Pansies (Lawrence)/The Saddest Day

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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 inferiorbut shining up beyondI saw the whole superiorworld shine like the promised land.
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So up I started climbingto join the folks on high,but when at last I got thereI 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 interiorthe people were never in.
I mean, they were never entirelythere when you talked to them;away in some private cupboardsome small voice went: Ahem!
Ahem! they went. This fellowis a little too open for me;with such people one has to be carefulthough of course, we won't let him see!—
And they thought you couldn't hear themprivately coughing: Ahem!And they thought you couldn't see themcautiously swallowing their phlegm!
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But of course I always heard them,and every time the same.They all of them always kept up their sleevetheir 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 daywhen I had to tell myself plain:the upper classes are just a fraud,you'd better get down again.

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