Fair were the dreamful days of old,
      When in the summer’s sleepy shade,
    Beneath the beeches on the wold,
      The shepherds lay and gently played
    Music to maidens, who, afraid,
      Drew all together rapturously,
    Their white soft hands like white leaves laid,
      In the old dear days of Arcady.

    Men were not then as they are now
      Haunted and terrified by creeds,
    They sought not then, nor cared to know
      The end that as a magnet leads,
    Nor told with austere fingers beads,
      Nor reasoned with their grief and glee,
    But rioted in pleasant meads
      In the old dear days of Arcady.

    The future may be wrong or right,
      The present is distinctly wrong,
    For life and love have lost delight,
      And bitter even is our song;
    And year by year grey doubt grows strong,
      And death is all that seems to dree. 
    Wherefore with weary hearts we long
      For the old dear days of Arcady.

    ENVOI

    Glories and triumphs ne’er shall cease,
      But men may sound the heavens and sea,
    One thing is lost for aye—­the peace
      Of the old dear days of Arcady.

And so it was that I came to settle down in a Strand lodging-house, determined to devote myself to literature, and to accept the hardships of a literary life.  I had been playing long enough, and now I was resolved to see what I could do in the world of work.  I was anxious for proof, peremptory proof, of my capacity or incapacity.  A book!  No.  I required an immediate answer, and journalism alone could give me that.  So I reasoned in the Strand lodging-house.  And what led me to that house?  Chance, or a friend’s recommendation?  I forget.  It was uncomfortable, hideous, and not very clean:  but curious, as all things are curious when examined closely.  Let me tell you about my rooms.  The sitting-room was a good deal longer than it was wide; it was panelled with deal, and the deal was painted a light brown; behind it there was a large bedroom:  the floor was covered with a ragged carpet, and a big bed stood in the middle of the floor.  But next to the sitting-room was a small bedroom which was let for ten shillings a week; and the partition wall was so thin that I could hear every movement the occupant made.  This proximity was intolerable, and eventually I decided on adding ten shillings to my rent, and I became the possessor of the entire flat.  In the room above me lived a pretty young woman, an actress at the Savoy Theatre.  She had a piano, and she used to play and sing in the mornings, and in the afternoon, friends—­girls from the theatre—­used to come and see her; and Emma, the maid-of-all-work, used to take them up their tea; and, oh! the chattering and the laughter.  Poor Miss L——­; she had only two pounds a week to live on, but she was always in high spirits except when she could not pay the hire of her piano; and I am sure that she now looks back with pleasure and thinks of those days as very happy ones.