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diff --git a/old/ltlr10.txt b/old/ltlr10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..13e7021 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ltlr10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6722 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Late Lyrics and Earlier, by Thomas Hardy +(#25 in our series by Thomas Hardy) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Late Lyrics and Earlier + +Author: Thomas Hardy + +Release Date: December, 2003 [EBook #4758] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on March 12, 2002] +[Most recently updated: March 12, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER *** + + + + +Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk from the 1922 +Macmillan and Co. edition. + + + + +LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER WITH MANY OTHER VERSES + + + + +Contents: + Apology + Weathers + The maid of Keinton Mandeville + Summer Schemes + Epeisodia + Faintheart in a Railway Train + At Moonrise and Onwards + The Garden Seat + Barthelemon at Vauxhall + "I sometimes think" + Jezreel + A Jog-trot Pair + "The Curtains now are Drawn" + "According to the Mighty Working" + "I was not he" + The West-of-Wessex Girl + Welcome Home + Going and Staying + Read by Moonlight + At a house in Hampstead + A Woman's Fancy + Her Song + A Wet August + The Dissemblers + To a Lady Playing and Singing in the Morning + "A man was drawing near to me" + The Strange House + "As 'twere to-night" + The Contretemps + A Gentleman's Epitaph on Himself and a Lady + The Old Gown + A night in November + A Duettist to her Pianoforte + "Where three roads joined" + "And there was a great calm" + Haunting Fingers + The Woman I Met + "If it's ever spring again" + The Two Houses + On Stinsford Hill at Midnight + The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House + The Selfsame Song + The Wanderer + A Wife Comes Back + A Young Man's Exhortation + At Lulworth Cove a Century Back + A Bygone Occasion + Two Serenades + The Wedding Morning + End of the Year 1912 + The Chimes Play "Life's a bumper!" + "I worked no wile to meet you" + At the Railway Station, Upway + Side by Side + Dream of the City Shopwoman + A Maiden's Pledge + The Child and the Sage + Mismet + An Autumn Rain-scene + Meditations on a Holiday + An Experience + The Beauty + The Collector Cleans his Picture + The Wood Fire + Saying Good-bye + On the tune called The Old-hundred-and-fourth + The Opportunity + Evelyn G. Of Christminster + The Rift + Voices from things growing in a Churchyard + On the Way + "She did not turn" + Growth in May + The Children and Sir Nameless + At the Royal Academy + Her Temple + A Two-years' Idyll + By Henstridge Cross at the year's end + Penance + "I look in her face" + After the War + "If you had known" + The Chapel-organist + Fetching Her + "Could I but will" + She revisits alone the church of her marriage + At the Entering of the New Year + They would not come + After a romantic day + The Two Wives + "I knew a lady" + A house with a History + A Procession of Dead Days + He Follows Himself + The Singing Woman + Without, not within her + "O I won't lead a homely life" + In the small hours + The little old table + Vagg Hollow + The dream is--which? + The Country Wedding + First or Last + Lonely Days + "What did it mean?" + At the dinner-table + The marble tablet + The Master and the Leaves + Last words to a dumb friend + A drizzling Easter morning + On one who lived and died where he was born + The Second Night + She who saw not + The old workman + The sailor's mother + Outside the casement + The passer-by + "I was the midmost" + A sound in the night + On a discovered curl of hair + An old likeness + Her Apotheosis + "Sacred to the memory" + To a well-named dwelling + The Whipper-in + A military appointment + The milestone by the rabbit-burrow + The Lament of the Looking-glass + Cross-currents + The old neighbour and the new + The chosen + The inscription + The marble-streeted town + A woman driving + A woman's trust + Best times + The casual acquaintance + Intra Sepulchrum + The whitewashed wall + Just the same + The last time + The seven times + The sun's last look on the country girl + In a London flat + Drawing details in an old church + Rake-hell muses + The Colour + Murmurs in the gloom + Epitaph + An ancient to ancients + After reading psalms xxxix., xl. + Surview + + + +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. + + + +WEATHERS + + + +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! + + + +BARTHELEMON AT VAUXHALL + + + +Francois Hippolite Barthelemon, 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." {1} + +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 aged 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! {2} + +- 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. + +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 + + + +"[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]" + +"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 Aides' 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: + +{1} Quadrilles danced early in the nineteenth century. + +{2} 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 ltlr10.txt or ltlr10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, ltlr11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, ltlr10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* diff --git a/old/ltlr10.zip b/old/ltlr10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..aaa9d0b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ltlr10.zip diff --git a/old/ltlr10h.htm b/old/ltlr10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e2211da --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ltlr10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6791 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>Late Lyrics and Earlier</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Late Lyrics and Earlier, by Thomas Hardy</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Late Lyrics and Earlier, by Thomas Hardy +(#25 in our series by Thomas Hardy) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Late Lyrics and Earlier + +Author: Thomas Hardy + +Release Date: December, 2003 [EBook #4758] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on March 12, 2002] +[Most recently updated: March 12, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the 1922 +Macmillan and Co. edition<br> +</pre> +<p> +<br> +<br> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER WITH MANY OTHER VERSES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Contents:<br> + Apology<br> + Weathers<br> + The maid of Keinton Mandeville<br> + Summer Schemes<br> + Epeisodia<br> + Faintheart in a Railway Train<br> + At Moonrise and Onwards<br> + The Garden Seat<br> + Barthélémon at Vauxhall<br> + “I sometimes think”<br> + Jezreel<br> + A Jog-trot Pair<br> + “The Curtains now are Drawn”<br> + “According to the Mighty Working”<br> + “I was not he”<br> + The West-of-Wessex Girl<br> + Welcome Home<br> + Going and Staying<br> + Read by Moonlight<br> + At a house in Hampstead<br> + A Woman's Fancy<br> + Her Song<br> + A Wet August<br> + The Dissemblers<br> + To a Lady Playing and Singing in the Morning<br> + “A man was drawing near to me”<br> + The Strange House<br> + “As ’twere to-night”<br> + The Contretemps<br> + A Gentleman's Epitaph on Himself and a Lady<br> + The Old Gown<br> + A night in November<br> + A Duettist to her Pianoforte<br> + “Where three roads joined”<br> + “And there was a great calm”<br> + Haunting Fingers<br> + The Woman I Met<br> + “If it's ever spring again”<br> + The Two Houses<br> + On Stinsford Hill at Midnight<br> + The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House<br> + The Selfsame Song<br> + The Wanderer<br> + A Wife Comes Back<br> + A Young Man's Exhortation<br> + At Lulworth Cove a Century Back<br> + A Bygone Occasion<br> + Two Serenades<br> + The Wedding Morning<br> + End of the Year 1912<br> + The Chimes Play “Life’s a bumper!”<br> + “I worked no wile to meet you”<br> + At the Railway Station, Upway<br> + Side by Side<br> + Dream of the City Shopwoman<br> + A Maiden's Pledge<br> + The Child and the Sage<br> + Mismet<br> + An Autumn Rain-scene<br> + Meditations on a Holiday<br> + An Experience<br> + The Beauty<br> + The Collector Cleans his Picture<br> + The Wood Fire<br> + Saying Good-bye<br> + On the tune called The Old-hundred-and-fourth<br> + The Opportunity<br> + Evelyn G. Of Christminster<br> + The Rift<br> + Voices from things growing in a Churchyard<br> + On the Way<br> + “She did not turn”<br> + Growth in May<br> + The Children and Sir Nameless<br> + At the Royal Academy<br> + Her Temple<br> + A Two-years’ Idyll<br> + By Henstridge Cross at the year’s end<br> + Penance<br> + “I look in her face”<br> + After the War<br> + “If you had known”<br> + The Chapel-organist<br> + Fetching Her<br> + “Could I but will”<br> + She revisits alone the church of her marriage<br> + At the Entering of the New Year<br> + They would not come<br> + After a romantic day<br> + The Two Wives<br> + “I knew a lady”<br> + A house with a History<br> + A Procession of Dead Days<br> + He Follows Himself<br> + The Singing Woman<br> + Without, not within her<br> + “O I won’t lead a homely life”<br> + In the small hours<br> + The little old table<br> + Vagg Hollow<br> + The dream is - which?<br> + The Country Wedding<br> + First or Last<br> + Lonely Days<br> + “What did it mean?”<br> + At the dinner-table<br> + The marble tablet<br> + The Master and the Leaves<br> + Last words to a dumb friend<br> + A drizzling Easter morning<br> + On one who lived and died where he was born<br> + The Second Night<br> + She who saw not<br> + The old workman<br> + The sailor’s mother<br> + Outside the casement<br> + The passer-by<br> + “I was the midmost”<br> + A sound in the night<br> + On a discovered curl of hair<br> + An old likeness<br> + Her Apotheosis<br> + “Sacred to the memory”<br> + To a well-named dwelling<br> + The Whipper-in<br> + A military appointment<br> + The milestone by the rabbit-burrow<br> + The Lament of the Looking-glass<br> + Cross-currents<br> + The old neighbour and the new<br> + The chosen<br> + The inscription<br> + The marble-streeted town<br> + A woman driving<br> + A woman’s trust<br> + Best times<br> + The casual acquaintance<br> + Intra Sepulchrum<br> + The whitewashed wall<br> + Just the same<br> + The last time<br> + The seven times<br> + The sun’s last look on the country girl<br> + In a London flat<br> + Drawing details in an old church<br> + Rake-hell muses<br> + The Colour<br> + Murmurs in the gloom<br> + Epitaph<br> + An ancient to ancients<br> + After reading psalms xxxix., xl.<br> + Surview<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +APOLOGY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>Lyrical Ballads, +</i>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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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”:<br> +<br> +<br> +If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst:<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>suggestio falsi </i>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!<br> +<br> +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 <i>ideas </i>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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>e.g., </i>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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>Late Lyrics </i>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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +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 <i>pour</i> <i>mieux sauter, </i>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<br> +<br> +<br> +Where once we held debate, a band<br> +Of youthful friends, on mind and art<br> +<br> +<br> +(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.<br> +<br> +I have to thank the editors and owners of <i>The Times, Fortnightly, +Mercury, </i>and other periodicals in which a few of the poems have +appeared for kindly assenting to their being reclaimed for collected +publication. T. H.<br> +<br> +<i>February </i>1922.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +WEATHERS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +This is the weather the cuckoo likes, <br> + And so do I;<br> +When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,<br> + And nestlings fly:<br> +And the little brown nightingale bills his best,<br> +And they sit outside at “The Travellers’ Rest,”<br> +And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, <br> +And citizens dream of the south and west,<br> + And so do I.<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> +This is the weather the shepherd shuns, <br> + And so do I;<br> +When beeches drip in browns and duns, <br> + And thresh, and ply;<br> +And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,<br> +And meadow rivulets overflow,<br> +And drops on gate-bars hang in a row,<br> +And rooks in families homeward go, <br> + And so do I.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE MAID OF KEINTON MANDEVILLE<br> +(A TRIBUTE TO SIR H. BISHOP)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I hear that maiden still<br> +Of Keinton Mandeville<br> +Singing, in flights that played<br> +As wind-wafts through us all,<br> +Till they made our mood a thrall<br> +To their aery rise and fall,<br> + “Should he upbraid.”<br> +<br> +Rose-necked, in sky-gray gown,<br> +From a stage in Stower Town<br> +Did she sing, and singing smile<br> +As she blent that dexterous voice<br> +With the ditty of her choice,<br> +And banished our annoys <br> + Thereawhile.<br> +<br> +One with such song had power<br> +To wing the heaviest hour<br> +Of him who housed with her.<br> +Who did I never knew<br> +When her spoused estate ondrew,<br> +And her warble flung its woo<br> + In his ear.<br> +<br> +Ah, she’s a beldame now,<br> +Time-trenched on cheek and brow,<br> +Whom I once heard as a maid<br> +From Keinton Mandeville<br> +Of matchless scope and skill<br> +Sing, with smile and swell and trill,<br> + “Should he upbraid!”<br> +<br> +1915 or 1916.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +SUMMER SCHEMES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +When friendly summer calls again,<br> + Calls again<br> +Her little fifers to these hills,<br> +We’ll go - we two - to that arched fane<br> +Of leafage where they prime their bills<br> +Before they start to flood the plain<br> +With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills.<br> + “ - We’ll go,” I sing; but who shall +say<br> + What may not chance before that day!<br> +<br> +And we shall see the waters spring,<br> + Waters spring<br> +From chinks the scrubby copses crown;<br> +And we shall trace their oncreeping<br> +To where the cascade tumbles down<br> +And sends the bobbing growths aswing,<br> +And ferns not quite but almost drown. <br> + “ - We shall,” I say; but who may sing<br> + Of what another moon will bring!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +EPEISODIA<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I<br> +<br> +Past the hills that peep<br> +Where the leaze is smiling,<br> +On and on beguiling<br> +Crisply-cropping sheep;<br> +Under boughs of brushwood<br> +Linking tree and tree<br> +In a shade of lushwood, <br> + There caressed we!<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> +Hemmed by city walls<br> +That outshut the sunlight,<br> +In a foggy dun light,<br> +Where the footstep falls<br> +With a pit-pat wearisome<br> +In its cadency<br> +On the flagstones drearisome <br> + There pressed we!<br> +<br> +III<br> +<br> +Where in wild-winged crowds<br> +Blown birds show their whiteness<br> +Up against the lightness<br> +Of the clammy clouds;<br> +By the random river<br> +Pushing to the sea,<br> +Under bents that quiver <br> + There rest we.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +FAINTHEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +At nine in the morning there passed a church,<br> +At ten there passed me by the sea,<br> +At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,<br> +At two a forest of oak and birch, <br> + And then, on a platform, she:<br> +<br> +A radiant stranger, who saw not me.<br> +I queried, “Get out to her do I dare?”<br> +But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,<br> +And the wheels moved on. O could it but be<br> + That I had alighted there!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AT MOONRISE AND ONWARDS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + I thought you a fire<br> + On Heron-Plantation Hill, <br> +Dealing out mischief the most dire<br> + To the chattels of men of hire <br> + There in their vill.<br> +<br> + But by and by<br> + You turned a yellow-green,<br> +Like a large glow-worm in the sky; <br> + And then I could descry<br> + Your mood and mien.<br> +<br> + How well I know<br> + Your furtive feminine shape! <br> +As if reluctantly you show<br> + You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw<br> + Aside its drape . . .<br> +<br> + - How many a year<br> + Have you kept pace with me,<br> +Wan Woman of the waste up there, <br> + Behind a hedge, or the bare<br> + Bough of a tree!<br> +<br> + No novelty are you,<br> + O Lady of all my time,<br> +Veering unbid into my view<br> + Whether I near Death’s mew, <br> + Or Life’s top cyme!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE GARDEN SEAT<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Its former green is blue and thin,<br> +And its once firm legs sink in and in; <br> +Soon it will break down unaware, <br> +Soon it will break down unaware.<br> +<br> +At night when reddest flowers are black<br> +Those who once sat thereon come back;<br> +Quite a row of them sitting there,<br> +Quite a row of them sitting there.<br> +<br> +With them the seat does not break down,<br> +Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown,<br> +For they are as light as upper air,<br> +They are as light as upper air!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +BARTHÉLÉMON AT VAUXHALL<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +He said: “Awake my soul, and with the sun,” . . .<br> +And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east,<br> +Where was emerging like a full-robed priest<br> +The irradiate globe that vouched the dark as done.<br> +<br> +It lit his face - the weary face of one<br> +Who in the adjacent gardens charged his string,<br> +Nightly, with many a tuneful tender thing, <br> +Till stars were weak, and dancing hours outrun.<br> +<br> +And then were threads of matin music spun<br> +In trial tones as he pursued his way:<br> +“This is a morn,” he murmured, “well begun:<br> +This strain to Ken will count when I am clay!”<br> +<br> +And count it did; till, caught by echoing lyres,<br> +It spread to galleried naves and mighty quires.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“I SOMETIMES THINK”<br> +(FOR F. E. H.)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I sometimes think as here I sit <br> + Of things I have done, <br> +Which seemed in doing not unfit<br> + To face the sun:<br> +Yet never a soul has paused a whit <br> + On such - not one.<br> +<br> +There was that eager strenuous press <br> + To sow good seed;<br> +There was that saving from distress <br> + In the nick of need;<br> +There were those words in the wilderness:<br> + Who cared to heed?<br> +<br> +Yet can this be full true, or no? <br> + For one did care,<br> +And, spiriting into my house, to, fro, <br> + Like wind on the stair,<br> +Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though <br> + I may despair.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +JEZREEL<br> +ON ITS SEIZURE BY THE ENGLISH UNDER ALLENBY, SEPTEMBER 1918<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Did they catch as it were in a Vision at shut of the day - <br> +When their cavalry smote through the ancient Esdraelon Plain,<br> +And they crossed where the Tishbite stood forth in his enemy’s +way - <br> +His gaunt mournful Shade as he bade the King haste off amain?<br> +<br> +On war-men at this end of time - even on Englishmen’s eyes - <br> +Who slay with their arms of new might in that long-ago place,<br> +Flashed he who drove furiously? . . . Ah, did the phantom arise<br> +Of that queen, of that proud Tyrian woman who painted her face?<br> +<br> +Faintly marked they the words “Throw her down!” rise from +Night eerily,<br> +Spectre-spots of the blood of her body on some rotten wall?<br> +And the thin note of pity that came: “A King’s daughter +is she,”<br> +As they passed where she trodden was once by the chargers’ footfall?<br> +<br> +Could such be the hauntings of men of to-day, at the cease<br> +Of pursuit, at the dusk-hour, ere slumber their senses could seal?<br> +Enghosted seers, kings - one on horseback who asked “Is it peace?” +. . .<br> +Yea, strange things and spectral may men have beheld in Jezreel!<br> +<br> +<i>September </i>24, 1918.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A JOG-TROT PAIR<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + Who were the twain that trod this track<br> + So many times together<br> + Hither and back,<br> +In spells of certain and uncertain weather?<br> +<br> + Commonplace in conduct they<br> + Who wandered to and fro here <br> + Day by day:<br> +Two that few dwellers troubled themselves to know here.<br> +<br> + The very gravel-path was prim<br> + That daily they would follow:<br> + Borders trim:<br> +Never a wayward sprout, or hump, or hollow.<br> +<br> + Trite usages in tamest style<br> + Had tended to their plighting. <br> + “It’s +just worth while,<br> +Perhaps,” they had said. “And saves much sad good-nighting.”<br> +<br> + And petty seemed the happenings<br> + That ministered to their joyance:<br> + Simple things,<br> +Onerous to satiate souls, increased their buoyance.<br> +<br> + Who could those common people be, <br> + Of days the plainest, barest?<br> + They were we;<br> +Yes; happier than the cleverest, smartest, rarest.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“THE CURTAINS NOW ARE DRAWN”<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I<br> +<br> + The curtains now are drawn,<br> + And the spindrift strikes the glass,<br> + Blown up the jagged pass<br> + By the surly salt sou’-west,<br> + And the sneering glare is gone<br> + Behind the yonder crest,<br> + While she sings to me:<br> +“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,<br> +And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,<br> +And death may come, but loving is divine.”<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> + I stand here in the rain,<br> + With its smite upon her stone,<br> + And the grasses that have grown<br> + Over women, children, men,<br> + And their texts that “Life is vain”;<br> + But I hear the notes as when<br> + Once she sang to me:<br> +“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,<br> +And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,<br> +And death may come, but loving is divine.”<br> +<br> +1913.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“ACCORDING TO THE MIGHTY WORKING”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I<br> +<br> +When moiling seems at cease<br> + In the vague void of night-time, <br> + And heaven’s wide roomage stormless <br> + Between the dusk and light-time, <br> + And fear at last is formless,<br> +We call the allurement Peace.<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> +Peace, this hid riot, Change,<br> + This revel of quick-cued mumming,<br> + This never truly being,<br> + This evermore becoming,<br> + This spinner’s wheel onfleeing <br> +Outside perception’s range.<br> +<br> +1917.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“I WAS NOT HE”<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + I was not he - the man<br> +Who used to pilgrim to your gate, <br> +At whose smart step you grew elate,<br> + And rosed, as maidens can,<br> + For a brief span.<br> +<br> + It was not I who sang<br> +Beside the keys you touched so true <br> +With note-bent eyes, as if with you<br> + It counted not whence sprang <br> + The voice that rang . . .<br> +<br> + Yet though my destiny<br> +It was to miss your early sweet, <br> +You still, when turned to you my feet,<br> + Had sweet enough to be<br> + A prize for me!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE WEST-OF-WESSEX GIRL<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A very West-of-Wessex girl, <br> + As blithe as blithe could be,<br> + Was once well-known to me,<br> +And she would laud her native town, <br> + And hope and hope that we<br> +Might sometime study up and down <br> + Its charms in company.<br> +<br> +But never I squired my Wessex girl <br> + In jaunts to Hoe or street<br> + When hearts were high in beat, <br> +Nor saw her in the marbled ways<br> + Where market-people meet<br> +That in her bounding early days <br> + Were friendly with her feet.<br> +<br> +Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl, <br> + When midnight hammers slow <br> + From Andrew’s, blow by blow,<br> +As phantom draws me by the hand <br> + To the place - Plymouth Hoe - <br> +Where side by side in life, as planned, <br> + We never were to go!<br> +<br> +Begun in Plymouth, <i>March </i>1913.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +WELCOME HOME<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + To my native place<br> + Bent upon returning,<br> + Bosom all day burning<br> + To be where my race<br> +Well were known, ‘twas much with me <br> +There to dwell in amity.<br> +<br> + Folk had sought their beds,<br> + But I hailed: to view me<br> + Under the moon, out to me<br> + Several pushed their heads, <br> +And to each I told my name, <br> +Plans, and that therefrom I came.<br> +<br> + “Did you? . . . Ah, ‘tis true <br> + I once heard, back a long time, <br> + Here had spent his young time, <br> + Some such man as you . . .<br> +Good-night.” The casement closed again,<br> +And I was left in the frosty lane.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +GOING AND STAYING<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I<br> +<br> +The moving sun-shapes on the spray, <br> +The sparkles where the brook was flowing,<br> +Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,<br> +These were the things we wished would stay;<br> + But they were going.<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> +Seasons of blankness as of snow,<br> +The silent bleed of a world decaying,<br> +The moan of multitudes in woe,<br> +These were the things we wished would go;<br> + But they were staying.<br> +<br> +III<br> +<br> +Then we looked closelier at Time,<br> +And saw his ghostly arms revolving<br> +To sweep off woeful things with prime,<br> +Things sinister with things sublime<br> + Alike dissolving.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +READ BY MOONLIGHT<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I paused to read a letter of hers<br> + By the moon’s cold shine,<br> +Eyeing it in the tenderest way,<br> +And edging it up to catch each ray <br> + Upon her light-penned line.<br> +I did not know what years would flow <br> + Of her life’s span and mine<br> +Ere I read another letter of hers <br> + By the moon’s cold shine!<br> +<br> +I chance now on the last of hers, <br> + By the moon’s cold shine;<br> +It is the one remaining page <br> +Out of the many shallow and sage <br> + Whereto she set her sign.<br> +Who could foresee there were to be <br> + Such letters of pain and pine<br> +Ere I should read this last of hers <br> + By the moon’s cold shine!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AT A HOUSE IN HAMPSTEAD<br> +SOMETIME THE DWELLING OF JOHN KEATS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +O poet, come you haunting here<br> +Where streets have stolen up all around,<br> +And never a nightingale pours one <br> + Full-throated sound?<br> +<br> +Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,<br> +Thought you to find all just the same <br> +Here shining, as in hours of old,<br> + If you but came?<br> +<br> +What will you do in your surprise<br> +At seeing that changes wrought in Rome<br> +Are wrought yet more on the misty slope <br> + One time your home?<br> +<br> +Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?<br> +Swing the doors open noisily?<br> +Show as an umbraged ghost beside <br> + Your ancient tree?<br> +<br> +Or will you, softening, the while <br> +You further and yet further look, <br> +Learn that a laggard few would fain<br> + Preserve your nook? . . .<br> +<br> + - Where the Piazza steps incline, <br> +And catch late light at eventide, <br> +I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,<br> + “’Twas here he died.”<br> +<br> +I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot, <br> +Where day and night a pyramid keeps <br> +Uplifted its white hand, and said,<br> + “’Tis there he sleeps.”<br> +<br> +Pleasanter now it is to hold <br> +That here, where sang he, more of him <br> +Remains than where he, tuneless, cold,<br> + Passed to the dim.<br> +<br> +<i>July </i>1920.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A WOMAN’S FANCY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“Ah Madam; you’ve indeed come back here?<br> + ’Twas sad - your husband’s so swift death,<br> +And you away! You shouldn’t have left him:<br> + It hastened his last breath.”<br> +<br> +“Dame, I am not the lady you think me; <br> + I know not her, nor know her name;<br> +I’ve come to lodge here - a friendless woman;<br> + My health my only aim.”<br> +<br> +She came; she lodged. Wherever she rambled<br> + They held her as no other than<br> +The lady named; and told how her husband <br> + Had died a forsaken man.<br> +<br> +So often did they call her thuswise <br> + Mistakenly, by that man’s name,<br> +So much did they declare about him, <br> + That his past form and fame<br> +<br> +Grew on her, till she pitied his sorrow <br> + As if she truly had been the cause - <br> +Yea, his deserter; and came to wonder<br> + What mould of man he was.<br> +<br> +“Tell me my history!” would exclaim she;<br> + “<i>Our </i>history,” she said mournfully.<br> +“But <i>you </i>know, surely, Ma’am?” they would answer,<br> + Much in perplexity.<br> +<br> +Curious, she crept to his grave one evening, <br> + And a second time in the dusk of the morrow;<br> +Then a third time, with crescent emotion <br> + Like a bereaved wife’s sorrow.<br> +<br> +No gravestone rose by the rounded hillock; <br> + - “I marvel why this is?” she said.<br> +- “He had no kindred, Ma’am, but you near.”<br> + - She set a stone at his head.<br> +<br> +She learnt to dream of him, and told them:<br> + “In slumber often uprises he,<br> +And says: ‘I am joyed that, after all, Dear,<br> + You’ve not deserted me!”<br> +<br> +At length died too this kinless woman, <br> + As he had died she had grown to crave;<br> +And at her dying she besought them <br> + To bury her in his grave.<br> +<br> +Such said, she had paused; until she added:<br> + “Call me by his name on the stone, <br> +As I were, first to last, his dearest,<br> + Not she who left him lone!”<br> +<br> +And this they did. And so it became there <br> + That, by the strength of a tender whim,<br> +The stranger was she who bore his name there,<br> + Not she who wedded him.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +HER SONG<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I sang that song on Sunday, <br> + To witch an idle while,<br> +I sang that song on Monday, <br> + As fittest to beguile;<br> +I sang it as the year outwore, <br> + And the new slid in;<br> +I thought not what might shape before <br> + Another would begin.<br> +<br> +I sang that song in summer, <br> + All unforeknowingly,<br> +To him as a new-comer<br> + From regions strange to me:<br> +I sang it when in afteryears<br> + The shades stretched out,<br> +And paths were faint; and flocking fears <br> + Brought cup-eyed care and doubt.<br> +<br> +Sings he that song on Sundays <br> + In some dim land afar,<br> +On Saturdays, or Mondays,<br> + As when the evening star<br> +Glimpsed in upon his bending face <br> + And my hanging hair,<br> +And time untouched me with a trace <br> + Of soul-smart or despair?<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A WET AUGUST<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Nine drops of water bead the jessamine,<br> +And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:<br> +- ’Twas not so in that August - full-rayed, fine - <br> +When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.<br> +<br> +Or was there then no noted radiancy <br> +Of summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough,<br> +Gilt over by the light I bore in me, <br> +And was the waste world just the same as now?<br> +<br> +It can have been so: yea, that threatenings<br> +Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray,<br> +By the then possibilities in things<br> +Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.<br> +<br> +1920.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE DISSEMBLERS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“It was not you I came to please,<br> + Only myself,” flipped she;<br> +“I like this spot of phantasies,<br> + And thought you far from me.”<br> +But O, he was the secret spell <br> + That led her to the lea!<br> +<br> +“It was not she who shaped my ways, <br> + Or works, or thoughts,” he said.<br> +“I scarcely marked her living days, <br> + Or missed her much when dead.”<br> +But O, his joyance knew its knell <br> + When daisies hid her head!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +TO A LADY PLAYING AND SINGING IN THE MORNING<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + Joyful lady, sing! <br> +And I will lurk here listening, <br> +Though nought be done, and nought begun, <br> +And work-hours swift are scurrying.<br> +<br> + Sing, O lady, still! <br> +Aye, I will wait each note you trill, <br> +Though duties due that press to do <br> +This whole day long I unfulfil.<br> +<br> + “ - It is an evening tune;<br> +One not designed to waste the noon,”<br> +You say. I know: time bids me go - <br> +For daytide passes too, too soon!<br> +<br> + But let indulgence be,<br> +This once, to my rash ecstasy:<br> +When sounds nowhere that carolled air<br> +My idled morn may comfort me!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“A MAN WAS DRAWING NEAR TO ME”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +On that gray night of mournful drone, <br> +A part from aught to hear, to see, <br> +I dreamt not that from shires unknown<br> + In gloom, alone,<br> + By Halworthy,<br> +A man was drawing near to me.<br> +<br> +I’d no concern at anything, <br> +No sense of coming pull-heart play; <br> +Yet, under the silent outspreading<br> + Of even’s wing<br> + Where Otterham lay,<br> +A man was riding up my way.<br> +<br> +I thought of nobody - not of one, <br> +But only of trifles - legends, ghosts - <br> +Though, on the moorland dim and dun<br> + That travellers shun<br> + About these coasts,<br> +The man had passed Tresparret Posts.<br> +<br> +There was no light at all inland, <br> +Only the seaward pharos-fire, <br> +Nothing to let me understand<br> + That hard at hand<br> + By Hennett Byre<br> +The man was getting nigh and nigher.<br> +<br> +There was a rumble at the door, <br> +A draught disturbed the drapery, <br> +And but a minute passed before,<br> + With gaze that bore<br> + My destiny,<br> +The man revealed himself to me<i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>THE STRANGE HOUSE<br> +(MAX GATE, A.D. 2000)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“I hear the piano playing - <br> + Just as a ghost might play.”<br> +“ - O, but what are you saying?<br> + There’s no piano to-day;<br> +Their old one was sold and broken; <br> + Years past it went amiss.”<br> +“ - I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken:<br> + A strange house, this!<br> +<br> +“I catch some undertone here,<br> + From some one out of sight.”<br> +“ - Impossible; we are alone here,<br> + And shall be through the night.”<br> +“ - The parlour-door - what stirred it?”<br> + “ - No one: no soul’s in range.”<br> +“ - But, anyhow, I heard it,<br> + And it seems strange!<br> +<br> +“Seek my own room I cannot - <br> + A figure is on the stair!”<br> +“ - What figure? Nay, I scan not <br> + Any one lingering there.<br> +A bough outside is waving, <br> + And that’s its shade by the moon.”<br> +“ - Well, all is strange! I am craving <br> + Strength to leave soon.”<br> +<br> +“ - Ah, maybe you’ve some vision <br> + Of showings beyond our sphere;<br> +Some sight, sense, intuition <br> + Of what once happened here?<br> +The house is old; they’ve hinted <br> + It once held two love-thralls,<br> +And they may have imprinted <br> + Their dreams on its walls?<br> +<br> +“They were - I think ‘twas told me - <br> + Queer in their works and ways;<br> +The teller would often hold me <br> + With weird tales of those days.<br> +Some folk can not abide here, <br> + But we - we do not care<br> +Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here, <br> + Knew joy, or despair.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“AS ’TWERE TO-NIGHT”<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +As ’twere to-night, in the brief space<br> + Of a far eventime,<br> + My spirit rang achime<br> +At vision of a girl of grace;<br> +As ’twere to-night, in the brief space<br> + Of a far eventime.<br> +<br> +As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow <br> + I airily walked and talked,<br> + And wondered as I walked<br> +What it could mean, this soar from sorrow; <br> +As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow<br> + I airily walked and talked.<br> +<br> +As ’twere at waning of this week <br> + Broke a new life on me;<br> + Trancings of bliss to be<br> +In some dim dear land soon to seek; <br> +As ’twere at waning of this week<br> + Broke a new life on me!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE CONTRETEMPS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,<br> + And we clasped, and almost kissed; +<br> + But she was not the woman whom <br> + I had promised to meet in the thawing brume<br> +On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.<br> +<br> + So loosening from me swift she said:<br> + “O why, why feign to be<br> + The one I had meant! - to whom I have sped<br> + To fly with, being so sorrily wed!”<br> +- ’Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me.<br> +<br> + My assignation had struck upon <br> + Some others’ like it, I found.<br> + And her lover rose on the night anon; <br> + And then her husband entered on <br> +The lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around.<br> +<br> + “Take her and welcome, man!” he cried:<br> + “I wash my hands of her.<br> + I’ll find me twice as good a bride!”<br> + - All this to me, whom he had eyed, <br> +Plainly, as his wife’s planned deliverer.<br> +<br> + And next the lover: “Little I knew, <br> + Madam, you had a third!<br> + Kissing here in my very view!”<br> + - Husband and lover then withdrew.<br> +I let them; and I told them not they erred.<br> +<br> + Why not? Well, there faced she and I - <br> + Two strangers who’d kissed, +or near,<br> + Chancewise. To see stand weeping by<br> + A woman once embraced, will try<br> +The tension of a man the most austere.<br> +<br> + So it began; and I was young, <br> + She pretty, by the lamp,<br> + As flakes came waltzing down among<br> + The waves of her clinging hair, that hung <br> +Heavily on her temples, dark and damp.<br> +<br> + And there alone still stood we two; <br> + She one cast off for me,<br> + Or so it seemed: while night ondrew,<br> + Forcing a parley what should do<br> +We twain hearts caught in one catastrophe.<br> +<br> + In stranded souls a common strait <br> + Wakes latencies unknown,<br> + Whose impulse may precipitate<br> + A life-long leap. The hour was late,<br> +And there was the Jersey boat with its funnel agroan.<br> +<br> + “Is wary walking worth much pother?”<br> + It grunted, as still it stayed.<br> + “One pairing is as good as another<br> + Where all is venture! Take each other, <br> +And scrap the oaths that you have aforetime made.” . . .<br> +<br> + - Of the four involved there walks but one<br> + On earth at this late day.<br> + And what of the chapter so begun?<br> + In that odd complex what was done?<br> + Well; happiness comes in full to none:<br> +Let peace lie on lulled lips: I will not say.<br> +<br> +WEYMOUTH.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I dwelt in the shade of a city, <br> + She far by the sea, <br> +With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;<br> + But never with me.<br> +<br> +Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring <br> + I never once met,<br> +To guide her with accents adoring <br> + Through Weippert’s “First Set.” +<a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a><br> +<br> +I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones <br> + In Vanity Fair,<br> +And she enjoyed hers among hale ones <br> + In salt-smelling air.<br> +<br> +Maybe she had eyes of deep colour, <br> + Maybe they were blue,<br> +Maybe as she aged they got duller; <br> + That never I knew.<br> +<br> +She may have had lips like the coral, <br> + But I never kissed them,<br> +Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel, <br> + Nor sought for, nor missed them.<br> +<br> +Not a word passed of love all our lifetime, <br> + Between us, nor thrill;<br> +We’d never a husband-and-wife time, <br> + For good or for ill.<br> +<br> +Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal,<br> + Lie I and lies she,<br> +This never-known lady, eternal <br> + Companion to me!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE OLD GOWN<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I have seen her in gowns the brightest,<br> + Of azure, green, and red,<br> +And in the simplest, whitest,<br> + Muslined from heel to head;<br> +I have watched her walking, riding, <br> + Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,<br> +Or in fixed thought abiding<br> + By the foam-fingered sea.<br> +<br> +In woodlands I have known her,<br> + When boughs were mourning loud,<br> +In the rain-reek she has shown her <br> + Wild-haired and watery-browed.<br> +And once or twice she has cast me <br> + As she pomped along the street<br> +Court-clad, ere quite she had passed me, <br> + A glance from her chariot-seat.<br> +<br> +But in my memoried passion <br> + For evermore stands she<br> +In the gown of fading fashion <br> + She wore that night when we,<br> +Doomed long to part, assembled <br> + In the snug small room; yea, when<br> +She sang with lips that trembled, <br> + “Shall I see his face again?”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I marked when the weather changed,<br> +And the panes began to quake,<br> +And the winds rose up and ranged,<br> +That night, lying half-awake.<br> +<br> +Dead leaves blew into my room,<br> +And alighted upon my bed,<br> +And a tree declared to the gloom<br> +Its sorrow that they were shed.<br> +<br> +One leaf of them touched my hand,<br> +And I thought that it was you<br> +There stood as you used to stand,<br> +And saying at last you knew!<br> +<br> +(?) 1913.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A DUETTIST TO HER PIANOFORTE<br> +SONG OF SILENCE<br> +(E. L. H. - H. C. H.)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Since every sound moves memories,<br> + How can I play you<br> +Just as I might if you raised no scene,<br> +By your ivory rows, of a form between<br> +My vision and your time-worn sheen, <br> + As when each day you<br> +Answered our fingers with ecstasy?<br> +So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!<br> +<br> +And as I am doomed to counterchord <br> + Her notes no more<br> +In those old things I used to know, <br> +In a fashion, when we practised so,<br> +“Good-night! - Good-bye!” to your pleated show<br> + Of silk, now hoar,<br> +Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key, <br> +For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!<br> +<br> +I fain would second her, strike to her stroke,<br> + As when she was by,<br> +Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “Fall<br> +Of Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal,<br> +To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call”<br> + Sung soft as a sigh:<br> +But upping ghosts press achefully,<br> +And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!<br> +<br> +Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers<br> + Afresh on the air,<br> +Too quick would the small white shapes be here<br> +Of the fellow twain of hands so dear;<br> +And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear;<br> + - Then how shall I bear<br> +Such heavily-haunted harmony?<br> +Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Where three roads joined it was green and fair,<br> +And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,<br> +And life laughed sweet when I halted there;<br> +Yet there I never again would be.<br> +<br> +I am sure those branchways are brooding now,<br> +With a wistful blankness upon their face, <br> +While the few mute passengers notice how <br> +Spectre-beridden is the place;<br> +<br> +Which nightly sighs like a laden soul,<br> +And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell<br> +Not far from thence, should have let it roll<br> +Away from them down a plumbless well<br> +<br> +While the phasm of him who fared starts up,<br> +And of her who was waiting him sobs from near,<br> +As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup<br> +They filled for themselves when their sky was clear.<br> +<br> +Yes, I see those roads - now rutted and bare,<br> +While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea; <br> +And though life laughed when I halted there,<br> +It is where I never again would be.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM”<br> +(ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, Nov. 11, 1918)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I<br> +<br> +There had been years of Passion - scorching, cold,<br> +And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,<br> +Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,<br> +Among the young, among the weak and old,<br> +And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> +Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught<br> +Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,<br> +Philosophies that sages long had taught,<br> +And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought,<br> +And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness.<br> +<br> +III<br> +<br> +The feeble folk at home had grown full-used<br> +To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” +from the war-adept<br> +In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;<br> +To day - dreamt men in millions, when they mused - <br> +To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.<br> +<br> +IV<br> +<br> +Waking to wish existence timeless, null, <br> +Sirius they watched above where armies fell;<br> +He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull<br> +Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull<br> +Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.<br> +<br> +V<br> +<br> +So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly<br> +Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!”<br> +One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,<br> +“Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,<br> +And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?”<br> +<br> +VI<br> +<br> +Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance<br> +To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,<br> +As they had raised it through the four years’ dance<br> +Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;<br> +And murmured, “Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?”<br> +<br> +VII<br> +<br> +Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not,<br> +The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.<br> +One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot<br> +And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What?<br> +Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?”<br> +<br> +VIII<br> +<br> +Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,<br> +No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,<br> +No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;<br> +Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”;<br> +No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.<br> +<br> +IX<br> +<br> +Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;<br> +There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;<br> +Some could, some could not, shake off misery:<br> +The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”<br> +And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +HAUNTING FINGERS<br> +A PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + “Are you +awake,<br> + Comrades, this silent night?<br> + Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey make<br> +Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!”<br> +<br> + “O viol, +my friend,<br> + I watch, though Phosphor nears,<br> + And I fain would drowse away to its utter end<br> +This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!”<br> +<br> +And they felt past handlers clutch them, <br> + Though none was in the room,<br> +Old players’ dead fingers touch them, <br> + Shrunk in the tomb.<br> +<br> + “‘Cello, +good mate,<br> + You speak my mind as yours:<br> + Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state,<br> +Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?”<br> +<br> + “Once I +could thrill<br> + The populace through and through,<br> + Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” +. . .<br> +(A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)<br> +<br> +And they felt old muscles travel <br> + Over their tense contours,<br> +And with long skill unravel<br> + Cunningest scores.<br> +<br> + “The tender +pat<br> + Of her aery finger-tips<br> + Upon me daily - I rejoiced thereat!”<br> +(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)<br> +<br> + “My keys’ +white shine,<br> + Now sallow, met a hand<br> + Even whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth +with mine<br> +In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!”<br> +<br> +And its clavier was filmed with fingers <br> + Like tapering flames - wan, cold - <br> +Or the nebulous light that lingers<br> + In charnel mould.<br> +<br> + “Gayer than +most<br> + Was I,” reverbed a drum;<br> + “The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! +What a host<br> +I stirred - even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!”<br> +<br> + Trilled an aged +viol:<br> + “Much tune have I set free<br> + To spur the dance, since my first timid trial<br> +Where I had birth - far hence, in sun-swept Italy!”<br> +<br> +And he feels apt touches on him<br> + From those that pressed him then;<br> +Who seem with their glance to con him,<br> + Saying, “Not again!”<br> +<br> + “A holy +calm,”<br> + Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued,<br> + “Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm<br> +Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.”<br> +<br> + “I faced +the sock<br> + Nightly,” twanged a sick lyre,<br> + “Over ranked lights! O charm of life in +mock,<br> +O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!”<br> +<br> +Thus they, till each past player<br> + Stroked thinner and more thin,<br> +And the morning sky grew grayer <br> + And day crawled in.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE WOMAN I MET<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted<br> + A lamp-lit crowd;<br> +And anon there passed me a soul departed, <br> + Who mutely bowed.<br> +In my far-off youthful years I had met her, <br> +Full-pulsed; but now, no more life’s debtor,<br> + Onward she slid<br> + In a shroud that furs half-hid.<br> +<br> +“Why do you trouble me, dead woman, <br> + Trouble me;<br> +You whom I knew when warm and human?<br> + - How it be<br> +That you quitted earth and are yet upon it <br> +Is, to any who ponder on it,<br> + Past being read!”<br> + “Still, it is so,” she said.<br> +<br> +“These were my haunts in my olden sprightly<br> + Hours of breath;<br> +Here I went tempting frail youth nightly <br> + To their death;<br> +But you deemed me chaste - me, a tinselled sinner!<br> +How thought you one with pureness in her <br> + Could pace this street<br> + Eyeing some man to greet?<br> +<br> +“Well; your very simplicity made me love you<br> + Mid such town dross,<br> +Till I set not Heaven itself above you, <br> + Who grew my Cross;<br> +For you’d only nod, despite how I sighed for you;<br> +So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!<br> + - What I suffered then<br> + Would have paid for the sins of ten!<br> +<br> +“Thus went the days. I feared you despised me<br> + To fling me a nod<br> +Each time, no more: till love chastised me <br> + As with a rod<br> +That a fresh bland boy of no assurance<br> +Should fire me with passion beyond endurance,<br> + While others all<br> + I hated, and loathed their call.<br> +<br> +“I said: ‘It is his mother’s spirit <br> + Hovering around<br> +To shield him, maybe!’ I used to fear it, <br> + As still I found<br> +My beauty left no least impression,<br> +And remnants of pride withheld confession <br> + Of my true trade<br> + By speaking; so I delayed.<br> +<br> +“I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flower <br> + He’ll be beguiled.’<br> +I held it, in passing you one late hour, <br> + To your face: you smiled,<br> +Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there<br> +A single one that rivalled me there! . . .<br> + Well: it’s all past.<br> + I died in the Lock at last.”<br> +<br> +So walked the dead and I together <br> + The quick among,<br> +Elbowing our kind of every feather <br> + Slowly and long;<br> +Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there<br> +With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there<br> + That winter night<br> + By flaming jets of light.<br> +<br> +She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,<br> + Guessing their lot;<br> +She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,<br> + And that did not.<br> +Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me,<br> +Why asked you never, ere death befell me, <br> + To have my love,<br> + Much as I dreamt thereof?”<br> +<br> +I could not answer. And she, well weeting<br> + All in my heart,<br> +Said: “God your guardian kept our fleeting<br> + Forms apart!”<br> +Sighing and drawing her furs around her <br> +Over the shroud that tightly bound her,<br> + With wafts as from clay<br> + She turned and thinned away.<br> +<br> +LONDON, 1918.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN”<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +If it’s ever spring again,<br> + Spring again,<br> +I shall go where went I when<br> +Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen,<br> +Seeing me not, amid their flounder,<br> +Standing with my arm around her;<br> +If it’s ever spring again,<br> + Spring again,<br> +I shall go where went I then.<br> +<br> +If it’s ever summer-time,<br> + Summer-time,<br> +With the hay crop at the prime,<br> +And the cuckoos - two - in rhyme,<br> +As they used to be, or seemed to,<br> +We shall do as long we’ve dreamed to,<br> +If it’s ever summer-time,<br> + Summer-time,<br> +With the hay, and bees achime.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE TWO HOUSES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + In the heart of +night,<br> + When farers were not near, <br> + The left house said to the house on the right,<br> +“I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.”<br> +<br> + Said the right, +cold-eyed:<br> + “Newcomer here I am,<br> + Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,<br> +Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.<br> +<br> + “Modern +my wood,<br> + My hangings fair of hue;<br> + While my windows open as they should, <br> +And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.<br> +<br> + “Your gear +is gray, <br> + Your face wears furrows untold.”<br> + “ - Yours might,” mourned the other, “if +you held, brother,<br> +The Presences from aforetime that I hold.<br> +<br> + “You have +not known<br> + Men’s lives, deaths, toils, +and teens; <br> + You are but a heap of stick and stone:<br> +A new house has no sense of the have-beens.<br> +<br> + “Void as +a drum<br> + You stand: I am packed with these, +<br> + Though, strangely, living dwellers who come<br> +See not the phantoms all my substance sees!<br> +<br> + “Visible +in the morning<br> + Stand they, when dawn drags in; +<br> + Visible at night; yet hint or warning<br> +Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.<br> +<br> + “Babes new-brought-forth<br> + Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched +<br> + Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth; <br> +Yea, throng they as when first from the ‘Byss upfetched.<br> +<br> + “Dancers +and singers <br> + Throb in me now as once;<br> + Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingers<br> +Of heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce.<br> +<br> + “Note here +within<br> + The bridegroom and the bride, <br> + Who smile and greet their friends and kin,<br> +And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.<br> +<br> + “Where such +inbe,<br> + A dwelling’s character<br> + Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy <br> +To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.<br> +<br> + “Yet the +blind folk<br> + My tenants, who come and go<br> + In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke,<br> +Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.”<br> +<br> + “ - Will +the day come,”<br> + Said the new one, awestruck, faint,<br> + “When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb -<br> +And with such spectral guests become acquaint?”<br> +<br> + “ - That +will it, boy;<br> + Such shades will people thee, <br> + Each in his misery, irk, or joy,<br> +And print on thee their presences as on me.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +ON STINSFORD HILL AT MIDNIGHT<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I glimpsed a woman’s muslined form<br> + Sing-songing airily<br> +Against the moon; and still she sang,<br> + And took no heed of me.<br> +<br> +Another trice, and I beheld<br> + What first I had not scanned,<br> +That now and then she tapped and shook<br> + A timbrel in her hand.<br> +<br> +So late the hour, so white her drape,<br> + So strange the look it lent<br> +To that blank hill, I could not guess<br> + What phantastry it meant.<br> +<br> +Then burst I forth: “Why such from you?<br> + Are you so happy now?”<br> +Her voice swam on; nor did she show<br> + Thought of me anyhow.<br> +<br> +I called again: “Come nearer; much<br> + That kind of note I need!”<br> +The song kept softening, loudening on,<br> + In placid calm unheed.<br> +<br> +“What home is yours now?” then I said;<br> + “You seem to have no care.”<br> +But the wild wavering tune went forth<br> + As if I had not been there.<br> +<br> +“This world is dark, and where you are,”<br> + I said, “I cannot be!”<br> +But still the happy one sang on,<br> + And had no heed of me.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +One without looks in to-night<br> + Through the curtain-chink<br> +From the sheet of glistening white;<br> +One without looks in to-night<br> + As we sit and think<br> + By the fender-brink.<br> +<br> +We do not discern those eyes<br> + Watching in the snow;<br> +Lit by lamps of rosy dyes<br> +We do not discern those eyes<br> + Wondering, aglow,<br> + Fourfooted, tiptoe.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE SELFSAME SONG<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A bird bills the selfsame song,<br> +With never a fault in its flow,<br> +That we listened to here those long<br> + Long years ago.<br> +<br> +A pleasing marvel is how<br> +A strain of such rapturous rote<br> +Should have gone on thus till now<br> + Unchanged in a note!<br> +<br> +- But it’s not the selfsame bird. -<br> +No: perished to dust is he . . .<br> +As also are those who heard<br> + That song with me.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE WANDERER<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +There is nobody on the road<br> + But I,<br> +And no beseeming abode<br> + I can try<br> +For shelter, so abroad<br> + I must lie.<br> +<br> +The stars feel not far up,<br> + And to be<br> +The lights by which I sup<br> + Glimmeringly,<br> +Set out in a hollow cup<br> + Over me.<br> +<br> +They wag as though they were<br> + Panting for joy<br> +Where they shine, above all care,<br> + And annoy,<br> +And demons of despair -<br> + Life’s alloy.<br> +<br> +Sometimes outside the fence<br> + Feet swing past,<br> +Clock-like, and then go hence,<br> + Till at last<br> +There is a silence, dense,<br> + Deep, and vast.<br> +<br> +A wanderer, witch-drawn<br> + To and fro,<br> +To-morrow, at the dawn,<br> + On I go,<br> +And where I rest anon<br> + Do not know!<br> +<br> +Yet it’s meet - this bed of hay<br> + And roofless plight;<br> +For there’s a house of clay,<br> + My own, quite,<br> +To roof me soon, all day<br> + And all night.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A WIFE COMES BACK<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +This is the story a man told me<br> + Of his life’s one day of dreamery.<br> +<br> + A woman came into his room<br> +Between the dawn and the creeping day:<br> +She was the years-wed wife from whom<br> +He had parted, and who lived far away,<br> + As if strangers they.<br> +<br> + He wondered, and as she stood<br> +She put on youth in her look and air,<br> +And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed<br> +Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair<br> + While he watched her there;<br> +<br> + Till she freshed to the pink and brown<br> +That were hers on the night when first they met,<br> +When she was the charm of the idle town<br> +And he the pick of the club-fire set . . .<br> + His eyes grew wet,<br> +<br> + And he stretched his arms: “Stay - rest! - ”<br> +He cried. “Abide with me so, my own!”<br> +But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;<br> +She had vanished with all he had looked upon<br> + Of her beauty: gone.<br> +<br> + He clothed, and drew downstairs,<br> +But she was not in the house, he found;<br> +And he passed out under the leafy pairs<br> +Of the avenue elms, and searched around<br> + To the park-pale bound.<br> +<br> + He mounted, and rode till night<br> +To the city to which she had long withdrawn,<br> +The vision he bore all day in his sight<br> +Being her young self as pondered on<br> + In the dim of dawn.<br> +<br> + “ - The lady here long ago -<br> +Is she now here? - young - or such age as she is?”<br> +“ - She is still here.” - “Thank God. Let her +know;<br> +She’ll pardon a comer so late as this<br> + Whom she’d fain not miss.”<br> +<br> + She received him - an ancient dame,<br> +Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb,<br> +“How strange! - I’d almost forgotten your name! -<br> +A call just now - is troublesome;<br> + Why did you come?”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A YOUNG MAN’S EXHORTATION<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + Call off your eyes from care<br> +By some determined deftness; put forth joys<br> +Dear as excess without the core that cloys,<br> + And charm Life’s lourings fair.<br> +<br> + Exalt and crown the hour<br> +That girdles us, and fill it full with glee,<br> +Blind glee, excelling aught could ever be<br> + Were heedfulness in power.<br> +<br> + Send up such touching strains<br> +That limitless recruits from Fancy’s pack<br> +Shall rush upon your tongue, and tender back<br> + All that your soul contains.<br> +<br> + For what do we know best?<br> +That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry,<br> +And that men moment after moment die,<br> + Of all scope dispossest.<br> +<br> + If I have seen one thing<br> +It is the passing preciousness of dreams;<br> +That aspects are within us; and who seems<br> + Most kingly is the King.<br> +<br> +1867: WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Had I but lived a hundred years ago<br> +I might have gone, as I have gone this year,<br> +By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,<br> +And Time have placed his finger on me there:<br> +<br> +“<i>You see that man</i>?” - I might have looked, and said,<br> +“O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought<br> +Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban’s Head.<br> +So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.”<br> +<br> +“<i>You see that man</i>?” - “Why yes; I told you; +yes:<br> +Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;<br> +And as the evening light scants less and less<br> +He looks up at a star, as many do.”<br> +<br> +“<i>You see that man</i>?” - “Nay, leave me!” +then I plead,<br> +“I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,<br> +And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:<br> +I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!<br> +<br> +“Good. That man goes to Rome - to death, despair;<br> +And no one notes him now but you and I:<br> +A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,<br> +And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.”<br> +<br> +<i>September </i>1920.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A BYGONE OCCASION<br> +(SONG)<br> + <br> +<br> +<br> + That night, that night,<br> + That song, that song!<br> +Will such again be evened quite<br> + Through lifetimes long?<br> +<br> + No mirth was shown<br> + To outer seers,<br> +But mood to match has not been known<br> + In modern years.<br> +<br> + O eyes that smiled,<br> + O lips that lured;<br> +That such would last was one beguiled<br> + To think ensured!<br> +<br> + That night, that night,<br> + That song, that song;<br> +O drink to its recalled delight,<br> + Though tears may throng!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +TWO SERENADES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I - <i>On Christmas Eve<br> +<br> +</i>Late on Christmas Eve, in the street alone,<br> +Outside a house, on the pavement-stone,<br> +I sang to her, as we’d sung together<br> +On former eves ere I felt her tether. -<br> +Above the door of green by me<br> +Was she, her casement seen by me;<br> + But she would not heed<br> + What I melodied<br> + In my soul’s sore need -<br> + She would not heed.<br> +<br> +Cassiopeia overhead,<br> +And the Seven of the Wain, heard what I said<br> +As I bent me there, and voiced, and fingered<br> +Upon the strings. . . . Long, long I lingered:<br> +Only the curtains hid from her<br> +One whom caprice had bid from her;<br> + But she did not come,<br> + And my heart grew numb<br> + And dull my strum;<br> + She did not come.<br> +<br> +II - <i>A Year Later<br> +<br> +</i>I skimmed the strings; I sang quite low;<br> +I hoped she would not come or know<br> +That the house next door was the one now dittied,<br> +Not hers, as when I had played unpitied;<br> +- Next door, where dwelt a heart fresh stirred,<br> +My new Love, of good will to me,<br> +Unlike my old Love chill to me,<br> +Who had not cared for my notes when heard:<br> + Yet that old Love came<br> + To the other’s name<br> + As hers were the claim;<br> + Yea, the old Love came<br> +<br> +My viol sank mute, my tongue stood still,<br> +I tried to sing on, but vain my will:<br> +I prayed she would guess of the later, and leave me;<br> +She stayed, as though, were she slain by the smart,<br> +She would bear love’s burn for a newer heart.<br> +The tense-drawn moment wrought to bereave me<br> +Of voice, and I turned in a dumb despair<br> +At her finding I’d come to another there.<br> + Sick I withdrew<br> + At love’s grim hue<br> + Ere my last Love knew;<br> + Sick I withdrew.<br> +<br> +From an old copy.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE WEDDING MORNING<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + Tabitha dressed for her wedding:-<br> + “Tabby, why look so sad?”<br> +“ - O I feel a great gloominess spreading, spreading,<br> + Instead of supremely glad! . . .<br> +<br> + “I called on Carry last night,<br> + And he came whilst I was there,<br> +Not knowing I’d called. So I kept out of sight,<br> + And I heard what he said to her:<br> +<br> + “‘ - Ah, I’d far liefer marry<br> + <i>You, </i>Dear, to-morrow!’ he said,<br> +‘But that cannot be.’ - O I’d give him to Carry,<br> + And willingly see them wed,<br> +<br> + “But how can I do it when<br> + His baby will soon be born?<br> +After that I hope I may die. And then<br> + She can have him. I shall not mourn!’<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +END OF THE YEAR 1912<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +You were here at his young beginning,<br> + You are not here at his agèd end;<br> +Off he coaxed you from Life’s mad spinning,<br> + Lest you should see his form extend<br> + Shivering, sighing,<br> + Slowly dying,<br> + And a tear on him expend.<br> +<br> +So it comes that we stand lonely<br> + In the star-lit avenue,<br> +Dropping broken lipwords only,<br> + For we hear no songs from you,<br> + Such as flew here<br> + For the new year<br> + Once, while six bells swung thereto.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE CHIMES PLAY “LIFE’S A BUMPER!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“Awake! I’m off to cities far away,”<br> +I said; and rose, on peradventures bent.<br> +The chimes played “Life’s a Bumper!” on that day<br> +To the measure of my walking as I went:<br> +Their sweetness frisked and floated on the lea,<br> +As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.<br> +<br> +“Awake!” I said. “I go to take a bride!”<br> + - The sun arose behind me ruby-red<br> +As I journeyed townwards from the countryside,<br> +The chiming bells saluting near ahead.<br> +Their sweetness swelled in tripping tings of glee<br> +As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.<br> +<br> +“Again arise.” I seek a turfy slope,<br> +And go forth slowly on an autumn noon,<br> +And there I lay her who has been my hope,<br> +And think, “O may I follow hither soon!”<br> +While on the wind the chimes come cheerily,<br> +Playing out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.<br> +<br> +1913.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“I WORKED NO WILE TO MEET YOU”<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I worked no wile to meet you,<br> + My sight was set elsewhere,<br> +I sheered about to shun you,<br> + And lent your life no care.<br> +I was unprimed to greet you<br> + At such a date and place,<br> +Constraint alone had won you<br> + Vision of my strange face!<br> +<br> +You did not seek to see me<br> + Then or at all, you said,<br> + - Meant passing when you neared me,<br> + But stumblingblocks forbade.<br> +You even had thought to flee me,<br> + By other mindings moved;<br> +No influent star endeared me,<br> + Unknown, unrecked, unproved!<br> +<br> +What, then, was there to tell us<br> + The flux of flustering hours<br> +Of their own tide would bring us<br> + By no device of ours<br> +To where the daysprings well us<br> + Heart-hydromels that cheer,<br> +Till Time enearth and swing us<br> + Round with the turning sphere.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AT THE RAILWAY STATION, UPWAY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + “There is not much that I can do,<br> +For I’ve no money that’s quite my own!”<br> + Spoke up the pitying child -<br> +A little boy with a violin<br> +At the station before the train came in, -<br> +“But I can play my fiddle to you,<br> +And a nice one ‘tis, and good in tone!”<br> +<br> + The man in the handcuffs smiled;<br> +The constable looked, and he smiled, too,<br> + As the fiddle began to twang;<br> +And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang<br> + Uproariously:<br> + “This life so free<br> + Is the thing for me!”<br> +And the constable smiled, and said no word,<br> +As if unconscious of what he heard;<br> +And so they went on till the train came in -<br> +The convict, and boy with the violin.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +SIDE BY SIDE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +So there sat they,<br> +The estranged two,<br> +Thrust in one pew<br> +By chance that day;<br> +Placed so, breath-nigh,<br> +Each comer unwitting<br> +Who was to be sitting<br> +In touch close by.<br> +<br> +Thus side by side<br> +Blindly alighted,<br> +They seemed united<br> +As groom and bride,<br> +Who’d not communed<br> +For many years -<br> +Lives from twain spheres<br> +With hearts distuned.<br> +<br> +Her fringes brushed<br> +His garment’s hem<br> +As the harmonies rushed<br> +Through each of them:<br> +Her lips could be heard<br> +In the creed and psalms,<br> +And their fingers neared<br> +At the giving of alms.<br> +<br> +And women and men,<br> +The matins ended,<br> +By looks commended<br> +Them, joined again.<br> +Quickly said she,<br> +“Don’t undeceive them -<br> +Better thus leave them:”<br> +“Quite so,” said he.<br> +<br> +Slight words! - the last<br> +Between them said,<br> +Those two, once wed,<br> +Who had not stood fast.<br> +Diverse their ways<br> +From the western door,<br> +To meet no more<br> +In their span of days.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +DREAM OF THE CITY SHOPWOMAN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +’Twere sweet to have a comrade here,<br> +Who’d vow to love this garreteer,<br> +By city people’s snap and sneer<br> + Tried oft and hard!<br> +<br> +We’d rove a truant cock and hen<br> +To some snug solitary glen,<br> +And never be seen to haunt again<br> + This teeming yard.<br> +<br> +Within a cot of thatch and clay<br> +We’d list the flitting pipers play,<br> +Our lives a twine of good and gay<br> + Enwreathed discreetly;<br> +<br> +Our blithest deeds so neighbouring wise<br> +That doves should coo in soft surprise,<br> +“These must belong to Paradise<br> + Who live so sweetly.”<br> +<br> +Our clock should be the closing flowers,<br> +Our sprinkle-bath the passing showers,<br> +Our church the alleyed willow bowers,<br> + The truth our theme;<br> +<br> +And infant shapes might soon abound:<br> +Their shining heads would dot us round<br> +Like mushroom balls on grassy ground . . .<br> + - But all is dream!<br> +<br> +O God, that creatures framed to feel<br> +A yearning nature’s strong appeal<br> +Should writhe on this eternal wheel<br> + In rayless grime;<br> +<br> +And vainly note, with wan regret,<br> +Each star of early promise set;<br> +Till Death relieves, and they forget<br> + Their one Life’s time!<br> +<br> +WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1866.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A MAIDEN’S PLEDGE<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +I do not wish to win your vow<br> +To take me soon or late as bride,<br> +And lift me from the nook where now<br> +I tarry your farings to my side.<br> +I am blissful ever to abide<br> +In this green labyrinth - let all be,<br> +If but, whatever may betide,<br> +You do not leave off loving me!<br> +<br> +Your comet-comings I will wait<br> +With patience time shall not wear through;<br> +The yellowing years will not abate<br> +My largened love and truth to you,<br> +Nor drive me to complaint undue<br> +Of absence, much as I may pine,<br> +If never another ‘twixt us two<br> +Shall come, and you stand wholly mine.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE CHILD AND THE SAGE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +You say, O Sage, when weather-checked,<br> + “I have been favoured so<br> +With cloudless skies, I must expect<br> + This dash of rain or snow.”<br> +<br> +“Since health has been my lot,” you say,<br> + “So many months of late,<br> +I must not chafe that one short day<br> + Of sickness mars my state.”<br> +<br> +You say, “Such bliss has been my share<br> + From Love’s unbroken smile,<br> +It is but reason I should bear<br> + A cross therein awhile.”<br> +<br> +And thus you do not count upon<br> + Continuance of joy;<br> +But, when at ease, expect anon<br> + A burden of annoy.<br> +<br> +But, Sage - this Earth - why not a place<br> + Where no reprisals reign,<br> +Where never a spell of pleasantness<br> + Makes reasonable a pain?<br> +<br> +<i>December </i>21, 1908.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +MISMET<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I<br> +<br> + He was leaning by a face,<br> + He was looking into eyes,<br> + And he knew a trysting-place,<br> + And he heard seductive sighs;<br> + But the face,<br> + And the eyes,<br> + And the place,<br> + And the sighs,<br> +Were not, alas, the right ones - the ones meet for him -<br> +Though fine and sweet the features, and the feelings all abrim.<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> + She was looking at a form,<br> + She was listening for a tread,<br> + She could feel a waft of charm<br> + When a certain name was said;<br> + But the form,<br> + And the tread,<br> + And the charm<br> + Of name said,<br> +Were the wrong ones for her, and ever would be so,<br> +While the heritor of the right it would have saved her soul to know!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AN AUTUMN RAIN-SCENE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +There trudges one to a merry-making<br> + With a sturdy swing,<br> + On whom the rain comes down.<br> +<br> +To fetch the saving medicament<br> + Is another bent,<br> + On whom the rain comes down.<br> +<br> +One slowly drives his herd to the stall<br> + Ere ill befall,<br> + On whom the rain comes down.<br> +<br> +This bears his missives of life and death<br> + With quickening breath,<br> + On whom the rain comes down.<br> +<br> +One watches for signals of wreck or war<br> + From the hill afar,<br> + On whom the rain comes down.<br> +<br> +No care if he gain a shelter or none,<br> + Unhired moves one,<br> + On whom the rain comes down.<br> +<br> +And another knows nought of its chilling fall<br> + Upon him at all,<br> + On whom the rain comes down.<br> +<br> +<i>October </i>1904.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +MEDITATIONS ON A HOLIDAY<br> +(A NEW THEME TO AN OLD FOLK-JINGLE)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +’Tis May morning,<br> +All-adorning,<br> +No cloud warning<br> + Of rain to-day.<br> +Where shall I go to,<br> +Go to, go to? -<br> +Can I say No to<br> + Lyonnesse-way?<br> +<br> +Well - what reason<br> +Now at this season<br> +Is there for treason<br> + To other shrines?<br> +Tristram is not there,<br> +Isolt forgot there,<br> +New eras blot there<br> + Sought-for signs!<br> +<br> +Stratford-on-Avon -<br> +Poesy-paven -<br> +I’ll find a haven<br> + There, somehow!<i> -<br> +</i>Nay - I’m but caught of<br> +Dreams long thought of,<br> +The Swan knows nought of<br> + His Avon now!<br> +<br> +What shall it be, then,<br> +I go to see, then,<br> +Under the plea, then,<br> + Of votary?<br> +I’ll go to Lakeland,<br> +Lakeland, Lakeland,<br> +Certainly Lakeland<br> + Let it be.<br> +<br> +But - why to that place,<br> +That place, that place,<br> +Such a hard come-at place<br> + Need I fare?<br> +When its bard cheers no more,<br> +Loves no more, fears no more,<br> +Sees no more, hears no more<br> + Anything there!<br> +<br> +Ah, there is Scotland,<br> +Burns’s Scotland,<br> +And Waverley’s. To what land<br> + Better can I hie?<i> -<br> +</i>Yet - if no whit now<br> +Feel those of it now -<br> +Care not a bit now<br> + For it - why I?<br> +<br> +I’ll seek a town street,<br> +Aye, a brick-brown street,<br> +Quite a tumbledown street,<br> + Drawing no eyes.<br> +For a Mary dwelt there,<br> +And a Percy felt there<br> +Heart of him melt there,<br> + A Claire likewise.<br> +<br> +Why incline to <i>that </i>city,<br> +Such a city, <i>that </i>city,<br> +Now a mud-bespat city! -<br> + Care the lovers who<br> +Now live and walk there,<br> +Sit there and talk there,<br> +Buy there, or hawk there,<br> + Or wed, or woo?<br> +<br> +Laughters in a volley<br> +Greet so fond a folly<br> +As nursing melancholy<br> + In this and that spot,<br> +Which, with most endeavour,<br> +Those can visit never,<br> +But for ever and ever<br> + Will now know not!<br> +<br> +If, on lawns Elysian,<br> +With a broadened vision<br> +And a faint derision<br> + Conscious be they,<br> +How they might reprove me<br> +That these fancies move me,<br> +Think they ill behoove me,<br> + Smile, and say:<br> +<br> +“What! - our hoar old houses,<br> +Where the past dead-drowses,<br> +Nor a child nor spouse is<br> + Of our name at all?<br> +Such abodes to care for,<br> +Inquire about and bear for,<br> +And suffer wear and tear for -<br> + How weak of you and small!”<br> +<br> +<i>May </i>1921.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AN EXPERIENCE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Wit, weight, or wealth there was not<br> + In anything that was said,<br> + In anything that was done;<br> +All was of scope to cause not<br> + A triumph, dazzle, or dread<br> + To even the subtlest one,<br> + My friend,<br> + To even the subtlest one.<br> +<br> +But there was a new afflation -<br> + An aura zephyring round,<br> + That care infected not:<br> +It came as a salutation,<br> + And, in my sweet astound,<br> + I scarcely witted what<br> + Might pend,<br> + I scarcely witted what.<br> +<br> +The hills in samewise to me<br> + Spoke, as they grayly gazed,<br> + - First hills to speak so yet!<br> +The thin-edged breezes blew me<br> + What I, though cobwebbed, crazed,<br> + Was never to forget,<br> + My friend,<br> + Was never to forget!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE BEAUTY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +O do not praise my beauty more,<br> + In such word-wild degree,<br> +And say I am one all eyes adore;<br> + For these things harass me!<br> +<br> +But do for ever softly say:<br> + “From now unto the end<br> +Come weal, come wanzing, come what may,<br> + Dear, I will be your friend.”<br> +<br> +I hate my beauty in the glass:<br> + My beauty is not I:<br> +I wear it: none cares whether, alas,<br> + Its wearer live or die!<br> +<br> +The inner I O care for, then,<br> + Yea, me and what I am,<br> +And shall be at the gray hour when<br> + My cheek begins to clam.<br> +<br> +<i>Note</i>. - “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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE COLLECTOR CLEANS HIS PICTURE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Fili hominis, ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in plaga. +- EZECH. xxiv. 16.<br> +<br> + How I remember cleaning that strange picture!<br> +I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour -<br> +His besides my own - over several Sundays,<br> +Often, too, in the week; so with parish pressures,<br> +Baptisms, burials, doctorings, conjugal counsel -<br> +All the whatnots asked of a rural parson -<br> +Faith, I was well-nigh broken, should have been fully<br> +Saving for one small secret relaxation,<br> +One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby.<br> +<br> + This was to delve at whiles for easel-lumber,<br> +Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city,<br> +Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas,<br> +Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure,<br> +Yet under all concealing a precious art-feat.<br> +Such I had found not yet. My latest capture<br> +Came from the rooms of a trader in ancient house-gear<br> +Who had no scent of beauty or soul for brushcraft.<br> +Only a tittle cost it - murked with grime-films,<br> +Gatherings of slow years, thick-varnished over,<br> +Never a feature manifest of man’s painting.<br> +<br> + So, one Saturday, time ticking hard on midnight<br> +Ere an hour subserved, I set me upon it.<br> +Long with coiled-up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned,<br> +Till a first fresh spot, a high light, looked forth,<br> +Then another, like fair flesh, and another;<br> +Then a curve, a nostril, and next a finger,<br> +Tapering, shapely, significantly pointing slantwise.<br> +“Flemish?” I said. “Nay, Spanish . . . But, nay, Italian!”<br> +- Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus,<br> +Named of some Astarte, of some Cotytto.<br> +Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel,<br> +Drunk with the lure of love’s inhibited dreamings.<br> +<br> + Till the dawn I rubbed, when there gazed up at me<br> +A hag, that had slowly emerged from under my hands there,<br> +Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosom<br> +Eaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime . . .<br> +- I could have ended myself in heart-shook horror.<br> +Stunned I sat till roused by a clear-voiced bell-chime,<br> +Fresh and sweet as the dew-fleece under my luthern.<br> +It was the matin service calling to me<br> +From the adjacent steeple.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE WOOD FIRE<br> +(A FRAGMENT)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“This is a brightsome blaze you’ve lit good friend, to-night!”<br> +“ - Aye, it has been the bleakest spring I have felt for years,<br> +And nought compares with cloven logs to keep alight:<br> +I buy them bargain-cheap of the executioners,<br> +As I dwell near; and they wanted the crosses out of sight<br> +By Passover, not to affront the eyes of visitors.<br> +<br> +“Yes, they’re from the crucifixions last week-ending<br> +At Kranion. We can sometimes use the poles again,<br> +But they get split by the nails, and ‘tis quicker work than mending<br> +To knock together new; though the uprights now and then<br> +Serve twice when they’re let stand. But if a feast’s +impending,<br> +As lately, you’ve to tidy up for the corners’ ken.<br> +<br> +“Though only three were impaled, you may know it didn’t +pass off<br> +So quietly as was wont? That Galilee carpenter’s son<br> +Who boasted he was king, incensed the rabble to scoff:<br> +I heard the noise from my garden. This piece is the one he was +on . . .<br> +Yes, it blazes up well if lit with a few dry chips and shroff;<br> +And it’s worthless for much else, what with cuts and stains thereon.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +SAYING GOOD-BYE<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +We are always saying<br> + “Good-bye, good-bye!”<br> +In work, in playing,<br> +In gloom, in gaying:<br> + At many a stage<br> + Of pilgrimage<br> + From youth to age<br> + We say, “Good-bye,<br> + Good-bye!”<br> +<br> +We are undiscerning<br> + Which go to sigh,<br> +Which will be yearning<br> +For soon returning;<br> + And which no more<br> + Will dark our door,<br> + Or tread our shore,<br> + But go to die,<br> + To die.<br> +<br> +Some come from roaming<br> + With joy again;<br> +Some, who come homing<br> +By stealth at gloaming,<br> + Had better have stopped<br> + Till death, and dropped<br> + By strange hands propped,<br> + Than come so fain,<br> + So fain.<br> +<br> +So, with this saying,<br> + “Good-bye, good-bye,”<br> +We speed their waying<br> +Without betraying<br> + Our grief, our fear<br> + No more to hear<br> + From them, close, clear,<br> + Again: “Good-bye,<br> + Good-bye!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +ON THE TUNE CALLED THE OLD-HUNDRED-AND-FOURTH<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +We never sang together<br> + Ravenscroft’s terse old tune<br> +On Sundays or on weekdays,<br> +In sharp or summer weather,<br> + At night-time or at noon.<br> +<br> +Why did we never sing it,<br> + Why never so incline<br> +On Sundays or on weekdays,<br> +Even when soft wafts would wing it<br> + From your far floor to mine?<br> +<br> +Shall we that tune, then, never<br> + Stand voicing side by side<br> +On Sundays or on weekdays? . . .<br> +Or shall we, when for ever<br> + In Sheol we abide,<br> +<br> +Sing it in desolation,<br> + As we might long have done<br> +On Sundays or on weekdays<br> +With love and exultation<br> + Before our sands had run?<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE OPPORTUNITY<br> +(FOR H. P.)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Forty springs back, I recall,<br> + We met at this phase of the Maytime:<br> +We might have clung close through all,<br> + But we parted when died that daytime.<br> +<br> +We parted with smallest regret;<br> + Perhaps should have cared but slightly,<br> +Just then, if we never had met:<br> + Strange, strange that we lived so lightly!<br> +<br> +Had we mused a little space<br> + At that critical date in the Maytime,<br> +One life had been ours, one place,<br> + Perhaps, till our long cold daytime.<br> +<br> +- This is a bitter thing<br> + For thee, O man: what ails it?<br> +The tide of chance may bring<br> + Its offer; but nought avails it!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +EVELYN G. OF CHRISTMINSTER<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I can see the towers<br> +In mind quite clear<br> +Not many hours’<br> +Faring from here;<br> +But how up and go,<br> +And briskly bear<br> +Thither, and know<br> +That are not there?<br> +<br> +Though the birds sing small,<br> +And apple and pear<br> +On your trees by the wall<br> +Are ripe and rare,<br> +Though none excel them,<br> +I have no care<br> +To taste them or smell them<br> +And you not there.<br> +<br> +Though the College stones<br> +Are smit with the sun,<br> +And the graduates and Dons<br> +Who held you as one<br> +Of brightest brow<br> +Still think as they did,<br> +Why haunt with them now<br> +Your candle is hid?<br> +<br> +Towards the river<br> +A pealing swells:<br> +They cost me a quiver -<br> +Those prayerful bells!<br> +How go to God,<br> +Who can reprove<br> +With so heavy a rod<br> +As your swift remove!<br> +<br> +The chorded keys<br> +Wait all in a row,<br> +And the bellows wheeze<br> +As long ago.<br> +And the psalter lingers,<br> +And organist’s chair;<br> +But where are your fingers<br> +That once wagged there?<br> +<br> +Shall I then seek<br> +That desert place<br> +This or next week,<br> +And those tracks trace<br> +That fill me with cark<br> +And cloy; nowhere<br> +Being movement or mark<br> +Of you now there!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE RIFT<br> +(SONG: <i>Minor Mode</i>)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +’Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time,<br> +When yellow begins to show in the leaf,<br> +That your old gamut changed its chime<br> +From those true tones -<i> </i>of span so brief! -<br> +That met my beats of joy, of grief,<br> + As rhyme meets rhyme.<br> +<br> +So sank I from my high sublime!<br> +We faced but chancewise after that,<br> +And never I knew or guessed my crime. . .<br> +Yes; ‘twas the date - or nigh thereat -<br> +Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat<br> + And cobweb-time.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +VOICES FROM THINGS GROWING IN A CHURCHYARD<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd,<br> + Sir or Madam,<br> +A little girl here sepultured.<br> +Once I flit-fluttered like a bird<br> +Above the grass, as now I wave<br> +In daisy shapes above my grave,<br> + All day cheerily,<br> + All night eerily!<br> +<br> +- I am one Bachelor Bowring, “Gent,”<br> + Sir or Madam;<br> +In shingled oak my bones were pent;<br> +Hence more than a hundred years I spent<br> +In my feat of change from a coffin-thrall<br> +To a dancer in green as leaves on a wall.<br> + All day cheerily,<br> + All night eerily!<br> +<br> +- I, these berries of juice and gloss,<br> + Sir or Madam,<br> +Am clean forgotten as Thomas Voss;<br> +Thin-urned, I have burrowed away from the moss<br> +That covers my sod, and have entered this yew,<br> +And turned to clusters ruddy of view,<br> + All day cheerily,<br> + All night eerily!<br> +<br> +- The Lady Gertrude, proud, high-bred,<br> + Sir or Madam,<br> +Am I - this laurel that shades your head;<br> +Into its veins I have stilly sped,<br> +And made them of me; and my leaves now shine,<br> +As did my satins superfine,<br> + All day cheerily,<br> + All night eerily!<br> +<br> +- I, who as innocent withwind climb,<br> + Sir or Madam.<br> +Am one Eve Greensleeves, in olden time<br> +Kissed by men from many a clime,<br> +Beneath sun, stars, in blaze, in breeze,<br> +As now by glowworms and by bees,<br> + All day cheerily,<br> + All night eerily! <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a><br> +<br> +- I’m old Squire Audeley Grey, who grew,<br> + Sir or Madam,<br> +Aweary of life, and in scorn withdrew;<br> +Till anon I clambered up anew<br> +As ivy-green, when my ache was stayed,<br> +And in that attire I have longtime gayed<br> + All day cheerily,<br> + All night eerily!<br> +<br> +- And so they breathe, these masks, to each<br> + Sir or Madam<br> +Who lingers there, and their lively speech<br> +Affords an interpreter much to teach,<br> +As their murmurous accents seem to come<br> +Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum,<br> + All day cheerily,<br> + All night eerily!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +ON THE WAY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + The trees fret fitfully and twist,<br> + Shutters rattle and carpets heave,<br> + Slime is the dust of yestereve,<br> + And in the streaming mist<br> +Fishes might seem to fin a passage if they list.<br> +<br> + But to his feet,<br> + Drawing nigh and +nigher<br> + A hidden seat,<br> + The fog is sweet<br> + And the wind a +lyre.<br> +<br> + A vacant sameness grays the sky,<br> + A moisture gathers on each knop<br> + Of the bramble, rounding to a drop,<br> + That greets the goer-by<br> +With the cold listless lustre of a dead man’s eye.<br> +<br> + But to her sight,<br> + Drawing nigh and +nigher<br> + Its deep delight,<br> + The fog is bright<br> + And the wind a +lyre.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“SHE DID NOT TURN”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + She did not turn,<br> +But passed foot-faint with averted head<br> +In her gown of green, by the bobbing fern,<br> +Though I leaned over the gate that led<br> +From where we waited with table spread;<br> + But she did not turn:<br> +Why was she near there if love had fled?<br> +<br> + She did not turn,<br> +Though the gate was whence I had often sped<br> +In the mists of morning to meet her, and learn<br> +Her heart, when its moving moods I read<br> +As a book - she mine, as she sometimes said;<br> + But she did not turn,<br> +And passed foot-faint with averted head.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +GROWTH IN MAY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,<br> + And thence thread a jungle of grass:<br> +Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand<br> + Above the lush stems as I pass.<br> +<br> +Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,<br> + And seem to reveal a dim sense<br> +That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green<br> + They make a mean show as a fence.<br> +<br> +Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,<br> + That range not greatly above<br> +The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,<br> + And <i>her </i>gown, as she waits for her Love.<br> +<br> +NEAR CHARD.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE CHILDREN AND SIR NAMELESS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Sir Nameless, once of Athelhall,<i> </i>declared:<br> +“These wretched children romping in my park<br> +Trample the herbage till the soil is bared,<br> +And yap and yell from early morn till dark!<br> +Go keep them harnessed to their set routines:<br> +Thank God I’ve none to hasten my decay;<br> +For green remembrance there are better means<br> +Than offspring, who but wish their sires away.”<br> +<br> +Sir Nameless of that mansion said anon:<br> +“To be perpetuate for my mightiness<br> +Sculpture must image me when I am gone.”<br> +- He forthwith summoned carvers there express<br> +To shape a figure stretching seven-odd feet<br> +(For he was tall) in alabaster stone,<br> +With shield, and crest, and casque, and word complete:<br> +When done a statelier work was never known.<br> +<br> +Three hundred years hied; Church-restorers came,<br> +And, no one of his lineage being traced,<br> +They thought an effigy so large in frame<br> +Best fitted for the floor. There it was placed,<br> +Under the seats for schoolchildren. And they<br> +Kicked out his name, and hobnailed off his nose;<br> +And, as they yawn through sermon-time, they say,<br> +“Who was this old stone man beneath our toes?”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +These summer landscapes - clump, and copse, and croft -<br> +Woodland and meadowland - here hung aloft,<br> +Gay with limp grass and leafery new and soft,<br> +<br> +Seem caught from the immediate season’s yield<br> +I saw last noonday shining over the field,<br> +By rapid snatch, while still are uncongealed<br> +<br> +The saps that in their live originals climb;<br> +Yester’s quick greenage here set forth in mime<br> +Just as it stands, now, at our breathing-time.<br> +<br> +But these young foils so fresh upon each tree,<br> +Soft verdures spread in sprouting novelty,<br> +Are not this summer’s, though they feign to be.<br> +<br> +Last year their May to Michaelmas term was run,<br> +Last autumn browned and buried every one,<br> +And no more know they sight of any sun.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +HER TEMPLE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Dear, think not that they will forget you:<br> + - If craftsmanly art should be mine<br> +I will build up a temple, and set you<br> + Therein as its shrine.<br> +<br> +They may say: “Why a woman such honour?”<br> + - Be told, “O, so sweet was her fame,<br> +That a man heaped this splendour upon her;<br> + None now knows his name.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A TWO-YEARS’ IDYLL<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + Yes; such it was;<br> + Just those two seasons unsought,<br> +Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;<br> + Moving, as straws,<br> + Hearts quick as ours in those days;<br> +Going like wind, too, and rated as nought<br> + Save as the prelude to plays<br> + Soon to come - larger, life-fraught:<br> + Yes; such it was.<br> +<br> + “Nought” it was called,<br> + Even by ourselves - that which springs<br> +Out of the years for all flesh, first or last,<br> + Commonplace, scrawled<br> + Dully on days that go past.<br> +Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings<br> + Even in hours overcast:<br> + Aye, though this best thing of things,<br> + “Nought” it was called!<br> +<br> + What seems it now?<br> + Lost: such beginning was all;<br> +Nothing came after: romance straight forsook<br> + Quickly somehow<br> + Life when we sped from our nook,<br> +Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall . . .<br> + - A preface without any book,<br> + A trumpet uplipped, but no call;<br> + That seems it now.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +BY HENSTRIDGE CROSS AT THE YEAR’S END<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +(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.)<br> +<br> + Why go the east road now? . . .<br> +That way a youth went on a morrow<br> +After mirth, and he brought back sorrow<br> + Painted upon his brow<br> + Why go the east road now?<br> +<br> + Why go the north road now?<br> +Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen,<br> +Once edging fiefs of my forefolk yeomen,<br> + Fallows fat to the plough:<br> + Why go the north road now?<br> +<br> + Why go the west road now?<br> +Thence to us came she, bosom-burning,<br> +Welcome with joyousness returning . . .<br> + - She sleeps under the bough:<br> + Why go the west road now?<br> +<br> + Why go the south road now?<br> +That way marched they some are forgetting,<br> +Stark to the moon left, past regretting<br> + Loves who have falsed their vow . . .<br> + Why go the south road now?<br> +<br> + Why go any road now?<br> +White stands the handpost for brisk on-bearers,<br> +“Halt!” is the word for wan-cheeked farers<br> + Musing on Whither, and How . . .<br> + Why go any road now?<br> +<br> + “Yea: we want new feet now”<br> +Answer the stones. “Want chit-chat, laughter:<br> +Plenty of such to go hereafter<br> + By our tracks, we trow!<br> + We are for new feet now.<br> +<br> +<i>During the War.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>PENANCE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“Why do you sit, O pale thin man,<br> + At the end of the room<br> +By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?<br> + - It is cold as a tomb,<br> +And there’s not a spark within the grate;<br> + And the jingling wires<br> + Are as vain desires<br> + That have lagged too late.”<br> +<br> +“Why do I? Alas, far times ago<br> + A woman lyred here<br> +In the evenfall; one who fain did so<br> + From year to year;<br> +And, in loneliness bending wistfully,<br> + Would wake each note<br> + In sick sad rote,<br> + None to listen or see!<br> +<br> +“I would not join. I would not stay,<br> + But drew away,<br> +Though the winter fire beamed brightly . . . Aye!<br> + I do to-day<br> +What I would not then; and the chill old keys,<br> + Like a skull’s brown teeth<br> + Loose in their sheath,<br> + Freeze my touch; yes, freeze.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“I LOOK IN HER FACE”<br> +(SONG: <i>Minor</i>)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I look in her face and say,<br> +“Sing as you used to sing<br> +About Love’s blossoming”;<br> +But she hints not Yea or Nay.<br> +<br> +“Sing, then, that Love’s a pain,<br> +If, Dear, you think it so,<br> +Whether it be or no;”<br> +But dumb her lips remain.<br> +<br> +I go to a far-off room,<br> +A faint song ghosts my ear;<br> +<i>Which </i>song I cannot hear,<br> +But it seems to come from a tomb.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AFTER THE WAR<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Last Post sounded<br> +Across the mead<br> +To where he loitered<br> +With absent heed.<br> +Five years before<br> +In the evening there<br> +Had flown that call<br> +To him and his Dear.<br> +“You’ll never come back;<br> +Good-bye!” she had said;<br> +“Here I’ll be living,<br> +And my Love dead!”<br> +<br> +Those closing minims<br> +Had been as shafts darting<br> +Through him and her pressed<br> +In that last parting;<br> +They thrilled him not now,<br> +In the selfsame place<br> +With the selfsame sun<br> +On his war-seamed face.<br> +“Lurks a god’s laughter<br> +In this?” he said,<br> +“That I am the living<br> +And she the dead!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“IF YOU HAD KNOWN”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + If you had known<br> +When listening with her to the far-down moan<br> +Of the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,<br> +And rain came on that did not hinder talk,<br> +Or damp your flashing facile gaiety<br> +In turning home, despite the slow wet walk<br> +By crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;<br> + If you had known<br> +<br> + You would lay roses,<br> +Fifty years thence, on her monument, that discloses<br> +Its graying shape upon the luxuriant green;<br> +Fifty years thence to an hour, by chance led there,<br> +What might have moved you? - yea, had you foreseen<br> +That on the tomb of the selfsame one, gone where<br> +The dawn of every day is as the close is,<br> + You would lay roses!<br> +<br> +1920.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE CHAPEL-ORGANIST<br> +(A.D. 185-)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I’ve been thinking it through, as I play here to-night, to play +never again,<br> +By the light of that lowering sun peering in at the window-pane,<br> +And over the back-street roofs, throwing shades from the boys of the +chore<br> +In the gallery, right upon me, sitting up to these keys once more . +. .<br> +<br> +How I used to hear tongues ask, as I sat here when I was new:<br> +“Who is she playing the organ? She touches it mightily true!”<br> +“She travels from Havenpool Town,” the deacon would softly +speak,<br> +“The stipend can hardly cover her fare hither twice in the week.”<br> +(It fell far short of doing, indeed; but I never told,<br> +For I have craved minstrelsy more than lovers, or beauty, or gold.)<br> +<br> +’Twas so he answered at first, but the story grew different later:<br> +“It cannot go on much longer, from what we hear of her now!”<br> +At the meaning wheeze in the words the inquirer would shift his place<br> +Till he could see round the curtain that screened me from people below.<br> +“A handsome girl,” he would murmur, upstaring, (and so I +am).<br> +“But - too much sex in her build; fine eyes, but eyelids too heavy;<br> +A bosom too full for her age; in her lips too voluptuous a look.”<br> +(It may be. But who put it there? Assuredly it was not I.)<br> +<br> +I went on playing and singing when this I had heard, and more,<br> +Though tears half-blinded me; yes, I remained going on and on,<br> +Just as I used me to chord and to sing at the selfsame time! . . .<br> +For it’s a contralto - my voice is; they’ll hear it again +here to-night<br> +In the psalmody notes that I love more than world or than flesh or than +life.<br> +<br> +Well, the deacon, in fact, that day had learnt new tidings about me;<br> +They troubled his mind not a little, for he was a worthy man.<br> +(He trades as a chemist in High Street, and during the week he had sought<br> +His fellow-deacon, who throve as a book-binder over the way.)<br> +“These are strange rumours,” he said. “We must +guard the good name of the chapel.<br> +If, sooth, she’s of evil report, what else can we do but dismiss +her?”<br> +“ - But get such another to play here we cannot for double the +price!”<br> +It settled the point for the time, and I triumphed awhile in their strait,<br> +And my much-beloved grand semibreves went living on under my fingers.<br> +<br> +At length in the congregation more head-shakes and murmurs were rife,<br> +And my dismissal was ruled, though I was not warned of it then.<br> +But a day came when they declared it. The news entered me as a +sword;<br> +I was broken; so pallid of face that they thought I should faint, they +said.<br> +I rallied. “O, rather than go, I will play you for nothing!” +said I.<br> +’Twas in much desperation I spoke it, for bring me to forfeit +I could not<br> +Those melodies chorded so richly for which I had laboured and lived.<br> +They paused. And for nothing I played at the chapel through Sundays +anon,<br> +Upheld by that art which I loved more than blandishments lavished of +men.<br> +<br> +But it fell that murmurs again from the flock broke the pastor’s +peace.<br> +Some member had seen me at Havenpool, comrading close a sea-captain.<br> +(Yes; I was thereto constrained, lacking means for the fare to and fro.)<br> +Yet God knows, if aught He knows ever, I loved the Old-Hundredth, Saint +Stephen’s,<br> +Mount Zion, New Sabbath, Miles-Lane, Holy Rest, and Arabia, and Eaton,<br> +Above all embraces of body by wooers who sought me and won! . . .<br> +Next week ‘twas declared I was seen coming home with a lover at +dawn.<br> +The deacons insisted then, strong; and forgiveness I did not implore.<br> +I saw all was lost for me, quite, but I made a last bid in my throbs.<br> +High love had been beaten by lust; and the senses had conquered the +soul,<br> +But the soul should die game, if I knew it! I turned to my masters +and said:<br> +“I yield, Gentlemen, without parlance. But - let me just +hymn you <i>once </i>more!<br> +It’s a little thing, Sirs, that I ask; and a passion is music +with me!”<br> +They saw that consent would cost nothing, and show as good grace, as +knew I,<br> +Though tremble I did, and feel sick, as I paused thereat, dumb for their +words.<br> +They gloomily nodded assent, saying, “Yes, if you care to. +Once more,<br> +And only once more, understand.” To that with a bend I agreed.<br> +- “You’ve a fixed and a far-reaching look,” spoke +one who had eyed me awhile.<br> +“I’ve a fixed and a far-reaching plan, and my look only +showed it,” said I.<br> +<br> +This evening of Sunday is come - the last of my functioning here.<br> +“She plays as if she were possessed!” they exclaim, glancing +upward and round.<br> +“Such harmonies I never dreamt the old instrument capable of!”<br> +Meantime the sun lowers and goes; shades deepen; the lights are turned +up,<br> +And the people voice out the last singing: tune Tallis: the Evening +Hymn.<br> +(I wonder Dissenters sing Ken: it shows them more liberal in spirit<br> +At this little chapel down here than at certain new others I know.)<br> +I sing as I play. Murmurs some one: “No woman’s throat +richer than hers!”<br> +“True: in these parts, at least,” ponder I. “But, +my man, you will hear it no more.”<br> +And I sing with them onward: “The grave dread as little do I as +my bed.”<br> +<br> +I lift up my feet from the pedals; and then, while my eyes are still +wet<br> +From the symphonies born of my fingers, I do that whereon I am set,<br> +And draw from my “full round bosom,” (their words; how can +<i>I </i>help its heave?)<br> +A bottle blue-coloured and fluted - a vinaigrette, they may conceive +-<br> +And before the choir measures my meaning, reads aught in my moves to +and fro,<br> +I drink from the phial at a draught, and they think it a pick-me-up; +so.<br> +Then I gather my books as to leave, bend over the keys as to pray.<br> +When they come to me motionless, stooping, quick death will have whisked +me away.<br> +<br> +“Sure, nobody meant her to poison herself in her haste, after +all!”<br> +The deacons will say as they carry me down and the night shadows fall,<br> +“Though the charges were true,” they will add. “It’s +a case red as scarlet withal!”<br> +I have never once minced it. Lived chaste I have not. Heaven +knows it above! . . .<br> +But past all the heavings of passion - it’s music has been my +life-love! . . .<br> +That tune did go well - this last playing! . . . I reckon they’ll +bury me here . . .<br> +Not a soul from the seaport my birthplace - will come, or bestow me +. . . a tear.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +FETCHING HER<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + An hour before the dawn,<br> + My friend,<br> +You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,<br> + Your breakfast-fire anon,<br> +And outing into the dark and damp<br> + You saddled, and set on.<br> +<br> + Thuswise, before the day,<br> + My friend,<br> +You sought her on her surfy shore,<br> + To fetch her thence away<br> +Unto your own new-builded door<br> + For a staunch lifelong stay.<br> +<br> + You said: “It seems to be,<br> + My friend,<br> +That I were bringing to my place<br> + The pure brine breeze, the sea,<br> +The mews - all her old sky and space,<br> + In bringing her with me!”<br> +<br> + - But time is prompt to expugn,<br> + My friend,<br> +Such magic-minted conjurings:<br> + The brought breeze fainted soon,<br> +And then the sense of seamews’ wings,<br> + And the shore’s sibilant tune.<br> +<br> + So, it had been more due,<br> + My friend,<br> +Perhaps, had you not pulled this flower<br> + From the craggy nook it knew,<br> +And set it in an alien bower;<br> + But left it where it grew!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“COULD I BUT WILL”<br> +(SONG: <i>Verses </i>1, 3, <i>key major; verse 2, key minor</i>)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + Could I but will,<br> + Will to my bent,<br> +I’d have afar ones near me still,<br> +And music of rare ravishment,<br> +In strains that move the toes and heels!<br> +And when the sweethearts sat for rest<br> +The unbetrothed should foot with zest<br> + Ecstatic reels.<br> +<br> + Could I be head,<br> + Head-god, “Come, now,<br> +Dear girl,” I’d say, “whose flame is fled,<br> +Who liest with linen-banded brow,<br> +Stirred but by shakes from Earth’s deep core - ”<br> +I’d say to her: “Unshroud and meet<br> +That Love who kissed and called thee Sweet! -<br> + Yea, come once more!”<br> +<br> + Even half-god power<br> + In spinning dooms<br> +Had I, this frozen scene should flower,<br> +And sand-swept plains and Arctic glooms<br> +Should green them gay with waving leaves,<br> +Mid which old friends and I would walk<br> +With weightless feet and magic talk<br> + Uncounted eves.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +SHE REVISITS ALONE THE CHURCH OF HER MARRIAGE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I have come to the church and chancel,<br> + Where all’s the same!<br> +- Brighter and larger in my dreams<br> +Truly it shaped than now, meseems,<br> + Is its substantial frame.<br> +But, anyhow, I made my vow,<br> + Whether for praise or blame,<br> +Here in this church and chancel<br> + Where all’s the same.<br> +<br> +Where touched the check-floored chancel<br> + My knees and his?<br> +The step looks shyly at the sun,<br> +And says, “’Twas here the thing was done,<br> + For bale or else for bliss!”<br> +Of all those there I least was ware<br> + Would it be that or this<br> +When touched the check-floored chancel<br> + My knees and his!<br> +<br> +Here in this fateful chancel<br> + Where all’s the same,<br> +I thought the culminant crest of life<br> +Was reached when I went forth the wife<br> + I was not when I came.<br> +Each commonplace one of my race,<br> + Some say, has such an aim -<br> +To go from a fateful chancel<br> + As not the same.<br> +<br> +Here, through this hoary chancel<br> + Where all’s the same,<br> +A thrill, a gaiety even, ranged<br> +That morning when it seemed I changed<br> + My nature with my name.<br> +Though now not fair, though gray my hair,<br> + He loved me, past proclaim,<br> +Here in this hoary chancel,<br> + Where all’s the same.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AT THE ENTERING OF THE NEW YEAR<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I (OLD STYLE)<br> +<br> +Our songs went up and out the chimney,<br> +And roused the home-gone husbandmen;<br> +Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,<br> +Our hands-across and back again,<br> +Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements<br> + On to the white highway,<br> +Where nighted farers paused and muttered,<br> + “Keep it up well, do they!”<br> +<br> +The contrabasso’s measured booming<br> +Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,<br> +To shepherds at their midnight lambings,<br> +To stealthy poachers on their rounds;<br> +And everybody caught full duly<br> + The notes of our delight,<br> +As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise<br> + Hailed by our sanguine sight.<br> +<br> +II (NEW STYLE)<br> +<br> + We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,<br> + As if to give ear to the muffled peal,<br> + Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim;<br> + But our truest heed is to words that steal<br> + From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,<br> + And seems, so far as our sense can see,<br> + To feature bereaved Humanity,<br> + As it sighs to the imminent year its say:-<br> +<br> + “O stay without, O stay without,<br> + Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;<br> + Though stars irradiate thee about<br> + Thy entrance here is undesired.<br> + Open the gate not, mystic one;<br> +Must we avow what we would close confine?<br> +<i>With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,<br> + </i>Albeit the fault may not be thine.”<br> +<br> +<i>December 31. During the War.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>THEY WOULD NOT COME<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I travelled to where in her lifetime<br> + She’d knelt at morning prayer,<br> + To call her up as if there;<br> +But she paid no heed to my suing,<br> +As though her old haunt could win not<br> + A thought from her spirit, or care.<br> +<br> +I went where my friend had lectioned<br> + The prophets in high declaim,<br> + That my soul’s ear the same<br> +Full tones should catch as aforetime;<br> +But silenced by gear of the Present<br> + Was the voice that once there came!<br> +<br> +Where the ocean had sprayed our banquet<br> + I stood, to recall it as then:<br> + The same eluding again!<br> +No vision. Shows contingent<br> +Affrighted it further from me<br> + Even than from my home-den.<br> +<br> +When I found them no responders,<br> + But fugitives prone to flee<br> + From where they had used to be,<br> +It vouched I had been led hither<br> +As by night wisps in bogland,<br> + And bruised the heart of me!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AFTER A ROMANTIC DAY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + The railway bore him through<br> + An earthen cutting out from a city:<br> + There was no scope for view,<br> +Though the frail light shed by a slim young moon<br> + Fell like a friendly tune.<br> +<br> + Fell like a liquid ditty,<br> +And the blank lack of any charm<br> + Of landscape did no harm.<br> +The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,<br> + And moon-lit, was enough<br> +For poetry of place: its weathered face<br> +Formed a convenient sheet whereon<br> +The visions of his mind were drawn.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE TWO WIVES<br> +(SMOKER’S CLUB-STORY)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I waited at home all the while they were boating together -<br> + My wife and my near neighbour’s +wife:<br> + Till there entered a woman I loved more than life,<br> +And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather,<br> + With a sense that some mischief +was rife.<br> +<br> +Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies<br> + Was drowned - which of them was +unknown:<br> + And I marvelled - my friend’s wife? - or was +it my own<br> +Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is?<br> + - We learnt it was <i>his </i>had +so gone.<br> +<br> +Then I cried in unrest: “He is free! But no good is releasing<br> + To him as it would be to me!”<br> + “ - But it is,” said the woman I loved, +quietly.<br> +“How?” I asked her. “ - Because he has long +loved me too without ceasing,<br> + And it’s just the same thing, +don’t you see.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“I KNEW A LADY”<br> +(CLUB SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I knew a lady when the days<br> + Grew long, and evenings goldened;<br> + But I was not emboldened<br> +By her prompt eyes and winning ways.<br> +<br> +And when old Winter nipt the haws,<br> + “Another’s wife I’ll be,<br> + And then you’ll care for me,”<br> +She said, “and think how sweet I was!”<br> +<br> +And soon she shone as another’s wife:<br> + As such I often met her,<br> + And sighed, “How I regret her!<br> +My folly cuts me like a knife!”<br> +<br> +And then, to-day, her husband came,<br> + And moaned, “Why did you flout her?<br> + Well could I do without her!<br> +For both our burdens you are to blame!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A HOUSE WITH A HISTORY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +There is a house in a city street<br> + Some past ones made their own;<br> +Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,<br> + And their babblings beat<br> + From ceiling to white hearth-stone.<br> +<br> +And who are peopling its parlours now?<br> + Who talk across its floor?<br> +Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow,<br> + Who read not how<br> + Its prime had passed before<br> +<br> +Their raw equipments, scenes, and says<br> + Afflicted its memoried face,<br> +That had seen every larger phase<br> + Of human ways<br> + Before these filled the place.<br> +<br> +To them that house’s tale is theirs,<br> + No former voices call<br> +Aloud therein. Its aspect bears<br> + Their joys and cares<br> + Alone, from wall to wall.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A PROCESSION OF DEAD DAYS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I see the ghost of a perished day;<br> +I know his face, and the feel of his dawn:<br> +’Twas he who took me far away<br> + To a spot strange and gray:<br> +Look at me, Day, and then pass on,<br> +But come again: yes, come anon!<br> +<br> +Enters another into view;<br> +His features are not cold or white,<br> +But rosy as a vein seen through:<br> + Too soon he smiles adieu.<br> +Adieu, O ghost-day of delight;<br> +But come and grace my dying sight.<br> +<br> +Enters the day that brought the kiss:<br> +He brought it in his foggy hand<br> +To where the mumbling river is,<br> + And the high clematis;<br> +It lent new colour to the land,<br> +And all the boy within me manned.<br> +<br> +Ah, this one. Yes, I know his name,<br> +He is the day that wrought a shine<br> +Even on a precinct common and tame,<br> + As ’twere of purposed aim.<br> +He shows him as a rainbow sign<br> +Of promise made to me and mine.<br> +<br> +The next stands forth in his morning clothes,<br> +And yet, despite their misty blue,<br> +They mark no sombre custom-growths<br> + That joyous living loathes,<br> +But a meteor act, that left in its queue<br> +A train of sparks my lifetime through.<br> +<br> +I almost tremble at his nod -<br> +This next in train - who looks at me<br> +As I were slave, and he were god<br> + Wielding an iron rod.<br> +I close my eyes; yet still is he<br> +In front there, looking mastery.<br> +<br> +In the similitude of a nurse<br> +The phantom of the next one comes:<br> +I did not know what better or worse<br> + Chancings might bless or curse<br> +When his original glossed the thrums<br> +Of ivy, bringing that which numbs.<br> +<br> +Yes; trees were turning in their sleep<br> +Upon their windy pillows of gray<br> +When he stole in. Silent his creep<br> + On the grassed eastern steep . . .<br> +I shall not soon forget that day,<br> +And what his third hour took away!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +HE FOLLOWS HIMSELF<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +In a heavy time I dogged myself<br> + Along a louring way,<br> +Till my leading self to my following self<br> + Said: “Why do you hang on me<br> + So harassingly?”<br> +<br> +“I have watched you, Heart of mine,” I cried,<br> + “So often going astray<br> +And leaving me, that I have pursued,<br> + Feeling such truancy<br> + Ought not to be.”<br> +<br> +He said no more, and I dogged him on<br> + From noon to the dun of day<br> +By prowling paths, until anew<br> + He begged: “Please turn and flee! -<br> + What do you see?”<br> +<br> +“Methinks I see a man,” said I,<br> + “Dimming his hours to gray.<br> +I will not leave him while I know<br> + Part of myself is he<br> + Who dreams such dree!”<br> +<br> +“I go to my old friend’s house,” he urged,<br> + “So do not watch me, pray!”<br> +“Well, I will leave you in peace,” said I,<br> + “Though of this poignancy<br> + You should fight free:<br> +<br> +“Your friend, O other me, is dead;<br> + You know not what you say.”<br> +- “That do I! And at his green-grassed door<br> + By night’s bright galaxy<br> + I bend a knee.”<br> +<br> +- The yew-plumes moved like mockers’ beards,<br> + Though only boughs were they,<br> +And I seemed to go; yet still was there,<br> + And am, and there haunt we<br> + Thus bootlessly.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE SINGING WOMAN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + There was a singing woman<br> + Came riding across the mead<br> + At the time of the mild May weather,<br> + Tameless, tireless;<br> +This song she sung: “I am fair, I am young!”<br> + And many turned to heed.<br> +<br> + And the same singing woman<br> + Sat crooning in her need<br> + At the time of the winter weather;<br> + Friendless, fireless,<br> +She sang this song: “Life, thou’rt too long!”<br> + And there was none to heed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +WITHOUT, NOT WITHIN HER<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +It was what you bore with you, Woman,<br> + Not inly were,<br> +That throned you from all else human,<br> + However fair!<br> +<br> +It was that strange freshness you carried<br> + Into a soul<br> +Whereon no thought of yours tarried<br> + Two moments at all.<br> +<br> +And out from his spirit flew death,<br> + And bale, and ban,<br> +Like the corn-chaff under the breath<br> + Of the winnowing-fan.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“O I WON’T LEAD A HOMELY LIFE”<br> +(<i>To an old air</i>)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“O I won’t lead a homely life<br> +As father’s Jack and mother’s Jill,<br> +But I will be a fiddler’s wife,<br> + With music mine at will!<br> + Just a little tune,<br> + Another one soon,<br> + As I merrily fling my fill!”<br> +<br> +And she became a fiddler’s Dear,<br> +And merry all day she strove to be;<br> +And he played and played afar and near,<br> + But never at home played he<br> + Any little tune<br> + Or late or soon;<br> + And sunk and sad was she!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +IN THE SMALL HOURS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I lay in my bed and fiddled<br> + With a dreamland viol and bow,<br> +And the tunes flew back to my fingers<br> + I had melodied years ago.<br> +It was two or three in the morning<br> + When I fancy-fiddled so<br> +Long reels and country-dances,<br> + And hornpipes swift and slow.<br> +<br> +And soon anon came crossing<br> + The chamber in the gray<br> +Figures of jigging fieldfolk -<br> + Saviours of corn and hay -<br> +To the air of “Haste to the Wedding,”<br> + As after a wedding-day;<br> +Yea, up and down the middle<br> + In windless whirls went they!<br> +<br> +There danced the bride and bridegroom,<br> + And couples in a train,<br> +Gay partners time and travail<br> + Had longwhiles stilled amain! . . .<br> +It seemed a thing for weeping<br> + To find, at slumber’s wane<br> +And morning’s sly increeping,<br> + That Now, not Then, held reign.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE LITTLE OLD TABLE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Creak, little wood thing, creak,<br> +When I touch you with elbow or knee;<br> +That is the way you speak<br> +Of one who gave you to me!<br> +<br> +You, little table, she brought -<br> +Brought me with her own hand,<br> +As she looked at me with a thought<br> +That I did not understand.<br> +<br> +- Whoever owns it anon,<br> +And hears it, will never know<br> +What a history hangs upon<br> +This creak from long ago.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +VAGG HOLLOW<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“What do you see in Vagg Hollow,<br> +Little boy, when you go<br> +In the morning at five on your lonely drive?”<br> +“ - I see men’s souls, who follow<br> +Till we’ve passed where the road lies low,<br> +When they vanish at our creaking!<br> +<br> +“They are like white faces speaking<br> +Beside and behind the waggon -<br> +One just as father’s was when here.<br> +The waggoner drinks from his flagon,<br> +(Or he’d flinch when the Hollow is near)<br> +But he does not give me any.<br> +<br> +“Sometimes the faces are many;<br> +But I walk along by the horses,<br> +He asleep on the straw as we jog;<br> +And I hear the loud water-courses,<br> +And the drops from the trees in the fog,<br> +And watch till the day is breaking.<br> +<br> +“And the wind out by Tintinhull waking;<br> +I hear in it father’s call<br> +As he called when I saw him dying,<br> +And he sat by the fire last Fall,<br> +And mother stood by sighing;<br> +But I’m not afraid at all!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE DREAM IS - WHICH?<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I am laughing by the brook with her,<br> + Splashed in its tumbling stir;<br> +And then it is a blankness looms<br> + As if I walked not there,<br> +Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,<br> + And treading a lonely stair.<br> +<br> +With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes<br> + We sit where none espies;<br> +Till a harsh change comes edging in<br> + As no such scene were there,<br> +But winter, and I were bent and thin,<br> + And cinder-gray my hair.<br> +<br> +We dance in heys around the hall,<br> + Weightless as thistleball;<br> +And then a curtain drops between,<br> + As if I danced not there,<br> +But wandered through a mounded green<br> + To find her, I knew where.<br> +<br> +<i>March </i>1913.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE COUNTRY WEDDING<br> +(A FIDDLER’S STORY)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Little fogs were gathered in every hollow,<br> +But the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather<br> +As we marched with our fiddles over the heather<br> +- How it comes back! - to their wedding that day.<br> +<br> +Our getting there brought our neighbours and all, O!<br> +Till, two and two, the couples stood ready.<br> +And her father said: “Souls, for God’s sake, be steady!”<br> +And we strung up our fiddles, and sounded out “A.”<br> +<br> +The groomsman he stared, and said, “You must follow!”<br> +But we’d gone to fiddle in front of the party,<br> +(Our feelings as friends being true and hearty)<br> +And fiddle in front we did - all the way.<br> +<br> +Yes, from their door by Mill-tail-Shallow,<br> +And up Styles-Lane, and by Front-Street houses,<br> +Where stood maids, bachelors, and spouses,<br> +Who cheered the songs that we knew how to play.<br> +<br> +I bowed the treble before her father,<br> +Michael the tenor in front of the lady,<br> +The bass-viol Reub - and right well played he! -<br> +The serpent Jim; ay, to church and back.<br> +<br> +I thought the bridegroom was flurried rather,<br> +As we kept up the tune outside the chancel,<br> +While they were swearing things none can cancel<br> +Inside the walls to our drumstick’s whack.<br> +<br> +“Too gay!” she pleaded. “Clouds may gather,<br> +And sorrow come.” But she gave in, laughing,<br> +And by supper-time when we’d got to the quaffing<br> +Her fears were forgot, and her smiles weren’t slack.<br> +<br> +A grand wedding ‘twas! And what would follow<br> +We never thought. Or that we should have buried her<br> +On the same day with the man that married her,<br> +A day like the first, half hazy, half clear.<br> +<br> +Yes: little fogs were in every hollow,<br> +Though the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather,<br> +When we went to play ’em to church together,<br> +And carried ’em there in an after year.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +FIRST OR LAST<br> +(SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + If grief come early<br> + Joy comes late,<br> + If joy come early<br> + Grief will wait;<br> + Aye, my dear and tender!<br> +<br> +Wise ones joy them early<br> +While the cheeks are red,<br> +Banish grief till surly<br> +Time has dulled their dread.<br> +<br> + And joy being ours<br> + Ere youth has flown,<br> + The later hours<br> + May find us gone;<br> + Aye, my dear and tender!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +LONELY DAYS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Lonely her fate was,<br> +Environed from sight<br> +In the house where the gate was<br> +Past finding at night.<br> +None there to share it,<br> +No one to tell:<br> +Long she’d to bear it,<br> +And bore it well.<br> +<br> +Elsewhere just so she<br> +Spent many a day;<br> +Wishing to go she<br> +Continued to stay.<br> +And people without<br> +Basked warm in the air,<br> +But none sought her out,<br> +Or knew she was there.<br> +Even birthdays were passed so,<br> +Sunny and shady:<br> +Years did it last so<br> +For this sad lady.<br> +Never declaring it,<br> +No one to tell,<br> +Still she kept bearing it -<br> +Bore it well.<br> +<br> +The days grew chillier,<br> +And then she went<br> +To a city, familiar<br> +In years forespent,<br> +When she walked gaily<br> +Far to and fro,<br> +But now, moving frailly,<br> +Could nowhere go.<br> +The cheerful colour<br> +Of houses she’d known<br> +Had died to a duller<br> +And dingier tone.<br> +Streets were now noisy<br> +Where once had rolled<br> +A few quiet coaches,<br> +Or citizens strolled.<br> +Through the party-wall<br> +Of the memoried spot<br> +They danced at a ball<br> +Who recalled her not.<br> +Tramlines lay crossing<br> +Once gravelled slopes,<br> +Metal rods clanked,<br> +And electric ropes.<br> +So she endured it all,<br> +Thin, thinner wrought,<br> +Until time cured it all,<br> +And she knew nought.<br> +<br> +Versified from a Diary.<br> +<br> +Versified from a Diary.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“WHAT DID IT MEAN?”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +What did it mean that noontide, when<br> +You bade me pluck the flower<br> +Within the other woman’s bower,<br> + Whom I knew nought of then?<br> +<br> +I thought the flower blushed deeplier - aye,<br> +And as I drew its stalk to me<br> +It seemed to breathe: “I am, I see,<br> +Made use of in a human play.”<br> +<br> +And while I plucked, upstarted sheer<br> +As phantom from the pane thereby<br> +A corpse-like countenance, with eye<br> +That iced me by its baleful peer -<br> + Silent, as from a bier . . .<br> +<br> +When I came back your face had changed,<br> + It was no face for me;<br> +O did it speak of hearts estranged,<br> + And deadly rivalry<br> +<br> + In times before<br> + I darked your door,<br> + To seise me of<br> + Mere second love,<br> +Which still the haunting first deranged?<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AT THE DINNER-TABLE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I sat at dinner in my prime,<br> +And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,<br> +And started as if I had seen a crime,<br> +And prayed the ghastly show might pass.<br> +<br> +Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,<br> +Grinning back to me as my own;<br> +I well-nigh fainted with affright<br> +At finding me a haggard crone.<br> +<br> +My husband laughed. He had slily set<br> +A warping mirror there, in whim<br> +To startle me. My eyes grew wet;<br> +I spoke not all the eve to him.<br> +<br> +He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,<br> +And took away the distorting glass,<br> +Uncovering the accustomed one;<br> +And so it ended? No, alas,<br> +<br> +Fifty years later, when he died,<br> +I sat me in the selfsame chair,<br> +Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed,<br> +I saw the sideboard facing there;<br> +<br> +And from its mirror looked the lean<br> +Thing I’d become, each wrinkle and score<br> +The image of me that I had seen<br> +In jest there fifty years before.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE MARBLE TABLET<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +There it stands, though alas, what a little of her<br> + Shows in its cold white look!<br> +Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of her<br> + Voice like the purl of a brook;<br> + Not her thoughts, that you read like a book.<br> +<br> +It may stand for her once in November<br> + When first she breathed, witless of all;<br> +Or in heavy years she would remember<br> + When circumstance held her in thrall;<br> + Or at last, when she answered her call!<br> +<br> +Nothing more. The still marble, date-graven,<br> + Gives all that it can, tersely lined;<br> +That one has at length found the haven<br> + Which every one other will find;<br> + With silence on what shone behind.<br> +<br> +St. Juliot: <i>September </i>8, 1916.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE MASTER AND THE LEAVES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I<br> +<br> +We are budding, Master, budding,<br> + We of your favourite tree;<br> +March drought and April flooding<br> + Arouse us merrily,<br> +Our stemlets newly studding;<br> + And yet you do not see!<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> +We are fully woven for summer<br> + In stuff of limpest green,<br> +The twitterer and the hummer<br> + Here rest of nights, unseen,<br> +While like a long-roll drummer<br> + The nightjar thrills the treen.<br> +<br> +III<br> +<br> +We are turning yellow, Master,<br> + And next we are turning red,<br> +And faster then and faster<br> + Shall seek our rooty bed,<br> +All wasted in disaster!<br> + But you lift not your head.<br> +<br> +IV<br> +<br> +- “I mark your early going,<br> + And that you’ll soon be clay,<br> +I have seen your summer showing<br> + As in my youthful day;<br> +But why I seem unknowing<br> + Is too sunk in to say!”<br> +<br> +1917.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +LAST WORDS TO A DUMB FRIEND<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Pet was never mourned as you,<br> +Purrer of the spotless hue,<br> +Plumy tail, and wistful gaze<br> +While you humoured our queer ways,<br> +Or outshrilled your morning call<br> +Up the stairs and through the hall -<br> +Foot suspended in its fall -<br> +While, expectant, you would stand<br> +Arched, to meet the stroking hand;<br> +Till your way you chose to wend<br> +Yonder, to your tragic end.<br> +<br> +Never another pet for me!<br> +Let your place all vacant be;<br> +Better blankness day by day<br> +Than companion torn away.<br> +Better bid his memory fade,<br> +Better blot each mark he made,<br> +Selfishly escape distress<br> +By contrived forgetfulness,<br> +Than preserve his prints to make<br> +Every morn and eve an ache.<br> +<br> +From the chair whereon he sat<br> +Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat;<br> +Rake his little pathways out<br> +Mid the bushes roundabout;<br> +Smooth away his talons’ mark<br> +From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,<br> +Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,<br> +Waiting us who loitered round.<br> +<br> +Strange it is this speechless thing,<br> +Subject to our mastering,<br> +Subject for his life and food<br> +To our gift, and time, and mood;<br> +Timid pensioner of us Powers,<br> +His existence ruled by ours,<br> +Should - by crossing at a breath<br> +Into safe and shielded death,<br> +By the merely taking hence<br> +Of his insignificance -<br> +Loom as largened to the sense,<br> +Shape as part, above man’s will,<br> +Of the Imperturbable.<br> +<br> +As a prisoner, flight debarred,<br> +Exercising in a yard,<br> +Still retain I, troubled, shaken,<br> +Mean estate, by him forsaken;<br> +And this home, which scarcely took<br> +Impress from his little look,<br> +By his faring to the Dim<br> +Grows all eloquent of him.<br> +<br> +Housemate, I can think you still<br> +Bounding to the window-sill,<br> +Over which I vaguely see<br> +Your small mound beneath the tree,<br> +Showing in the autumn shade<br> +That you moulder where you played.<br> +<br> +<i>October </i>2, 1904.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A DRIZZLING EASTER MORNING<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +And he is risen? Well, be it so . . .<br> +And still the pensive lands complain,<br> +And dead men wait as long ago,<br> +As if, much doubting, they would know<br> +What they are ransomed from, before<br> +They pass again their sheltering door.<br> +<br> +I stand amid them in the rain,<br> +While blusters vex the yew and vane;<br> +And on the road the weary wain<br> +Plods forward, laden heavily;<br> +And toilers with their aches are fain<br> +For endless rest - though risen is he.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +ON ONE WHO LIVED AND DIED WHERE HE WAS BORN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +When a night in November<br> + Blew forth its bleared airs<br> +An infant descended<br> + His birth-chamber stairs<br> + For the very first time,<br> + At the still, midnight chime;<br> +All unapprehended<br> + His mission, his aim. -<br> +Thus, first, one November,<br> +An infant descended<br> + The stairs.<br> +<br> +On a night in November<br> + Of weariful cares,<br> +A frail aged figure<br> + Ascended those stairs<br> + For the very last time:<br> + All gone his life’s prime,<br> +All vanished his vigour,<br> + And fine, forceful frame:<br> +Thus, last, one November<br> +Ascended that figure<br> + Upstairs.<br> +<br> +On those nights in November -<br> + Apart eighty years -<br> +The babe and the bent one<br> + Who traversed those stairs<br> + From the early first time<br> + To the last feeble climb -<br> +That fresh and that spent one -<br> + Were even the same:<br> +Yea, who passed in November<br> +As infant, as bent one,<br> + Those stairs.<br> +<br> +Wise child of November!<br> + From birth to blanched hairs<br> +Descending, ascending,<br> + Wealth-wantless, those stairs;<br> + Who saw quick in time<br> + As a vain pantomime<br> +Life’s tending, its ending,<br> + The worth of its fame.<br> +Wise child of November,<br> +Descending, ascending<br> + Those stairs!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE SECOND NIGHT<br> +(BALLAD)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I missed one night, but the next I went;<br> + It was gusty above, and clear;<br> +She was there, with the look of one ill-content,<br> + And said: “Do not come near!”<br> +<br> +- “I am sorry last night to have failed you here,<br> + And now I have travelled all day;<br> +And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier,<br> + So brief must be my stay.”<br> +<br> +- “O man of mystery, why not say<br> + Out plain to me all you mean?<br> +Why you missed last night, and must now away<br> + Is - another has come between!”<br> +<br> +- “ O woman so mocking in mood and mien,<br> + So be it!” I replied:<br> +“And if I am due at a differing scene<br> + Before the dark has died,<br> +<br> +“’Tis that, unresting, to wander wide<br> + Has ever been my plight,<br> +And at least I have met you at Cremyll side<br> + If not last eve, to-night.”<br> +<br> +- “You get small rest - that read I quite;<br> + And so do I, maybe;<br> +Though there’s a rest hid safe from sight<br> + Elsewhere awaiting me!”<br> +<br> +A mad star crossed the sky to the sea,<br> + Wasting in sparks as it streamed,<br> +And when I looked to where stood she<br> + She had changed, much changed, it seemed:<br> +<br> +The sparks of the star in her pupils gleamed,<br> + She was vague as a vapour now,<br> +And ere of its meaning I had dreamed<br> + She’d vanished - I knew not how.<br> +<br> +I stood on, long; each cliff-top bough,<br> + Like a cynic nodding there,<br> +Moved up and down, though no man’s brow<br> + But mine met the wayward air.<br> +<br> +Still stood I, wholly unaware<br> + Of what had come to pass,<br> +Or had brought the secret of my new Fair<br> + To my old Love, alas!<br> +<br> +I went down then by crag and grass<br> + To the boat wherein I had come.<br> +Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lass<br> + Of Edgcumbe, is sharp for some!<br> +<br> +“Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numb<br> + On the shore here, whither she’d sped<br> +To meet her lover last night in the glum,<br> + And he came not, ‘tis said.<br> +<br> +“And she leapt down, heart-hit. Pity she’s dead:<br> + So much for the faithful-bent!” . . .<br> +I looked, and again a star overhead<br> + Shot through the firmament.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +SHE WHO SAW NOT<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + “Did you see something within the house<br> +That made me call you before the red sunsetting?<br> +Something that all this common scene endows<br> +With a richened impress there can be no forgetting?”<br> +<br> + “ - I have found nothing to see therein,<br> +O Sage, that should have made you urge me to enter,<br> +Nothing to fire the soul, or the sense to win:<br> +I rate you as a rare misrepresenter!”<br> +<br> + “ - Go anew, Lady, - in by the right . . .<br> +Well: why does your face not shine like the face of Moses?”<br> +“ - I found no moving thing there save the light<br> +And shadow flung on the wall by the outside roses.”<br> +<br> + “ - Go yet once more, pray. Look on a +seat.”<br> +“ - I go . . . O Sage, it’s only a man that sits there<br> +With eyes on the sun. Mute, - average head to feet.”<br> +“ - No more?” - “No more. Just one the place +befits there,<br> +<br> + “As the rays reach in through the open door,<br> +And he looks at his hand, and the sun glows through his fingers,<br> +While he’s thinking thoughts whose tenour is no more<br> +To me than the swaying rose-tree shade that lingers.”<br> +<br> + No more. And years drew on and on<br> +Till no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding;<br> +And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone,<br> +As a vision what she had missed when the real beholding.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE OLD WORKMAN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“Why are you so bent down before your time,<br> +Old mason? Many have not left their prime<br> +So far behind at your age, and can still<br> + Stand full upright at will.”<br> +<br> +He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,<br> +And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;<br> +“Those upper blocks,” he said, “that there you see,<br> + It was that ruined me.”<br> +<br> +There stood in the air up to the parapet<br> +Crowning the corner height, the stones as set<br> +By him - ashlar whereon the gales might drum<br> + For centuries to come.<br> +<br> +“I carried them up,” he said, “by a ladder there;<br> +The last was as big a load as I could bear;<br> +But on I heaved; and something in my back<br> + Moved, as ’twere with a crack.<br> +<br> +“So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain;<br> +And those who live there, walled from wind and rain<br> +By freestone that I lifted, do not know<br> + That my life’s ache came so.<br> +<br> +“They don’t know me, or even know my name,<br> +But good I think it, somehow, all the same<br> +To have kept ’em safe from harm, and right and tight,<br> + Though it has broke me quite.<br> +<br> +“Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud,<br> +Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud,<br> +And to stand storms for ages, beating round<br> + When I lie underground.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE SAILOR’S MOTHER<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + “O whence do you come,<br> +Figure in the night-fog that chills me numb?”<br> +<br> +“I come to you across from my house up there,<br> +And I don’t mind the brine-mist clinging to me<br> + That blows from the quay,<br> +For I heard him in my chamber, and thought you unaware.”<br> +<br> + “But what did you hear,<br> +That brought you blindly knocking in this middle-watch so drear?”<br> +<br> +“My sailor son’s voice as ’twere calling at your door,<br> +And I don’t mind my bare feet clammy on the stones,<br> + And the blight to my bones,<br> +For he only knows of <i>this </i>house I lived in before.”<br> +<br> + “Nobody’s nigh,<br> +Woman like a skeleton, with socket-sunk eye.”<br> +<br> +“Ah - nobody’s nigh! And my life is drearisome,<br> +And this is the old home we loved in many a day<br> + Before he went away;<br> +And the salt fog mops me. And nobody’s come!”<br> +<br> +From “To Please his Wife.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +OUTSIDE THE CASEMENT<br> +(A REMINISCENCE OF THE WAR)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + We sat in the room<br> + And praised her whom<br> +We saw in the portico-shade outside:<br> + She could not hear<br> + What was said of her,<br> +But smiled, for its purport we did not hide.<br> +<br> + Then in was brought<br> + That message, fraught<br> +With evil fortune for her out there,<br> + Whom we loved that day<br> + More than any could say,<br> +And would fain have fenced from a waft of care.<br> +<br> + And the question pressed<br> + Like lead on each breast,<br> +Should we cloak the tidings, or call her and tell?<br> + It was too intense<br> + A choice for our sense,<br> +As we pondered and watched her we loved so well.<br> +<br> + Yea, spirit failed us<br> + At what assailed us;<br> +How long, while seeing what soon must come,<br> + Should we counterfeit<br> + No knowledge of it,<br> +And stay the stroke that would blanch and numb?<br> +<br> + And thus, before<br> + For evermore<br> +Joy left her, we practised to beguile<br> + Her innocence when<br> + She now and again<br> +Looked in, and smiled us another smile.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE PASSER-BY<br> +(L. H. RECALLS HER ROMANCE)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He used to pass, well-trimmed and brushed,<br> + My window every day,<br> +And when I smiled on him he blushed,<br> +That youth, quite as a girl might; aye,<br> + In the shyest way.<br> +<br> +Thus often did he pass hereby,<br> + That youth of bounding gait,<br> +Until the one who blushed was I,<br> +And he became, as here I sate,<br> + My joy, my fate.<br> +<br> +And now he passes by no more,<br> + That youth I loved too true!<br> +I grieve should he, as here of yore,<br> +Pass elsewhere, seated in his view,<br> + Some maiden new!<br> +<br> +If such should be, alas for her!<br> + He’ll make her feel him dear,<br> +Become her daily comforter,<br> +Then tire him of her beauteous gear,<br> + And disappear!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“I WAS THE MIDMOST”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I was the midmost of my world<br> + When first I frisked me free,<br> +For though within its circuit gleamed<br> + But a small company,<br> +And I was immature, they seemed<br> + To bend their looks on me.<br> +<br> +She was the midmost of my world<br> + When I went further forth,<br> +And hence it was that, whether I turned<br> + To south, east, west, or north,<br> +Beams of an all-day Polestar burned<br> + From that new axe of earth.<br> +<br> +Where now is midmost in my world?<br> + I trace it not at all:<br> +No midmost shows it here, or there,<br> + When wistful voices call<br> +“We are fain! We are fain!” from everywhere<br> + On Earth’s bewildering ball!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A SOUND IN THE NIGHT<br> +(WOODSFORD CASTLE: 17-)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband? -<br> +What is it sounds in this house so eerily?<br> +It seems to be a woman’s voice: each little while I hear it,<br> + And it much troubles me!”<br> +<br> +“’Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:<br> +Letting fancies worry thee! - sure ‘tis a foolish thing,<br> +When we were on’y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,<br> + And now it’s but evening.”<br> +<br> +“Yet seems it still a woman’s voice outside the castle, +husband,<br> +And ‘tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.<br> +Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure<br> + Ere ever thou sawest my face?”<br> +<br> +“It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,<br> +If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,<br> +Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatches<br> + Like a creature that sighs and mopes.”<br> +<br> +“Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,<br> +And it saddens me much that so piteous a sound<br> +On this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrow<br> + Should so ghost-like wander round!”<br> +<br> +“To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,<br> +And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,<br> +And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,<br> + And throw the light over the moor.”<br> +<br> +He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber,<br> +And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight,<br> +And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern,<br> + And go out into the night.<br> +<br> +She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,<br> +And his voice as he unclothed him: “’Twas nothing, as I +said,<br> +But the nor’-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath’art the +river,<br> + And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head.”<br> +<br> +“Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,<br> +Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,<br> +The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,<br> + Why is it silent now?<br> +<br> +“And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,<br> +And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,<br> +And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,<br> + And thy breath as if hard to get?”<br> +<br> +He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing,<br> +Then started up and walked about the room resentfully:<br> +“O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded,<br> + Why castedst thou thy spells on me?<br> +<br> +“There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:<br> +She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,<br> +As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e’en the cry you heard, wife,<br> + But she will cry no more!<br> +<br> +“And now I can’t abide thee: this place, it hath a curse +on’t,<br> +This farmstead once a castle: I’ll get me straight away!”<br> +He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,<br> + And went ere the dawn turned day.<br> +<br> +They found a woman’s body at a spot called Rocky Shallow,<br> +Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground,<br> +And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly known her,<br> + But he could not be found.<br> +<br> +And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,<br> +And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,<br> +And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,<br> + And sometimes an infant’s moan.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +ON A DISCOVERED CURL OF HAIR<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +When your soft welcomings were said,<br> +This curl was waving on your head,<br> +And when we walked where breakers dinned<br> +It sported in the sun and wind,<br> +And when I had won your words of grace<br> +It brushed and clung about my face.<br> +Then, to abate the misery<br> +Of absentness, you gave it me.<br> +<br> +Where are its fellows now? Ah, they<br> +For brightest brown have donned a gray,<br> +And gone into a caverned ark,<br> +Ever unopened, always dark!<br> +<br> +Yet this one curl, untouched of time,<br> +Beams with live brown as in its prime,<br> +So that it seems I even could now<br> +Restore it to the living brow<br> +By bearing down the western road<br> +Till I had reached your old abode.<br> +<br> +<i>February </i>1913.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AN OLD LIKENESS<br> +(RECALLING R. T.)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Who would have thought<br> +That, not having missed her<br> +Talks, tears, laughter<br> +In absence, or sought<br> +To recall for so long<br> +Her gamut of song;<br> +Or ever to waft her<br> +Signal of aught<br> +That she, fancy-fanned,<br> +Would well understand,<br> +I should have kissed her<br> +Picture when scanned<br> +Yawning years after!<br> +<br> +Yet, seeing her poor<br> +Dim-outlined form<br> +Chancewise at night-time,<br> +Some old allure<br> +Came on me, warm,<br> +Fresh, pleadful, pure,<br> +As in that bright time<br> +At a far season<br> +Of love and unreason,<br> +And took me by storm<br> +Here in this blight-time!<br> +<br> +And thus it arose<br> +That, yawning years after<br> +Our early flows<br> +Of wit and laughter,<br> +And framing of rhymes<br> +At idle times,<br> +At sight of her painting,<br> +Though she lies cold<br> +In churchyard mould,<br> +I took its feinting<br> +As real, and kissed it,<br> +As if I had wist it<br> +Herself of old.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +HER APOTHEOSIS<br> +“Secretum meum mihi”<br> +(FADED WOMAN’S SONG)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +There was a spell of leisure,<br> + No record vouches when;<br> +With honours, praises, pleasure<br> + To womankind from men.<br> +<br> +But no such lures bewitched me,<br> + No hand was stretched to raise,<br> +No gracious gifts enriched me,<br> + No voices sang my praise.<br> +<br> +Yet an iris at that season<br> + Amid the accustomed slight<br> +From denseness, dull unreason,<br> + Ringed me with living light.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“SACRED TO THE MEMORY”<br> +(MARY H.)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +That “Sacred to the Memory”<br> +Is clearly carven there I own,<br> +And all may think that on the stone<br> +The words have been inscribed by me<br> +In bare conventionality.<br> +<br> +They know not and will never know<br> +That my full script is not confined<br> +To that stone space, but stands deep lined<br> +Upon the landscape high and low<br> +Wherein she made such worthy show.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +TO A WELL-NAMED DWELLING<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Glad old house of lichened stonework,<br> +What I owed you in my lone work,<br> + Noon and night!<br> +Whensoever faint or ailing,<br> +Letting go my grasp and failing,<br> + You lent light.<br> +<br> +How by that fair title came you?<br> +Did some forward eye so name you<br> + Knowing that one,<br> +Sauntering down his century blindly,<br> +Would remark your sound, so kindly,<br> + And be won?<br> +<br> +Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,<br> +Bask in April, May, and June-light,<br> + Zephyr-fanned;<br> +Let your chambers show no sorrow,<br> +Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,<br> + While they stand.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE WHIPPER-IN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +My father was the whipper-in, -<br> + Is still - if I’m not misled?<br> +And now I see, where the hedge is thin,<br> + A little spot of red;<br> + Surely it is my father<br> + Going to the kennel-shed!<br> +<br> +“I cursed and fought my father - aye,<br> + And sailed to a foreign land;<br> +And feeling sorry, I’m back, to stay,<br> + Please God, as his helping hand.<br> + Surely it is my father<br> + Near where the kennels stand?”<br> +<br> +“ - True. Whipper-in he used to be<br> + For twenty years or more;<br> +And you did go away to sea<br> + As youths have done before.<br> + Yes, oddly enough that red there<br> + Is the very coat he wore.<br> +<br> +“But he - he’s dead; was thrown somehow,<br> + And gave his back a crick,<br> +And though that is his coat, ‘tis now<br> + The scarecrow of a rick;<br> + You’ll see when you get nearer -<br> + ’Tis spread out on a stick.<br> +<br> +“You see, when all had settled down<br> + Your mother’s things were sold,<br> +And she went back to her own town,<br> + And the coat, ate out with mould,<br> + Is now used by the farmer<br> + For scaring, as ‘tis old.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A MILITARY APPOINTMENT<br> +(SCHERZANDO)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“So back you have come from the town, Nan, dear!<br> +And have you seen him there, or near -<br> + That soldier of mine -<br> +Who long since promised to meet me here?”<br> +<br> +“ - O yes, Nell: from the town I come,<br> +And have seen your lover on sick-leave home -<br> + That soldier of yours -<br> +Who swore to meet you, or Strike-him-dumb;<br> +<br> +“But has kept himself of late away;<br> +Yet, - in short, he’s coming, I heard him say -<br> + That lover of yours -<br> +To this very spot on this very day.”<br> +<br> +“ - Then I’ll wait, I’ll wait, through wet or dry!<br> +I’ll give him a goblet brimming high -<br> + This lover of mine -<br> +And not of complaint one word or sigh!”<br> +<br> +“ - Nell, him I have chanced so much to see,<br> +That - he has grown the lover of me! -<br> + That lover of yours -<br> +And it’s here our meeting is planned to be.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE MILESTONE BY THE RABBIT-BURROW<br> +(ON YELL’HAM HILL)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +In my loamy nook<br> +As I dig my hole<br> +I observe men look<br> +At a stone, and sigh<br> +As they pass it by<br> +To some far goal.<br> +<br> +Something it says<br> +To their glancing eyes<br> +That must distress<br> +The frail and lame,<br> +And the strong of frame<br> +Gladden or surprise.<br> +<br> +Do signs on its face<br> +Declare how far<br> +Feet have to trace<br> +Before they gain<br> +Some blest champaign<br> +Where no gins are?<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE LAMENT OF THE LOOKING-GLASS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Words from the mirror softly pass<br> + To the curtains with a sigh:<br> +“Why should I trouble again to glass<br> + These smileless things hard by,<br> +Since she I pleasured once, alas,<br> + Is now no longer nigh!”<br> +<br> +“I’ve imaged shadows of coursing cloud,<br> + And of the plying limb<br> +On the pensive pine when the air is loud<br> + With its aerial hymn;<br> +But never do they make me proud<br> + To catch them within my rim!<br> +<br> +“I flash back phantoms of the night<br> + That sometimes flit by me,<br> +I echo roses red and white -<br> + The loveliest blooms that be -<br> +But now I never hold to sight<br> + So sweet a flower as she.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CROSS-CURRENTS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +They parted - a pallid, trembling I pair,<br> + And rushing down the lane<br> +He left her lonely near me there;<br> + - I asked her of their pain.<br> +<br> +“It is for ever,” at length she said,<br> + “His friends have schemed it so,<br> +That the long-purposed day to wed<br> + Never shall we two know.”<br> +<br> +“In such a cruel case,” said I,<br> + “Love will contrive a course?”<br> +“ - Well, no . . . A thing may underlie,<br> + Which robs that of its force;<br> +<br> +“A thing I could not tell him of,<br> + Though all the year I have tried;<br> +This: never could I have given him love,<br> + Even had I been his bride.<br> +<br> +“So, when his kinsfolk stop the way<br> + Point-blank, there could not be<br> +A happening in the world to-day<br> + More opportune for me!<br> +<br> +“Yet hear - no doubt to your surprise -<br> + I am sorry, for his sake,<br> +That I have escaped the sacrifice<br> + I was prepared to make!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE OLD NEIGHBOUR AND THE NEW<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +’Twas to greet the new rector I called I here,<br> + But in the arm-chair I see<br> +My old friend, for long years installed here,<br> + Who palely nods to me.<br> +<br> +The new man explains what he’s planning<br> + In a smart and cheerful tone,<br> +And I listen, the while that I’m scanning<br> + The figure behind his own.<br> +<br> +The newcomer urges things on me;<br> + I return a vague smile thereto,<br> +The olden face gazing upon me<br> + Just as it used to do!<br> +<br> +And on leaving I scarcely remember<br> + Which neighbour to-day I have seen,<br> +The one carried out in September,<br> + Or him who but entered yestreen.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE CHOSEN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“Ατιυα εστιυ +αλληγορουμενα<br> +<br> +“A woman for whom great gods might strive!”<br> + I said, and kissed her there:<br> +And then I thought of the other five,<br> + And of how charms outwear.<br> +<br> +I thought of the first with her eating eyes,<br> +And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,<br> +And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,<br> +And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.<br> +<br> +And I thought of the fifth, whom I’d called a jade,<br> + And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;<br> +And that each had shown her a passable maid,<br> + Yet not of the favour sought.<br> +<br> +So I traced these words on the bark of a beech,<br> +Just at the falling of the mast:<br> +“After scanning five; yes, each and each,<br> +I’ve found the woman desired - at last!”<br> +<br> +“ - I feel a strange benumbing spell,<br> + As one ill-wished!” said she.<br> +And soon it seemed that something fell<br> + Was starving her love for me.<br> +<br> +“I feel some curse. O, <i>five </i>were there?”<br> +And wanly she swerved, and went away.<br> +I followed sick: night numbed the air,<br> +And dark the mournful moorland lay.<br> +<br> +I cried: “O darling, turn your head!”<br> + But never her face I viewed;<br> +“O turn, O turn!” again I said,<br> + And miserably pursued.<br> +<br> +At length I came to a Christ-cross stone<br> +Which she had passed without discern;<br> +And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,<br> +And prayed aloud that she might turn.<br> +<br> +I rose, and looked; and turn she did;<br> + I cried, “My heart revives!”<br> +“Look more,” she said. I looked as bid;<br> + Her face was all the five’s.<br> +<br> +All the five women, clear come back,<br> +I saw in her - with her made one,<br> +The while she drooped upon the track,<br> +And her frail term seemed well-nigh run.<br> +<br> +She’d half forgot me in her change;<br> + “Who are you? Won’t you say<br> +Who you may be, you man so strange,<br> + Following since yesterday?”<br> +<br> +I took the composite form she was,<br> +And carried her to an arbour small,<br> +Not passion-moved, but even because<br> +In one I could atone to all.<br> +<br> +And there she lies, and there I tend,<br> + Till my life’s threads unwind,<br> +A various womanhood in blend -<br> + Not one, but all combined.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE INSCRIPTION<br> +(A TALE)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Sir John was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she,<br> +Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun,<br> +Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually,<br> + As his widowed one.<br> +<br> +And to pleasure her in her sorrow, and fix his name<br> +As a memory Time’s fierce frost should never kill,<br> +She caused to be richly chased a brass to his fame,<br> + Which should link them still;<br> +<br> +For she bonded her name with his own on the brazen page,<br> +As if dead and interred there with him, and cold, and numb,<br> +(Omitting the day of her dying and year of her age<br> + Till her end should come;)<br> +<br> +And implored good people to pray “Of their Charytie<br> +For these twaine Soules,” - yea, she who did last remain<br> +Forgoing Heaven’s bliss if ever with spouse should she<br> + Again have lain.<br> +<br> +Even there, as it first was set, you may see it now,<br> +Writ in quaint Church text, with the date of her death left bare,<br> +In the aged Estminster aisle, where the folk yet bow<br> + Themselves in prayer.<br> +<br> +Thereafter some years slid, till there came a day<br> +When it slowly began to be marked of the standers-by<br> +That she would regard the brass, and would bend away<br> + With a drooping sigh.<br> +<br> +Now the lady was fair as any the eye might scan<br> +Through a summer day of roving - a type at whose lip<br> +Despite her maturing seasons, no meet man<br> + Would be loth to sip.<br> +<br> +And her heart was stirred with a lightning love to its pith<br> +For a newcomer who, while less in years, was one<br> +Full eager and able to make her his own forthwith,<br> + Restrained of none.<br> +<br> +But she answered Nay, death-white; and still as he urged<br> +She adversely spake, overmuch as she loved the while,<br> +Till he pressed for why, and she led with the face of one scourged<br> + To the neighbouring aisle,<br> +<br> +And showed him the words, ever gleaming upon her pew,<br> +Memorizing her there as the knight’s eternal wife,<br> +Or falsing such, debarred inheritance due<br> + Of celestial life.<br> +<br> +He blenched, and reproached her that one yet undeceased<br> +Should bury her future - that future which none can spell;<br> +And she wept, and purposed anon to inquire of the priest<br> + If the price were hell<br> +<br> +Of her wedding in face of the record. Her lover agreed,<br> +And they parted before the brass with a shudderful kiss,<br> +For it seemed to flash out on their impulse of passionate need,<br> + “Mock ye not this!”<br> +<br> +Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one,<br> +Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were dead<br> +Her name and adjuration; but since it was done<br> + Nought could be said<br> +<br> +Save that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul,<br> +And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good,<br> +If she wished anon to reach the coveted goal<br> + Of beatitude.<br> +<br> +To erase from the consecrate text her prayer as there prayed<br> +Would aver that, since earth’s joys most drew her, past doubt,<br> +Friends’ prayers for her joy above by Jesu’s aid<br> + Could be done without.<br> +<br> +Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibe<br> +That would rise at her back in the nave when she should pass<br> +As another’s avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribe<br> + On the changeless brass.<br> +<br> +And so for months she replied to her Love: “No, no”;<br> +While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more,<br> +Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to show<br> + Less warmth than before.<br> +<br> +And, after an absence, wrote words absolute:<br> +That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear;<br> +And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit,<br> + He should wed elsewhere.<br> +<br> +Thence on, at unwonted times through the lengthening days<br> +She was seen in the church - at dawn, or when the sun dipt<br> +And the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze,<br> + Before the script.<br> +<br> +She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowers<br> +As summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed,<br> +When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours,<br> + She was missed from her bed.<br> +<br> +“The church!” they whispered with qualms; “where often +she sits.”<br> +They found her: facing the brass there, else seeing none,<br> +But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits;<br> + And she knew them not one.<br> +<br> +And so she remained, in her handmaids’ charge; late, soon,<br> +Tracing words in the air with her finger, as seen that night -<br> +Those incised on the brass - till at length unwatched one noon,<br> + She vanished from sight.<br> +<br> +And, as talebearers tell, thence on to her last-taken breath<br> +Was unseen, save as wraith that in front of the brass made moan;<br> +So that ever the way of her life and the time of her death<br> + Remained unknown.<br> +<br> +And hence, as indited above, you may read even now<br> +The quaint church-text, with the date of her death left bare,<br> +In the aged Estminster aisle, where folk yet bow<br> + Themselves in prayer.<br> +<br> +<i>October </i>30, 1907.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE MARBLE-STREETED TOWN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I reach the marble-streeted town,<br> + Whose “Sound” outbreathes its air<br> + Of sharp sea-salts;<br> +I see the movement up and down<br> + As when she was there.<br> +Ships of all countries come and go,<br> + The bandsmen boom in the sun<br> + A throbbing waltz;<br> +The schoolgirls laugh along the Hoe<br> + As when she was one.<br> +<br> +I move away as the music rolls:<br> + The place seems not to mind<br> + That she - of old<br> +The brightest of its native souls -<br> + Left it behind!<br> +Over this green aforedays she<br> + On light treads went and came,<br> + Yea, times untold;<br> +Yet none here knows her history -<br> + Has heard her name.<br> +<br> +PLYMOUTH (1914?).<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A WOMAN DRIVING<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +How she held up the horses’ heads,<br> + Firm-lipped, with steady rein,<br> +Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,<br> + Till all was safe again!<br> +<br> +With form erect and keen contour<br> + She passed against the sea,<br> +And, dipping into the chine’s obscure,<br> + Was seen no more by me.<br> +<br> +To others she appeared anew<br> + At times of dusky light,<br> +But always, so they told, withdrew<br> + From close and curious sight.<br> +<br> +Some said her silent wheels would roll<br> + Rutless on softest loam,<br> +And even that her steeds’ footfall<br> + Sank not upon the foam.<br> +<br> +Where drives she now? It may be where<br> + No mortal horses are,<br> +But in a chariot of the air<br> + Towards some radiant star.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A WOMAN’S TRUST<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +If he should live a thousand years<br> + He’d find it not again<br> + That scorn of him by men<br> +Could less disturb a woman’s trust<br> +In him as a steadfast star which must<br> +Rise scathless from the nether spheres:<br> +If he should live a thousand years<br> + He’d find it not again.<br> +<br> +She waited like a little child,<br> + Unchilled by damps of doubt,<br> + While from her eyes looked out<br> +A confidence sublime as Spring’s<br> +When stressed by Winter’s loiterings.<br> +Thus, howsoever the wicked wiled,<br> +She waited like a little child<br> + Unchilled by damps of doubt.<br> +<br> +Through cruel years and crueller<br> + Thus she believed in him<br> + And his aurore, so dim;<br> +That, after fenweeds, flowers would blow;<br> +And above all things did she show<br> +Her faith in his good faith with her;<br> +Through cruel years and crueller<br> + Thus she believed in him!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +BEST TIMES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +We went a day’s excursion to the stream,<br> +Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,<br> + And I did not know<br> + That life would show,<br> +However it might flower, no finer glow.<br> +<br> +I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road<br> +That wound towards the wicket of your abode,<br> + And I did not think<br> + That life would shrink<br> +To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.<br> +<br> +Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,<br> +And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,<br> + And I full forgot<br> + That life might not<br> +Again be touching that ecstatic height.<br> +<br> +And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,<br> +After a gaiety prolonged and rare,<br> + No thought soever<br> + That you might never<br> +Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.<br> +<br> +Rewritten from an old draft.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +While he was here in breath and bone,<br> + To speak to and to see,<br> +Would I had known - more clearly known -<br> + What that man did for me<br> +<br> +When the wind scraped a minor lay,<br> + And the spent west from white<br> +To gray turned tiredly, and from gray<br> + To broadest bands of night!<br> +<br> +But I saw not, and he saw not<br> + What shining life-tides flowed<br> +To me-ward from his casual jot<br> + Of service on that road.<br> +<br> +He would have said: “’Twas nothing new;<br> + We all do what we can;<br> +’Twas only what one man would do<br> + For any other man.”<br> +<br> +Now that I gauge his goodliness<br> + He’s slipped from human eyes;<br> +And when he passed there’s none can guess,<br> + Or point out where he lies.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +INTRA SEPULCHRUM<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + What curious things we said,<br> + What curious things we did<br> +Up there in the world we walked till dead<br> + Our kith and kin amid!<br> +<br> + How we played at love,<br> + And its wildness, weakness, woe;<br> +Yes, played thereat far more than enough<br> + As it turned out, I trow!<br> +<br> + Played at believing in gods<br> + And observing the ordinances,<br> +I for your sake in impossible codes<br> + Right ready to acquiesce.<br> +<br> + Thinking our lives unique,<br> + Quite quainter than usual kinds,<br> +We held that we could not abide a week<br> + The tether of typic minds.<br> +<br> + - Yet people who day by day<br> + Pass by and look at us<br> +From over the wall in a casual way<br> + Are of this unconscious.<br> +<br> + And feel, if anything,<br> + That none can be buried here<br> +Removed from commonest fashioning,<br> + Or lending note to a bier:<br> +<br> + No twain who in heart-heaves proved<br> + Themselves at all adept,<br> +Who more than many laughed and loved,<br> + Who more than many wept,<br> +<br> + Or were as sprites or elves<br> + Into blind matter hurled,<br> +Or ever could have been to themselves<br> + The centre of the world.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE WHITEWASHED WALL<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Why does she turn in that shy soft way<br> + Whenever she stirs the fire,<br> +And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,<br> + As if entranced to admire<br> +Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight<br> + Of a rose in richest green?<br> +I have known her long, but this raptured rite<br> + I never before have seen.<br> +<br> +- Well, once when her son cast his shadow there,<br> + A friend took a pencil and drew him<br> +Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines<br> + Had a lifelike semblance to him.<br> +And there long stayed his familiar look;<br> + But one day, ere she knew,<br> +The whitener came to cleanse the nook,<br> + And covered the face from view.<br> +<br> +“Yes,” he said: “My brush goes on with a rush,<br> + And the draught is buried under;<br> +When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,<br> + What else can you do, I wonder?”<br> +But she knows he’s there. And when she yearns<br> + For him, deep in the labouring night,<br> +She sees him as close at hand, and turns<br> + To him under his sheet of white.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +JUST THE SAME<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I sat. It all was past;<br> +Hope never would hail again;<br> +Fair days had ceased at a blast,<br> +The world was a darkened den.<br> +<br> +The beauty and dream were gone,<br> +And the halo in which I had hied<br> +So gaily gallantly on<br> +Had suffered blot and died!<br> +<br> +I went forth, heedless whither,<br> +In a cloud too black for name:<br> +- People frisked hither and thither;<br> +The world was just the same.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE LAST TIME<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The kiss had been given and taken,<br> + And gathered to many past:<br> +It never could reawaken;<br> + But you heard none say: “It’s the last!”<br> +<br> +The clock showed the hour and the minute,<br> + But you did not turn and look:<br> +You read no finis in it,<br> + As at closing of a book.<br> +<br> +But you read it all too rightly<br> + When, at a time anon,<br> +A figure lay stretched out whitely,<br> + And you stood looking thereon.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE SEVEN TIMES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The dark was thick. A boy he seemed at that time<br> + Who trotted by me with uncertain air;<br> +“I’ll tell my tale,” he murmured, “for I fancy<br> + A friend goes there? . . . ”<br> +<br> +Then thus he told. “I reached - ’twas for the first +time -<br> + A dwelling. Life was clogged in me with care;<br> +I thought not I should meet an eyesome maiden,<br> + But found one there.<br> +<br> +“I entered on the precincts for the second time -<br> + ’Twas an adventure fit and fresh and fair -<br> +I slackened in my footsteps at the porchway,<br> + And found her there.<br> +<br> +“I rose and travelled thither for the third time,<br> + The hope-hues growing gayer and yet gayer<br> +As I hastened round the boscage of the outskirts,<br> + And found her there.<br> +<br> +“I journeyed to the place again the fourth time<br> + (The best and rarest visit of the rare,<br> +As it seemed to me, engrossed about these goings),<br> + And found her there.<br> +<br> +“When I bent me to my pilgrimage the fifth time<br> + (Soft-thinking as I journeyed I would dare<br> +A certain word at token of good auspice),<br> + I found her there.<br> +<br> +“That landscape did I traverse for the sixth time,<br> + And dreamed on what we purposed to prepare;<br> +I reached a tryst before my journey’s end came,<br> + And found her there.<br> +<br> +“I went again - long after - aye, the seventh time;<br> + The look of things was sinister and bare<br> +As I caught no customed signal, heard no voice call,<br> + Nor found her there.<br> +<br> +“And now I gad the globe - day, night, and any time,<br> + To light upon her hiding unaware,<br> +And, maybe, I shall nigh me to some nymph-niche,<br> + And find her there!”<br> +<br> +“ But how,” said I, “has your so little lifetime<br> + Given roomage for such loving, loss, despair?<br> +A boy so young!” Forthwith I turned my lantern<br> + Upon him there.<br> +<br> +His head was white. His small form, fine aforetime,<br> + Was shrunken with old age and battering wear,<br> +An eighty-years long plodder saw I pacing<br> + Beside me there.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE SUN’S LAST LOOK ON THE COUNTRY GIRL<br> +(M. H.)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The sun threw down a radiant spot<br> + On the face in the winding-sheet -<br> +The face it had lit when a babe’s in its cot;<br> +And the sun knew not, and the face knew not<br> + That soon they would no more meet.<br> +<br> +Now that the grave has shut its door,<br> + And lets not in one ray,<br> +Do they wonder that they meet no more -<br> +That face and its beaming visitor -<br> + That met so many a day?<br> +<br> +<i>December </i>1915.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +IN A LONDON FLAT<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I<br> +<br> +“You look like a widower,” she said<br> +Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed,<br> +As he sat by the fire in the outer room,<br> +Reading late on a night of gloom,<br> +And a cab-hack’s wheeze, and the clap of its feet<br> +In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street,<br> +Were all that came to them now and then . . .<br> +“You really do!” she quizzed again.<br> +<br> +II<br> +<br> +And the Spirits behind the curtains heard,<br> +And also laughed, amused at her word,<br> +And at her light-hearted view of him.<br> +“Let’s get him made so - just for a whim!”<br> +Said the Phantom Ironic. “’Twould serve her right<br> +If we coaxed the Will to do it some night.”<br> +“O pray not!” pleaded the younger one,<br> +The Sprite of the Pities. “She said it in fun!”<br> +<br> +III<br> +<br> +But so it befell, whatever the cause,<br> +That what she had called him he next year was;<br> +And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere,<br> +He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there,<br> +And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores,<br> +At the empty bed through the folding-doors<br> +As he remembered her words; and wept<br> +That she had forgotten them where she slept.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +DRAWING DETAILS IN AN OLD CHURCH<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I hear the bell-rope sawing,<br> +And the oil-less axle grind,<br> +As I sit alone here drawing<br> +What some Gothic brain designed;<br> +And I catch the toll that follows<br> + From the lagging bell,<br> +Ere it spreads to hills and hollows<br> +Where the parish people dwell.<br> +<br> +I ask not whom it tolls for,<br> +Incurious who he be;<br> +So, some morrow, when those knolls for<br> +One unguessed, sound out for me,<br> +A stranger, loitering under<br> + In nave or choir,<br> +May think, too, “Whose, I wonder?”<br> +But care not to inquire.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +RAKE-HELL MUSES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Yes; since she knows not need,<br> + Nor walks in blindness,<br> +I may without unkindness<br> + A true thing tell:<br> +<br> +Which would be truth, indeed,<br> + Though worse in speaking,<br> +Were her poor footsteps seeking<br> + A pauper’s cell.<br> +<br> +I judge, then, better far<br> + She now have sorrow,<br> +Than gladness that to-morrow<br> + Might know its knell. -<br> +<br> +It may be men there are<br> + Could make of union<br> +A lifelong sweet communion -<br> + A passioned spell;<br> +<br> +But <i>I, </i>to save her name<br> + And bring salvation<br> +By altar-affirmation<br> + And bridal bell;<br> +<br> +I, by whose rash unshame<br> + These tears come to her:-<br> +My faith would more undo her<br> + Than my farewell!<br> +<br> +Chained to me, year by year<br> + My moody madness<br> +Would wither her old gladness<br> + Like famine fell.<br> +<br> +She’ll take the ill that’s near,<br> + And bear the blaming.<br> +‘Twill pass. Full soon her shaming<br> + They’ll cease to yell.<br> +<br> +Our unborn, first her moan,<br> + Will grow her guerdon,<br> +Until from blot and burden<br> + A joyance swell;<br> +<br> +In that therein she’ll own<br> + My good part wholly,<br> +My evil staining solely<br> + My own vile vell.<br> +<br> +Of the disgrace, may be<br> + “He shunned to share it,<br> +Being false,” they’ll say. I’ll bear it;<br> + Time will dispel<br> +<br> +The calumny, and prove<br> + This much about me,<br> +That she lives best without me<br> + Who would live well.<br> +<br> +That, this once, not self-love<br> + But good intention<br> +Pleads that against convention<br> + We two rebel.<br> +<br> +For, is one moonlight dance,<br> + One midnight passion,<br> +A rock whereon to fashion<br> + Life’s citadel?<br> +<br> +Prove they their power to prance<br> + Life’s miles together<br> +From upper slope to nether<br> + Who trip an ell?<br> +<br> +- Years hence, or now apace,<br> + May tongues be calling<br> +News of my further falling<br> + Sinward pell-mell:<br> +<br> +Then this great good will grace<br> + Our lives’ division,<br> +She’s saved from more misprision<br> + Though I plumb hell.<br> +<br> +189-<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE COLOUR<br> +(<i>The following lines are partly made up, partly remembered from a +Wessex folk-rhyme</i>)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“What shall I bring you?<br> +Please will white do<br> +Best for your wearing<br> + The long day through?”<br> +“ - White is for weddings,<br> +Weddings, weddings,<br> +White is for weddings,<br> + And that won’t do.”<br> +<br> +“What shall I bring you?<br> +Please will red do<br> +Best for your wearing<br> + The long day through?”<br> +“ - Red is for soldiers,<br> +Soldiers, soldiers,<br> +Red is for soldiers,<br> + And that won’t do.”<br> +<br> +“What shall I bring you?<br> +Please will blue do<br> +Best for your wearing<br> + The long day through?”<br> +“ - Blue is for sailors,<br> +Sailors, sailors,<br> +Blue is for sailors,<br> + And that won’t do.<br> +<br> +“What shall I bring you?<br> +Please will green do<br> +Best for your wearing<br> + The long day through?”<br> +“ - Green is for mayings,<br> +Mayings, mayings,<br> +Green is for mayings,<br> + And that won’t do.”<br> +<br> +“What shall I bring you<br> +Then? Will black do<br> +Best for your wearing<br> + The long day through?”<br> +“ - Black is for mourning,<br> +Mourning, mourning,<br> +Black is for mourning,<br> + And black will do.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +MURMURS IN THE GLOOM<br> +(NOCTURNE)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I wayfared at the nadir of the sun<br> +Where populations meet, though seen of none;<br> + And millions seemed to sigh around<br> + As though their haunts were nigh around,<br> + And unknown throngs to cry around<br> + Of things late done.<br> +<br> +“O Seers, who well might high ensample show”<br> +(Came throbbing past in plainsong small and slow),<br> + “Leaders who lead us aimlessly,<br> + Teachers who train us shamelessly,<br> + Why let ye smoulder flamelessly<br> + The truths ye trow?<br> +<br> +“Ye scribes, that urge the old medicament,<br> +Whose fusty vials have long dried impotent,<br> + Why prop ye meretricious things,<br> + Denounce the sane as vicious things,<br> + And call outworn factitious things<br> + Expedient?<br> +<br> +“O Dynasties that sway and shake us so,<br> +Why rank your magnanimities so low<br> + That grace can smooth no waters yet,<br> + But breathing threats and slaughters yet<br> + Ye grieve Earth’s sons and daughters yet<br> + As long ago?<br> +<br> +“Live there no heedful ones of searching sight,<br> +Whose accents might be oracles that smite<br> + To hinder those who frowardly<br> + Conduct us, and untowardly;<br> + To lead the nations vawardly<br> + From gloom to light?”<br> +<br> +<i>September </i>22, 1899.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +EPITAPH<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I never cared for Life: Life cared for me,<br> +And hence I owed it some fidelity.<br> +It now says, “Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind<br> +Sufficient toll for an unwilling mind,<br> +And I dismiss thee - not without regard<br> +That thou didst ask no ill-advised reward,<br> +Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AN ANCIENT TO ANCIENTS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Where once we danced, where once sang,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,<br> +And cracks creep; worms have fed upon<br> +The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then<br> +Than now, with harps and tabrets gone,<br> + Gentlemen!<br> +<br> +Where once we rowed, where once we sailed,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +And damsels took the tiller, veiled<br> +Against too strong a stare (God wot<br> +Their fancy, then or anywhen!)<br> +Upon that shore we are clean forgot,<br> + Gentlemen!<br> +<br> +We have lost somewhat, afar and near,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +The thinning of our ranks each year<br> +Affords a hint we are nigh undone,<br> +That we shall not be ever again<br> +The marked of many, loved of one,<br> + Gentlemen.<br> +<br> +In dance the polka hit our wish,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +The paced quadrille, the spry schottische,<br> +“Sir Roger.” - And in opera spheres<br> +The “Girl” (the famed “Bohemian”),<br> +And “Trovatore,” held the ears,<br> + Gentlemen.<br> +<br> +This season’s paintings do not please,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise;<br> +Throbbing romance has waned and wanned;<br> +No wizard wields the witching pen<br> +Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, and Sand,<br> + Gentlemen.<br> +<br> +The bower we shrined to Tennyson,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon<br> +Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust,<br> +The spider is sole denizen;<br> +Even she who read those rhymes is dust,<br> + Gentlemen!<br> +<br> +We who met sunrise sanguine-souled,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +Are wearing weary. We are old;<br> +These younger press; we feel our rout<br> +Is imminent to Aïdes’ den, -<br> +That evening’s shades are stretching out,<br> + Gentlemen!<br> +<br> +And yet, though ours be failing frames,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +So were some others’ history names,<br> +Who trode their track light-limbed and fast<br> +As these youth, and not alien<br> +From enterprise, to their long last,<br> + Gentlemen.<br> +<br> +Sophocles, Plato, Socrates,<br> + Gentlemen,<br> +Pythagoras, Thucydides,<br> +Herodotus, and Homer, - yea,<br> +Clement, Augustin, Origen,<br> +Burnt brightlier towards their setting-day,<br> + Gentlemen.<br> +<br> +And ye, red-lipped and smooth-browed; list,<br> + Gentlemen;<br> +Much is there waits you we have missed;<br> +Much lore we leave you worth the knowing,<br> +Much, much has lain outside our ken:<br> +Nay, rush not: time serves: we are going,<br> + Gentlemen.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AFTER READING PSALMS<br> +XXXIX., XL., ETC.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Simple was I and was young;<br> + Kept no gallant tryst, I;<br> +Even from good words held my tongue,<br> + <i>Quoniam Tu fecisti</i>!<br> +<br> +Through my youth I stirred me not,<br> + High adventure missed I,<br> +Left the shining shrines unsought;<br> + Yet - <i>me deduxisti</i>!<br> +<br> +At my start by Helicon<br> + Love-lore little wist I,<br> +Worldly less; but footed on;<br> + Why? <i>Me suscepisti</i>!<br> +<br> +When I failed at fervid rhymes,<br> + “Shall,” I said, “persist I?”<br> +“<i>Dies</i>” (I would add at times)<br> + “<i>Meos posuisti</i>!”<br> +<br> +So I have fared through many suns;<br> + Sadly little grist I<br> +Bring my mill, or any one’s,<br> + <i>Domine, Tu scisti</i>!<br> +<br> +And at dead of night I call:<br> + “Though to prophets list I,<br> +Which hath understood at all?<br> + Yea: <i>Quem elegisti</i>?”<br> +<br> +187-<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +SURVIEW<br> +“Cogitavi vias meas”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A cry from the green-grained sticks of the fire<br> + Made me gaze where it seemed to be:<br> +’Twas my own voice talking therefrom to me<br> +On how I had walked when my sun was higher -<br> + My heart in its arrogancy.<br> +<br> +“<i>You held not to whatsoever was true</i>,”<br> + Said my own voice talking to me:<br> +<i>“Whatsoever was just you were slack to see;<br> +Kept not things lovely and pure in view</i>,”<br> + Said my own voice talking to me.<br> +<br> +“<i>You slighted her that endureth all</i>,”<br> + Said my own voice talking to me;<br> +<i>“Vaunteth not, trusteth hopefully;<br> +That suffereth long and is kind withal</i>,”<br> + Said my own voice talking to me.<br> +<br> +“<i>You taught not that which you set about</i>,”<br> + Said my own voice talking to me;<br> +“<i>That the greatest of things is Charity. </i>. . ”<br> +- And the sticks burnt low, and the fire went out,<br> + And my voice ceased talking to me.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Footnotes:<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> Quadrilles +danced early in the nineteenth century.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a> It was said +her real name was Eve Trevillian or Trevelyan; and that she was the +handsome mother of two or three illegitimate children, <i>circa </i>1784-95.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named ltlr10h.htm or ltlr10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, ltlr11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, ltlr10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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