IV

Soon was I then to gather bitter shame Of spirit; I had been most wildly proud — Yet in my pride had been Some little courage, formless as a cloud,

Unpiloted save by a vagrant wind, But still an earnest of the bonds that tame The legionary hates, of sacred loves that lean From the high soul of man towards his kind.

And all my grief Had been for those I watched go to and fro In uncompassioned woe Along that little span my unbelief

Had fashioned in my vision as all life. Now even this so little virtue waned, For I became caught up into the strife That I had pitied, and my soul was stained

At last by that most venomous despair, Self-pity. I no longer was aware Of any will to heal the world’ s unrest,

I suffered as it suffered, and I grew Troubled in all my daily trafficking, Not with the large heroic trouble known By proud adventurous men who would atone

With their own passionate pity for the sting And anguish of a world of peril and snares, It was the trouble of a soul in thrall To mean despairs,

Driven about a waste where neither fall Of words from lips of love, nor consolation Of grave eyes comforting, nor ministration Of hand or heart could pierce the deadly wall

Of self — of self,— I was a living shame — A broken purpose. I had stood apart With pride rebellious and defiant heart, And now my pride had perished in the flame.

I cried for succour as a little child Might supplicate whose days are undefiled,— For tutored pride and innocence are one. To the gloom has won

A gleam of the sun And into the barren desolate ways A scent is blown As of meadows mown

By cooling rivers in clover days.