THE PADDOCK
With all the endless making, nothing’s Made;
There’s nothing come of all the eternal drudge,
Except—the need to drudge all over again!
Oh, who’d be a housekeeper? week in, week out,
The same old stupid treadmill; kick your heels,
Beat time, but never get on. I’m sick of it!
What will the next three years be like, I wonder?
Different, if I can manage it,—that I know!
Now ’Lizbeth says, this is the best of lives,
Wholesome, and natural (Liz, no! not for me!):
She reckons, work is, as you do it, worth
Or not worth doing; and, to help folk live,
She says, is the one way to live yourself.
—Is it? I’d like to make quite sure of that
By trying more ways first. And....what is living?
Eating up sheep, and wearing out your socks?
For that’s the only kind of thing I help!—
Wonderfully dull! If that’s all, well, I think
Life’s not worth helping. But it isn’t all,
Of course, it’s just the skin; life’s deeper down.
Well, then—if help I must, why can’t I help
Deep down? serve something Big, do something Real,
Make something that is Something? I’d like that,
But this—Oh, it’s so petty!
’Lizbeth says,
She finds it plenty large; but then, she’s different.
She asks no more, because she doesn’t need to,
Because she’s Liz, dear, tender, loving Liz,
Born with a magnifying heart; and seeing
More than is there, too, till she’s there to see it;
