Three lives
Three friends there were. Not all the same
And yet in many ways were kin;
They shared life’s ever-twisted game;
Found fun and horror both within;
But life, as ever, when she came,
Had tangled tales that she would spin.
The first, a man of seasons hoar,
Was in a loveless marriage bound;
With age, he started then the more
To seek where Friendship might be found;
And then, by lucky chance, he saw
A girl he liked to be around.
The marriage faltered; cracked, and broke;
Anon in dwelling lone he dwelt.
But though he might regret the stroke,
Instead ’twas only Free he felt;
Instead of cloying marriage smoke
The clean fresh air of joy he smelt.
The second was of younger years;
His life was trammeled in a cave
Where constantly the fiend he fears
Might set his fragile soul to rave
And he would say: whate’er appears,
To it, I am a mindless slave.
But after (far too long) a spell,
He step’d outside; began to teach;
He sought a flat where he might dwell
Beyond the caveman’s furious screech.
The sound of life, once tolling bell,
As music now his ears did reach.
The third: a woman full of fun,
Was wife, and mother to a child;
Her mind did e’er down new paths run
And take her to new landscapes wild;
And now through shadow, now through sun,
Her curious brain was all beguil’d.
But daily life with routine fill’d
Would throw so many a task and chore
That hour to hour her joy was still’d
Beneath the pile of humdrum bore;
She trudged, as if through tar new-spill’d,
And yearn’d for any open door.
Like Greatness, Freedom comes three ways.
The first found Freedom on him thrust;
The next achieved it; and their days
Have both recover’d boom from bust.
Alas! The third, born Free, in maze
Is held too tight; how is this just?