My Double
In hail and rain and sleet and snow,
in gale and fog and freezing cold,
I see him to his labour go,
Yet he is old as I am old.
I shrink and think: Life is not fair.
He looks like me, yet Fate has ground
Him in the bloody mire, and where
He makes a bob I make a pound.
Ay, how he seems the spit of me,
And had I not the knack of rhyme,
I, too, might muck in misery,
Or grovel in the gutter grime.
I grieve that there be rich and poor,
And from my study snug and warm,
I watch from luxury secure
My broken brother breast the storm.
And sad of soul again I say
Alas that there be poor and rich;
God speed the day when life will pay
An equal wage to desk and ditch.
Aye, even more - with just decree,
Pay him a pound and me a bob . . .
Yet though I mucked in misery,
By God! I'd stick my rhyming job.
And so I see with heart of rue
his trudge to toil in daylight dim . . .
But what the devil can I do?
So many millions are like him.
-Robert William Service
