The gaunt brown walls


Look infinite in their decent meaness.


There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle,

   
The fulsome fire.

   
The atmosphere


Suggests the trail of a ghostly druggist.


Dressings and lint on the long, lean table—

   
Whom are they for?

   
The patients yawn,


Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin.


A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles.

   
It's grim and strange.

   
Far footfalls clank.


The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged.


My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral . . .

   
O, a gruesome world!

William Earnest Henley,

London Voluntaries, 1898.