You come and try it, you just come and try! O for one day if you would take my place! If we could only change once, you and I, You, with your soft white wrists and delicate face! One day of it, my man, and like Joe Cluer, Pneumonia’d get you and you’d die, that’s sure. O God, if on dark days you yet remember So small and base a thing as I, who pray, Though of myself I am but now the ember— For my great sorrows grant me this, that they Who look upon me may be shaken deep By sufferings; O let me curse their sleep, A devil’s dance, a demon’s wicked laughter,— To haunt them for a space; so they may know How sleek and fat their spirits are; and after, When they have prospered of me, I will go; Grant me but this, and I am well content. Then strike me quickly, God, for I am spent. Yet,—lift me from these streets before I die. For the old hunger takes me, and I yearn To go where swelling hills are, and blue sky, And slowly walk in woods, and sleep in fern; To wake in fern, and see the larks go winging, Vanish in sunlight, and still hear them singing! So die; and leave behind me no more trace Than stays of chalkings after night of rain; Even myself, I hardly know their place When I go back next day to draw again; Only the withered leaves, which the rain beat, And the grey gentle stones, with rain still sweet. * * * * * So for nine days I suffered this man’s curse, And lived with him, and lived his life, and ached; And this vicarious suffering was far worse Than my own pain had been.... But when I waked, His pain, my sorrow, were together flown; My grief had lived and died; and the sun shone. There was a woman lived by Bloomsbury Square— She is no more to me; I could not sorrow To think, I loved this woman, she was fair; All grief I had was grief that I could borrow— A beggar’s grief. With him, all these long years, I lived his life of wretchedness and tears. Personality GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER