A Portrait
WALKING among men like a phantom,
With vacant eyes and listless air,
Unmarked, befriended, jeered at, laughed at,
Only smiling in reply
And drawing into self again
Like a sensitive snail within its shell;
Outwardly complaisant, satisfied, serene;
Inwardly, ah! inwardly,
A racked and tortured desert
Empty of everything but dreams—
Desires, ambitions,—dreams that come to naught
But leave the mind limp, exhausted,
Till it sees the world and life
Labelled with “ Hopeless.”
A ship without a compass
Floundering in dark and forlorn waters;
Seeing no harbour,
Knowing no goal,
But buffeted on relentless winds
That make the framework creak
And the nails burst!
A mind that grinds and grinds and grinds
When there’s nothing in it to grind,
Gnawing itself away in frenzied toil,
And producing—
Nothing!
