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diff --git a/4758-0.txt b/4758-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef55acb --- /dev/null +++ b/4758-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6767 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Late Lyrics and Earlier, by Thomas Hardy + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Late Lyrics and Earlier + with many other verses + + +Author: Thomas Hardy + + + +Release Date: January 18, 2015 [eBook #4758] +[This file was first posted on March 12, 2002] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER*** + + +Transcribed from the 1922 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + LATE LYRICS + AND EARLIER + + + WITH MANY OTHER VERSES + + BY + THOMAS HARDY + + * * * * * + + MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON + 1922 + + * * * * * + + COPYRIGHT + + * * * * * + + PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + * * * * * + + + + +APOLOGY + + +ABOUT half the verses that follow were written quite lately. The rest +are older, having been held over in MS. when past volumes were published, +on considering that these would contain a sufficient number of pages to +offer readers at one time, more especially during the distractions of the +war. The unusually far back poems to be found here are, however, but +some that were overlooked in gathering previous collections. A freshness +in them, now unattainable, seemed to make up for their inexperience and +to justify their inclusion. A few are dated; the dates of others are not +discoverable. + +The launching of a volume of this kind in neo-Georgian days by one who +began writing in mid-Victorian, and has published nothing to speak of for +some years, may seem to call for a few words of excuse or explanation. +Whether or no, readers may feel assured that a new book is submitted to +them with great hesitation at so belated a date. Insistent practical +reasons, however, among which were requests from some illustrious men of +letters who are in sympathy with my productions, the accident that +several of the poems have already seen the light, and that dozens of them +have been lying about for years, compelled the course adopted, in spite +of the natural disinclination of a writer whose works have been so +frequently regarded askance by a pragmatic section here and there, to +draw attention to them once more. + +I do not know that it is necessary to say much on the contents of the +book, even in deference to suggestions that will be mentioned presently. +I believe that those readers who care for my poems at all—readers to whom +no passport is required—will care for this new instalment of them, +perhaps the last, as much as for any that have preceded them. Moreover, +in the eyes of a less friendly class the pieces, though a very mixed +collection indeed, contain, so far as I am able to see, little or nothing +in technic or teaching that can be considered a Star-Chamber matter, or +so much as agitating to a ladies’ school; even though, to use +Wordsworth’s observation in his Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_, such +readers may suppose “that by the act of writing in verse an author makes +a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of +association: that he not only thus apprises the reader that certain +classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that +others will be carefully excluded.” + +It is true, nevertheless, that some grave, positive, stark, delineations +are interspersed among those of the passive, lighter, and traditional +sort presumably nearer to stereotyped tastes. For—while I am quite aware +that a thinker is not expected, and, indeed, is scarcely allowed, now +more than heretofore, to state all that crosses his mind concerning +existence in this universe, in his attempts to explain or excuse the +presence of evil and the incongruity of penalizing the irresponsible—it +must be obvious to open intelligences that, without denying the beauty +and faithful service of certain venerable cults, such disallowance of +“obstinate questionings” and “blank misgivings” tends to a paralysed +intellectual stalemate. Heine observed nearly a hundred years ago that +the soul has her eternal rights; that she will not be darkened by +statutes, nor lullabied by the music of bells. And what is to-day, in +allusions to the present author’s pages, alleged to be “pessimism” is, in +truth, only such “questionings” in the exploration of reality, and is the +first step towards the soul’s betterment, and the body’s also. + +If I may be forgiven for quoting my own old words, let me repeat what I +printed in this relation more than twenty years ago, and wrote much +earlier, in a poem entitled “In Tenebris”: + + If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst: + +that is to say, by the exploration of reality, and its frank recognition +stage by stage along the survey, with an eye to the best consummation +possible: briefly, evolutionary meliorism. But it is called pessimism +nevertheless; under which word, expressed with condemnatory emphasis, it +is regarded by many as some pernicious new thing (though so old as to +underlie the Christian idea, and even to permeate the Greek drama); and +the subject is charitably left to decent silence, as if further comment +were needless. + +Happily there are some who feel such Levitical passing-by to be, alas, by +no means a permanent dismissal of the matter; that comment on where the +world stands is very much the reverse of needless in these disordered +years of our prematurely afflicted century: that amendment and not +madness lies that way. And looking down the future these few hold fast +to the same: that whether the human and kindred animal races survive till +the exhaustion or destruction of the globe, or whether these races perish +and are succeeded by others before that conclusion comes, pain to all +upon it, tongued or dumb, shall be kept down to a minimum by +lovingkindness, operating through scientific knowledge, and actuated by +the modicum of free will conjecturally possessed by organic life when the +mighty necessitating forces—unconscious or other—that have “the +balancings of the clouds,” happen to be in equilibrium, which may or may +not be often. + +To conclude this question I may add that the argument of the so-called +optimists is neatly summarized in a stern pronouncement against me by my +friend Mr. Frederic Harrison in a late essay of his, in the words: “This +view of life is not mine.” The solemn declaration does not seem to me to +be so annihilating to the said “view” (really a series of fugitive +impressions which I have never tried to co-ordinate) as is complacently +assumed. Surely it embodies a too human fallacy quite familiar in logic. +Next, a knowing reviewer, apparently a Roman Catholic young man, speaks, +with some rather gross instances of the _suggestio falsi_ in his article, +of “Mr. Hardy refusing consolation,” the “dark gravity of his ideas,” and +so on. When a Positivist and a Catholic agree there must be something +wonderful in it, which should make a poet sit up. But . . . O that +’twere possible! + +I would not have alluded in this place or anywhere else to such casual +personal criticisms—for casual and unreflecting they must be—but for the +satisfaction of two or three friends in whose opinion a short answer was +deemed desirable, on account of the continual repetition of these +criticisms, or more precisely, quizzings. After all, the serious and +truly literary inquiry in this connection is: Should a shaper of such +stuff as dreams are made on disregard considerations of what is customary +and expected, and apply himself to the real function of poetry, the +application of ideas to life (in Matthew Arnold’s familiar phrase)? This +bears more particularly on what has been called the “philosophy” of these +poems—usually reproved as “queer.” Whoever the author may be that +undertakes such application of ideas in this “philosophic” +direction—where it is specially required—glacial judgments must +inevitably fall upon him amid opinion whose arbiters largely decry +individuality, to whom _ideas_ are oddities to smile at, who are moved by +a yearning the reverse of that of the Athenian inquirers on Mars Hill; +and stiffen their features not only at sound of a new thing, but at a +restatement of old things in new terms. Hence should anything of this +sort in the following adumbrations seem “queer”—should any of them seem +to good Panglossians to embody strange and disrespectful conceptions of +this best of all possible worlds, I apologize; but cannot help it. + +Such divergences, which, though piquant for the nonce, it would be +affectation to say are not saddening and discouraging likewise, may, to +be sure, arise sometimes from superficial aspect only, writer and reader +seeing the same thing at different angles. But in palpable cases of +divergence they arise, as already said, whenever a serious effort is made +towards that which the authority I have cited—who would now be called +old-fashioned, possibly even parochial—affirmed to be what no good critic +could deny as the poet’s province, the application of ideas to life. One +might shrewdly guess, by the by, that in such recommendation the famous +writer may have overlooked the cold-shouldering results upon an +enthusiastic disciple that would be pretty certain to follow his putting +the high aim in practice, and have forgotten the disconcerting experience +of Gil Blas with the Archbishop. + +To add a few more words to what has already taken up too many, there is a +contingency liable to miscellanies of verse that I have never seen +mentioned, so far as I can remember; I mean the chance little shocks that +may be caused over a book of various character like the present and its +predecessors by the juxtaposition of unrelated, even discordant, +effusions; poems perhaps years apart in the making, yet facing each +other. An odd result of this has been that dramatic anecdotes of a +satirical and humorous intention (such, _e.g._, as “Royal Sponsors”) +following verse in graver voice, have been read as misfires because they +raise the smile that they were intended to raise, the journalist, deaf to +the sudden change of key, being unconscious that he is laughing with the +author and not at him. I admit that I did not foresee such contingencies +as I ought to have done, and that people might not perceive when the tone +altered. But the difficulties of arranging the themes in a graduated +kinship of moods would have been so great that irrelation was almost +unavoidable with efforts so diverse. I must trust for right +note-catching to those finely-touched spirits who can divine without half +a whisper, whose intuitiveness is proof against all the accidents of +inconsequence. In respect of the less alert, however, should any one’s +train of thought be thrown out of gear by a consecutive piping of vocal +reeds in jarring tonics, without a semiquaver’s rest between, and be led +thereby to miss the writer’s aim and meaning in one out of two contiguous +compositions, I shall deeply regret it. + +Having at last, I think, finished with the personal points that I was +recommended to notice, I will forsake the immediate object of this +Preface; and, leaving _Late Lyrics_ to whatever fate it deserves, digress +for a few moments to more general considerations. The thoughts of any +man of letters concerned to keep poetry alive cannot but run +uncomfortably on the precarious prospects of English verse at the present +day. Verily the hazards and casualties surrounding the birth and setting +forth of almost every modern creation in numbers are ominously like those +of one of Shelley’s paper-boats on a windy lake. And a forward +conjecture scarcely permits the hope of a better time, unless men’s +tendencies should change. So indeed of all art, literature, and “high +thinking” nowadays. Whether owing to the barbarizing of taste in the +younger minds by the dark madness of the late war, the unabashed +cultivation of selfishness in all classes, the plethoric growth of +knowledge simultaneously with the stunting of wisdom, “a degrading thirst +after outrageous stimulation” (to quote Wordsworth again), or from any +other cause, we seem threatened with a new Dark Age. + +I formerly thought, like so many roughly handled writers, that so far as +literature was concerned a partial cause might be impotent or mischievous +criticism; the satirizing of individuality, the lack of whole-seeing in +contemporary estimates of poetry and kindred work, the knowingness +affected by junior reviewers, the overgrowth of meticulousness in their +peerings for an opinion, as if it were a cultivated habit in them to +scrutinize the tool-marks and be blind to the building, to hearken for +the key-creaks and be deaf to the diapason, to judge the landscape by a +nocturnal exploration with a flash-lantern. In other words, to carry on +the old game of sampling the poem or drama by quoting the worst line or +worst passage only, in ignorance or not of Coleridge’s proof that a +versification of any length neither can be nor ought to be all poetry; of +reading meanings into a book that its author never dreamt of writing +there. I might go on interminably. + +But I do not now think any such temporary obstructions to be the cause of +the hazard, for these negligences and ignorances, though they may have +stifled a few true poets in the run of generations, disperse like +stricken leaves before the wind of next week, and are no more heard of +again in the region of letters than their writers themselves. No: we may +be convinced that something of the deeper sort mentioned must be the +cause. + +In any event poetry, pure literature in general, religion—I include +religion because poetry and religion touch each other, or rather modulate +into each other; are, indeed, often but different names for the same +thing—these, I say, the visible signs of mental and emotional life, must +like all other things keep moving, becoming; even though at present, when +belief in witches of Endor is displacing the Darwinian theory and “the +truth that shall make you free,” men’s minds appear, as above noted, to +be moving backwards rather than on. I speak, of course, somewhat +sweepingly, and should except many isolated minds; also the minds of men +in certain worthy but small bodies of various denominations, and perhaps +in the homely quarter where advance might have been the very least +expected a few years back—the English Church—if one reads it rightly as +showing evidence of “removing those things that are shaken,” in +accordance with the wise Epistolary recommendation to the Hebrews. For +since the historic and once august hierarchy of Rome some generation ago +lost its chance of being the religion of the future by doing otherwise, +and throwing over the little band of neo-Catholics who were making a +struggle for continuity by applying the principle of evolution to their +own faith, joining hands with modern science, and outflanking the +hesitating English instinct towards liturgical reform (a flank march +which I at the time quite expected to witness, with the gathering of many +millions of waiting agnostics into its fold); since then, one may ask, +what other purely English establishment than the Church, of sufficient +dignity and footing, and with such strength of old association, such +architectural spell, is left in this country to keep the shreds of +morality together? + +It may be a forlorn hope, a mere dream, that of an alliance between +religion, which must be retained unless the world is to perish, and +complete rationality, which must come, unless also the world is to +perish, by means of the interfusing effect of poetry—“the breath and +finer spirit of all knowledge; the impassioned expression of science,” as +it was defined by an English poet who was quite orthodox in his ideas. +But if it be true, as Comte argued, that advance is never in a straight +line, but in a looped orbit, we may, in the aforesaid ominous moving +backward, be doing it _pour mieux sauter_, drawing back for a spring. I +repeat that I forlornly hope so, notwithstanding the supercilious regard +of hope by Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, and other philosophers down to +Einstein who have my respect. But one dares not prophesy. Physical, +chronological, and other contingencies keep me in these days from +critical studies and literary circles + + Where once we held debate, a band + Of youthful friends, on mind and art + +(if one may quote Tennyson in this century of free verse). Hence I +cannot know how things are going so well as I used to know them, and the +aforesaid limitations must quite prevent my knowing hence-forward. + +I have to thank the editors and owners of _The Times_, _Fortnightly_, +_Mercury_, and other periodicals in which a few of the poems have +appeared for kindly assenting to their being reclaimed for collected +publication. + + T. H. + +_February_ 1922. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +APOLOGY v +WEATHERS 1 +THE MAID OF KEINTON MANDEVILLE 3 +SUMMER SCHEMES 5 +EPEISODIA 6 +FAINTHEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN 8 +AT MOONRISE AND ONWARDS 9 +THE GARDEN SEAT 11 +BARTHÉLÉMON AT VAUXHALL 12 +“I SOMETIMES THINK” 14 +JEZREEL 15 +A JOG-TROT PAIR 17 +“THE CURTAINS NOW ARE DRAWN” 19 +“ACCORDING TO THE MIGHTY WORKING” 21 +“I WAS NOT HE” 22 +THE WEST-OF-WESSEX GIRL 23 +WELCOME HOME 25 +GOING AND STAYING 26 +READ BY MOONLIGHT 27 +AT A HOUSE IN HAMPSTEAD 28 +A WOMAN’S FANCY 30 +HER SONG 33 +A WET AUGUST 35 +THE DISSEMBLERS 36 +TO A LADY PLAYING AND SINGING IN THE MORNING 37 +“A MAN WAS DRAWING NEAR TO ME” 38 +THE STRANGE HOUSE 40 +“AS ’TWERE TO-NIGHT” 42 +THE CONTRETEMPS 43 +A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY 46 +THE OLD GOWN 48 +A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER 50 +A DUETTIST TO HER PIANOFORTE 51 +“WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED” 53 +“AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM” 55 +HAUNTING FINGERS 59 +THE WOMAN I MET 63 +“IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN” 67 +THE TWO HOUSES 68 +ON STINSFORD HILL AT MIDNIGHT 72 +THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE 74 +THE SELFSAME SONG 75 +THE WANDERER 76 +A WIFE COMES BACK 78 +A YOUNG MAN’S EXHORTATION 81 +AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK 83 +A BYGONE OCCASION 85 +TWO SERENADES 86 +THE WEDDING MORNING 89 +END OF THE YEAR 1912 90 +THE CHIMES PLAY “LIFE’S A BUMPER!” 91 +“I WORKED NO WILE TO MEET YOU” 93 +AT THE RAILWAY STATION, UPWAY 95 +SIDE BY SIDE 96 +DREAM OF THE CITY SHOPWOMAN 98 +A MAIDEN’S PLEDGE 100 +THE CHILD AND THE SAGE 101 +MISMET 103 +AN AUTUMN RAIN-SCENE 105 +MEDITATIONS ON A HOLIDAY 107 +AN EXPERIENCE 111 +THE BEAUTY 113 +THE COLLECTOR CLEANS HIS PICTURE 114 +THE WOOD FIRE 117 +SAYING GOOD-BYE 119 +ON THE TUNE CALLED THE OLD-HUNDRED-AND-FOURTH 121 +THE OPPORTUNITY 123 +EVELYN G. OF CHRISTMINSTER 124 +THE RIFT 126 +VOICES FROM THINGS GROWING 127 +ON THE WAY 130 +“SHE DID NOT TURN” 132 +GROWTH IN MAY 133 +THE CHILDREN AND SIR NAMELESS 134 +AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY 136 +HER TEMPLE 138 +A TWO-YEARS’ IDYLL 139 +BY HENSTRIDGE CROSS AT THE YEAR’S END 141 +PENANCE 143 +“I LOOK IN HER FACE” 145 +AFTER THE WAR 146 +“IF YOU HAD KNOWN” 148 +THE CHAPEL-ORGANIST 150 +FETCHING HER 157 +“COULD I BUT WILL” 159 +SHE REVISITS ALONE THE CHURCH OF HER MARRIAGE 161 +AT THE ENTERING OF THE NEW YEAR 163 +THEY WOULD NOT COME 165 +AFTER A ROMANTIC DAY 167 +THE TWO WIVES 168 +“I KNEW A LADY” 170 +A HOUSE WITH A HISTORY 171 +A PROCESSION OF DEAD DAYS 173 +HE FOLLOWS HIMSELF 176 +THE SINGING WOMAN 178 +WITHOUT, NOT WITHIN HER 179 +“O I WON’T LEAD A HOMELY LIFE” 180 +IN THE SMALL HOURS 181 +THE LITTLE OLD TABLE 183 +VAGG HOLLOW 184 +THE DREAM IS—WHICH? 186 +THE COUNTRY WEDDING 187 +FIRST OR LAST 190 +LONELY DAYS 191 +“WHAT DID IT MEAN?” 194 +AT THE DINNER-TABLE 196 +THE MARBLE TABLET 198 +THE MASTER AND THE LEAVES 199 +LAST WORDS TO A DUMB FRIEND 201 +A DRIZZLING EASTER MORNING 204 +ON ONE WHO LIVED AND DIED WHERE HE WAS BORN 205 +THE SECOND NIGHT 207 +SHE WHO SAW NOT 210 +THE OLD WORKMAN 212 +THE SAILOR’S MOTHER 214 +OUTSIDE THE CASEMENT 216 +THE PASSER-BY 218 +“I WAS THE MIDMOST” 220 +A SOUND IN THE NIGHT 221 +ON A DISCOVERED CURL OF HAIR 226 +AN OLD LIKENESS 227 +HER APOTHEOSIS 229 +“SACRED TO THE MEMORY” 230 +TO A WELL-NAMED DWELLING 231 +THE WHIPPER-IN 232 +A MILITARY APPOINTMENT 234 +THE MILESTONE BY THE RABBIT-BURROW 236 +THE LAMENT OF THE LOOKING-GLASS 237 +CROSS-CURRENTS 238 +THE OLD NEIGHBOUR AND THE NEW 240 +THE CHOSEN 241 +THE INSCRIPTION 244 +THE MARBLE-STREETED TOWN 251 +A WOMAN DRIVING 252 +A WOMAN’S TRUST 254 +BEST TIMES 256 +THE CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE 258 +INTRA SEPULCHRUM 260 +THE WHITEWASHED WALL 262 +JUST THE SAME 264 +THE LAST TIME 265 +THE SEVEN TIMES 266 +THE SUN’S LAST LOOK ON THE COUNTRY GIRL 269 +IN A LONDON FLAT 270 +DRAWING DETAILS IN AN OLD CHURCH 272 +RAKE-HELL MUSES 273 +THE COLOUR 277 +MURMURS IN THE GLOOM 279 +EPITAPH 281 +AN ANCIENT TO ANCIENTS 282 +AFTER READING PSALMS XXXIX., XL. 285 +SURVIEW 287 + +WEATHERS + + + I + + THIS is the weather the cuckoo likes, + And so do I; + When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, + And nestlings fly: + And the little brown nightingale bills his best, + And they sit outside at “The Travellers’ Rest,” + And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, + And citizens dream of the south and west, + And so do I. + + II + + This is the weather the shepherd shuns, + And so do I; + When beeches drip in browns and duns, + And thresh, and ply; + And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe, + And meadow rivulets overflow, + And drops on gate-bars hang in a row, + And rooks in families homeward go, + And so do I. + + + + +THE MAID OF KEINTON MANDEVILLE +(A TRIBUTE TO SIR H. BISHOP) + + + I HEAR that maiden still + Of Keinton Mandeville + Singing, in flights that played + As wind-wafts through us all, + Till they made our mood a thrall + To their aery rise and fall, + “Should he upbraid.” + + Rose-necked, in sky-gray gown, + From a stage in Stower Town + Did she sing, and singing smile + As she blent that dexterous voice + With the ditty of her choice, + And banished our annoys + Thereawhile. + + One with such song had power + To wing the heaviest hour + Of him who housed with her. + Who did I never knew + When her spoused estate ondrew, + And her warble flung its woo + In his ear. + + Ah, she’s a beldame now, + Time-trenched on cheek and brow, + Whom I once heard as a maid + From Keinton Mandeville + Of matchless scope and skill + Sing, with smile and swell and trill, + “Should he upbraid!” + +1915 or 1916. + + + + +SUMMER SCHEMES + + + WHEN friendly summer calls again, + Calls again + Her little fifers to these hills, + We’ll go—we two—to that arched fane + Of leafage where they prime their bills + Before they start to flood the plain + With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills. + “—We’ll go,” I sing; but who shall say + What may not chance before that day! + + And we shall see the waters spring, + Waters spring + From chinks the scrubby copses crown; + And we shall trace their oncreeping + To where the cascade tumbles down + And sends the bobbing growths aswing, + And ferns not quite but almost drown. + “—We shall,” I say; but who may sing + Of what another moon will bring! + + + + +EPEISODIA + + + I + + PAST the hills that peep + Where the leaze is smiling, + On and on beguiling + Crisply-cropping sheep; + Under boughs of brushwood + Linking tree and tree + In a shade of lushwood, + There caressed we! + + II + + Hemmed by city walls + That outshut the sunlight, + In a foggy dun light, + Where the footstep falls + With a pit-pat wearisome + In its cadency + On the flagstones drearisome + There pressed we! + + III + + Where in wild-winged crowds + Blown birds show their whiteness + Up against the lightness + Of the clammy clouds; + By the random river + Pushing to the sea, + Under bents that quiver + There rest we. + + + + +FAINTHEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN + + + AT nine in the morning there passed a church, + At ten there passed me by the sea, + At twelve a town of smoke and smirch, + At two a forest of oak and birch, + And then, on a platform, she: + + A radiant stranger, who saw not me. + I queried, “Get out to her do I dare?” + But I kept my seat in my search for a plea, + And the wheels moved on. O could it but be + That I had alighted there! + + + + +AT MOONRISE AND ONWARDS + + + I THOUGHT you a fire + On Heron-Plantation Hill, + Dealing out mischief the most dire + To the chattels of men of hire + There in their vill. + + But by and by + You turned a yellow-green, + Like a large glow-worm in the sky; + And then I could descry + Your mood and mien. + + How well I know + Your furtive feminine shape! + As if reluctantly you show + You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw + Aside its drape . . . + + —How many a year + Have you kept pace with me, + Wan Woman of the waste up there, + Behind a hedge, or the bare + Bough of a tree! + + No novelty are you, + O Lady of all my time, + Veering unbid into my view + Whether I near Death’s mew, + Or Life’s top cyme! + + + + +THE GARDEN SEAT + + + ITS former green is blue and thin, + And its once firm legs sink in and in; + Soon it will break down unaware, + Soon it will break down unaware. + + At night when reddest flowers are black + Those who once sat thereon come back; + Quite a row of them sitting there, + Quite a row of them sitting there. + + With them the seat does not break down, + Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown, + For they are as light as upper air, + They are as light as upper air! + + + + +BARTHÉLÉMON AT VAUXHALL + + +François Hippolite Barthélémon, first-fiddler at Vauxhall Gardens, +composed what was probably the most popular morning hymn-tune ever +written. It was formerly sung, full-voiced, every Sunday in most +churches, to Bishop Ken’s words, but is now seldom heard. + + HE said: “Awake my soul, and with the sun,” . . . + And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east, + Where was emerging like a full-robed priest + The irradiate globe that vouched the dark as done. + + It lit his face—the weary face of one + Who in the adjacent gardens charged his string, + Nightly, with many a tuneful tender thing, + Till stars were weak, and dancing hours outrun. + + And then were threads of matin music spun + In trial tones as he pursued his way: + “This is a morn,” he murmured, “well begun: + This strain to Ken will count when I am clay!” + + And count it did; till, caught by echoing lyres, + It spread to galleried naves and mighty quires. + + + + +“I SOMETIMES THINK” +(FOR F. E. H.) + + + I SOMETIMES think as here I sit + Of things I have done, + Which seemed in doing not unfit + To face the sun: + Yet never a soul has paused a whit + On such—not one. + + There was that eager strenuous press + To sow good seed; + There was that saving from distress + In the nick of need; + There were those words in the wilderness: + Who cared to heed? + + Yet can this be full true, or no? + For one did care, + And, spiriting into my house, to, fro, + Like wind on the stair, + Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though + I may despair. + + + + +JEZREEL +ON ITS SEIZURE BY THE ENGLISH UNDER ALLENBY, SEPTEMBER 1918 + + + DID they catch as it were in a Vision at shut of the day— + When their cavalry smote through the ancient Esdraelon Plain, + And they crossed where the Tishbite stood forth in his enemy’s way— + His gaunt mournful Shade as he bade the King haste off amain? + + On war-men at this end of time—even on Englishmen’s eyes— + Who slay with their arms of new might in that long-ago place, + Flashed he who drove furiously? . . . Ah, did the phantom arise + Of that queen, of that proud Tyrian woman who painted her face? + + Faintly marked they the words “Throw her down!” rise from Night + eerily, + Spectre-spots of the blood of her body on some rotten wall? + And the thin note of pity that came: “A King’s daughter is she,” + As they passed where she trodden was once by the chargers’ footfall? + + Could such be the hauntings of men of to-day, at the cease + Of pursuit, at the dusk-hour, ere slumber their senses could seal? + Enghosted seers, kings—one on horseback who asked “Is it peace?” . . . + Yea, strange things and spectral may men have beheld in Jezreel! + +_September_ 24, 1918. + + + + +A JOG-TROT PAIR + + + WHO were the twain that trod this track + So many times together + Hither and back, + In spells of certain and uncertain weather? + + Commonplace in conduct they + Who wandered to and fro here + Day by day: + Two that few dwellers troubled themselves to know here. + + The very gravel-path was prim + That daily they would follow: + Borders trim: + Never a wayward sprout, or hump, or hollow. + + Trite usages in tamest style + Had tended to their plighting. + “It’s just worth while, + Perhaps,” they had said. “And saves much sad good-nighting.” + + And petty seemed the happenings + That ministered to their joyance: + Simple things, + Onerous to satiate souls, increased their buoyance. + + Who could those common people be, + Of days the plainest, barest? + They were we; + Yes; happier than the cleverest, smartest, rarest. + + + + +“THE CURTAINS NOW ARE DRAWN” +(SONG) + + + I + + THE curtains now are drawn, + And the spindrift strikes the glass, + Blown up the jagged pass + By the surly salt sou’-west, + And the sneering glare is gone + Behind the yonder crest, + While she sings to me: + “O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine, + And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine, + And death may come, but loving is divine.” + + II + + I stand here in the rain, + With its smite upon her stone, + And the grasses that have grown + Over women, children, men, + And their texts that “Life is vain”; + But I hear the notes as when + Once she sang to me: + “O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine, + And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine, + And death may come, but loving is divine.” + +1913. + + + +“ACCORDING TO THE MIGHTY WORKING” + + + I + + WHEN moiling seems at cease + In the vague void of night-time, + And heaven’s wide roomage stormless + Between the dusk and light-time, + And fear at last is formless, + We call the allurement Peace. + + II + + Peace, this hid riot, Change, + This revel of quick-cued mumming, + This never truly being, + This evermore becoming, + This spinner’s wheel onfleeing + Outside perception’s range. + +1917. + + + + +“I WAS NOT HE” +(SONG) + + + I WAS not he—the man + Who used to pilgrim to your gate, + At whose smart step you grew elate, + And rosed, as maidens can, + For a brief span. + + It was not I who sang + Beside the keys you touched so true + With note-bent eyes, as if with you + It counted not whence sprang + The voice that rang . . . + + Yet though my destiny + It was to miss your early sweet, + You still, when turned to you my feet, + Had sweet enough to be + A prize for me! + + + + +THE WEST-OF-WESSEX GIRL + + + A VERY West-of-Wessex girl, + As blithe as blithe could be, + Was once well-known to me, + And she would laud her native town, + And hope and hope that we + Might sometime study up and down + Its charms in company. + + But never I squired my Wessex girl + In jaunts to Hoe or street + When hearts were high in beat, + Nor saw her in the marbled ways + Where market-people meet + That in her bounding early days + Were friendly with her feet. + + Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl, + When midnight hammers slow + From Andrew’s, blow by blow, + As phantom draws me by the hand + To the place—Plymouth Hoe— + Where side by side in life, as planned, + We never were to go! + +Begun in Plymouth, _March_ 1913. + + + + +WELCOME HOME + + + TO my native place + Bent upon returning, + Bosom all day burning + To be where my race + Well were known, ’twas much with me + There to dwell in amity. + + Folk had sought their beds, + But I hailed: to view me + Under the moon, out to me + Several pushed their heads, + And to each I told my name, + Plans, and that therefrom I came. + + “Did you? . . . Ah, ’tis true + I once heard, back a long time, + Here had spent his young time, + Some such man as you . . . + Good-night.” The casement closed again, + And I was left in the frosty lane. + + + + +GOING AND STAYING + + + I + + THE moving sun-shapes on the spray, + The sparkles where the brook was flowing, + Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May, + These were the things we wished would stay; + But they were going. + + II + + Seasons of blankness as of snow, + The silent bleed of a world decaying, + The moan of multitudes in woe, + These were the things we wished would go; + But they were staying. + + III + + Then we looked closelier at Time, + And saw his ghostly arms revolving + To sweep off woeful things with prime, + Things sinister with things sublime + Alike dissolving. + + + + +READ BY MOONLIGHT + + + I PAUSED to read a letter of hers + By the moon’s cold shine, + Eyeing it in the tenderest way, + And edging it up to catch each ray + Upon her light-penned line. + I did not know what years would flow + Of her life’s span and mine + Ere I read another letter of hers + By the moon’s cold shine! + + I chance now on the last of hers, + By the moon’s cold shine; + It is the one remaining page + Out of the many shallow and sage + Whereto she set her sign. + Who could foresee there were to be + Such letters of pain and pine + Ere I should read this last of hers + By the moon’s cold shine! + + + + +AT A HOUSE IN HAMPSTEAD +SOMETIME THE DWELLING OF JOHN KEATS + + + O POET, come you haunting here + Where streets have stolen up all around, + And never a nightingale pours one + Full-throated sound? + + Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills, + Thought you to find all just the same + Here shining, as in hours of old, + If you but came? + + What will you do in your surprise + At seeing that changes wrought in Rome + Are wrought yet more on the misty slope + One time your home? + + Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs? + Swing the doors open noisily? + Show as an umbraged ghost beside + Your ancient tree? + + Or will you, softening, the while + You further and yet further look, + Learn that a laggard few would fain + Preserve your nook? . . . + + —Where the Piazza steps incline, + And catch late light at eventide, + I once stood, in that Rome, and thought, + “’Twas here he died.” + + I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot, + Where day and night a pyramid keeps + Uplifted its white hand, and said, + “’Tis there he sleeps.” + + Pleasanter now it is to hold + That here, where sang he, more of him + Remains than where he, tuneless, cold, + Passed to the dim. + +_July_ 1920. + + + + +A WOMAN’S FANCY + + + “AH Madam; you’ve indeed come back here? + ’Twas sad—your husband’s so swift death, + And you away! You shouldn’t have left him: + It hastened his last breath.” + + “Dame, I am not the lady you think me; + I know not her, nor know her name; + I’ve come to lodge here—a friendless woman; + My health my only aim.” + + She came; she lodged. Wherever she rambled + They held her as no other than + The lady named; and told how her husband + Had died a forsaken man. + + So often did they call her thuswise + Mistakenly, by that man’s name, + So much did they declare about him, + That his past form and fame + + Grew on her, till she pitied his sorrow + As if she truly had been the cause— + Yea, his deserter; and came to wonder + What mould of man he was. + + “Tell me my history!” would exclaim she; + “_Our_ history,” she said mournfully. + “But _you_ know, surely, Ma’am?” they would answer, + Much in perplexity. + + Curious, she crept to his grave one evening, + And a second time in the dusk of the morrow; + Then a third time, with crescent emotion + Like a bereaved wife’s sorrow. + + No gravestone rose by the rounded hillock; + —“I marvel why this is?” she said. + —“He had no kindred, Ma’am, but you near.” + —She set a stone at his head. + + She learnt to dream of him, and told them: + “In slumber often uprises he, + And says: ‘I am joyed that, after all, Dear, + You’ve not deserted me!” + + At length died too this kinless woman, + As he had died she had grown to crave; + And at her dying she besought them + To bury her in his grave. + + Such said, she had paused; until she added: + “Call me by his name on the stone, + As I were, first to last, his dearest, + Not she who left him lone!” + + And this they did. And so it became there + That, by the strength of a tender whim, + The stranger was she who bore his name there, + Not she who wedded him. + + + + +HER SONG + + + I SANG that song on Sunday, + To witch an idle while, + I sang that song on Monday, + As fittest to beguile; + I sang it as the year outwore, + And the new slid in; + I thought not what might shape before + Another would begin. + + I sang that song in summer, + All unforeknowingly, + To him as a new-comer + From regions strange to me: + I sang it when in afteryears + The shades stretched out, + And paths were faint; and flocking fears + Brought cup-eyed care and doubt. + + Sings he that song on Sundays + In some dim land afar, + On Saturdays, or Mondays, + As when the evening star + Glimpsed in upon his bending face + And my hanging hair, + And time untouched me with a trace + Of soul-smart or despair? + + + + +A WET AUGUST + + + NINE drops of water bead the jessamine, + And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles: + —’Twas not so in that August—full-rayed, fine— + When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles. + + Or was there then no noted radiancy + Of summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough, + Gilt over by the light I bore in me, + And was the waste world just the same as now? + + It can have been so: yea, that threatenings + Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray, + By the then possibilities in things + Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day. + +1920. + + + + +THE DISSEMBLERS + + + “IT was not you I came to please, + Only myself,” flipped she; + “I like this spot of phantasies, + And thought you far from me.” + But O, he was the secret spell + That led her to the lea! + + “It was not she who shaped my ways, + Or works, or thoughts,” he said. + “I scarcely marked her living days, + Or missed her much when dead.” + But O, his joyance knew its knell + When daisies hid her head! + + + + +TO A LADY PLAYING AND SINGING IN THE MORNING + + + JOYFUL lady, sing! + And I will lurk here listening, + Though nought be done, and nought begun, + And work-hours swift are scurrying. + + Sing, O lady, still! + Aye, I will wait each note you trill, + Though duties due that press to do + This whole day long I unfulfil. + + “—It is an evening tune; + One not designed to waste the noon,” + You say. I know: time bids me go— + For daytide passes too, too soon! + + But let indulgence be, + This once, to my rash ecstasy: + When sounds nowhere that carolled air + My idled morn may comfort me! + + + + +“A MAN WAS DRAWING NEAR TO ME” + + + ON that gray night of mournful drone, + A part from aught to hear, to see, + I dreamt not that from shires unknown + In gloom, alone, + By Halworthy, + A man was drawing near to me. + + I’d no concern at anything, + No sense of coming pull-heart play; + Yet, under the silent outspreading + Of even’s wing + Where Otterham lay, + A man was riding up my way. + + I thought of nobody—not of one, + But only of trifles—legends, ghosts— + Though, on the moorland dim and dun + That travellers shun + About these coasts, + The man had passed Tresparret Posts. + + There was no light at all inland, + Only the seaward pharos-fire, + Nothing to let me understand + That hard at hand + By Hennett Byre + The man was getting nigh and nigher. + + There was a rumble at the door, + A draught disturbed the drapery, + And but a minute passed before, + With gaze that bore + My destiny, + The man revealed himself to me. + + + + +THE STRANGE HOUSE +(MAX GATE, A.D. 2000) + + + “I HEAR the piano playing— + Just as a ghost might play.” + “—O, but what are you saying? + There’s no piano to-day; + Their old one was sold and broken; + Years past it went amiss.” + “—I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken: + A strange house, this! + + “I catch some undertone here, + From some one out of sight.” + “—Impossible; we are alone here, + And shall be through the night.” + “—The parlour-door—what stirred it?” + “—No one: no soul’s in range.” + “—But, anyhow, I heard it, + And it seems strange! + + “Seek my own room I cannot— + A figure is on the stair!” + “—What figure? Nay, I scan not + Any one lingering there. + A bough outside is waving, + And that’s its shade by the moon.” + “—Well, all is strange! I am craving + Strength to leave soon.” + + “—Ah, maybe you’ve some vision + Of showings beyond our sphere; + Some sight, sense, intuition + Of what once happened here? + The house is old; they’ve hinted + It once held two love-thralls, + And they may have imprinted + Their dreams on its walls? + + “They were—I think ’twas told me— + Queer in their works and ways; + The teller would often hold me + With weird tales of those days. + Some folk can not abide here, + But we—we do not care + Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here, + Knew joy, or despair.” + + + + +“AS ’TWERE TO-NIGHT” +(SONG) + + + AS ’twere to-night, in the brief space + Of a far eventime, + My spirit rang achime + At vision of a girl of grace; + As ’twere to-night, in the brief space + Of a far eventime. + + As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow + I airily walked and talked, + And wondered as I walked + What it could mean, this soar from sorrow; + As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow + I airily walked and talked. + + As ’twere at waning of this week + Broke a new life on me; + Trancings of bliss to be + In some dim dear land soon to seek; + As ’twere at waning of this week + Broke a new life on me! + + + + +THE CONTRETEMPS + + + A FORWARD rush by the lamp in the gloom, + And we clasped, and almost kissed; + But she was not the woman whom + I had promised to meet in the thawing brume + On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst. + + So loosening from me swift she said: + “O why, why feign to be + The one I had meant!—to whom I have sped + To fly with, being so sorrily wed!” + —’Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me. + + My assignation had struck upon + Some others’ like it, I found. + And her lover rose on the night anon; + And then her husband entered on + The lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around. + + “Take her and welcome, man!” he cried: + “I wash my hands of her. + I’ll find me twice as good a bride!” + —All this to me, whom he had eyed, + Plainly, as his wife’s planned deliverer. + + And next the lover: “Little I knew, + Madam, you had a third! + Kissing here in my very view!” + —Husband and lover then withdrew. + I let them; and I told them not they erred. + + Why not? Well, there faced she and I— + Two strangers who’d kissed, or near, + Chancewise. To see stand weeping by + A woman once embraced, will try + The tension of a man the most austere. + + So it began; and I was young, + She pretty, by the lamp, + As flakes came waltzing down among + The waves of her clinging hair, that hung + Heavily on her temples, dark and damp. + + And there alone still stood we two; + She one cast off for me, + Or so it seemed: while night ondrew, + Forcing a parley what should do + We twain hearts caught in one catastrophe. + + In stranded souls a common strait + Wakes latencies unknown, + Whose impulse may precipitate + A life-long leap. The hour was late, + And there was the Jersey boat with its funnel agroan. + + “Is wary walking worth much pother?” + It grunted, as still it stayed. + “One pairing is as good as another + Where all is venture! Take each other, + And scrap the oaths that you have aforetime made.” . . . + + —Of the four involved there walks but one + On earth at this late day. + And what of the chapter so begun? + In that odd complex what was done? + Well; happiness comes in full to none: + Let peace lie on lulled lips: I will not say. + +WEYMOUTH. + + + + +A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER + + + I DWELT in the shade of a city, + She far by the sea, + With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty; + But never with me. + + Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring + I never once met, + To guide her with accents adoring + Through Weippert’s “First Set.” {46} + + I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones + In Vanity Fair, + And she enjoyed hers among hale ones + In salt-smelling air. + + Maybe she had eyes of deep colour, + Maybe they were blue, + Maybe as she aged they got duller; + That never I knew. + + She may have had lips like the coral, + But I never kissed them, + Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel, + Nor sought for, nor missed them. + + Not a word passed of love all our lifetime, + Between us, nor thrill; + We’d never a husband-and-wife time, + For good or for ill. + + Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal, + Lie I and lies she, + This never-known lady, eternal + Companion to me! + + + + +THE OLD GOWN +(SONG) + + + I HAVE seen her in gowns the brightest, + Of azure, green, and red, + And in the simplest, whitest, + Muslined from heel to head; + I have watched her walking, riding, + Shade-flecked by a leafy tree, + Or in fixed thought abiding + By the foam-fingered sea. + + In woodlands I have known her, + When boughs were mourning loud, + In the rain-reek she has shown her + Wild-haired and watery-browed. + And once or twice she has cast me + As she pomped along the street + Court-clad, ere quite she had passed me, + A glance from her chariot-seat. + + But in my memoried passion + For evermore stands she + In the gown of fading fashion + She wore that night when we, + Doomed long to part, assembled + In the snug small room; yea, when + She sang with lips that trembled, + “Shall I see his face again?” + + + + +A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER + + + I MARKED when the weather changed, + And the panes began to quake, + And the winds rose up and ranged, + That night, lying half-awake. + + Dead leaves blew into my room, + And alighted upon my bed, + And a tree declared to the gloom + Its sorrow that they were shed. + + One leaf of them touched my hand, + And I thought that it was you + There stood as you used to stand, + And saying at last you knew! + +(?) 1913. + + + + +A DUETTIST TO HER PIANOFORTE +SONG OF SILENCE +(E. L. H.—H. C. H.) + + + SINCE every sound moves memories, + How can I play you + Just as I might if you raised no scene, + By your ivory rows, of a form between + My vision and your time-worn sheen, + As when each day you + Answered our fingers with ecstasy? + So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me! + + And as I am doomed to counterchord + Her notes no more + In those old things I used to know, + In a fashion, when we practised so, + “Good-night!—Good-bye!” to your pleated show + Of silk, now hoar, + Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key, + For dead, dead, dead, you are to me! + + I fain would second her, strike to her stroke, + As when she was by, + Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “Fall + Of Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal, + To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call” + Sung soft as a sigh: + But upping ghosts press achefully, + And mute, mute, mute, you are for me! + + Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers + Afresh on the air, + Too quick would the small white shapes be here + Of the fellow twain of hands so dear; + And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear; + —Then how shall I bear + Such heavily-haunted harmony? + Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me! + + + + +“WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED” + + + WHERE three roads joined it was green and fair, + And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea, + And life laughed sweet when I halted there; + Yet there I never again would be. + + I am sure those branchways are brooding now, + With a wistful blankness upon their face, + While the few mute passengers notice how + Spectre-beridden is the place; + + Which nightly sighs like a laden soul, + And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell + Not far from thence, should have let it roll + Away from them down a plumbless well + + While the phasm of him who fared starts up, + And of her who was waiting him sobs from near, + As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup + They filled for themselves when their sky was clear. + + Yes, I see those roads—now rutted and bare, + While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea; + And though life laughed when I halted there, + It is where I never again would be. + + + + +“AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM” +(ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, Nov. 11, 1918) + + + I + + THERE had been years of Passion—scorching, cold, + And much Despair, and Anger heaving high, + Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold, + Among the young, among the weak and old, + And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?” + + II + + Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught + Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness, + Philosophies that sages long had taught, + And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought, + And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness. + + III + + The feeble folk at home had grown full-used + To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adept + In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused; + To day—dreamt men in millions, when they mused— + To nightmare-men in millions when they slept. + + IV + + Waking to wish existence timeless, null, + Sirius they watched above where armies fell; + He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull + Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull + Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well. + + V + + So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly + Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!” + One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly, + “Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly, + And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?” + + VI + + Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance + To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped, + As they had raised it through the four years’ dance + Of Death in the now familiar flats of France; + And murmured, “Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?” + + VII + + Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not, + The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song. + One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot + And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What? + Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?” + + VIII + + Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray, + No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn, + No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray; + Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”; + No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn. + + IX + + Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency; + There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky; + Some could, some could not, shake off misery: + The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!” + And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?” + + + + +HAUNTING FINGERS +A PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS + + + “ARE you awake, + Comrades, this silent night? + Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey make + Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!” + + “O viol, my friend, + I watch, though Phosphor nears, + And I fain would drowse away to its utter end + This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!” + + And they felt past handlers clutch them, + Though none was in the room, + Old players’ dead fingers touch them, + Shrunk in the tomb. + + “’Cello, good mate, + You speak my mind as yours: + Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state, + Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?” + + “Once I could thrill + The populace through and through, + Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” . . . + (A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.) + + And they felt old muscles travel + Over their tense contours, + And with long skill unravel + Cunningest scores. + + “The tender pat + Of her aery finger-tips + Upon me daily—I rejoiced thereat!” + (Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.) + + “My keys’ white shine, + Now sallow, met a hand + Even whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mine + In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!” + + And its clavier was filmed with fingers + Like tapering flames—wan, cold— + Or the nebulous light that lingers + In charnel mould. + + “Gayer than most + Was I,” reverbed a drum; + “The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! What a host + I stirred—even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!” + + Trilled an aged viol: + “Much tune have I set free + To spur the dance, since my first timid trial + Where I had birth—far hence, in sun-swept Italy!” + + And he feels apt touches on him + From those that pressed him then; + Who seem with their glance to con him, + Saying, “Not again!” + + “A holy calm,” + Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued, + “Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm + Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.” + + “I faced the sock + Nightly,” twanged a sick lyre, + “Over ranked lights! O charm of life in mock, + O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!” + + Thus they, till each past player + Stroked thinner and more thin, + And the morning sky grew grayer + And day crawled in. + + + + +THE WOMAN I MET + + + A STRANGER, I threaded sunken-hearted + A lamp-lit crowd; + And anon there passed me a soul departed, + Who mutely bowed. + In my far-off youthful years I had met her, + Full-pulsed; but now, no more life’s debtor, + Onward she slid + In a shroud that furs half-hid. + + “Why do you trouble me, dead woman, + Trouble me; + You whom I knew when warm and human? + —How it be + That you quitted earth and are yet upon it + Is, to any who ponder on it, + Past being read!” + “Still, it is so,” she said. + + “These were my haunts in my olden sprightly + Hours of breath; + Here I went tempting frail youth nightly + To their death; + But you deemed me chaste—me, a tinselled sinner! + How thought you one with pureness in her + Could pace this street + Eyeing some man to greet? + + “Well; your very simplicity made me love you + Mid such town dross, + Till I set not Heaven itself above you, + Who grew my Cross; + For you’d only nod, despite how I sighed for you; + So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you! + —What I suffered then + Would have paid for the sins of ten! + + “Thus went the days. I feared you despised me + To fling me a nod + Each time, no more: till love chastised me + As with a rod + That a fresh bland boy of no assurance + Should fire me with passion beyond endurance, + While others all + I hated, and loathed their call. + + “I said: ‘It is his mother’s spirit + Hovering around + To shield him, maybe!’ I used to fear it, + As still I found + My beauty left no least impression, + And remnants of pride withheld confession + Of my true trade + By speaking; so I delayed. + + “I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flower + He’ll be beguiled.’ + I held it, in passing you one late hour, + To your face: you smiled, + Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there + A single one that rivalled me there! . . . + Well: it’s all past. + I died in the Lock at last.” + + So walked the dead and I together + The quick among, + Elbowing our kind of every feather + Slowly and long; + Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there + With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there + That winter night + By flaming jets of light. + + She showed me Juans who feared their call-time, + Guessing their lot; + She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time, + And that did not. + Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me, + Why asked you never, ere death befell me, + To have my love, + Much as I dreamt thereof?” + + I could not answer. And she, well weeting + All in my heart, + Said: “God your guardian kept our fleeting + Forms apart!” + Sighing and drawing her furs around her + Over the shroud that tightly bound her, + With wafts as from clay + She turned and thinned away. + +LONDON, 1918. + + + + +“IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN” +(SONG) + + + IF it’s ever spring again, + Spring again, + I shall go where went I when + Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen, + Seeing me not, amid their flounder, + Standing with my arm around her; + If it’s ever spring again, + Spring again, + I shall go where went I then. + + If it’s ever summer-time, + Summer-time, + With the hay crop at the prime, + And the cuckoos—two—in rhyme, + As they used to be, or seemed to, + We shall do as long we’ve dreamed to, + If it’s ever summer-time, + Summer-time, + With the hay, and bees achime. + + + + +THE TWO HOUSES + + + IN the heart of night, + When farers were not near, + The left house said to the house on the right, + “I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.” + + Said the right, cold-eyed: + “Newcomer here I am, + Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide, + Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam. + + “Modern my wood, + My hangings fair of hue; + While my windows open as they should, + And water-pipes thread all my chambers through. + + “Your gear is gray, + Your face wears furrows untold.” + “—Yours might,” mourned the other, “if you held, brother, + The Presences from aforetime that I hold. + + “You have not known + Men’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens; + You are but a heap of stick and stone: + A new house has no sense of the have-beens. + + “Void as a drum + You stand: I am packed with these, + Though, strangely, living dwellers who come + See not the phantoms all my substance sees! + + “Visible in the morning + Stand they, when dawn drags in; + Visible at night; yet hint or warning + Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win. + + “Babes new-brought-forth + Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched + Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth; + Yea, throng they as when first from the ’Byss upfetched. + + “Dancers and singers + Throb in me now as once; + Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingers + Of heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce. + + “Note here within + The bridegroom and the bride, + Who smile and greet their friends and kin, + And down my stairs depart for tracks untried. + + “Where such inbe, + A dwelling’s character + Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy + To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere. + + “Yet the blind folk + My tenants, who come and go + In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke, + Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.” + + “—Will the day come,” + Said the new one, awestruck, faint, + “When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb— + And with such spectral guests become acquaint?” + + “—That will it, boy; + Such shades will people thee, + Each in his misery, irk, or joy, + And print on thee their presences as on me.” + + + + +ON STINSFORD HILL AT MIDNIGHT + + + I GLIMPSED a woman’s muslined form + Sing-songing airily + Against the moon; and still she sang, + And took no heed of me. + + Another trice, and I beheld + What first I had not scanned, + That now and then she tapped and shook + A timbrel in her hand. + + So late the hour, so white her drape, + So strange the look it lent + To that blank hill, I could not guess + What phantastry it meant. + + Then burst I forth: “Why such from you? + Are you so happy now?” + Her voice swam on; nor did she show + Thought of me anyhow. + + I called again: “Come nearer; much + That kind of note I need!” + The song kept softening, loudening on, + In placid calm unheed. + + “What home is yours now?” then I said; + “You seem to have no care.” + But the wild wavering tune went forth + As if I had not been there. + + “This world is dark, and where you are,” + I said, “I cannot be!” + But still the happy one sang on, + And had no heed of me. + + + + +THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE + + + ONE without looks in to-night + Through the curtain-chink + From the sheet of glistening white; + One without looks in to-night + As we sit and think + By the fender-brink. + + We do not discern those eyes + Watching in the snow; + Lit by lamps of rosy dyes + We do not discern those eyes + Wondering, aglow, + Fourfooted, tiptoe. + + + + +THE SELFSAME SONG + + + A BIRD bills the selfsame song, + With never a fault in its flow, + That we listened to here those long + Long years ago. + + A pleasing marvel is how + A strain of such rapturous rote + Should have gone on thus till now + Unchanged in a note! + + —But it’s not the selfsame bird.— + No: perished to dust is he . . . + As also are those who heard + That song with me. + + + + +THE WANDERER + + + THERE is nobody on the road + But I, + And no beseeming abode + I can try + For shelter, so abroad + I must lie. + + The stars feel not far up, + And to be + The lights by which I sup + Glimmeringly, + Set out in a hollow cup + Over me. + + They wag as though they were + Panting for joy + Where they shine, above all care, + And annoy, + And demons of despair— + Life’s alloy. + + Sometimes outside the fence + Feet swing past, + Clock-like, and then go hence, + Till at last + There is a silence, dense, + Deep, and vast. + + A wanderer, witch-drawn + To and fro, + To-morrow, at the dawn, + On I go, + And where I rest anon + Do not know! + + Yet it’s meet—this bed of hay + And roofless plight; + For there’s a house of clay, + My own, quite, + To roof me soon, all day + And all night. + + + + +A WIFE COMES BACK + + + THIS is the story a man told me + Of his life’s one day of dreamery. + + A woman came into his room + Between the dawn and the creeping day: + She was the years-wed wife from whom + He had parted, and who lived far away, + As if strangers they. + + He wondered, and as she stood + She put on youth in her look and air, + And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed + Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair + While he watched her there; + + Till she freshed to the pink and brown + That were hers on the night when first they met, + When she was the charm of the idle town + And he the pick of the club-fire set . . . + His eyes grew wet, + + And he stretched his arms: “Stay—rest!—” + He cried. “Abide with me so, my own!” + But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast; + She had vanished with all he had looked upon + Of her beauty: gone. + + He clothed, and drew downstairs, + But she was not in the house, he found; + And he passed out under the leafy pairs + Of the avenue elms, and searched around + To the park-pale bound. + + He mounted, and rode till night + To the city to which she had long withdrawn, + The vision he bore all day in his sight + Being her young self as pondered on + In the dim of dawn. + + “—The lady here long ago— + Is she now here?—young—or such age as she is?” + “—She is still here.”—“Thank God. Let her know; + She’ll pardon a comer so late as this + Whom she’d fain not miss.” + + She received him—an ancient dame, + Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb, + “How strange!—I’d almost forgotten your name!— + A call just now—is troublesome; + Why did you come?” + + + + +A YOUNG MAN’S EXHORTATION + + + CALL off your eyes from care + By some determined deftness; put forth joys + Dear as excess without the core that cloys, + And charm Life’s lourings fair. + + Exalt and crown the hour + That girdles us, and fill it full with glee, + Blind glee, excelling aught could ever be + Were heedfulness in power. + + Send up such touching strains + That limitless recruits from Fancy’s pack + Shall rush upon your tongue, and tender back + All that your soul contains. + + For what do we know best? + That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry, + And that men moment after moment die, + Of all scope dispossest. + + If I have seen one thing + It is the passing preciousness of dreams; + That aspects are within us; and who seems + Most kingly is the King. + +1867: WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS. + + + + +AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK + + + HAD I but lived a hundred years ago + I might have gone, as I have gone this year, + By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know, + And Time have placed his finger on me there: + + “_You see that man_?”—I might have looked, and said, + “O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought + Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban’s Head. + So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.” + + “_You see that man_?”—“Why yes; I told you; yes: + Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue; + And as the evening light scants less and less + He looks up at a star, as many do.” + + “_You see that man_?”—“Nay, leave me!” then I plead, + “I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea, + And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed: + I have said the third time; yes, that man I see! + + “Good. That man goes to Rome—to death, despair; + And no one notes him now but you and I: + A hundred years, and the world will follow him there, + And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.” + +_September_ 1920. + +_Note_.—In September 1820 Keats, on his way to Rome, landed one day on +the Dorset coast, and composed the sonnet, “Bright star! would I were +steadfast as thou art.” The spot of his landing is judged to have been +Lulworth Cove. + + + + +A BYGONE OCCASION +(SONG) + + + THAT night, that night, + That song, that song! + Will such again be evened quite + Through lifetimes long? + + No mirth was shown + To outer seers, + But mood to match has not been known + In modern years. + + O eyes that smiled, + O lips that lured; + That such would last was one beguiled + To think ensured! + + That night, that night, + That song, that song; + O drink to its recalled delight, + Though tears may throng! + + + + +TWO SERENADES + + +I +_On Christmas Eve_ + + + LATE on Christmas Eve, in the street alone, + Outside a house, on the pavement-stone, + I sang to her, as we’d sung together + On former eves ere I felt her tether.— + Above the door of green by me + Was she, her casement seen by me; + But she would not heed + What I melodied + In my soul’s sore need— + She would not heed. + + Cassiopeia overhead, + And the Seven of the Wain, heard what I said + As I bent me there, and voiced, and fingered + Upon the strings. . . . Long, long I lingered: + Only the curtains hid from her + One whom caprice had bid from her; + But she did not come, + And my heart grew numb + And dull my strum; + She did not come. + + + +II +_A Year Later_ + + + I SKIMMED the strings; I sang quite low; + I hoped she would not come or know + That the house next door was the one now dittied, + Not hers, as when I had played unpitied; + —Next door, where dwelt a heart fresh stirred, + My new Love, of good will to me, + Unlike my old Love chill to me, + Who had not cared for my notes when heard: + Yet that old Love came + To the other’s name + As hers were the claim; + Yea, the old Love came + + My viol sank mute, my tongue stood still, + I tried to sing on, but vain my will: + I prayed she would guess of the later, and leave me; + She stayed, as though, were she slain by the smart, + She would bear love’s burn for a newer heart. + The tense-drawn moment wrought to bereave me + Of voice, and I turned in a dumb despair + At her finding I’d come to another there. + Sick I withdrew + At love’s grim hue + Ere my last Love knew; + Sick I withdrew. + +From an old copy. + + + + +THE WEDDING MORNING + + + TABITHA dressed for her wedding:— + “Tabby, why look so sad?” + “—O I feel a great gloominess spreading, spreading, + Instead of supremely glad! . . . + + “I called on Carry last night, + And he came whilst I was there, + Not knowing I’d called. So I kept out of sight, + And I heard what he said to her: + + “‘—Ah, I’d far liefer marry + _You_, Dear, to-morrow!’ he said, + ‘But that cannot be.’—O I’d give him to Carry, + And willingly see them wed, + + “But how can I do it when + His baby will soon be born? + After that I hope I may die. And then + She can have him. I shall not mourn!” + + + + +END OF THE YEAR 1912 + + + YOU were here at his young beginning, + You are not here at his agèd end; + Off he coaxed you from Life’s mad spinning, + Lest you should see his form extend + Shivering, sighing, + Slowly dying, + And a tear on him expend. + + So it comes that we stand lonely + In the star-lit avenue, + Dropping broken lipwords only, + For we hear no songs from you, + Such as flew here + For the new year + Once, while six bells swung thereto. + + + + +THE CHIMES PLAY “LIFE’S A BUMPER!” + + + “AWAKE! I’m off to cities far away,” + I said; and rose, on peradventures bent. + The chimes played “Life’s a Bumper!” on that day + To the measure of my walking as I went: + Their sweetness frisked and floated on the lea, + As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me. + + “Awake!” I said. “I go to take a bride!” + —The sun arose behind me ruby-red + As I journeyed townwards from the countryside, + The chiming bells saluting near ahead. + Their sweetness swelled in tripping tings of glee + As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me. + + “Again arise.” I seek a turfy slope, + And go forth slowly on an autumn noon, + And there I lay her who has been my hope, + And think, “O may I follow hither soon!” + While on the wind the chimes come cheerily, + Playing out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me. + +1913. + + + + +“I WORKED NO WILE TO MEET YOU” +(SONG) + + + I WORKED no wile to meet you, + My sight was set elsewhere, + I sheered about to shun you, + And lent your life no care. + I was unprimed to greet you + At such a date and place, + Constraint alone had won you + Vision of my strange face! + + You did not seek to see me + Then or at all, you said, + —Meant passing when you neared me, + But stumblingblocks forbade. + You even had thought to flee me, + By other mindings moved; + No influent star endeared me, + Unknown, unrecked, unproved! + + What, then, was there to tell us + The flux of flustering hours + Of their own tide would bring us + By no device of ours + To where the daysprings well us + Heart-hydromels that cheer, + Till Time enearth and swing us + Round with the turning sphere. + + + + +AT THE RAILWAY STATION, UPWAY + + + “THERE is not much that I can do, + For I’ve no money that’s quite my own!” + Spoke up the pitying child— + A little boy with a violin + At the station before the train came in,— + “But I can play my fiddle to you, + And a nice one ’tis, and good in tone!” + + The man in the handcuffs smiled; + The constable looked, and he smiled, too, + As the fiddle began to twang; + And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang + Uproariously: + “This life so free + Is the thing for me!” + And the constable smiled, and said no word, + As if unconscious of what he heard; + And so they went on till the train came in— + The convict, and boy with the violin. + + + + +SIDE BY SIDE + + + SO there sat they, + The estranged two, + Thrust in one pew + By chance that day; + Placed so, breath-nigh, + Each comer unwitting + Who was to be sitting + In touch close by. + + Thus side by side + Blindly alighted, + They seemed united + As groom and bride, + Who’d not communed + For many years— + Lives from twain spheres + With hearts distuned. + + Her fringes brushed + His garment’s hem + As the harmonies rushed + Through each of them: + Her lips could be heard + In the creed and psalms, + And their fingers neared + At the giving of alms. + + And women and men, + The matins ended, + By looks commended + Them, joined again. + Quickly said she, + “Don’t undeceive them— + Better thus leave them:” + “Quite so,” said he. + + Slight words!—the last + Between them said, + Those two, once wed, + Who had not stood fast. + Diverse their ways + From the western door, + To meet no more + In their span of days. + + + + +DREAM OF THE CITY SHOPWOMAN + + + ’TWERE sweet to have a comrade here, + Who’d vow to love this garreteer, + By city people’s snap and sneer + Tried oft and hard! + + We’d rove a truant cock and hen + To some snug solitary glen, + And never be seen to haunt again + This teeming yard. + + Within a cot of thatch and clay + We’d list the flitting pipers play, + Our lives a twine of good and gay + Enwreathed discreetly; + + Our blithest deeds so neighbouring wise + That doves should coo in soft surprise, + “These must belong to Paradise + Who live so sweetly.” + + Our clock should be the closing flowers, + Our sprinkle-bath the passing showers, + Our church the alleyed willow bowers, + The truth our theme; + + And infant shapes might soon abound: + Their shining heads would dot us round + Like mushroom balls on grassy ground . . . + —But all is dream! + + O God, that creatures framed to feel + A yearning nature’s strong appeal + Should writhe on this eternal wheel + In rayless grime; + + And vainly note, with wan regret, + Each star of early promise set; + Till Death relieves, and they forget + Their one Life’s time! + +WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1866. + + + + +A MAIDEN’S PLEDGE +(SONG) + + + I DO not wish to win your vow + To take me soon or late as bride, + And lift me from the nook where now + I tarry your farings to my side. + I am blissful ever to abide + In this green labyrinth—let all be, + If but, whatever may betide, + You do not leave off loving me! + + Your comet-comings I will wait + With patience time shall not wear through; + The yellowing years will not abate + My largened love and truth to you, + Nor drive me to complaint undue + Of absence, much as I may pine, + If never another ’twixt us two + Shall come, and you stand wholly mine. + + + + +THE CHILD AND THE SAGE + + + YOU say, O Sage, when weather-checked, + “I have been favoured so + With cloudless skies, I must expect + This dash of rain or snow.” + + “Since health has been my lot,” you say, + “So many months of late, + I must not chafe that one short day + Of sickness mars my state.” + + You say, “Such bliss has been my share + From Love’s unbroken smile, + It is but reason I should bear + A cross therein awhile.” + + And thus you do not count upon + Continuance of joy; + But, when at ease, expect anon + A burden of annoy. + + But, Sage—this Earth—why not a place + Where no reprisals reign, + Where never a spell of pleasantness + Makes reasonable a pain? + +_December_ 21, 1908. + + + + +MISMET + + + I + + HE was leaning by a face, + He was looking into eyes, + And he knew a trysting-place, + And he heard seductive sighs; + But the face, + And the eyes, + And the place, + And the sighs, + Were not, alas, the right ones—the ones meet for him— + Though fine and sweet the features, and the feelings all abrim. + + II + + She was looking at a form, + She was listening for a tread, + She could feel a waft of charm + When a certain name was said; + But the form, + And the tread, + And the charm + Of name said, + Were the wrong ones for her, and ever would be so, + While the heritor of the right it would have saved her soul to know! + + + + +AN AUTUMN RAIN-SCENE + + + THERE trudges one to a merry-making + With a sturdy swing, + On whom the rain comes down. + + To fetch the saving medicament + Is another bent, + On whom the rain comes down. + + One slowly drives his herd to the stall + Ere ill befall, + On whom the rain comes down. + + This bears his missives of life and death + With quickening breath, + On whom the rain comes down. + + One watches for signals of wreck or war + From the hill afar, + On whom the rain comes down. + + No care if he gain a shelter or none, + Unhired moves one, + On whom the rain comes down. + + And another knows nought of its chilling fall + Upon him at all, + On whom the rain comes down. + +_October_ 1904. + + + + +MEDITATIONS ON A HOLIDAY +(A NEW THEME TO AN OLD FOLK-JINGLE) + + + ’TIS May morning, + All-adorning, + No cloud warning + Of rain to-day. + Where shall I go to, + Go to, go to?— + Can I say No to + Lyonnesse-way? + + Well—what reason + Now at this season + Is there for treason + To other shrines? + Tristram is not there, + Isolt forgot there, + New eras blot there + Sought-for signs! + + Stratford-on-Avon— + Poesy-paven— + I’ll find a haven + There, somehow!— + Nay—I’m but caught of + Dreams long thought of, + The Swan knows nought of + His Avon now! + + What shall it be, then, + I go to see, then, + Under the plea, then, + Of votary? + I’ll go to Lakeland, + Lakeland, Lakeland, + Certainly Lakeland + Let it be. + + But—why to that place, + That place, that place, + Such a hard come-at place + Need I fare? + When its bard cheers no more, + Loves no more, fears no more, + Sees no more, hears no more + Anything there! + + Ah, there is Scotland, + Burns’s Scotland, + And Waverley’s. To what land + Better can I hie?— + Yet—if no whit now + Feel those of it now— + Care not a bit now + For it—why I? + + I’ll seek a town street, + Aye, a brick-brown street, + Quite a tumbledown street, + Drawing no eyes. + For a Mary dwelt there, + And a Percy felt there + Heart of him melt there, + A Claire likewise. + + Why incline to _that_ city, + Such a city, _that_ city, + Now a mud-bespat city!— + Care the lovers who + Now live and walk there, + Sit there and talk there, + Buy there, or hawk there, + Or wed, or woo? + + Laughters in a volley + Greet so fond a folly + As nursing melancholy + In this and that spot, + Which, with most endeavour, + Those can visit never, + But for ever and ever + Will now know not! + + If, on lawns Elysian, + With a broadened vision + And a faint derision + Conscious be they, + How they might reprove me + That these fancies move me, + Think they ill behoove me, + Smile, and say: + + “What!—our hoar old houses, + Where the past dead-drowses, + Nor a child nor spouse is + Of our name at all? + Such abodes to care for, + Inquire about and bear for, + And suffer wear and tear for— + How weak of you and small!” + +_May_ 1921. + + + + +AN EXPERIENCE + + + WIT, weight, or wealth there was not + In anything that was said, + In anything that was done; + All was of scope to cause not + A triumph, dazzle, or dread + To even the subtlest one, + My friend, + To even the subtlest one. + + But there was a new afflation— + An aura zephyring round, + That care infected not: + It came as a salutation, + And, in my sweet astound, + I scarcely witted what + Might pend, + I scarcely witted what. + + The hills in samewise to me + Spoke, as they grayly gazed, + —First hills to speak so yet! + The thin-edged breezes blew me + What I, though cobwebbed, crazed, + Was never to forget, + My friend, + Was never to forget! + + + + +THE BEAUTY + + + O DO not praise my beauty more, + In such word-wild degree, + And say I am one all eyes adore; + For these things harass me! + + But do for ever softly say: + “From now unto the end + Come weal, come wanzing, come what may, + Dear, I will be your friend.” + + I hate my beauty in the glass: + My beauty is not I: + I wear it: none cares whether, alas, + Its wearer live or die! + + The inner I O care for, then, + Yea, me and what I am, + And shall be at the gray hour when + My cheek begins to clam. + +_Note_.—“The Regent Street beauty, Miss Verrey, the Swiss confectioner’s +daughter, whose personal attractions have been so mischievously +exaggerated, died of fever on Monday evening, brought on by the annoyance +she had been for some time subject to.”—London paper, October 1828. + + + + +THE COLLECTOR CLEANS HIS PICTURE + + + Fili hominis, ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in + plaga.—EZECH. xxiv. 16. + + HOW I remember cleaning that strange picture! + I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour— + His besides my own—over several Sundays, + Often, too, in the week; so with parish pressures, + Baptisms, burials, doctorings, conjugal counsel— + All the whatnots asked of a rural parson— + Faith, I was well-nigh broken, should have been fully + Saving for one small secret relaxation, + One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby. + + This was to delve at whiles for easel-lumber, + Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city, + Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas, + Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure, + Yet under all concealing a precious art-feat. + Such I had found not yet. My latest capture + Came from the rooms of a trader in ancient house-gear + Who had no scent of beauty or soul for brushcraft. + Only a tittle cost it—murked with grime-films, + Gatherings of slow years, thick-varnished over, + Never a feature manifest of man’s painting. + + So, one Saturday, time ticking hard on midnight + Ere an hour subserved, I set me upon it. + Long with coiled-up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned, + Till a first fresh spot, a high light, looked forth, + Then another, like fair flesh, and another; + Then a curve, a nostril, and next a finger, + Tapering, shapely, significantly pointing slantwise. + “Flemish?” I said. “Nay, Spanish . . . But, nay, Italian!” + —Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus, + Named of some Astarte, of some Cotytto. + Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel, + Drunk with the lure of love’s inhibited dreamings. + + Till the dawn I rubbed, when there gazed up at me + A hag, that had slowly emerged from under my hands there, + Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosom + Eaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime . . . + —I could have ended myself in heart-shook horror. + Stunned I sat till roused by a clear-voiced bell-chime, + Fresh and sweet as the dew-fleece under my luthern. + It was the matin service calling to me + From the adjacent steeple. + + + + +THE WOOD FIRE +(A FRAGMENT) + + + “THIS is a brightsome blaze you’ve lit good friend, to-night!” + “—Aye, it has been the bleakest spring I have felt for years, + And nought compares with cloven logs to keep alight: + I buy them bargain-cheap of the executioners, + As I dwell near; and they wanted the crosses out of sight + By Passover, not to affront the eyes of visitors. + + “Yes, they’re from the crucifixions last week-ending + At Kranion. We can sometimes use the poles again, + But they get split by the nails, and ’tis quicker work than mending + To knock together new; though the uprights now and then + Serve twice when they’re let stand. But if a feast’s impending, + As lately, you’ve to tidy up for the corners’ ken. + + “Though only three were impaled, you may know it didn’t pass off + So quietly as was wont? That Galilee carpenter’s son + Who boasted he was king, incensed the rabble to scoff: + I heard the noise from my garden. This piece is the one he was on . . . + Yes, it blazes up well if lit with a few dry chips and shroff; + And it’s worthless for much else, what with cuts and stains thereon.” + + + + +SAYING GOOD-BYE +(SONG) + + + WE are always saying + “Good-bye, good-bye!” + In work, in playing, + In gloom, in gaying: + At many a stage + Of pilgrimage + From youth to age + We say, “Good-bye, + Good-bye!” + + We are undiscerning + Which go to sigh, + Which will be yearning + For soon returning; + And which no more + Will dark our door, + Or tread our shore, + But go to die, + To die. + + Some come from roaming + With joy again; + Some, who come homing + By stealth at gloaming, + Had better have stopped + Till death, and dropped + By strange hands propped, + Than come so fain, + So fain. + + So, with this saying, + “Good-bye, good-bye,” + We speed their waying + Without betraying + Our grief, our fear + No more to hear + From them, close, clear, + Again: “Good-bye, + Good-bye!” + + + + +ON THE TUNE CALLED THE OLD-HUNDRED-AND-FOURTH + + + WE never sang together + Ravenscroft’s terse old tune + On Sundays or on weekdays, + In sharp or summer weather, + At night-time or at noon. + + Why did we never sing it, + Why never so incline + On Sundays or on weekdays, + Even when soft wafts would wing it + From your far floor to mine? + + Shall we that tune, then, never + Stand voicing side by side + On Sundays or on weekdays? . . . + Or shall we, when for ever + In Sheol we abide, + + Sing it in desolation, + As we might long have done + On Sundays or on weekdays + With love and exultation + Before our sands had run? + + + + +THE OPPORTUNITY +(FOR H. P.) + + + FORTY springs back, I recall, + We met at this phase of the Maytime: + We might have clung close through all, + But we parted when died that daytime. + + We parted with smallest regret; + Perhaps should have cared but slightly, + Just then, if we never had met: + Strange, strange that we lived so lightly! + + Had we mused a little space + At that critical date in the Maytime, + One life had been ours, one place, + Perhaps, till our long cold daytime. + + —This is a bitter thing + For thee, O man: what ails it? + The tide of chance may bring + Its offer; but nought avails it! + + + + +EVELYN G. OF CHRISTMINSTER + + + I CAN see the towers + In mind quite clear + Not many hours’ + Faring from here; + But how up and go, + And briskly bear + Thither, and know + That are not there? + + Though the birds sing small, + And apple and pear + On your trees by the wall + Are ripe and rare, + Though none excel them, + I have no care + To taste them or smell them + And you not there. + + Though the College stones + Are smit with the sun, + And the graduates and Dons + Who held you as one + Of brightest brow + Still think as they did, + Why haunt with them now + Your candle is hid? + + Towards the river + A pealing swells: + They cost me a quiver— + Those prayerful bells! + How go to God, + Who can reprove + With so heavy a rod + As your swift remove! + + The chorded keys + Wait all in a row, + And the bellows wheeze + As long ago. + And the psalter lingers, + And organist’s chair; + But where are your fingers + That once wagged there? + + Shall I then seek + That desert place + This or next week, + And those tracks trace + That fill me with cark + And cloy; nowhere + Being movement or mark + Of you now there! + + + + +THE RIFT +(SONG: _Minor Mode_) + + + ’TWAS just at gnat and cobweb-time, + When yellow begins to show in the leaf, + That your old gamut changed its chime + From those true tones—of span so brief!— + That met my beats of joy, of grief, + As rhyme meets rhyme. + + So sank I from my high sublime! + We faced but chancewise after that, + And never I knew or guessed my crime. . . + Yes; ’twas the date—or nigh thereat— + Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat + And cobweb-time. + + + + +VOICES FROM THINGS GROWING IN A CHURCHYARD + + + THESE flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd, + Sir or Madam, + A little girl here sepultured. + Once I flit-fluttered like a bird + Above the grass, as now I wave + In daisy shapes above my grave, + All day cheerily, + All night eerily! + + —I am one Bachelor Bowring, “Gent,” + Sir or Madam; + In shingled oak my bones were pent; + Hence more than a hundred years I spent + In my feat of change from a coffin-thrall + To a dancer in green as leaves on a wall. + All day cheerily, + All night eerily! + + —I, these berries of juice and gloss, + Sir or Madam, + Am clean forgotten as Thomas Voss; + Thin-urned, I have burrowed away from the moss + That covers my sod, and have entered this yew, + And turned to clusters ruddy of view, + All day cheerily, + All night eerily! + + —The Lady Gertrude, proud, high-bred, + Sir or Madam, + Am I—this laurel that shades your head; + Into its veins I have stilly sped, + And made them of me; and my leaves now shine, + As did my satins superfine, + All day cheerily, + All night eerily! + + —I, who as innocent withwind climb, + Sir or Madam. + Am one Eve Greensleeves, in olden time + Kissed by men from many a clime, + Beneath sun, stars, in blaze, in breeze, + As now by glowworms and by bees, + All day cheerily, + All night eerily! {128} + + —I’m old Squire Audeley Grey, who grew, + Sir or Madam, + Aweary of life, and in scorn withdrew; + Till anon I clambered up anew + As ivy-green, when my ache was stayed, + And in that attire I have longtime gayed + All day cheerily, + All night eerily! + + —And so they breathe, these masks, to each + Sir or Madam + Who lingers there, and their lively speech + Affords an interpreter much to teach, + As their murmurous accents seem to come + Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum, + All day cheerily, + All night eerily! + + + + +ON THE WAY + + + THE trees fret fitfully and twist, + Shutters rattle and carpets heave, + Slime is the dust of yestereve, + And in the streaming mist + Fishes might seem to fin a passage if they list. + + But to his feet, + Drawing nigh and nigher + A hidden seat, + The fog is sweet + And the wind a lyre. + + A vacant sameness grays the sky, + A moisture gathers on each knop + Of the bramble, rounding to a drop, + That greets the goer-by + With the cold listless lustre of a dead man’s eye. + + But to her sight, + Drawing nigh and nigher + Its deep delight, + The fog is bright + And the wind a lyre. + + + + +“SHE DID NOT TURN” + + + SHE did not turn, + But passed foot-faint with averted head + In her gown of green, by the bobbing fern, + Though I leaned over the gate that led + From where we waited with table spread; + But she did not turn: + Why was she near there if love had fled? + + She did not turn, + Though the gate was whence I had often sped + In the mists of morning to meet her, and learn + Her heart, when its moving moods I read + As a book—she mine, as she sometimes said; + But she did not turn, + And passed foot-faint with averted head. + + + + +GROWTH IN MAY + + + I ENTER a daisy-and-buttercup land, + And thence thread a jungle of grass: + Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand + Above the lush stems as I pass. + + Hedges peer over, and try to be seen, + And seem to reveal a dim sense + That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green + They make a mean show as a fence. + + Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats, + That range not greatly above + The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats, + And _her_ gown, as she waits for her Love. + +NEAR CHARD. + + + + +THE CHILDREN AND SIR NAMELESS + + + Sir Nameless, once of Athelhall, declared: + “These wretched children romping in my park + Trample the herbage till the soil is bared, + And yap and yell from early morn till dark! + Go keep them harnessed to their set routines: + Thank God I’ve none to hasten my decay; + For green remembrance there are better means + Than offspring, who but wish their sires away.” + + Sir Nameless of that mansion said anon: + “To be perpetuate for my mightiness + Sculpture must image me when I am gone.” + —He forthwith summoned carvers there express + To shape a figure stretching seven-odd feet + (For he was tall) in alabaster stone, + With shield, and crest, and casque, and word complete: + When done a statelier work was never known. + + Three hundred years hied; Church-restorers came, + And, no one of his lineage being traced, + They thought an effigy so large in frame + Best fitted for the floor. There it was placed, + Under the seats for schoolchildren. And they + Kicked out his name, and hobnailed off his nose; + And, as they yawn through sermon-time, they say, + “Who was this old stone man beneath our toes?” + + + + +AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY + + + THESE summer landscapes—clump, and copse, and croft— + Woodland and meadowland—here hung aloft, + Gay with limp grass and leafery new and soft, + + Seem caught from the immediate season’s yield + I saw last noonday shining over the field, + By rapid snatch, while still are uncongealed + + The saps that in their live originals climb; + Yester’s quick greenage here set forth in mime + Just as it stands, now, at our breathing-time. + + But these young foils so fresh upon each tree, + Soft verdures spread in sprouting novelty, + Are not this summer’s, though they feign to be. + + Last year their May to Michaelmas term was run, + Last autumn browned and buried every one, + And no more know they sight of any sun. + + + + +HER TEMPLE + + + DEAR, think not that they will forget you: + —If craftsmanly art should be mine + I will build up a temple, and set you + Therein as its shrine. + + They may say: “Why a woman such honour?” + —Be told, “O, so sweet was her fame, + That a man heaped this splendour upon her; + None now knows his name.” + + + + +A TWO-YEARS’ IDYLL + + + YES; such it was; + Just those two seasons unsought, + Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways; + Moving, as straws, + Hearts quick as ours in those days; + Going like wind, too, and rated as nought + Save as the prelude to plays + Soon to come—larger, life-fraught: + Yes; such it was. + + “Nought” it was called, + Even by ourselves—that which springs + Out of the years for all flesh, first or last, + Commonplace, scrawled + Dully on days that go past. + Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings + Even in hours overcast: + Aye, though this best thing of things, + “Nought” it was called! + + What seems it now? + Lost: such beginning was all; + Nothing came after: romance straight forsook + Quickly somehow + Life when we sped from our nook, + Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall . . . + —A preface without any book, + A trumpet uplipped, but no call; + That seems it now. + + + + +BY HENSTRIDGE CROSS AT THE YEAR’S END + + +(From this centuries-old cross-road the highway leads east to London, +north to Bristol and Bath, west to Exeter and the Land’s End, and south +to the Channel coast.) + + WHY go the east road now? . . . + That way a youth went on a morrow + After mirth, and he brought back sorrow + Painted upon his brow + Why go the east road now? + + Why go the north road now? + Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen, + Once edging fiefs of my forefolk yeomen, + Fallows fat to the plough: + Why go the north road now? + + Why go the west road now? + Thence to us came she, bosom-burning, + Welcome with joyousness returning . . . + —She sleeps under the bough: + Why go the west road now? + + Why go the south road now? + That way marched they some are forgetting, + Stark to the moon left, past regretting + Loves who have falsed their vow . . . + Why go the south road now? + + Why go any road now? + White stands the handpost for brisk on-bearers, + “Halt!” is the word for wan-cheeked farers + Musing on Whither, and How . . . + Why go any road now? + + “Yea: we want new feet now” + Answer the stones. “Want chit-chat, laughter: + Plenty of such to go hereafter + By our tracks, we trow! + We are for new feet now.” + +_During the War_. + + + + +PENANCE + + + “WHY do you sit, O pale thin man, + At the end of the room + By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan? + —It is cold as a tomb, + And there’s not a spark within the grate; + And the jingling wires + Are as vain desires + That have lagged too late.” + + “Why do I? Alas, far times ago + A woman lyred here + In the evenfall; one who fain did so + From year to year; + And, in loneliness bending wistfully, + Would wake each note + In sick sad rote, + None to listen or see! + + “I would not join. I would not stay, + But drew away, + Though the winter fire beamed brightly . . . Aye! + I do to-day + What I would not then; and the chill old keys, + Like a skull’s brown teeth + Loose in their sheath, + Freeze my touch; yes, freeze.” + + + + +“I LOOK IN HER FACE” +(SONG: _Minor_) + + + I LOOK in her face and say, + “Sing as you used to sing + About Love’s blossoming”; + But she hints not Yea or Nay. + + “Sing, then, that Love’s a pain, + If, Dear, you think it so, + Whether it be or no;” + But dumb her lips remain. + + I go to a far-off room, + A faint song ghosts my ear; + _Which_ song I cannot hear, + But it seems to come from a tomb. + + + + +AFTER THE WAR + + + LAST Post sounded + Across the mead + To where he loitered + With absent heed. + Five years before + In the evening there + Had flown that call + To him and his Dear. + “You’ll never come back; + Good-bye!” she had said; + “Here I’ll be living, + And my Love dead!” + + Those closing minims + Had been as shafts darting + Through him and her pressed + In that last parting; + They thrilled him not now, + In the selfsame place + With the selfsame sun + On his war-seamed face. + “Lurks a god’s laughter + In this?” he said, + “That I am the living + And she the dead!” + + + + +“IF YOU HAD KNOWN” + + + IF you had known + When listening with her to the far-down moan + Of the white-selvaged and empurpled sea, + And rain came on that did not hinder talk, + Or damp your flashing facile gaiety + In turning home, despite the slow wet walk + By crooked ways, and over stiles of stone; + If you had known + + You would lay roses, + Fifty years thence, on her monument, that discloses + Its graying shape upon the luxuriant green; + Fifty years thence to an hour, by chance led there, + What might have moved you?—yea, had you foreseen + That on the tomb of the selfsame one, gone where + The dawn of every day is as the close is, + You would lay roses! + +1920. + + + + +THE CHAPEL-ORGANIST +(A.D. 185–) + + + I’VE been thinking it through, as I play here to-night, to play never + again, + By the light of that lowering sun peering in at the window-pane, + And over the back-street roofs, throwing shades from the boys of the + chore + In the gallery, right upon me, sitting up to these keys once more . . . + + How I used to hear tongues ask, as I sat here when I was new: + “Who is she playing the organ? She touches it mightily true!” + “She travels from Havenpool Town,” the deacon would softly speak, + “The stipend can hardly cover her fare hither twice in the week.” + (It fell far short of doing, indeed; but I never told, + For I have craved minstrelsy more than lovers, or beauty, or gold.) + + ’Twas so he answered at first, but the story grew different later: + “It cannot go on much longer, from what we hear of her now!” + At the meaning wheeze in the words the inquirer would shift his place + Till he could see round the curtain that screened me from people + below. + “A handsome girl,” he would murmur, upstaring, (and so I am). + “But—too much sex in her build; fine eyes, but eyelids too heavy; + A bosom too full for her age; in her lips too voluptuous a look.” + (It may be. But who put it there? Assuredly it was not I.) + + I went on playing and singing when this I had heard, and more, + Though tears half-blinded me; yes, I remained going on and on, + Just as I used me to chord and to sing at the selfsame time! . . . + For it’s a contralto—my voice is; they’ll hear it again here to-night + In the psalmody notes that I love more than world or than flesh or + than life. + + Well, the deacon, in fact, that day had learnt new tidings about me; + They troubled his mind not a little, for he was a worthy man. + (He trades as a chemist in High Street, and during the week he had + sought + His fellow-deacon, who throve as a book-binder over the way.) + “These are strange rumours,” he said. “We must guard the good name of + the chapel. + If, sooth, she’s of evil report, what else can we do but dismiss her?” + “—But get such another to play here we cannot for double the price!” + It settled the point for the time, and I triumphed awhile in their + strait, + And my much-beloved grand semibreves went living on under my fingers. + + At length in the congregation more head-shakes and murmurs were rife, + And my dismissal was ruled, though I was not warned of it then. + But a day came when they declared it. The news entered me as a sword; + I was broken; so pallid of face that they thought I should faint, they + said. + I rallied. “O, rather than go, I will play you for nothing!” said I. + ’Twas in much desperation I spoke it, for bring me to forfeit I could + not + Those melodies chorded so richly for which I had laboured and lived. + They paused. And for nothing I played at the chapel through Sundays + anon, + Upheld by that art which I loved more than blandishments lavished of + men. + + But it fell that murmurs again from the flock broke the pastor’s + peace. + Some member had seen me at Havenpool, comrading close a sea-captain. + (Yes; I was thereto constrained, lacking means for the fare to and + fro.) + Yet God knows, if aught He knows ever, I loved the Old-Hundredth, + Saint Stephen’s, + Mount Zion, New Sabbath, Miles-Lane, Holy Rest, and Arabia, and Eaton, + Above all embraces of body by wooers who sought me and won! . . . + Next week ’twas declared I was seen coming home with a lover at dawn. + The deacons insisted then, strong; and forgiveness I did not implore. + I saw all was lost for me, quite, but I made a last bid in my throbs. + High love had been beaten by lust; and the senses had conquered the + soul, + But the soul should die game, if I knew it! I turned to my masters + and said: + “I yield, Gentlemen, without parlance. But—let me just hymn you + _once_ more! + It’s a little thing, Sirs, that I ask; and a passion is music with + me!” + They saw that consent would cost nothing, and show as good grace, as + knew I, + Though tremble I did, and feel sick, as I paused thereat, dumb for + their words. + They gloomily nodded assent, saying, “Yes, if you care to. Once more, + And only once more, understand.” To that with a bend I agreed. + —“You’ve a fixed and a far-reaching look,” spoke one who had eyed me + awhile. + “I’ve a fixed and a far-reaching plan, and my look only showed it,” + said I. + + This evening of Sunday is come—the last of my functioning here. + “She plays as if she were possessed!” they exclaim, glancing upward + and round. + “Such harmonies I never dreamt the old instrument capable of!” + Meantime the sun lowers and goes; shades deepen; the lights are turned + up, + And the people voice out the last singing: tune Tallis: the Evening + Hymn. + (I wonder Dissenters sing Ken: it shows them more liberal in spirit + At this little chapel down here than at certain new others I know.) + I sing as I play. Murmurs some one: “No woman’s throat richer than + hers!” + “True: in these parts, at least,” ponder I. “But, my man, you will + hear it no more.” + And I sing with them onward: “The grave dread as little do I as my + bed.” + + I lift up my feet from the pedals; and then, while my eyes are still + wet + From the symphonies born of my fingers, I do that whereon I am set, + And draw from my “full round bosom,” (their words; how can _I_ help + its heave?) + A bottle blue-coloured and fluted—a vinaigrette, they may conceive— + And before the choir measures my meaning, reads aught in my moves to + and fro, + I drink from the phial at a draught, and they think it a pick-me-up; + so. + Then I gather my books as to leave, bend over the keys as to pray. + When they come to me motionless, stooping, quick death will have + whisked me away. + + “Sure, nobody meant her to poison herself in her haste, after all!” + The deacons will say as they carry me down and the night shadows fall, + “Though the charges were true,” they will add. “It’s a case red as + scarlet withal!” + I have never once minced it. Lived chaste I have not. Heaven knows + it above! . . . + But past all the heavings of passion—it’s music has been my life-love! . . . + That tune did go well—this last playing! . . . I reckon they’ll bury + me here . . . + Not a soul from the seaport my birthplace—will come, or bestow me . . . + a tear. + + + + +FETCHING HER + + + AN hour before the dawn, + My friend, + You lit your waiting bedside-lamp, + Your breakfast-fire anon, + And outing into the dark and damp + You saddled, and set on. + + Thuswise, before the day, + My friend, + You sought her on her surfy shore, + To fetch her thence away + Unto your own new-builded door + For a staunch lifelong stay. + + You said: “It seems to be, + My friend, + That I were bringing to my place + The pure brine breeze, the sea, + The mews—all her old sky and space, + In bringing her with me!” + + —But time is prompt to expugn, + My friend, + Such magic-minted conjurings: + The brought breeze fainted soon, + And then the sense of seamews’ wings, + And the shore’s sibilant tune. + + So, it had been more due, + My friend, + Perhaps, had you not pulled this flower + From the craggy nook it knew, + And set it in an alien bower; + But left it where it grew! + + + + +“COULD I BUT WILL” +(SONG: _Verses_ 1, 3, _key major_; _verse_ 2, _key minor_) + + + COULD I but will, + Will to my bent, + I’d have afar ones near me still, + And music of rare ravishment, + In strains that move the toes and heels! + And when the sweethearts sat for rest + The unbetrothed should foot with zest + Ecstatic reels. + + Could I be head, + Head-god, “Come, now, + Dear girl,” I’d say, “whose flame is fled, + Who liest with linen-banded brow, + Stirred but by shakes from Earth’s deep core—” + I’d say to her: “Unshroud and meet + That Love who kissed and called thee Sweet!— + Yea, come once more!” + + Even half-god power + In spinning dooms + Had I, this frozen scene should flower, + And sand-swept plains and Arctic glooms + Should green them gay with waving leaves, + Mid which old friends and I would walk + With weightless feet and magic talk + Uncounted eves. + + + + +SHE REVISITS ALONE THE CHURCH OF HER MARRIAGE + + + I HAVE come to the church and chancel, + Where all’s the same! + —Brighter and larger in my dreams + Truly it shaped than now, meseems, + Is its substantial frame. + But, anyhow, I made my vow, + Whether for praise or blame, + Here in this church and chancel + Where all’s the same. + + Where touched the check-floored chancel + My knees and his? + The step looks shyly at the sun, + And says, “’Twas here the thing was done, + For bale or else for bliss!” + Of all those there I least was ware + Would it be that or this + When touched the check-floored chancel + My knees and his! + + Here in this fateful chancel + Where all’s the same, + I thought the culminant crest of life + Was reached when I went forth the wife + I was not when I came. + Each commonplace one of my race, + Some say, has such an aim— + To go from a fateful chancel + As not the same. + + Here, through this hoary chancel + Where all’s the same, + A thrill, a gaiety even, ranged + That morning when it seemed I changed + My nature with my name. + Though now not fair, though gray my hair, + He loved me, past proclaim, + Here in this hoary chancel, + Where all’s the same. + + + + +AT THE ENTERING OF THE NEW YEAR + + +I +(OLD STYLE) + + + OUR songs went up and out the chimney, + And roused the home-gone husbandmen; + Our allemands, our heys, poussettings, + Our hands-across and back again, + Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements + On to the white highway, + Where nighted farers paused and muttered, + “Keep it up well, do they!” + + The contrabasso’s measured booming + Sped at each bar to the parish bounds, + To shepherds at their midnight lambings, + To stealthy poachers on their rounds; + And everybody caught full duly + The notes of our delight, + As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise + Hailed by our sanguine sight. + + + +II +(NEW STYLE) + + + WE stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb, + As if to give ear to the muffled peal, + Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim; + But our truest heed is to words that steal + From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray, + And seems, so far as our sense can see, + To feature bereaved Humanity, + As it sighs to the imminent year its say:— + + “O stay without, O stay without, + Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired; + Though stars irradiate thee about + Thy entrance here is undesired. + Open the gate not, mystic one; + Must we avow what we would close confine? + _With thee_, _good friend_, _we would have converse none_, + Albeit the fault may not be thine.” + +_December_ 31. _During the War_. + + + + +THEY WOULD NOT COME + + + I TRAVELLED to where in her lifetime + She’d knelt at morning prayer, + To call her up as if there; + But she paid no heed to my suing, + As though her old haunt could win not + A thought from her spirit, or care. + + I went where my friend had lectioned + The prophets in high declaim, + That my soul’s ear the same + Full tones should catch as aforetime; + But silenced by gear of the Present + Was the voice that once there came! + + Where the ocean had sprayed our banquet + I stood, to recall it as then: + The same eluding again! + No vision. Shows contingent + Affrighted it further from me + Even than from my home-den. + + When I found them no responders, + But fugitives prone to flee + From where they had used to be, + It vouched I had been led hither + As by night wisps in bogland, + And bruised the heart of me! + + + + +AFTER A ROMANTIC DAY + + + THE railway bore him through + An earthen cutting out from a city: + There was no scope for view, + Though the frail light shed by a slim young moon + Fell like a friendly tune. + + Fell like a liquid ditty, + And the blank lack of any charm + Of landscape did no harm. + The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough, + And moon-lit, was enough + For poetry of place: its weathered face + Formed a convenient sheet whereon + The visions of his mind were drawn. + + + + +THE TWO WIVES +(SMOKER’S CLUB-STORY) + + + I WAITED at home all the while they were boating together— + My wife and my near neighbour’s wife: + Till there entered a woman I loved more than life, + And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather, + With a sense that some mischief was rife. + + Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies + Was drowned—which of them was unknown: + And I marvelled—my friend’s wife?—or was it my own + Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is? + —We learnt it was _his_ had so gone. + + Then I cried in unrest: “He is free! But no good is releasing + To him as it would be to me!” + “—But it is,” said the woman I loved, quietly. + “How?” I asked her. “—Because he has long loved me too without + ceasing, + And it’s just the same thing, don’t you see.” + + + + +“I KNEW A LADY” +(CLUB SONG) + + + I KNEW a lady when the days + Grew long, and evenings goldened; + But I was not emboldened + By her prompt eyes and winning ways. + + And when old Winter nipt the haws, + “Another’s wife I’ll be, + And then you’ll care for me,” + She said, “and think how sweet I was!” + + And soon she shone as another’s wife: + As such I often met her, + And sighed, “How I regret her! + My folly cuts me like a knife!” + + And then, to-day, her husband came, + And moaned, “Why did you flout her? + Well could I do without her! + For both our burdens you are to blame!” + + + + +A HOUSE WITH A HISTORY + + + THERE is a house in a city street + Some past ones made their own; + Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet, + And their babblings beat + From ceiling to white hearth-stone. + + And who are peopling its parlours now? + Who talk across its floor? + Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow, + Who read not how + Its prime had passed before + + Their raw equipments, scenes, and says + Afflicted its memoried face, + That had seen every larger phase + Of human ways + Before these filled the place. + + To them that house’s tale is theirs, + No former voices call + Aloud therein. Its aspect bears + Their joys and cares + Alone, from wall to wall. + + + + +A PROCESSION OF DEAD DAYS + + + I SEE the ghost of a perished day; + I know his face, and the feel of his dawn: + ’Twas he who took me far away + To a spot strange and gray: + Look at me, Day, and then pass on, + But come again: yes, come anon! + + Enters another into view; + His features are not cold or white, + But rosy as a vein seen through: + Too soon he smiles adieu. + Adieu, O ghost-day of delight; + But come and grace my dying sight. + + Enters the day that brought the kiss: + He brought it in his foggy hand + To where the mumbling river is, + And the high clematis; + It lent new colour to the land, + And all the boy within me manned. + + Ah, this one. Yes, I know his name, + He is the day that wrought a shine + Even on a precinct common and tame, + As ’twere of purposed aim. + He shows him as a rainbow sign + Of promise made to me and mine. + + The next stands forth in his morning clothes, + And yet, despite their misty blue, + They mark no sombre custom-growths + That joyous living loathes, + But a meteor act, that left in its queue + A train of sparks my lifetime through. + + I almost tremble at his nod— + This next in train—who looks at me + As I were slave, and he were god + Wielding an iron rod. + I close my eyes; yet still is he + In front there, looking mastery. + + In the similitude of a nurse + The phantom of the next one comes: + I did not know what better or worse + Chancings might bless or curse + When his original glossed the thrums + Of ivy, bringing that which numbs. + + Yes; trees were turning in their sleep + Upon their windy pillows of gray + When he stole in. Silent his creep + On the grassed eastern steep . . . + I shall not soon forget that day, + And what his third hour took away! + + + + +HE FOLLOWS HIMSELF + + + IN a heavy time I dogged myself + Along a louring way, + Till my leading self to my following self + Said: “Why do you hang on me + So harassingly?” + + “I have watched you, Heart of mine,” I cried, + “So often going astray + And leaving me, that I have pursued, + Feeling such truancy + Ought not to be.” + + He said no more, and I dogged him on + From noon to the dun of day + By prowling paths, until anew + He begged: “Please turn and flee!— + What do you see?” + + “Methinks I see a man,” said I, + “Dimming his hours to gray. + I will not leave him while I know + Part of myself is he + Who dreams such dree!” + + “I go to my old friend’s house,” he urged, + “So do not watch me, pray!” + “Well, I will leave you in peace,” said I, + “Though of this poignancy + You should fight free: + + “Your friend, O other me, is dead; + You know not what you say.” + —“That do I! And at his green-grassed door + By night’s bright galaxy + I bend a knee.” + + —The yew-plumes moved like mockers’ beards, + Though only boughs were they, + And I seemed to go; yet still was there, + And am, and there haunt we + Thus bootlessly. + + + + +THE SINGING WOMAN + + + THERE was a singing woman + Came riding across the mead + At the time of the mild May weather, + Tameless, tireless; + This song she sung: “I am fair, I am young!” + And many turned to heed. + + And the same singing woman + Sat crooning in her need + At the time of the winter weather; + Friendless, fireless, + She sang this song: “Life, thou’rt too long!” + And there was none to heed. + + + + +WITHOUT, NOT WITHIN HER + + + IT was what you bore with you, Woman, + Not inly were, + That throned you from all else human, + However fair! + + It was that strange freshness you carried + Into a soul + Whereon no thought of yours tarried + Two moments at all. + + And out from his spirit flew death, + And bale, and ban, + Like the corn-chaff under the breath + Of the winnowing-fan. + + + + +“O I WON’T LEAD A HOMELY LIFE” +(_To an old air_) + + + “O I won’t lead a homely life + As father’s Jack and mother’s Jill, + But I will be a fiddler’s wife, + With music mine at will! + Just a little tune, + Another one soon, + As I merrily fling my fill!” + + And she became a fiddler’s Dear, + And merry all day she strove to be; + And he played and played afar and near, + But never at home played he + Any little tune + Or late or soon; + And sunk and sad was she! + + + + +IN THE SMALL HOURS + + + I LAY in my bed and fiddled + With a dreamland viol and bow, + And the tunes flew back to my fingers + I had melodied years ago. + It was two or three in the morning + When I fancy-fiddled so + Long reels and country-dances, + And hornpipes swift and slow. + + And soon anon came crossing + The chamber in the gray + Figures of jigging fieldfolk— + Saviours of corn and hay— + To the air of “Haste to the Wedding,” + As after a wedding-day; + Yea, up and down the middle + In windless whirls went they! + + There danced the bride and bridegroom, + And couples in a train, + Gay partners time and travail + Had longwhiles stilled amain! . . . + It seemed a thing for weeping + To find, at slumber’s wane + And morning’s sly increeping, + That Now, not Then, held reign. + + + + +THE LITTLE OLD TABLE + + + CREAK, little wood thing, creak, + When I touch you with elbow or knee; + That is the way you speak + Of one who gave you to me! + + You, little table, she brought— + Brought me with her own hand, + As she looked at me with a thought + That I did not understand. + + —Whoever owns it anon, + And hears it, will never know + What a history hangs upon + This creak from long ago. + + + + +VAGG HOLLOW + + +Vagg Hollow is a marshy spot on the old Roman Road near Ilchester, where +“things” are seen. Merchandise was formerly fetched inland from the +canal-boats at Load-Bridge by waggons this way. + + “WHAT do you see in Vagg Hollow, + Little boy, when you go + In the morning at five on your lonely drive?” + “—I see men’s souls, who follow + Till we’ve passed where the road lies low, + When they vanish at our creaking! + + “They are like white faces speaking + Beside and behind the waggon— + One just as father’s was when here. + The waggoner drinks from his flagon, + (Or he’d flinch when the Hollow is near) + But he does not give me any. + + “Sometimes the faces are many; + But I walk along by the horses, + He asleep on the straw as we jog; + And I hear the loud water-courses, + And the drops from the trees in the fog, + And watch till the day is breaking. + + “And the wind out by Tintinhull waking; + I hear in it father’s call + As he called when I saw him dying, + And he sat by the fire last Fall, + And mother stood by sighing; + But I’m not afraid at all!” + + + + +THE DREAM IS—WHICH? + + + I AM laughing by the brook with her, + Splashed in its tumbling stir; + And then it is a blankness looms + As if I walked not there, + Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms, + And treading a lonely stair. + + With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes + We sit where none espies; + Till a harsh change comes edging in + As no such scene were there, + But winter, and I were bent and thin, + And cinder-gray my hair. + + We dance in heys around the hall, + Weightless as thistleball; + And then a curtain drops between, + As if I danced not there, + But wandered through a mounded green + To find her, I knew where. + +_March_ 1913. + + + + +THE COUNTRY WEDDING +(A FIDDLER’S STORY) + + + LITTLE fogs were gathered in every hollow, + But the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather + As we marched with our fiddles over the heather + —How it comes back!—to their wedding that day. + + Our getting there brought our neighbours and all, O! + Till, two and two, the couples stood ready. + And her father said: “Souls, for God’s sake, be steady!” + And we strung up our fiddles, and sounded out “A.” + + The groomsman he stared, and said, “You must follow!” + But we’d gone to fiddle in front of the party, + (Our feelings as friends being true and hearty) + And fiddle in front we did—all the way. + + Yes, from their door by Mill-tail-Shallow, + And up Styles-Lane, and by Front-Street houses, + Where stood maids, bachelors, and spouses, + Who cheered the songs that we knew how to play. + + I bowed the treble before her father, + Michael the tenor in front of the lady, + The bass-viol Reub—and right well played he!— + The serpent Jim; ay, to church and back. + + I thought the bridegroom was flurried rather, + As we kept up the tune outside the chancel, + While they were swearing things none can cancel + Inside the walls to our drumstick’s whack. + + “Too gay!” she pleaded. “Clouds may gather, + And sorrow come.” But she gave in, laughing, + And by supper-time when we’d got to the quaffing + Her fears were forgot, and her smiles weren’t slack. + + A grand wedding ’twas! And what would follow + We never thought. Or that we should have buried her + On the same day with the man that married her, + A day like the first, half hazy, half clear. + + Yes: little fogs were in every hollow, + Though the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather, + When we went to play ’em to church together, + And carried ’em there in an after year. + + + + +FIRST OR LAST +(SONG) + + + IF grief come early + Joy comes late, + If joy come early + Grief will wait; + Aye, my dear and tender! + + Wise ones joy them early + While the cheeks are red, + Banish grief till surly + Time has dulled their dread. + + And joy being ours + Ere youth has flown, + The later hours + May find us gone; + Aye, my dear and tender! + + + + +LONELY DAYS + + + LONELY her fate was, + Environed from sight + In the house where the gate was + Past finding at night. + None there to share it, + No one to tell: + Long she’d to bear it, + And bore it well. + + Elsewhere just so she + Spent many a day; + Wishing to go she + Continued to stay. + And people without + Basked warm in the air, + But none sought her out, + Or knew she was there. + Even birthdays were passed so, + Sunny and shady: + Years did it last so + For this sad lady. + Never declaring it, + No one to tell, + Still she kept bearing it— + Bore it well. + + The days grew chillier, + And then she went + To a city, familiar + In years forespent, + When she walked gaily + Far to and fro, + But now, moving frailly, + Could nowhere go. + The cheerful colour + Of houses she’d known + Had died to a duller + And dingier tone. + Streets were now noisy + Where once had rolled + A few quiet coaches, + Or citizens strolled. + Through the party-wall + Of the memoried spot + They danced at a ball + Who recalled her not. + Tramlines lay crossing + Once gravelled slopes, + Metal rods clanked, + And electric ropes. + So she endured it all, + Thin, thinner wrought, + Until time cured it all, + And she knew nought. + +Versified from a Diary. + + + + +“WHAT DID IT MEAN?” + + + What did it mean that noontide, when + You bade me pluck the flower + Within the other woman’s bower, + Whom I knew nought of then? + + I thought the flower blushed deeplier—aye, + And as I drew its stalk to me + It seemed to breathe: “I am, I see, + Made use of in a human play.” + + And while I plucked, upstarted sheer + As phantom from the pane thereby + A corpse-like countenance, with eye + That iced me by its baleful peer— + Silent, as from a bier . . . + + When I came back your face had changed, + It was no face for me; + O did it speak of hearts estranged, + And deadly rivalry + + In times before + I darked your door, + To seise me of + Mere second love, + Which still the haunting first deranged? + + + + +AT THE DINNER-TABLE + + + I SAT at dinner in my prime, + And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass, + And started as if I had seen a crime, + And prayed the ghastly show might pass. + + Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight, + Grinning back to me as my own; + I well-nigh fainted with affright + At finding me a haggard crone. + + My husband laughed. He had slily set + A warping mirror there, in whim + To startle me. My eyes grew wet; + I spoke not all the eve to him. + + He was sorry, he said, for what he had done, + And took away the distorting glass, + Uncovering the accustomed one; + And so it ended? No, alas, + + Fifty years later, when he died, + I sat me in the selfsame chair, + Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed, + I saw the sideboard facing there; + + And from its mirror looked the lean + Thing I’d become, each wrinkle and score + The image of me that I had seen + In jest there fifty years before. + + + + +THE MARBLE TABLET + + + THERE it stands, though alas, what a little of her + Shows in its cold white look! + Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of her + Voice like the purl of a brook; + Not her thoughts, that you read like a book. + + It may stand for her once in November + When first she breathed, witless of all; + Or in heavy years she would remember + When circumstance held her in thrall; + Or at last, when she answered her call! + + Nothing more. The still marble, date-graven, + Gives all that it can, tersely lined; + That one has at length found the haven + Which every one other will find; + With silence on what shone behind. + +ST. JULIOT: _September_ 8, 1916. + + + + +THE MASTER AND THE LEAVES + + + I + + WE are budding, Master, budding, + We of your favourite tree; + March drought and April flooding + Arouse us merrily, + Our stemlets newly studding; + And yet you do not see! + + II + + We are fully woven for summer + In stuff of limpest green, + The twitterer and the hummer + Here rest of nights, unseen, + While like a long-roll drummer + The nightjar thrills the treen. + + III + + We are turning yellow, Master, + And next we are turning red, + And faster then and faster + Shall seek our rooty bed, + All wasted in disaster! + But you lift not your head. + + IV + + —“I mark your early going, + And that you’ll soon be clay, + I have seen your summer showing + As in my youthful day; + But why I seem unknowing + Is too sunk in to say!” + +1917. + + + + +LAST WORDS TO A DUMB FRIEND + + + PET was never mourned as you, + Purrer of the spotless hue, + Plumy tail, and wistful gaze + While you humoured our queer ways, + Or outshrilled your morning call + Up the stairs and through the hall— + Foot suspended in its fall— + While, expectant, you would stand + Arched, to meet the stroking hand; + Till your way you chose to wend + Yonder, to your tragic end. + + Never another pet for me! + Let your place all vacant be; + Better blankness day by day + Than companion torn away. + Better bid his memory fade, + Better blot each mark he made, + Selfishly escape distress + By contrived forgetfulness, + Than preserve his prints to make + Every morn and eve an ache. + + From the chair whereon he sat + Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat; + Rake his little pathways out + Mid the bushes roundabout; + Smooth away his talons’ mark + From the claw-worn pine-tree bark, + Where he climbed as dusk embrowned, + Waiting us who loitered round. + + Strange it is this speechless thing, + Subject to our mastering, + Subject for his life and food + To our gift, and time, and mood; + Timid pensioner of us Powers, + His existence ruled by ours, + Should—by crossing at a breath + Into safe and shielded death, + By the merely taking hence + Of his insignificance— + Loom as largened to the sense, + Shape as part, above man’s will, + Of the Imperturbable. + + As a prisoner, flight debarred, + Exercising in a yard, + Still retain I, troubled, shaken, + Mean estate, by him forsaken; + And this home, which scarcely took + Impress from his little look, + By his faring to the Dim + Grows all eloquent of him. + + Housemate, I can think you still + Bounding to the window-sill, + Over which I vaguely see + Your small mound beneath the tree, + Showing in the autumn shade + That you moulder where you played. + +_October_ 2, 1904. + + + + +A DRIZZLING EASTER MORNING + + + AND he is risen? Well, be it so . . . + And still the pensive lands complain, + And dead men wait as long ago, + As if, much doubting, they would know + What they are ransomed from, before + They pass again their sheltering door. + + I stand amid them in the rain, + While blusters vex the yew and vane; + And on the road the weary wain + Plods forward, laden heavily; + And toilers with their aches are fain + For endless rest—though risen is he. + + + + +ON ONE WHO LIVED AND DIED WHERE HE WAS BORN + + + WHEN a night in November + Blew forth its bleared airs + An infant descended + His birth-chamber stairs + For the very first time, + At the still, midnight chime; + All unapprehended + His mission, his aim.— + Thus, first, one November, + An infant descended + The stairs. + + On a night in November + Of weariful cares, + A frail aged figure + Ascended those stairs + For the very last time: + All gone his life’s prime, + All vanished his vigour, + And fine, forceful frame: + Thus, last, one November + Ascended that figure + Upstairs. + + On those nights in November— + Apart eighty years— + The babe and the bent one + Who traversed those stairs + From the early first time + To the last feeble climb— + That fresh and that spent one— + Were even the same: + Yea, who passed in November + As infant, as bent one, + Those stairs. + + Wise child of November! + From birth to blanched hairs + Descending, ascending, + Wealth-wantless, those stairs; + Who saw quick in time + As a vain pantomime + Life’s tending, its ending, + The worth of its fame. + Wise child of November, + Descending, ascending + Those stairs! + + + + +THE SECOND NIGHT +(BALLAD) + + + I MISSED one night, but the next I went; + It was gusty above, and clear; + She was there, with the look of one ill-content, + And said: “Do not come near!” + + —“I am sorry last night to have failed you here, + And now I have travelled all day; + And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier, + So brief must be my stay.” + + —“O man of mystery, why not say + Out plain to me all you mean? + Why you missed last night, and must now away + Is—another has come between!” + + —“O woman so mocking in mood and mien, + So be it!” I replied: + “And if I am due at a differing scene + Before the dark has died, + + “’Tis that, unresting, to wander wide + Has ever been my plight, + And at least I have met you at Cremyll side + If not last eve, to-night.” + + —“You get small rest—that read I quite; + And so do I, maybe; + Though there’s a rest hid safe from sight + Elsewhere awaiting me!” + + A mad star crossed the sky to the sea, + Wasting in sparks as it streamed, + And when I looked to where stood she + She had changed, much changed, it seemed: + + The sparks of the star in her pupils gleamed, + She was vague as a vapour now, + And ere of its meaning I had dreamed + She’d vanished—I knew not how. + + I stood on, long; each cliff-top bough, + Like a cynic nodding there, + Moved up and down, though no man’s brow + But mine met the wayward air. + + Still stood I, wholly unaware + Of what had come to pass, + Or had brought the secret of my new Fair + To my old Love, alas! + + I went down then by crag and grass + To the boat wherein I had come. + Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lass + Of Edgcumbe, is sharp for some! + + “Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numb + On the shore here, whither she’d sped + To meet her lover last night in the glum, + And he came not, ’tis said. + + “And she leapt down, heart-hit. Pity she’s dead: + So much for the faithful-bent!” . . . + I looked, and again a star overhead + Shot through the firmament. + + + + +SHE WHO SAW NOT + + + “DID you see something within the house + That made me call you before the red sunsetting? + Something that all this common scene endows + With a richened impress there can be no forgetting?” + + “—I have found nothing to see therein, + O Sage, that should have made you urge me to enter, + Nothing to fire the soul, or the sense to win: + I rate you as a rare misrepresenter!” + + “—Go anew, Lady,—in by the right . . . + Well: why does your face not shine like the face of Moses?” + “—I found no moving thing there save the light + And shadow flung on the wall by the outside roses.” + + “—Go yet once more, pray. Look on a seat.” + “—I go . . . O Sage, it’s only a man that sits there + With eyes on the sun. Mute,—average head to feet.” + “—No more?”—“No more. Just one the place befits there, + + “As the rays reach in through the open door, + And he looks at his hand, and the sun glows through his fingers, + While he’s thinking thoughts whose tenour is no more + To me than the swaying rose-tree shade that lingers.” + + No more. And years drew on and on + Till no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding; + And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone, + As a vision what she had missed when the real beholding. + + + + +THE OLD WORKMAN + + + “WHY are you so bent down before your time, + Old mason? Many have not left their prime + So far behind at your age, and can still + Stand full upright at will.” + + He pointed to the mansion-front hard by, + And to the stones of the quoin against the sky; + “Those upper blocks,” he said, “that there you see, + It was that ruined me.” + + There stood in the air up to the parapet + Crowning the corner height, the stones as set + By him—ashlar whereon the gales might drum + For centuries to come. + + “I carried them up,” he said, “by a ladder there; + The last was as big a load as I could bear; + But on I heaved; and something in my back + Moved, as ’twere with a crack. + + “So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain; + And those who live there, walled from wind and rain + By freestone that I lifted, do not know + That my life’s ache came so. + + “They don’t know me, or even know my name, + But good I think it, somehow, all the same + To have kept ’em safe from harm, and right and tight, + Though it has broke me quite. + + “Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud, + Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud, + And to stand storms for ages, beating round + When I lie underground.” + + + + +THE SAILOR’S MOTHER + + + “O WHENCE do you come, + Figure in the night-fog that chills me numb?” + + “I come to you across from my house up there, + And I don’t mind the brine-mist clinging to me + That blows from the quay, + For I heard him in my chamber, and thought you unaware.” + + “But what did you hear, + That brought you blindly knocking in this middle-watch so drear?” + + “My sailor son’s voice as ’twere calling at your door, + And I don’t mind my bare feet clammy on the stones, + And the blight to my bones, + For he only knows of _this_ house I lived in before.” + + “Nobody’s nigh, + Woman like a skeleton, with socket-sunk eye.” + + “Ah—nobody’s nigh! And my life is drearisome, + And this is the old home we loved in many a day + Before he went away; + And the salt fog mops me. And nobody’s come!” + +From “To Please his Wife.” + + + + +OUTSIDE THE CASEMENT +(A REMINISCENCE OF THE WAR) + + + WE sat in the room + And praised her whom + We saw in the portico-shade outside: + She could not hear + What was said of her, + But smiled, for its purport we did not hide. + + Then in was brought + That message, fraught + With evil fortune for her out there, + Whom we loved that day + More than any could say, + And would fain have fenced from a waft of care. + + And the question pressed + Like lead on each breast, + Should we cloak the tidings, or call her and tell? + It was too intense + A choice for our sense, + As we pondered and watched her we loved so well. + + Yea, spirit failed us + At what assailed us; + How long, while seeing what soon must come, + Should we counterfeit + No knowledge of it, + And stay the stroke that would blanch and numb? + + And thus, before + For evermore + Joy left her, we practised to beguile + Her innocence when + She now and again + Looked in, and smiled us another smile. + + + + +THE PASSER-BY +(L. H. RECALLS HER ROMANCE) + + + He used to pass, well-trimmed and brushed, + My window every day, + And when I smiled on him he blushed, + That youth, quite as a girl might; aye, + In the shyest way. + + Thus often did he pass hereby, + That youth of bounding gait, + Until the one who blushed was I, + And he became, as here I sate, + My joy, my fate. + + And now he passes by no more, + That youth I loved too true! + I grieve should he, as here of yore, + Pass elsewhere, seated in his view, + Some maiden new! + + If such should be, alas for her! + He’ll make her feel him dear, + Become her daily comforter, + Then tire him of her beauteous gear, + And disappear! + + + + +“I WAS THE MIDMOST” + + + I WAS the midmost of my world + When first I frisked me free, + For though within its circuit gleamed + But a small company, + And I was immature, they seemed + To bend their looks on me. + + She was the midmost of my world + When I went further forth, + And hence it was that, whether I turned + To south, east, west, or north, + Beams of an all-day Polestar burned + From that new axe of earth. + + Where now is midmost in my world? + I trace it not at all: + No midmost shows it here, or there, + When wistful voices call + “We are fain! We are fain!” from everywhere + On Earth’s bewildering ball! + + + + +A SOUND IN THE NIGHT +(WOODSFORD CASTLE: 17–) + + + “WHAT do I catch upon the night-wind, husband?— + What is it sounds in this house so eerily? + It seems to be a woman’s voice: each little while I hear it, + And it much troubles me!” + + “’Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes: + Letting fancies worry thee!—sure ’tis a foolish thing, + When we were on’y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide, + And now it’s but evening.” + + “Yet seems it still a woman’s voice outside the castle, husband, + And ’tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place. + Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure + Ere ever thou sawest my face?” + + “It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise, + If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes, + Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatches + Like a creature that sighs and mopes.” + + “Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman, + And it saddens me much that so piteous a sound + On this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrow + Should so ghost-like wander round!” + + “To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then, + And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door, + And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey, + And throw the light over the moor.” + + He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber, + And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight, + And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern, + And go out into the night. + + She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning, + And his voice as he unclothed him: “’Twas nothing, as I said, + But the nor’-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath’art the river, + And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head.” + + “Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here, + Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow, + The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river, + Why is it silent now? + + “And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking, + And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet, + And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me, + And thy breath as if hard to get?” + + He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing, + Then started up and walked about the room resentfully: + “O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded, + Why castedst thou thy spells on me? + + “There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry: + She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore, + As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e’en the cry you heard, wife, + But she will cry no more! + + “And now I can’t abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on’t, + This farmstead once a castle: I’ll get me straight away!” + He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened, + And went ere the dawn turned day. + + They found a woman’s body at a spot called Rocky Shallow, + Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground, + And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly known her, + But he could not be found. + + And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle, + And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone, + And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying, + And sometimes an infant’s moan. + + + + +ON A DISCOVERED CURL OF HAIR + + + WHEN your soft welcomings were said, + This curl was waving on your head, + And when we walked where breakers dinned + It sported in the sun and wind, + And when I had won your words of grace + It brushed and clung about my face. + Then, to abate the misery + Of absentness, you gave it me. + + Where are its fellows now? Ah, they + For brightest brown have donned a gray, + And gone into a caverned ark, + Ever unopened, always dark! + + Yet this one curl, untouched of time, + Beams with live brown as in its prime, + So that it seems I even could now + Restore it to the living brow + By bearing down the western road + Till I had reached your old abode. + +_February_ 1913. + + + + +AN OLD LIKENESS +(RECALLING R. T.) + + + WHO would have thought + That, not having missed her + Talks, tears, laughter + In absence, or sought + To recall for so long + Her gamut of song; + Or ever to waft her + Signal of aught + That she, fancy-fanned, + Would well understand, + I should have kissed her + Picture when scanned + Yawning years after! + + Yet, seeing her poor + Dim-outlined form + Chancewise at night-time, + Some old allure + Came on me, warm, + Fresh, pleadful, pure, + As in that bright time + At a far season + Of love and unreason, + And took me by storm + Here in this blight-time! + + And thus it arose + That, yawning years after + Our early flows + Of wit and laughter, + And framing of rhymes + At idle times, + At sight of her painting, + Though she lies cold + In churchyard mould, + I took its feinting + As real, and kissed it, + As if I had wist it + Herself of old. + + + + +HER APOTHEOSIS +“Secretum meum mihi” +(FADED WOMAN’S SONG) + + + THERE was a spell of leisure, + No record vouches when; + With honours, praises, pleasure + To womankind from men. + + But no such lures bewitched me, + No hand was stretched to raise, + No gracious gifts enriched me, + No voices sang my praise. + + Yet an iris at that season + Amid the accustomed slight + From denseness, dull unreason, + Ringed me with living light. + + + + +“SACRED TO THE MEMORY” +(MARY H.) + + + THAT “Sacred to the Memory” + Is clearly carven there I own, + And all may think that on the stone + The words have been inscribed by me + In bare conventionality. + + They know not and will never know + That my full script is not confined + To that stone space, but stands deep lined + Upon the landscape high and low + Wherein she made such worthy show. + + + + +TO A WELL-NAMED DWELLING + + + GLAD old house of lichened stonework, + What I owed you in my lone work, + Noon and night! + Whensoever faint or ailing, + Letting go my grasp and failing, + You lent light. + + How by that fair title came you? + Did some forward eye so name you + Knowing that one, + Sauntering down his century blindly, + Would remark your sound, so kindly, + And be won? + + Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight, + Bask in April, May, and June-light, + Zephyr-fanned; + Let your chambers show no sorrow, + Blanching day, or stuporing morrow, + While they stand. + + + + +THE WHIPPER-IN + + + MY father was the whipper-in,— + Is still—if I’m not misled? + And now I see, where the hedge is thin, + A little spot of red; + Surely it is my father + Going to the kennel-shed! + + “I cursed and fought my father—aye, + And sailed to a foreign land; + And feeling sorry, I’m back, to stay, + Please God, as his helping hand. + Surely it is my father + Near where the kennels stand?” + + “—True. Whipper-in he used to be + For twenty years or more; + And you did go away to sea + As youths have done before. + Yes, oddly enough that red there + Is the very coat he wore. + + “But he—he’s dead; was thrown somehow, + And gave his back a crick, + And though that is his coat, ’tis now + The scarecrow of a rick; + You’ll see when you get nearer— + ’Tis spread out on a stick. + + “You see, when all had settled down + Your mother’s things were sold, + And she went back to her own town, + And the coat, ate out with mould, + Is now used by the farmer + For scaring, as ’tis old.” + + + + +A MILITARY APPOINTMENT +(SCHERZANDO) + + + “SO back you have come from the town, Nan, dear! + And have you seen him there, or near— + That soldier of mine— + Who long since promised to meet me here?” + + “—O yes, Nell: from the town I come, + And have seen your lover on sick-leave home— + That soldier of yours— + Who swore to meet you, or Strike-him-dumb; + + “But has kept himself of late away; + Yet,—in short, he’s coming, I heard him say— + That lover of yours— + To this very spot on this very day.” + + “—Then I’ll wait, I’ll wait, through wet or dry! + I’ll give him a goblet brimming high— + This lover of mine— + And not of complaint one word or sigh!” + + “—Nell, him I have chanced so much to see, + That—he has grown the lover of me!— + That lover of yours— + And it’s here our meeting is planned to be.” + + + + +THE MILESTONE BY THE RABBIT-BURROW +(ON YELL’HAM HILL) + + + IN my loamy nook + As I dig my hole + I observe men look + At a stone, and sigh + As they pass it by + To some far goal. + + Something it says + To their glancing eyes + That must distress + The frail and lame, + And the strong of frame + Gladden or surprise. + + Do signs on its face + Declare how far + Feet have to trace + Before they gain + Some blest champaign + Where no gins are? + + + + +THE LAMENT OF THE LOOKING-GLASS + + + WORDS from the mirror softly pass + To the curtains with a sigh: + “Why should I trouble again to glass + These smileless things hard by, + Since she I pleasured once, alas, + Is now no longer nigh!” + + “I’ve imaged shadows of coursing cloud, + And of the plying limb + On the pensive pine when the air is loud + With its aerial hymn; + But never do they make me proud + To catch them within my rim! + + “I flash back phantoms of the night + That sometimes flit by me, + I echo roses red and white— + The loveliest blooms that be— + But now I never hold to sight + So sweet a flower as she.” + + + + +CROSS-CURRENTS + + + THEY parted—a pallid, trembling I pair, + And rushing down the lane + He left her lonely near me there; + —I asked her of their pain. + + “It is for ever,” at length she said, + “His friends have schemed it so, + That the long-purposed day to wed + Never shall we two know.” + + “In such a cruel case,” said I, + “Love will contrive a course?” + “—Well, no . . . A thing may underlie, + Which robs that of its force; + + “A thing I could not tell him of, + Though all the year I have tried; + This: never could I have given him love, + Even had I been his bride. + + “So, when his kinsfolk stop the way + Point-blank, there could not be + A happening in the world to-day + More opportune for me! + + “Yet hear—no doubt to your surprise— + I am sorry, for his sake, + That I have escaped the sacrifice + I was prepared to make!” + + + + +THE OLD NEIGHBOUR AND THE NEW + + + ’TWAS to greet the new rector I called I here, + But in the arm-chair I see + My old friend, for long years installed here, + Who palely nods to me. + + The new man explains what he’s planning + In a smart and cheerful tone, + And I listen, the while that I’m scanning + The figure behind his own. + + The newcomer urges things on me; + I return a vague smile thereto, + The olden face gazing upon me + Just as it used to do! + + And on leaving I scarcely remember + Which neighbour to-day I have seen, + The one carried out in September, + Or him who but entered yestreen. + + + + +THE CHOSEN + + + “Ατιυά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμενα + + “A WOMAN for whom great gods might strive!” + I said, and kissed her there: + And then I thought of the other five, + And of how charms outwear. + + I thought of the first with her eating eyes, + And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray, + And I thought of the third, experienced, wise, + And I thought of the fourth who sang all day. + + And I thought of the fifth, whom I’d called a jade, + And I thought of them all, tear-fraught; + And that each had shown her a passable maid, + Yet not of the favour sought. + + So I traced these words on the bark of a beech, + Just at the falling of the mast: + “After scanning five; yes, each and each, + I’ve found the woman desired—at last!” + + “—I feel a strange benumbing spell, + As one ill-wished!” said she. + And soon it seemed that something fell + Was starving her love for me. + + “I feel some curse. O, _five_ were there?” + And wanly she swerved, and went away. + I followed sick: night numbed the air, + And dark the mournful moorland lay. + + I cried: “O darling, turn your head!” + But never her face I viewed; + “O turn, O turn!” again I said, + And miserably pursued. + + At length I came to a Christ-cross stone + Which she had passed without discern; + And I knelt upon the leaves there strown, + And prayed aloud that she might turn. + + I rose, and looked; and turn she did; + I cried, “My heart revives!” + “Look more,” she said. I looked as bid; + Her face was all the five’s. + + All the five women, clear come back, + I saw in her—with her made one, + The while she drooped upon the track, + And her frail term seemed well-nigh run. + + She’d half forgot me in her change; + “Who are you? Won’t you say + Who you may be, you man so strange, + Following since yesterday?” + + I took the composite form she was, + And carried her to an arbour small, + Not passion-moved, but even because + In one I could atone to all. + + And there she lies, and there I tend, + Till my life’s threads unwind, + A various womanhood in blend— + Not one, but all combined. + + + + +THE INSCRIPTION +(A TALE) + + + SIR JOHN was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she, + Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun, + Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually, + As his widowed one. + + And to pleasure her in her sorrow, and fix his name + As a memory Time’s fierce frost should never kill, + She caused to be richly chased a brass to his fame, + Which should link them still; + + For she bonded her name with his own on the brazen page, + As if dead and interred there with him, and cold, and numb, + (Omitting the day of her dying and year of her age + Till her end should come;) + + And implored good people to pray “Of their Charytie + For these twaine Soules,”—yea, she who did last remain + Forgoing Heaven’s bliss if ever with spouse should she + Again have lain. + + Even there, as it first was set, you may see it now, + Writ in quaint Church text, with the date of her death left bare, + In the aged Estminster aisle, where the folk yet bow + Themselves in prayer. + + Thereafter some years slid, till there came a day + When it slowly began to be marked of the standers-by + That she would regard the brass, and would bend away + With a drooping sigh. + + Now the lady was fair as any the eye might scan + Through a summer day of roving—a type at whose lip + Despite her maturing seasons, no meet man + Would be loth to sip. + + And her heart was stirred with a lightning love to its pith + For a newcomer who, while less in years, was one + Full eager and able to make her his own forthwith, + Restrained of none. + + But she answered Nay, death-white; and still as he urged + She adversely spake, overmuch as she loved the while, + Till he pressed for why, and she led with the face of one scourged + To the neighbouring aisle, + + And showed him the words, ever gleaming upon her pew, + Memorizing her there as the knight’s eternal wife, + Or falsing such, debarred inheritance due + Of celestial life. + + He blenched, and reproached her that one yet undeceased + Should bury her future—that future which none can spell; + And she wept, and purposed anon to inquire of the priest + If the price were hell + + Of her wedding in face of the record. Her lover agreed, + And they parted before the brass with a shudderful kiss, + For it seemed to flash out on their impulse of passionate need, + “Mock ye not this!” + + Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one, + Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were dead + Her name and adjuration; but since it was done + Nought could be said + + Save that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul, + And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good, + If she wished anon to reach the coveted goal + Of beatitude. + + To erase from the consecrate text her prayer as there prayed + Would aver that, since earth’s joys most drew her, past doubt, + Friends’ prayers for her joy above by Jesu’s aid + Could be done without. + + Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibe + That would rise at her back in the nave when she should pass + As another’s avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribe + On the changeless brass. + + And so for months she replied to her Love: “No, no”; + While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more, + Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to show + Less warmth than before. + + And, after an absence, wrote words absolute: + That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear; + And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit, + He should wed elsewhere. + + Thence on, at unwonted times through the lengthening days + She was seen in the church—at dawn, or when the sun dipt + And the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze, + Before the script. + + She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowers + As summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed, + When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours, + She was missed from her bed. + + “The church!” they whispered with qualms; “where often she sits.” + They found her: facing the brass there, else seeing none, + But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits; + And she knew them not one. + + And so she remained, in her handmaids’ charge; late, soon, + Tracing words in the air with her finger, as seen that night— + Those incised on the brass—till at length unwatched one noon, + She vanished from sight. + + And, as talebearers tell, thence on to her last-taken breath + Was unseen, save as wraith that in front of the brass made moan; + So that ever the way of her life and the time of her death + Remained unknown. + + And hence, as indited above, you may read even now + The quaint church-text, with the date of her death left bare, + In the aged Estminster aisle, where folk yet bow + Themselves in prayer. + +_October_ 30, 1907. + + + + +THE MARBLE-STREETED TOWN + + + I REACH the marble-streeted town, + Whose “Sound” outbreathes its air + Of sharp sea-salts; + I see the movement up and down + As when she was there. + Ships of all countries come and go, + The bandsmen boom in the sun + A throbbing waltz; + The schoolgirls laugh along the Hoe + As when she was one. + + I move away as the music rolls: + The place seems not to mind + That she—of old + The brightest of its native souls— + Left it behind! + Over this green aforedays she + On light treads went and came, + Yea, times untold; + Yet none here knows her history— + Has heard her name. + +PLYMOUTH (1914?). + + + + +A WOMAN DRIVING + + + HOW she held up the horses’ heads, + Firm-lipped, with steady rein, + Down that grim steep the coastguard treads, + Till all was safe again! + + With form erect and keen contour + She passed against the sea, + And, dipping into the chine’s obscure, + Was seen no more by me. + + To others she appeared anew + At times of dusky light, + But always, so they told, withdrew + From close and curious sight. + + Some said her silent wheels would roll + Rutless on softest loam, + And even that her steeds’ footfall + Sank not upon the foam. + + Where drives she now? It may be where + No mortal horses are, + But in a chariot of the air + Towards some radiant star. + + + + +A WOMAN’S TRUST + + + IF he should live a thousand years + He’d find it not again + That scorn of him by men + Could less disturb a woman’s trust + In him as a steadfast star which must + Rise scathless from the nether spheres: + If he should live a thousand years + He’d find it not again. + + She waited like a little child, + Unchilled by damps of doubt, + While from her eyes looked out + A confidence sublime as Spring’s + When stressed by Winter’s loiterings. + Thus, howsoever the wicked wiled, + She waited like a little child + Unchilled by damps of doubt. + + Through cruel years and crueller + Thus she believed in him + And his aurore, so dim; + That, after fenweeds, flowers would blow; + And above all things did she show + Her faith in his good faith with her; + Through cruel years and crueller + Thus she believed in him! + + + + +BEST TIMES + + + WE went a day’s excursion to the stream, + Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam, + And I did not know + That life would show, + However it might flower, no finer glow. + + I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road + That wound towards the wicket of your abode, + And I did not think + That life would shrink + To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink. + + Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night, + And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light, + And I full forgot + That life might not + Again be touching that ecstatic height. + + And that calm eve when you walked up the stair, + After a gaiety prolonged and rare, + No thought soever + That you might never + Walk down again, struck me as I stood there. + +Rewritten from an old draft. + + + + +THE CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE + + + WHILE he was here in breath and bone, + To speak to and to see, + Would I had known—more clearly known— + What that man did for me + + When the wind scraped a minor lay, + And the spent west from white + To gray turned tiredly, and from gray + To broadest bands of night! + + But I saw not, and he saw not + What shining life-tides flowed + To me-ward from his casual jot + Of service on that road. + + He would have said: “’Twas nothing new; + We all do what we can; + ’Twas only what one man would do + For any other man.” + + Now that I gauge his goodliness + He’s slipped from human eyes; + And when he passed there’s none can guess, + Or point out where he lies. + + + + +INTRA SEPULCHRUM + + + WHAT curious things we said, + What curious things we did + Up there in the world we walked till dead + Our kith and kin amid! + + How we played at love, + And its wildness, weakness, woe; + Yes, played thereat far more than enough + As it turned out, I trow! + + Played at believing in gods + And observing the ordinances, + I for your sake in impossible codes + Right ready to acquiesce. + + Thinking our lives unique, + Quite quainter than usual kinds, + We held that we could not abide a week + The tether of typic minds. + + —Yet people who day by day + Pass by and look at us + From over the wall in a casual way + Are of this unconscious. + + And feel, if anything, + That none can be buried here + Removed from commonest fashioning, + Or lending note to a bier: + + No twain who in heart-heaves proved + Themselves at all adept, + Who more than many laughed and loved, + Who more than many wept, + + Or were as sprites or elves + Into blind matter hurled, + Or ever could have been to themselves + The centre of the world. + + + + +THE WHITEWASHED WALL + + + WHY does she turn in that shy soft way + Whenever she stirs the fire, + And kiss to the chimney-corner wall, + As if entranced to admire + Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight + Of a rose in richest green? + I have known her long, but this raptured rite + I never before have seen. + + —Well, once when her son cast his shadow there, + A friend took a pencil and drew him + Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines + Had a lifelike semblance to him. + And there long stayed his familiar look; + But one day, ere she knew, + The whitener came to cleanse the nook, + And covered the face from view. + + “Yes,” he said: “My brush goes on with a rush, + And the draught is buried under; + When you have to whiten old cots and brighten, + What else can you do, I wonder?” + But she knows he’s there. And when she yearns + For him, deep in the labouring night, + She sees him as close at hand, and turns + To him under his sheet of white. + + + + +JUST THE SAME + + + I SAT. It all was past; + Hope never would hail again; + Fair days had ceased at a blast, + The world was a darkened den. + + The beauty and dream were gone, + And the halo in which I had hied + So gaily gallantly on + Had suffered blot and died! + + I went forth, heedless whither, + In a cloud too black for name: + —People frisked hither and thither; + The world was just the same. + + + + +THE LAST TIME + + + THE kiss had been given and taken, + And gathered to many past: + It never could reawaken; + But you heard none say: “It’s the last!” + + The clock showed the hour and the minute, + But you did not turn and look: + You read no finis in it, + As at closing of a book. + + But you read it all too rightly + When, at a time anon, + A figure lay stretched out whitely, + And you stood looking thereon. + + + + +THE SEVEN TIMES + + + THE dark was thick. A boy he seemed at that time + Who trotted by me with uncertain air; + “I’ll tell my tale,” he murmured, “for I fancy + A friend goes there? . . . ” + + Then thus he told. “I reached—’twas for the first time— + A dwelling. Life was clogged in me with care; + I thought not I should meet an eyesome maiden, + But found one there. + + “I entered on the precincts for the second time— + ’Twas an adventure fit and fresh and fair— + I slackened in my footsteps at the porchway, + And found her there. + + “I rose and travelled thither for the third time, + The hope-hues growing gayer and yet gayer + As I hastened round the boscage of the outskirts, + And found her there. + + “I journeyed to the place again the fourth time + (The best and rarest visit of the rare, + As it seemed to me, engrossed about these goings), + And found her there. + + “When I bent me to my pilgrimage the fifth time + (Soft-thinking as I journeyed I would dare + A certain word at token of good auspice), + I found her there. + + “That landscape did I traverse for the sixth time, + And dreamed on what we purposed to prepare; + I reached a tryst before my journey’s end came, + And found her there. + + “I went again—long after—aye, the seventh time; + The look of things was sinister and bare + As I caught no customed signal, heard no voice call, + Nor found her there. + + “And now I gad the globe—day, night, and any time, + To light upon her hiding unaware, + And, maybe, I shall nigh me to some nymph-niche, + And find her there!” + + “But how,” said I, “has your so little lifetime + Given roomage for such loving, loss, despair? + A boy so young!” Forthwith I turned my lantern + Upon him there. + + His head was white. His small form, fine aforetime, + Was shrunken with old age and battering wear, + An eighty-years long plodder saw I pacing + Beside me there. + + + + +THE SUN’S LAST LOOK ON THE COUNTRY GIRL +(M. H.) + + + THE sun threw down a radiant spot + On the face in the winding-sheet— + The face it had lit when a babe’s in its cot; + And the sun knew not, and the face knew not + That soon they would no more meet. + + Now that the grave has shut its door, + And lets not in one ray, + Do they wonder that they meet no more— + That face and its beaming visitor— + That met so many a day? + +_December_ 1915. + + + + +IN A LONDON FLAT + + + I + + “YOU look like a widower,” she said + Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed, + As he sat by the fire in the outer room, + Reading late on a night of gloom, + And a cab-hack’s wheeze, and the clap of its feet + In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street, + Were all that came to them now and then . . . + “You really do!” she quizzed again. + + II + + And the Spirits behind the curtains heard, + And also laughed, amused at her word, + And at her light-hearted view of him. + “Let’s get him made so—just for a whim!” + Said the Phantom Ironic. “’Twould serve her right + If we coaxed the Will to do it some night.” + “O pray not!” pleaded the younger one, + The Sprite of the Pities. “She said it in fun!” + + III + + But so it befell, whatever the cause, + That what she had called him he next year was; + And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere, + He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there, + And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores, + At the empty bed through the folding-doors + As he remembered her words; and wept + That she had forgotten them where she slept. + + + + +DRAWING DETAILS IN AN OLD CHURCH + + + I HEAR the bell-rope sawing, + And the oil-less axle grind, + As I sit alone here drawing + What some Gothic brain designed; + And I catch the toll that follows + From the lagging bell, + Ere it spreads to hills and hollows + Where the parish people dwell. + + I ask not whom it tolls for, + Incurious who he be; + So, some morrow, when those knolls for + One unguessed, sound out for me, + A stranger, loitering under + In nave or choir, + May think, too, “Whose, I wonder?” + But care not to inquire. + + + + +RAKE-HELL MUSES + + + YES; since she knows not need, + Nor walks in blindness, + I may without unkindness + A true thing tell: + + Which would be truth, indeed, + Though worse in speaking, + Were her poor footsteps seeking + A pauper’s cell. + + I judge, then, better far + She now have sorrow, + Than gladness that to-morrow + Might know its knell.— + + It may be men there are + Could make of union + A lifelong sweet communion— + A passioned spell; + + But _I_, to save her name + And bring salvation + By altar-affirmation + And bridal bell; + + I, by whose rash unshame + These tears come to her:— + My faith would more undo her + Than my farewell! + + Chained to me, year by year + My moody madness + Would wither her old gladness + Like famine fell. + + She’ll take the ill that’s near, + And bear the blaming. + ’Twill pass. Full soon her shaming + They’ll cease to yell. + + Our unborn, first her moan, + Will grow her guerdon, + Until from blot and burden + A joyance swell; + + In that therein she’ll own + My good part wholly, + My evil staining solely + My own vile vell. + + Of the disgrace, may be + “He shunned to share it, + Being false,” they’ll say. I’ll bear it; + Time will dispel + + The calumny, and prove + This much about me, + That she lives best without me + Who would live well. + + That, this once, not self-love + But good intention + Pleads that against convention + We two rebel. + + For, is one moonlight dance, + One midnight passion, + A rock whereon to fashion + Life’s citadel? + + Prove they their power to prance + Life’s miles together + From upper slope to nether + Who trip an ell? + + —Years hence, or now apace, + May tongues be calling + News of my further falling + Sinward pell-mell: + + Then this great good will grace + Our lives’ division, + She’s saved from more misprision + Though I plumb hell. + +189– + + + + +THE COLOUR + + +(_The following lines are partly made up_, _partly remembered from a +Wessex folk-rhyme_) + + “WHAT shall I bring you? + Please will white do + Best for your wearing + The long day through?” + “—White is for weddings, + Weddings, weddings, + White is for weddings, + And that won’t do.” + + “What shall I bring you? + Please will red do + Best for your wearing + The long day through?” + “ —Red is for soldiers, + Soldiers, soldiers, + Red is for soldiers, + And that won’t do.” + + “What shall I bring you? + Please will blue do + Best for your wearing + The long day through?” + “—Blue is for sailors, + Sailors, sailors, + Blue is for sailors, + And that won’t do. + + “What shall I bring you? + Please will green do + Best for your wearing + The long day through?” + “—Green is for mayings, + Mayings, mayings, + Green is for mayings, + And that won’t do.” + + “What shall I bring you + Then? Will black do + Best for your wearing + The long day through?” + “—Black is for mourning, + Mourning, mourning, + Black is for mourning, + And black will do.” + + + + +MURMURS IN THE GLOOM +(NOCTURNE) + + + I WAYFARED at the nadir of the sun + Where populations meet, though seen of none; + And millions seemed to sigh around + As though their haunts were nigh around, + And unknown throngs to cry around + Of things late done. + + “O Seers, who well might high ensample show” + (Came throbbing past in plainsong small and slow), + “Leaders who lead us aimlessly, + Teachers who train us shamelessly, + Why let ye smoulder flamelessly + The truths ye trow? + + “Ye scribes, that urge the old medicament, + Whose fusty vials have long dried impotent, + Why prop ye meretricious things, + Denounce the sane as vicious things, + And call outworn factitious things + Expedient? + + “O Dynasties that sway and shake us so, + Why rank your magnanimities so low + That grace can smooth no waters yet, + But breathing threats and slaughters yet + Ye grieve Earth’s sons and daughters yet + As long ago? + + “Live there no heedful ones of searching sight, + Whose accents might be oracles that smite + To hinder those who frowardly + Conduct us, and untowardly; + To lead the nations vawardly + From gloom to light?” + +_September_ 22, 1899. + + + + +EPITAPH + + + I NEVER cared for Life: Life cared for me, + And hence I owed it some fidelity. + It now says, “Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind + Sufficient toll for an unwilling mind, + And I dismiss thee—not without regard + That thou didst ask no ill-advised reward, + Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find.” + + + + +AN ANCIENT TO ANCIENTS + + + WHERE once we danced, where once sang, + Gentlemen, + The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang, + And cracks creep; worms have fed upon + The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then + Than now, with harps and tabrets gone, + Gentlemen! + + Where once we rowed, where once we sailed, + Gentlemen, + And damsels took the tiller, veiled + Against too strong a stare (God wot + Their fancy, then or anywhen!) + Upon that shore we are clean forgot, + Gentlemen! + + We have lost somewhat, afar and near, + Gentlemen, + The thinning of our ranks each year + Affords a hint we are nigh undone, + That we shall not be ever again + The marked of many, loved of one, + Gentlemen. + + In dance the polka hit our wish, + Gentlemen, + The paced quadrille, the spry schottische, + “Sir Roger.”—And in opera spheres + The “Girl” (the famed “Bohemian”), + And “Trovatore,” held the ears, + Gentlemen. + + This season’s paintings do not please, + Gentlemen, + Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise; + Throbbing romance has waned and wanned; + No wizard wields the witching pen + Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, and Sand, + Gentlemen. + + The bower we shrined to Tennyson, + Gentlemen, + Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon + Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust, + The spider is sole denizen; + Even she who read those rhymes is dust, + Gentlemen! + + We who met sunrise sanguine-souled, + Gentlemen, + Are wearing weary. We are old; + These younger press; we feel our rout + Is imminent to Aïdes’ den,— + That evening’s shades are stretching out, + Gentlemen! + + And yet, though ours be failing frames, + Gentlemen, + So were some others’ history names, + Who trode their track light-limbed and fast + As these youth, and not alien + From enterprise, to their long last, + Gentlemen. + + Sophocles, Plato, Socrates, + Gentlemen, + Pythagoras, Thucydides, + Herodotus, and Homer,—yea, + Clement, Augustin, Origen, + Burnt brightlier towards their setting-day, + Gentlemen. + + And ye, red-lipped and smooth-browed; list, + Gentlemen; + Much is there waits you we have missed; + Much lore we leave you worth the knowing, + Much, much has lain outside our ken: + Nay, rush not: time serves: we are going, + Gentlemen. + + + + +AFTER READING PSALMS +XXXIX., XL., ETC. + + + SIMPLE was I and was young; + Kept no gallant tryst, I; + Even from good words held my tongue, + _Quoniam Tu fecisti_! + + Through my youth I stirred me not, + High adventure missed I, + Left the shining shrines unsought; + Yet—_me deduxisti_! + + At my start by Helicon + Love-lore little wist I, + Worldly less; but footed on; + Why? _Me suscepisti_! + + When I failed at fervid rhymes, + “Shall,” I said, “persist I?” + “_Dies_” (I would add at times) + “_Meos posuisti_!” + + So I have fared through many suns; + Sadly little grist I + Bring my mill, or any one’s, + _Domine_, _Tu scisti_! + + And at dead of night I call: + “Though to prophets list I, + Which hath understood at all? + Yea: _Quem elegisti_?” + +187– + + + + +SURVIEW +“Cogitavi vias meas” + + + A CRY from the green-grained sticks of the fire + Made me gaze where it seemed to be: + ’Twas my own voice talking therefrom to me + On how I had walked when my sun was higher— + My heart in its arrogancy. + + “_You held not to whatsoever was true_,” + Said my own voice talking to me: + “_Whatsoever was just you were slack to see_; + _Kept not things lovely and pure in view_,” + Said my own voice talking to me. + + “_You slighted her that endureth all_,” + Said my own voice talking to me; + “_Vaunteth not_, _trusteth hopefully_; + _That suffereth long and is kind withal_,” + Said my own voice talking to me. + + “_You taught not that which you set about_,” + Said my own voice talking to me; + “_That the greatest of things is Charity_. . . ” + —And the sticks burnt low, and the fire went out, + And my voice ceased talking to me. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{46} Quadrilles danced early in the nineteenth century. + +{128} It was said her real name was Eve Trevillian or Trevelyan; and +that she was the handsome mother of two or three illegitimate children, +_circa_ 1784–95. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER*** + + +******* This file should be named 4758-0.txt or 4758-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/7/5/4758 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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