Poem by William Ernest Henley

Croquis

                  To G. W.

The beach was crowded. Pausing now and then,
He groped and fiddled doggedly along,
His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng
The stony peevishness of sightless men.
He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again,
Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song,
So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong,
You hardly could distinguish one in ten.
He stopped at last, and sat him on the sand,
And, grasping wearily his bread-winner,
Staring dim towards the blue immensity,
Then leaned his head upon his poor old hand.
He may have slept: he did not speak nor stir:
His gesture spoke a vast despondency. 

1. In Hospital. 12. Etching
2. Rhymes and Rhythms. 21. When the Wind Storms by with a Shout, and the Stern Sea-Caves
3. In Hospital. 14. Ave, Caeser!
4. Beside the Idle Summer Sea
5. Echoes. 22. The West a Glimmering Lake of Light

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