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.
In Hospital - I - Enter Patient
William Ernest Henley
(1)
Poem topics: child, death, life, soldier, summer, young, room, small, clean, street, morning, hospital, iron, tragic, quiet, strange, stone, cold, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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