Old voices, old kisses, old songs
Blossom derisive about me;
While the new days

Pass me in endless procession:
A pageant of shadows

Silently, leeringly wending

Or.... and still on . . . still on!

Far in the stillness a cat

Languishes loudly. A cinder

Falls, and the shadows

Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next

man to me

Turns with a moan; and the snorer,

The drug like a rope at his throat,

Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the

night-nurse,

Noiseless and strange,

Her bull's eye half-lanterned in apron (Whispering me, 'Are ye no sleepin' yet?'), Passes, list-slippered and peering,

Round . . . and is gone.

Sleep comes at last

Sleep full of dreams and misgivings

Broken with brutal and sordid

Voices and sounds that impose on me,

Ere I can wake to it,

The unnatural, intolerable day.

VIII

STAFF-NURSE: OLD STYLE

THE greater masters of the commonplace,
REMBRANDT and good SIR WALTER-only these
Could paint her all to you: experienced ease
And antique liveliness and ponderous grace;
The sweet old roses of her sunken face;
The depth and malice of her sly, grey eyes;
The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies
The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace.
These thirty years has she been nursing here,
Some of them under SYME, her hero still.

Much is she worth, and even more is made of her.
Patients and students hold her
very dear.

The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill.

They say 'The Chief' himself is half-afraid of her.

IX

LADY-PROBATIONER

SOME three, or five, or seven, and thirty years;
A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin;
Dark eyes and shy that, ignorant of sin,
Are yet acquainted, it would seem, with tears;
A comely shape; a slim, high-coloured hand,
Graced, rather oddly, with a signet ring;
A bashful air, becoming everything;

A well-bred silence always at command.

Her plain print gown, prim cap, and bright steel chain

Look out of place on her, and I remain

Absorbed in her, as in a pleasant mystery.

Quick, skilful, quiet, soft in speech and touch 'Do you like nursing?' 'Yes, Sir, very much.' Somehow, I rather think she has a history.

X

STAFF-NURSE: NEW STYLE

BLUE-EYED and bright of face but waning fast
Into the sere of virginal decay,

I view her as she enters, day by day,
As a sweet sunset almost overpast.
Kindly and calm, patrician to the last,
Superbly falls her gown of sober gray,
And on her chignon's elegant array

The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste.
She talks BEETHOVEN; frowns disapprobation

At BALZAC's name, sighs it at 'poor GEORGE
SAND'S';

Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands;
Speaks Latin with a right accentuation;
And gives at need (as one who understands)
Draught, counsel, diagnosis, exhortation.