O, all these poor weary glances!
And yours, and mine!
And those that are no more, and those to be!
And those that will never be, and yet exist!
There are those that seem to visit the poor on a Sabbath;
There are some like sick folk who are houseless,
There are some like lambs in a meadow full of bleaching linen,
And O, these strange unwonted glances!
Under the vaults of some we behold
A maiden being put to death in a chamber with closed doors.
And some make us dream of unknown sorrows,
Of peasants at the windows of a factory,
Of a gardener turned weaver,
Of a summer afternoon in a wax-work show,
Of the thoughts of a queen on beholding a sick man in a garden,
Of an odour of camphor in the forest,
Of a princess locked in a tower on a day of rejoicing,
Of men sailing all the week on the stagnant waters of a canal.
Have pity on those that come creeping forth like convalescents at harvest-tide!
Have pity on those that have the air of children who have lost their way at supper-time!
Have pity on the glances of the wounded man at the surgeon,
Like tents stricken by a hurricane!
Have pity on the glances of the virgin tempted!
(Rivers of milk are flowing away in the darkness,
And the swans have died in the midst of serpents!)
And the gaze of the virgin who surrenders!
Princesses deserted in swamps that have no issue,
And those eyes in which you may see ships in full sail, lit up by flashes of the storm!
And how pitiful are all those glances which suffer because they are not elsewhere!
And so much suffering, so indistinguishable and yet so various!
And those glances that no one will ever understand!
And those poor glances which are all but dumb!
And those poor whispering glances!
And those poor stifled glances!
Amid some of these you might think yourself in a mansion serving as hospital,
And many others have the air of tents, lilies of war, on the little lawn of the convent!
And many others have the air of wounded men tended in a hot-house!
Or Sisters of Charity on an ocean devoid of patients.
Oh, to have encountered all these glances,
To have admitted them all,
And to have exhausted mine thereby!
And henceforth to be unable to close mine eyes!