[Editor: This poem by Marie E. J. Pitt was published in The Horses of the Hills and Other Verses (1911).]
La Misere.
O black Sargasso! choked lagoon where rot
The human wrecks by Fortune’s backwash hurled
From out the pulsing man-seas of the World
To hide as things that are and yet are not.
Grim stagnant pool wherein the craft of Greed
Trawl ’mid the slime and clutch for guerdon fair,
Here warm gold of a drowned woman’s hair,
Here youth’s lost sunshine and its careless creed,
And here a heart’s hushed music! “Nets o’ lies,
What treasure bring ye from the depths to-night,
Or pearl or shell-trove?” — “Nay! but laughing light
That once made morning in the children’s eyes.”
Source:
Marie E. J. Pitt, The Horses of the Hills and Other Verses, Melbourne: Specialty Press, 1911, page 96
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