Page:Barham Beach - a poem of regeneration.djvu/145

 E rode with bent head, asking over at length Had it been superhuman and splendid, his strength, As a god s, or but as the inhuman brute force Of a giant, crass blindness its generant source? One could equably bear it, the being more strong Than the rest of one s race, if there did not belong As a penalty keen of that coveted state The need to be strong for all others, to wait The shock of necessitous cries, to assume The burdens of many, to hasten their doom Or avert it, to settle their right and their wrong, Ah, weary the duties of one who is strong! Ah, well, it was over! that sweet summer’s joy Was put out of his life like a child s broken toy,- His life? could he call it a life, where misrule Was the one constant factor? where he, doting fool, Ever desperate struggled the claims to adjust Twixt claimants bejeweled and matted with dust, And where if he left but one moment the helm Anarchy s tempest leaped wild to o erwhelm, Was it life, in the tumult and torment whereof Never he saw or should see again Love? He rode by the haunts she had hallowed, the hills, The gold-gleaming woods with their little white rills, How it had pleased her, whene er through the dark A fire-fly wafted its quivering spark! On he rode, growing ever more wearily sad, Till suddenly out of the gloaming a lad