Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ENIGMA by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)

First Line: THE GASLIGHTS FLUTTER AND FLARE
Last Line: AND DARK LIVES TOO DREADFUL FOR SONG.
THE gaslights flutter and flare
On the cruel stones of the street,
And beneath in the sordid glare
Pace legions of weary feet;
Fair faces that soon shall grow hard,
Shy glances already grown bold,
The wrecks of a girlhood marred
By shame and hunger and cold.

But here, as she passes along,
Is one whose young cheek still shows,
'Mid the pallid, pitiful throng,
The fresh bloom of a tender rose.
Not long has she walked with vice,
A recruit to the army of Ill,
A fresh lamb for the sacrifice
That steams up to Moloch still.

And the spell through which youth draws all,
The faint shyness in hurrying walk,
The lithe form slender and tall,
The soft burr in her simple talk,
Constrains the grave passer, whose brain
Is long leagues of fancy apart,
To thrill with a sudden pain
And an emptiness of heart.

Poor child! since it is not long
Since you were indeed but a child,
A gay thing of bird-like song,
And even as a bird is wild;
With no shadow of thought or care,
Laughing all the sweet hours away,
When every morning was fair,
And every season a May.

Through the red fallow on the hill
The white team laboured along,
While you roamed the green copses at will,
And mimicked the cuckoo's song;
While they tossed and carried the hay,
While the reapers were hid in the wheat,
You had only to laugh and to play,
Or to bathe in the brook your feet.

For your mother left you a child,
Your rough father's pride and joy:
Rejoiced that his girl was as wild
And fearless as any boy.
Though you would not plunder the nest,
Nor harry the shrieking hare,
You could gallop bare-backed with the best,
And knew where the orchises were.

"Like a boy" was what they said,
With your straight limbs and fearless face;
Like a girl in the golden head,
Gay fancies, and nameless grace.
Like a boy in high courage and all
Quick forces, and daring of will;
Like a girl in the peril to fall,
And innocent blindness to ill.

And even now, on the sordid street,
As you pass by the theatre door,
You bring with you some freshness sweet
Of the brightness and breezes of yore.
Not yet are the frank eyes grown bold,
Not yet have they lost all their joy;
Not yet has time taken the gold
From the short crisp curls of the boy.

And if truly a boy's they were,
Not thus would he pace forlorn;
Nor would careless passers-by dare
To shoot out the lips of scorn.
Is it Nature or man that makes
An unequal judgment arraign
Those whose equal nature takes
The mark of the self-same stain?

Leaving this one, shame and disgrace;
Leaving that one, honour and fame;
To this one, confusion of face,
To that one, a stainless name;
A high port and respect and wealth
For the one who is guilty indeed,
While the innocent walks by stealth
Through rough places with feet that bleed.

Do I touch a deep ulcer of Time,
A created or ultimate ill,
A primal curse or a crime,
Self-inflicted through ignorance still?
But meanwhile, poor truant, you come
With a new face year after year,
Leaving innocence, freedom, and home
For these dens of weeping and fear.

To decline by a swift decay,
To a thing so low and forlorn,
That, for all your fresh beauty to-day,
It were better you never were born;
Or to find in some rare-sent hour,
As a lily rooted in mire,
Love spring with its pure white flower
From the lowest depths of desire.

Heaven pity you! So little turns
The stream of our lives from the right;
So like is the flame that burns
To the hearth that gives warmth and light;
So fine the impassable fence,
Set for ever 'twixt right and wrong,
Between white lives of innocence
And dark lives too dreadful for song.



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