Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/124

102 I woke because I thought the time had come;
 * Beyond my will there was no other cause:

And everywhere I found myself at home
 * Because I chose to be the thing I was;

And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape,
 * I always went according to the laws.

I was the love that chose my mother out;
 * I joined two lives and from the union burst;

My weakness and my strength without a doubt
 * Are mine alone for ever from the first.

It's just the very same with a difference in the name
 * As "Thy will be done." You say it if you durst!

They say it daily up and down the land
 * As easy as you take a drink, it's true;

But the difficultest go to understand,
 * And the difficultest job a man can do,

Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
 * And feel that that's the proper thing for you.

It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;
 * It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;

It's walking on a string across a gulf
 * With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck:

But the thing is daily done by many and many a one. . ..
 * And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.