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 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.