John Davidson (1857 – 1909)
Scottish journalist, playwright, fiction-writer and translator, but is best remembered as a poet.
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And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that's the proper thing for you.
It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It's walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck;
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one.
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
One must become
Fanatic – be a wedge – a thunder-bolt
To smite a passage through the close-grained world.
Mere by-blows are the world and we,
And time within eternity
A sheer anachronism.
My feet are heavy now but on I go,
My head erect beneath the tragic years.
Farewell the hope that mocked, farewell despair
That went before me still and made the pace.
The earth is full of graves, and mine was there
Before my life began; my resting-place.
Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies:
Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more
In every branch becomes the sale of money.
That minister of ministers,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.
Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate;
Help me with scorn, and strengthen me with hate.
Seraphs and saints with one great voice
Welcomed that soul that knew not fear.
Amazed to find it could rejoice,
Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.
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