Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke
Andrew Lang (18441912)Pen and Ink
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Who read men’s fortunes in the hand,
Who voyaged with your smithy fires
From waste to waste across the land,
Why did you leave for garth and town
Your life by heath and river’s brink,
Why lay your gipsy freedom down
And doom your child to Pen and Ink?
That crowned, or failed to crown, the day;
Too honest or too tame to steal
You broke into the beaten way:
Plied loom or awl like other men,
And learned to love the guineas’ chink—
Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me then
To earn so few—with Pen and Ink!
’Tis over late for me to roam,
Yet the caged bird who hears the cry
Of his wild fellows fleeting home
May feel no sharper pang than mine,
Who seem to hear, whene’er I think,
Spate in the stream, and wind in pine,
Call me to quit dull Pen and Ink.
That slept within the blood, awakes;
For then the summer and the spring
I fain would meet by streams and lakes;
But ah! my birthright long is sold,
But custom chains me, link on link,
And I must get me, as of old,
Back to my tools, to Pen and Ink.