Pansies (Lawrence)/The Saddest Day

THE SADDEST DAY

"We climbed the steep ascent to heaven
Through peril, toil and pain.
O God to us may strength be given
To scramble back again."

O I was born low and inferior
but shining up beyond
I saw the whole superior
world shine like the promised land.

So up I started climbing
to join the folks on high,
but when at last I got there
I had to sit down and cry.

For it wasn't a bit superior,
it was only affected and mean;
though the house had a fine interior
the people were never in.

I mean, they were never entirely
there when you talked to them;
away in some private cupboard
some small voice went: Ahem!

Ahem! they went. This fellow
is a little too open for me;
with such people one has to be careful
though of course, we won't let him see!—

And they thought you couldn't hear them
privately coughing: Ahem!
And they thought you couldn't see them
cautiously swallowing their phlegm!

But of course I always heard them,
and every time the same.
They all of them always kept up their sleeve
their class-superior claim.

Some narrow-gutted superiority,
and trying to make you agree,
which, for myself, I couldn't,
it was all my-eye to me.

And so there came the saddest day
when I had to tell myself plain:
the upper classes are just a fraud,
you'd better get down again.