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.