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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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