a living land.
I hear the ghostly cry,
As if a still voice fell from heaven
To where sea-whelmed the drowned folk lie
In sepulchres no tempest stirs,
And only eyeless things pass by.
Oh, eyes and cheeks that glow!
Oh, strength and comeliness! Alas,
The lustrous health is earth, I know
From shrinking eyes that recognize
No brother in my rags and woe.
But I have conquered fate;
For I have chosen the better part,
And neither hope, nor fear, nor hate.
With placid breath, on pain and death—
My certain alms—alone I wait.
The pale unechoing note,
The faint “Aha!” sent from the wall
Of heaven, but from no ruddy throat
Of human breed or seraph’s seed,—
A phantom voice that cries by rote.