Poem by William Ernest Henley

In Hospital. 1. 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 gloom
A 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 environ
These corridors and stairs of stone and iron,
Cold, naked, clean-half-workhouse and half-jail.

1. Echoes. 12. To Me at My Fifth-Floor Window
2. Echoes. 21. We Flash across the Level
3. In Hospital. 22. Pastoral
4. In Hospital. 12. Etching
5. Echoes. 15. There Is a Wheel Inside My Head

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