REUBEN
That summer went, that autumn, winter, spring.
Next summer came, and still she linger’d on
And could not die: a piteous creature now,
Whose weary world to the rack’d body’s sense,
At furthest to her chamber wall was shrunk.
Whose set monotony of pain no care
Could vary now; the gentle garrulousness
Gone, the brave cheer of that sunshiny spirit
Quench’d; even for Reuben scarce a greeting now.
A whole once-happy kindly human being
Turn’d to a fine machine for feeling pain,
Whose intervals of rest were nothingness.
Alive, yet lifeless: dying, far from death:
Obscure, to signal martyrdom adjudged:
Innocent, with inhuman tortures wrung.
—O strange, inscrutable world!
For Reuben now
No sweet shared vigil, no reviving change
For Sarah. But the neighbours to and fro
Came with kind aid; and went with strange reports.
Reuben was rarely altered. Age was age
And trouble trouble—but what trouble need
Glue up the lips and screw the eyelids down,
And make a man as shy of company
As if he was himself a bit of gold
And all his neighbours thieves? And as to age—
He did look wan and wisht, not Mercy’s face
Show’d more the bone—yet see what strength he had!
29
