Darkness
Darkness is a poem written by Arthur Conan Doyle first published in the collected volume Songs of the Road on 16 march 1911.
Editions
- in Songs of the Road (16 march 1911, Smith, Elder & Co. [UK])
- in Songs of the Road (october 1911, Doubleday, Page & Co. [US])
- in Songs of the Road (27 january 1920, John Murray [UK])
- in Songs of the Road (february 1920, John Murray [UK])
- in The Poems of Arthur Conan Doyle (21 september 1922, John Murray [UK])
- in The Poems of Arthur Conan Doyle (14 september 1928, John Murray's Fiction Library [UK])
Darkness
A gentleman of wit and charm,
A kindly heart, a cleanly mind,
One who was quick with hand or purse,
To lift the burden of his kind.
A brain well balanced and mature,
A soul that shrank from all things base,
So rode he forth that winter day,
Complete in every mortal grace.
And then — the blunder of a horse,
The crash upon the frozen clods,
And — Death? Ah! no such dignity,
But Life, all twisted and at odds!
At odds in body and in soul,
Degraded to some brutish state,
A being loathsome and malign,
Debased, obscene, degenerate.
Pathology? The case is clear,
The diagnosis is exact;
A bone depressed, a haemorrhage,
The pressure on a nervous tract.
Theology? Ah, there's the rub!
Since brain and soul together fade,
Then when the brain is dead — enough!
Lord help us, for we need Thine aid!
