Young Blood

"But, sir," I said, "they tell me the man is like to die!" The Canon shook his head indulgently. "Young blood,

Cousin," he boomed. "Young blood!

Youth will be served!" — D'Hermonville's Fabliaux.

He woke up with a sick taste in his mouth And lay there heavily, while dancing motes Whirled through his brain in endless, rippling streams,

And a grey mist weighed down upon his eyes So that they could not open fully.

Yet After some time his blurred mind stumbled back To its last ragged memory — a room;

Air foul with wine; a shouting, reeling crowd Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs;

The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice,

Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote;

And then . . . well, they had brought him home it seemed,

Since he awoke in bed — oh, damn the business!

He had not wanted it — the silly jokes, "One last, great night of freedom ere you're married!" "You'll get no fun then!" "H-ssh, don't tell that story!

He'll have a wife soon!" — God! the sitting down To drink till you were sodden! . . .                              Like great light She came into his thoughts.

That was the worst.

To wallow in the mud like this because His friends were fools. . . .

He was not fit to touch,

To see, oh far, far off, that silver place Where God stood manifest to man in her. . . .

Fouling himself. . . .

One thing he brought to her,

At least.

He had been clean; had taken it A kind of point of honor from the first . . .

Others might do it . . . but he didn't care For those things. . . .                  Suddenly his vision cleared.

And something seemed to grow within his mind. . . .

Something was wrong — the color of the wall — The queer shape of the bedposts — everything Was changed, somehow . . . his room.

Was this his room? . . .

He turned his head — and saw beside him there The sagging body's slope, the paint-smeared face,

And the loose, open mouth, lax and awry,

The breasts, the bleached and brittle hair . . . these things. . . .

As if all Hell were crushed to one bright line Of lightning for a moment.

Then he sank,

Prone beneath an intolerable weight.

And bitter loathing crept up all his limbs.