: Poems by Henley William Ernest - Poetry

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IN HOSPITAL

BALZAC.

I 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 ag?d 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.

II WAITING

A SQUARE, squat room , Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight; Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware; Scissors and lint and apothecary's jars.

Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from, Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted: Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach, While at their ease two dressers do their chores.

One has a probe--it feels to me a crowbar. A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone. A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers. Life is a blunder and a shame.

THE gaunt brown walls Look infinite in their decent meanness. There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle, The fulsome fire.

The atmosphere Suggests the trail of a ghostly druggist. Dressings and lint on the long, lean table-- Whom are they for?

The patients yawn, Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin. A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles. It's grim and strange.

Far footfalls clank. The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged. My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral . . . O, a gruesome world!

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