Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/390

 O, Basil, love! now that you seem to feel

And understand how much I've suffered since

You first gave way—now that you comprehend

The bitter heart-wear, darling, that has brought

The swift, sad silver to this hair of mine

Which should have come with Age—which came with Pain,

Do make one more attempt to free yourself

From what is slowly killing both of us;

And if you do the thing I ask of you,

If you but try this once, we may indeed—

We may be happy yet."

Then Basil Moss,

Remembering in his marvellous agony

How often he had found her in the dead

Of icy nights with uncomplaining eyes,

A watcher in a cheerless room for him;

And thinking, too, that often, while he threw

His scanty earnings over reeking bars,

The darling that he really loved through all

Was left without enough to eat—then Moss,

I say, sprang to his feet with sinews set

And knotted brows, and throat that gasped for air,

And cried aloud—"My poor, poor girl, I will."

And so he did; and fought this time the fight

Out to the bitter end; and with the help

Of prayers and unremitting tenderness

He gained the victory at last; but not—

No, not before the agony and sweat

Of fierce Gethsemanes had come to him;

And not before the awful nightly trials,

When, set in mental furnaces of flame,

With eyes that ached and wooed in vain for sleep,

He had to fight the devil holding out

The cup of Lethe to his fevered lips.

But still he conquered; and the end was this,

That though he often had to face the eyes

Of that bleak Virtue which is not of Christ

(Because the gracious Lord of Love was one with Him

Who blessed the dying thief upon the cross),

He held his way with no unfaltering steps,