"The Inner Room" is a poem by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in his 1898 poetry collection Songs of Action.
"[5] Another biographer, Martin Booth, describes this "intensely serious" poem as "fascinating, for it lays bare the powers that [Doyle] believes were in him, eternally fighting to get the upper hand on his soul.
"[6] The poem's fifth stanza introduces "a stark-faced fellow, / Beetle-browed, / Whose black soul shrinks away / From a lawyer-ridden day, / And has thoughts he dare not say / Half avowed."
And 'mid them all, alert, But somewhat cowed, There sits a stark-faced fellow, Beetle-browed, Whose black soul shrinks away From a lawyer-ridden day, And has thoughts he dare not say Half avowed.
Darkling figures, stern or quaint, Now a savage, now a saint, Showing fitfully and faint Through the gloom.