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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:19:58 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:19:58 -0700 |
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diff --git a/2863-h/2863-h.htm b/2863-h/2863-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9f924af --- /dev/null +++ b/2863-h/2863-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6117 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Satires of Circumstance, by Thomas Hardy</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Satires of Circumstance, by Thomas Hardy + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Satires of Circumstance + Lyrics and Reveries with Miscellaneous Pieces + + +Author: Thomas Hardy + + + +Release Date: January 23, 2015 [eBook #2863] +[This file was first posted on August 29, 2000] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>SATIRES<br /> +OF CIRCUMSTANCE<br /> +LYRICS AND REVERIES<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">WITH MISCELLANEOUS PIECES</span></h1> + +<div class="gapmediumline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +THOMAS HARDY</p> + +<div class="gapmediumline"> </div> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> + +<div class="gapmediumline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br /> +ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON<br /> +1919</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">COPYRIGHT</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>First Edition</i> 1914<br /> +<i>Reprinted</i> 1915, 1919<br /> +<i>Pocket Edition</i> 1919</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +v</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td colspan="3"><p><span class="smcap">Lyrics and +Reveries</span>—</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>In Front of the Landscape</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page3">3</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Channel Firing</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page7">7</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Convergence of the Twain</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page9">9</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Ghost of the Past</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page12">12</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>After the Visit</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>To Meet, or Otherwise</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page16">16</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Difference</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page18">18</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Sun on the Bookcase</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page19">19</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>“When I set out for Lyonnesse”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page20">20</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Thunderstorm in Town</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page21">21</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Torn Letter</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page22">22</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Beyond the Last Lamp</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page25">25</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Face at the Casement</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page27">27</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Lost Love</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page30">30</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>“My spirit will not haunt the +mound”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page31">31</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Wessex Heights</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page32">32</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>In Death divided</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page35">35</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p><a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vi</span>The Place on the Map</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page37">37</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Where the Picnic was</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Schreckhorn</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page41">41</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Singer asleep</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page42">42</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Plaint to Man</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page45">45</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>God’s Funeral</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page47">47</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Spectres that grieve</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page52">52</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>“Ah, are you digging on my +grave?”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page54">54</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"><p><span class="smcap">Satires of +Circumstance</span>—</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>I.</p> +</td> +<td><p>At Tea</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page59">59</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>II.</p> +</td> +<td><p>In Church</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page60">60</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>III.</p> +</td> +<td><p>By her Aunt’s Grave</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page61">61</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>IV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>In the Room of the Bride-elect</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page62">62</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>V.</p> +</td> +<td><p>At the Watering-place</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page63">63</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>VI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>In the Cemetery</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page64">64</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>VII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>Outside the Window</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page65">65</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>VIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>In the Study</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page66">66</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>IX.</p> +</td> +<td><p>At the Altar-rail</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page67">67</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>X.</p> +</td> +<td><p>In the Nuptial Chamber</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page68">68</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>XI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>In the Restaurant</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page69">69</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>XII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>At the Draper’s</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page70">70</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>XIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>On the Death-bed</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page71">71</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>XIV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>Over the Coffin</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page72">72</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>XV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>In the Moonlight</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page73">73</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"><p><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vii</span><span class="smcap">Lyrics and Reveries</span> +(<i>continued</i>)—</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Self-unconscious</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page77">77</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Discovery</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page80">80</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Tolerance</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page81">81</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Before and after Summer</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page82">82</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>At Day-close in November</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page83">83</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Year’s Awakening</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page84">84</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Under the Waterfall</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page85">85</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Spell of the Rose</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page88">88</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>St. Launce’s revisited</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page90">90</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"><p><span class="smcap">Poems of</span> +1912–13–</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Going</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page95">95</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Your Last Drive</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page97">97</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Walk</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page99">99</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Rain on a Grace</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page100">100</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>“I found her out there”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page102">102</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Without Ceremony</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page104">104</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Lament</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page105">105</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Haunter</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page107">107</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Voice</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page109">109</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>His Visitor</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page110">110</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Circular</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page112">112</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Dream or No</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page113">113</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>After a Journey</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page115">115</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Death-ray recalled</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page117">117</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p><a name="pageviii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. viii</span>Beeny Cliff</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page119">119</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>At Castle Boterel</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page121">121</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Places</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Phantom Horsewoman</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page125">125</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"><p><span class="smcap">Miscellaneous +Pieces</span>—</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Wistful Lady</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page129">129</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Woman in the Rye</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page131">131</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Cheval-Glass</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page132">132</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Re-enactment</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page134">134</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Her Secret</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page140">140</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>“She charged me”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page141">141</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Newcomer’s Wife</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page142">142</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Conversation at Dawn</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page143">143</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A King’s Soliloquy</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page152">152</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Coronation</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page154">154</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Aquae Sulis</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page157">157</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Seventy-four and Twenty</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page160">160</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Elopement</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page161">161</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>“I rose up as my custom is”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page163">163</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Week</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page165">165</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Had you wept</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page167">167</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Bereft, she thinks she dreams</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page169">169</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>In the British Museum</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page170">170</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>In the Servants’ Quarters</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Obliterate Tomb</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page175">175</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +ix</span>“Regret not me”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page183">183</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Recalcitrants</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page185">185</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Starlings on the Roof</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page186">186</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Moon looks in</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page187">187</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Sweet Hussy</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page188">188</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Telegram</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page189">189</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Moth-signal</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Seen by the Waits</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page193">193</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Two Soldiers</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page194">194</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Death of Regret</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>In the Days of Crinoline</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page197">197</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Roman Gravemounds</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page199">199</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Workbox</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page201">201</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Sacrilege</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page203">203</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Abbey Mason</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page210">210</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Jubilee of a Magazine</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page222">222</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>The Satin Shoes</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page224">224</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>Exeunt Omnes</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page227">227</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>A Poet</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page228">228</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"><p><span +class="smcap">Postscript</span>—</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td colspan="2"><p>“Men who march away”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page229">229</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>LYRICS +AND REVERIES</h2> +<h3><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>IN FRONT +OF THE LANDSCAPE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Plunging</span> and +labouring on in a tide of visions,<br /> + Dolorous and dear,<br /> +Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters<br /> + Stretching around,<br /> +Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape<br /> + Yonder and near,</p> +<p class="poetry">Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and +the upland<br /> + Foliage-crowned,<br /> +Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flat<br /> + Stroked by the light,<br /> +Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial<br /> + Meadow or mound.</p> +<p class="poetry">What were the infinite spectacles bulking +foremost<br /> + Under my sight,<br /> +<a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>Hindering me +to discern my paced advancement<br /> + Lengthening to miles;<br /> +What were the re-creations killing the daytime<br /> + As by the night?</p> +<p class="poetry">O they were speechful faces, gazing +insistent,<br /> + Some as with smiles,<br /> +Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundled<br /> + Over the wrecked<br /> +Cheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with +anguish,<br /> + Harrowed by wiles.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, +address them—<br /> + Halo-bedecked—<br /> +And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason,<br /> + Rigid in hate,<br /> +Smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision,<br /> + Dreaded, suspect.</p> +<p class="poetry">Then there would breast me shining sights, +sweet seasons<br /> + Further in date;<br /> +Instruments of strings with the tenderest passion<br /> + Vibrant, beside<br /> +<a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>Lamps long +extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth’s crust<br +/> + Now corporate.</p> +<p class="poetry">Also there rose a headland of hoary aspect<br +/> + Gnawed by the tide,<br /> +Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there<br +/> + Guilelessly glad—<br /> +Wherefore they knew not—touched by the fringe of an +ecstasy<br /> + Scantly descried.</p> +<p class="poetry">Later images too did the day unfurl me,<br /> + Shadowed and sad,<br /> +Clay cadavers of those who had shared in the dramas,<br /> + Laid now at ease,<br /> +Passions all spent, chiefest the one of the broad brow<br /> + Sepulture-clad.</p> +<p class="poetry">So did beset me scenes miscalled of the +bygone,<br /> + Over the leaze,<br /> +Past the clump, and down to where lay the beheld ones;<br /> + —Yea, as the rhyme<br /> +Sung by the sea-swell, so in their pleading dumbness<br /> + Captured me these.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +6</span>For, their lost revisiting manifestations<br /> + In their own time<br /> +Much had I slighted, caring not for their purport,<br /> + Seeing behind<br /> +Things more coveted, reckoned the better worth calling<br /> + Sweet, sad, sublime.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thus do they now show hourly before the +intenser<br /> + Stare of the mind<br /> +As they were ghosts avenging their slights by my bypast<br /> + Body-borne eyes,<br /> +Show, too, with fuller translation than rested upon them<br /> + As living kind.</p> +<p class="poetry">Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, +saying<br /> + In their surmise,<br /> +“Ah—whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing +nought<br /> + Round him that looms<br /> +Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings,<br /> + Save a few tombs?”</p> +<h3><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>CHANNEL +FIRING</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">That</span> night your +great guns, unawares,<br /> +Shook all our coffins as we lay,<br /> +And broke the chancel window-squares,<br /> +We thought it was the Judgment-day</p> +<p class="poetry">And sat upright. While drearisome<br /> +Arose the howl of wakened hounds:<br /> +The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,<br /> +The worms drew back into the mounds,</p> +<p class="poetry">The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, +“No;<br /> +It’s gunnery practice out at sea<br /> +Just as before you went below;<br /> +The world is as it used to be:</p> +<p class="poetry">“All nations striving strong to make<br +/> +Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters<br /> +They do no more for Christés sake<br /> +Than you who are helpless in such matters.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +8</span>“That this is not the judgment-hour<br /> +For some of them’s a blessed thing,<br /> +For if it were they’d have to scour<br /> +Hell’s floor for so much threatening . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when<br +/> +I blow the trumpet (if indeed<br /> +I ever do; for you are men,<br /> +And rest eternal sorely need).”</p> +<p class="poetry">So down we lay again. “I wonder,<br +/> +Will the world ever saner be,”<br /> +Said one, “than when He sent us under<br /> +In our indifferent century!”</p> +<p class="poetry">And many a skeleton shook his head.<br /> +“Instead of preaching forty year,”<br /> +My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,<br /> +“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Again the guns disturbed the hour,<br /> +Roaring their readiness to avenge,<br /> +As far inland as Stourton Tower,<br /> +And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.</p> +<p><i>April</i> 1914.</p> +<h3><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>THE +CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">(<i>Lines on the loss of the</i> +“<i>Titanic</i>”)</p> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"> <span class="smcap">In</span> +a solitude of the sea<br /> + Deep from human vanity,<br /> +And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry"> Steel chambers, late the +pyres<br /> + Of her salamandrine fires,<br /> +Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">III</p> +<p class="poetry"> Over the mirrors meant<br /> + To glass the opulent<br /> +The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, +indifferent.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page10"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 10</span>IV</p> +<p class="poetry"> Jewels in joy designed<br /> + To ravish the sensuous mind<br /> +Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and +blind.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">V</p> +<p class="poetry"> Dim moon-eyed fishes near<br +/> + Gaze at the gilded gear<br /> +And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down +here?” . . .</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VI</p> +<p class="poetry"> Well: while was fashioning<br +/> + This creature of cleaving wing,<br /> +The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VII</p> +<p class="poetry"> Prepared a sinister mate<br +/> + For her—so gaily great—<br /> +A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VIII</p> +<p class="poetry"> And as the smart ship grew<br +/> + In stature, grace, and hue,<br /> +In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page11"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 11</span>IX</p> +<p class="poetry"> Alien they seemed to be:<br +/> + No mortal eye could see<br /> +The intimate welding of their later history,</p> +<p style="text-align: center">X</p> +<p class="poetry"> Or sign that they were +bent<br /> + By paths coincident<br /> +On being anon twin halves of one august event,</p> +<p style="text-align: center">XI</p> +<p class="poetry"> Till the Spinner of the +Years<br /> + Said “Now!” And each one hears,<br +/> +And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.</p> +<h3><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>THE +GHOST OF THE PAST</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">We</span> two kept house, +the Past and I,<br /> + The Past and I;<br /> +I tended while it hovered nigh,<br /> + Leaving me never alone.<br /> +It was a spectral housekeeping<br /> + Where fell no jarring tone,<br /> +As strange, as still a housekeeping<br /> + As ever has been known.</p> +<p class="poetry">As daily I went up the stair<br /> + And down the stair,<br /> +I did not mind the Bygone there—<br /> + The Present once to me;<br /> +Its moving meek companionship<br /> + I wished might ever be,<br /> +There was in that companionship<br /> + Something of ecstasy.</p> +<p class="poetry">It dwelt with me just as it was,<br /> + Just as it was<br /> +When first its prospects gave me pause<br /> + In wayward wanderings,<br /> +<a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>Before the +years had torn old troths<br /> + As they tear all sweet things,<br /> +Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths<br /> + And dulled old rapturings.</p> +<p class="poetry">And then its form began to fade,<br /> + Began to fade,<br /> +Its gentle echoes faintlier played<br /> + At eves upon my ear<br /> +Than when the autumn’s look embrowned<br /> + The lonely chambers here,<br /> +The autumn’s settling shades embrowned<br /> + Nooks that it haunted near.</p> +<p class="poetry">And so with time my vision less,<br /> + Yea, less and less<br /> +Makes of that Past my housemistress,<br /> + It dwindles in my eye;<br /> +It looms a far-off skeleton<br /> + And not a comrade nigh,<br /> +A fitful far-off skeleton<br /> + Dimming as days draw by.</p> +<h3><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>AFTER +THE VISIT<br /> +(<i>To F. E. D.</i>)</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Come</span> again to the place<br /> +Where your presence was as a leaf that skims<br /> +Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims<br /> + The bloom on the farer’s face.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Come again, with the feet<br +/> +That were light on the green as a thistledown ball,<br /> +And those mute ministrations to one and to all<br /> + Beyond a man’s saying sweet.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Until then the faint scent<br +/> +Of the bordering flowers swam unheeded away,<br /> +And I marked not the charm in the changes of day<br /> + As the cloud-colours came and went.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Through the dark corridors<br +/> +Your walk was so soundless I did not know<br /> +Your form from a phantom’s of long ago<br /> + Said to pass on the ancient floors,</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page15"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 15</span>Till you drew from the shade,<br /> +And I saw the large luminous living eyes<br /> +Regard me in fixed inquiring-wise<br /> + As those of a soul that weighed,</p> +<p class="poetry"> Scarce consciously,<br /> +The eternal question of what Life was,<br /> +And why we were there, and by whose strange laws<br /> + That which mattered most could not be.</p> +<h3><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>TO +MEET, OR OTHERWISE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Whether</span> to sally and +see thee, girl of my dreams,<br /> + Or whether to stay<br /> +And see thee not! How vast the difference seems<br /> + Of Yea from Nay<br /> +Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams<br /> + At no far day<br /> +On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh!</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make<br +/> + The most I can<br /> +Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian<br /> +Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache,<br /> + While still we scan<br /> +Round our frail faltering progress for some path or plan.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +17</span>By briefest meeting something sure is won;<br /> + It will have been:<br /> +Nor God nor Daemon can undo the done,<br /> + Unsight the seen,<br /> +Make muted music be as unbegun,<br /> + Though things terrene<br /> +Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.</p> +<p class="poetry">So, to the one long-sweeping symphony<br /> + From times remote<br /> +Till now, of human tenderness, shall we<br /> + Supply one note,<br /> +Small and untraced, yet that will ever be<br /> + Somewhere afloat<br /> +Amid the spheres, as part of sick Life’s antidote.</p> +<h3><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>THE +DIFFERENCE</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sinking</span> down by the +gate I discern the thin moon,<br /> +And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine,<br /> +But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird’s tune,<br /> +For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry">Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such +as now,<br /> +The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon;<br /> +But she will see never this gate, path, or bough,<br /> +Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune.</p> +<h3><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>THE +SUN ON THE BOOKCASE<br /> +(<i>Student’s Love-song</i>)</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Once</span> more the +cauldron of the sun<br /> +Smears the bookcase with winy red,<br /> +And here my page is, and there my bed,<br /> +And the apple-tree shadows travel along.<br /> +Soon their intangible track will be run,<br /> + And dusk grow strong<br /> + And they be fled.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,<br /> +And I have wasted another day . . .<br /> +But wasted—<i>wasted</i>, do I say?<br /> +Is it a waste to have imaged one<br /> +Beyond the hills there, who, anon,<br /> + My great deeds done<br /> + Will be mine alway?</p> +<h3><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>“WHEN I SET OUT FOR LYONNESSE”</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> I set out for +Lyonnesse,<br /> + A hundred miles away,<br /> + The rime was on the spray,<br /> +And starlight lit my lonesomeness<br /> +When I set out for Lyonnesse<br /> + A hundred miles away.</p> +<p class="poetry">What would bechance at Lyonnesse<br /> + While I should sojourn there<br /> + No prophet durst declare,<br /> +Nor did the wisest wizard guess<br /> +What would bechance at Lyonnesse<br /> + While I should sojourn there.</p> +<p class="poetry">When I came back from Lyonnesse<br /> + With magic in my eyes,<br /> + None managed to surmise<br /> +What meant my godlike gloriousness,<br /> +When I came back from Lyonnesse<br /> + With magic in my eyes.</p> +<h3><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>A +THUNDERSTORM IN TOWN<br /> +(<i>A Reminiscence</i>)</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">She</span> wore a new +“terra-cotta” dress,<br /> +And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,<br /> +Within the hansom’s dry recess,<br /> +Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless<br /> + We sat on, snug and warm.</p> +<p class="poetry">Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad +pain,<br /> +And the glass that had screened our forms before<br /> +Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:<br /> +I should have kissed her if the rain<br /> + Had lasted a minute more.</p> +<h3><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>THE +TORN LETTER</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry">I tore your letter into strips<br /> + No bigger than the airy feathers<br /> + That ducks preen out in changing weathers<br /> +Upon the shifting ripple-tips.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry">In darkness on my bed alone<br /> + I seemed to see you in a vision,<br /> + And hear you say: “Why this derision<br /> +Of one drawn to you, though unknown?”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">III</p> +<p class="poetry">Yes, eve’s quick mood had run its +course,<br /> + The night had cooled my hasty madness;<br /> + I suffered a regretful sadness<br /> +Which deepened into real remorse.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page23"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 23</span>IV</p> +<p class="poetry">I thought what pensive patient days<br /> + A soul must know of grain so tender,<br /> + How much of good must grace the sender<br /> +Of such sweet words in such bright phrase.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">V</p> +<p class="poetry">Uprising then, as things unpriced<br /> + I sought each fragment, patched and mended;<br /> + The midnight whitened ere I had ended<br /> +And gathered words I had sacrificed.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VI</p> +<p class="poetry">But some, alas, of those I threw<br /> + Were past my search, destroyed for ever:<br /> + They were your name and place; and never<br /> +Did I regain those clues to you.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VII</p> +<p class="poetry">I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,<br /> + My track; that, so the Will decided,<br /> + In life, death, we should be divided,<br /> +And at the sense I ached indeed.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page24"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 24</span>VIII</p> +<p class="poetry">That ache for you, born long ago,<br /> + Throbs on; I never could outgrow it.<br /> + What a revenge, did you but know it!<br /> +But that, thank God, you do not know.</p> +<h3><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>BEYOND +THE LAST LAMP<br /> +(Near Tooting Common)</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">While</span> rain, with eve +in partnership,<br /> +Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip,<br /> +Beyond the last lone lamp I passed<br /> + Walking slowly, whispering sadly,<br /> + Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast:<br /> +Some heavy thought constrained each face,<br /> +And blinded them to time and place.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry">The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed<br /> +In mental scenes no longer orbed<br /> +By love’s young rays. Each countenance<br /> + As it slowly, as it sadly<br /> + Caught the lamplight’s yellow glance<br /> +Held in suspense a misery<br /> +At things which had been or might be.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page26"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 26</span>III</p> +<p class="poetry">When I retrod that watery way<br /> +Some hours beyond the droop of day,<br /> +Still I found pacing there the twain<br /> + Just as slowly, just as sadly,<br /> + Heedless of the night and rain.<br /> +One could but wonder who they were<br /> +And what wild woe detained them there.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">IV</p> +<p class="poetry">Though thirty years of blur and blot<br /> +Have slid since I beheld that spot,<br /> +And saw in curious converse there<br /> + Moving slowly, moving sadly<br /> + That mysterious tragic pair,<br /> +Its olden look may linger on—<br /> +All but the couple; they have gone.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">V</p> +<p class="poetry">Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And +yet<br /> +To me, when nights are weird and wet,<br /> +Without those comrades there at tryst<br /> + Creeping slowly, creeping sadly,<br /> + That lone lane does not exist.<br /> +There they seem brooding on their pain,<br /> +And will, while such a lane remain.</p> +<h3><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>THE +FACE AT THE CASEMENT</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span class="smcap">If</span> +ever joy leave<br /> +An abiding sting of sorrow,<br /> +So befell it on the morrow<br /> + Of that May eve . . .</p> +<p class="poetry"> The travelled sun dropped<br +/> +To the north-west, low and lower,<br /> +The pony’s trot grew slower,<br /> + And then we stopped.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “This cosy house just +by<br /> +I must call at for a minute,<br /> +A sick man lies within it<br /> + Who soon will die.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “He wished to marry +me,<br /> +So I am bound, when I drive near him,<br /> +To inquire, if but to cheer him,<br /> + How he may be.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page28"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 28</span>A message was sent in,<br /> +And wordlessly we waited,<br /> +Till some one came and stated<br /> + The bulletin.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And that the sufferer +said,<br /> +For her call no words could thank her;<br /> +As his angel he must rank her<br /> + Till life’s spark fled.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Slowly we drove away,<br /> +When I turned my head, although not<br /> +Called; why so I turned I know not<br /> + Even to this day.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And lo, there in my view<br +/> +Pressed against an upper lattice<br /> +Was a white face, gazing at us<br /> + As we withdrew.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And well did I divine<br /> +It to be the man’s there dying,<br /> +Who but lately had been sighing<br /> + For her pledged mine.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Then I deigned a deed of +hell;<br /> +It was done before I knew it;<br /> +What devil made me do it<br /> + I cannot tell!</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page29"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 29</span>Yes, while he gazed above,<br /> +I put my arm about her<br /> +That he might see, nor doubt her<br /> + My plighted Love.</p> +<p class="poetry"> The pale face vanished +quick,<br /> +As if blasted, from the casement,<br /> +And my shame and self-abasement<br /> + Began their prick.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And they prick on, +ceaselessly,<br /> +For that stab in Love’s fierce fashion<br /> +Which, unfired by lover’s passion,<br /> + Was foreign to me.</p> +<p class="poetry"> She smiled at my caress,<br +/> +But why came the soft embowment<br /> +Of her shoulder at that moment<br /> + She did not guess.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Long long years has he +lain<br /> +In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather:<br /> +What tears there, bared to weather,<br /> + Will cleanse that stain!</p> +<p class="poetry"> Love is long-suffering, +brave,<br /> +Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel;<br /> +But O, too, Love is cruel,<br /> + Cruel as the grave.</p> +<h3><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>LOST +LOVE</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">play</span> my sweet old +airs—<br /> + The airs he knew<br /> + When our love was true—<br /> + But he does not balk<br /> + His determined walk,<br /> +And passes up the stairs.</p> +<p class="poetry">I sing my songs once more,<br /> + And presently hear<br /> + His footstep near<br /> + As if it would stay;<br /> + But he goes his way,<br /> +And shuts a distant door.</p> +<p class="poetry">So I wait for another morn<br /> + And another night<br /> + In this soul-sick blight;<br /> + And I wonder much<br /> + As I sit, why such<br /> +A woman as I was born!</p> +<h3><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +31</span>“MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND”</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">My</span> spirit will not +haunt the mound<br /> + Above my breast,<br /> +But travel, memory-possessed,<br /> +To where my tremulous being found<br /> + Life largest, best.</p> +<p class="poetry">My phantom-footed shape will go<br /> + When nightfall grays<br /> +Hither and thither along the ways<br /> +I and another used to know<br /> + In backward days.</p> +<p class="poetry">And there you’ll find me, if a jot<br /> + You still should care<br /> +For me, and for my curious air;<br /> +If otherwise, then I shall not,<br /> + For you, be there.</p> +<h2><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>WESSEX +HEIGHTS (1896)</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">There</span> are some +heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand<br /> +For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,<br +/> +Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,<br +/> +I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.</p> +<p class="poetry">In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the +lone man’s friend—<br /> +Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak +to mend:<br /> +Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as +I,<br /> +But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is +the sky.</p> +<p class="poetry">In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having +weird detective ways—<br /> +Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days:<br /> +<a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>They hang +about at places, and they say harsh heavy things—<br /> +Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings.</p> +<p class="poetry">Down there I seem to be false to myself, my +simple self that was,<br /> +And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass +cause<br /> +Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this,<br +/> +Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.</p> +<p class="poetry">I cannot go to the great grey Plain; +there’s a figure against the moon,<br /> +Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;<br +/> +I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms +now passed<br /> +For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there +fast.</p> +<p class="poetry">There’s a ghost at Yell’ham Bottom +chiding loud at the fall of the night,<br /> +There’s a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, +in a shroud of white,<br /> +There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it +near,<br /> +I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not +hear.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +34</span>As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of +hers,<br /> +I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she +prefers;<br /> +Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not +know;<br /> +Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her +go.</p> +<p class="poetry">So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on +Wylls-Neck to the west,<br /> +Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest,<br /> +Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with +me,<br /> +And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.</p> +<h3><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>IN +DEATH DIVIDED</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"> I <span +class="smcap">shall</span> rot here, with those whom in their +day<br /> + You never knew,<br /> + And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,<br /> + Met not my view,<br /> +Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry"> No shade of pinnacle or tree +or tower,<br /> + While earth endures,<br /> + Will fall on my mound and within the hour<br /> + Steal on to yours;<br /> +One robin never haunt our two green covertures.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">III</p> +<p class="poetry"> Some organ may resound on +Sunday noons<br /> + By where you lie,<br /> + Some other thrill the panes with other tunes<br /> + Where moulder I;<br /> +No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page36"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 36</span>IV</p> +<p class="poetry"> The simply-cut memorial at my +head<br /> + Perhaps may take<br /> + A Gothic form, and that above your bed<br /> + Be Greek in make;<br /> +No linking symbol show thereon for our tale’s sake.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">V</p> +<p class="poetry"> And in the monotonous moils +of strained, hard-run<br /> + Humanity,<br /> + The eternal tie which binds us twain in one<br /> + No eye will see<br /> +Stretching across the miles that sever you from me.</p> +<h3><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>THE +PLACE ON THE MAP</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"> I <span +class="smcap">look</span> upon the map that hangs by me—<br +/> +Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished +artistry—<br /> + And I mark a jutting height<br /> +Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry"> —’Twas a day of +latter summer, hot and dry;<br /> +Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked on, she and I,<br +/> + By this spot where, calmly quite,<br /> +She informed me what would happen by and by.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">III</p> +<p class="poetry"> This hanging map depicts the +coast and place,<br /> +And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case<br /> + All distinctly to my sight,<br /> +And her tension, and the aspect of her face.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page38"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 38</span>IV</p> +<p class="poetry"> Weeks and weeks we had loved +beneath that blazing blue,<br /> +Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too,<br +/> + While she told what, as by sleight,<br /> +Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">V</p> +<p class="poetry"> For the wonder and the +wormwood of the whole<br /> +Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double +soul<br /> + Wore a torrid tragic light<br /> +Under order-keeping’s rigorous control.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VI</p> +<p class="poetry"> So, the map revives her +words, the spot, the time,<br /> +And the thing we found we had to face before the next +year’s prime;<br /> + The charted coast stares bright,<br /> +And its episode comes back in pantomime.</p> +<h3><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>WHERE +THE PICNIC WAS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Where</span> we made the +fire,<br /> +In the summer time,<br /> +Of branch and briar<br /> +On the hill to the sea<br /> +I slowly climb<br /> +Through winter mire,<br /> +And scan and trace<br /> +The forsaken place<br /> +Quite readily.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now a cold wind blows,<br /> +And the grass is gray,<br /> +But the spot still shows<br /> +As a burnt circle—aye,<br /> +And stick-ends, charred,<br /> +Still strew the sward<br /> +Whereon I stand,<br /> +Last relic of the band<br /> +Who came that day!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>Yes, I am here<br /> +Just as last year,<br /> +And the sea breathes brine<br /> +From its strange straight line<br /> +Up hither, the same<br /> +As when we four came.<br /> +—But two have wandered far<br /> +From this grassy rise<br /> +Into urban roar<br /> +Where no picnics are,<br /> +And one—has shut her eyes<br /> +For evermore.</p> +<h3><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>THE +SCHRECKHORN<br /> +(<i>With thoughts of Leslie Stephen</i>)<br /> +(June 1897)</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Aloof</span>, as if a thing +of mood and whim;<br /> +Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams<br /> +Upon my nearing vision, less it seems<br /> +A looming Alp-height than a guise of him<br /> +Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb,<br /> +Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe,<br /> +Of semblance to his personality<br /> +In its quaint glooms, keen lights, and rugged trim.</p> +<p class="poetry">At his last change, when Life’s dull +coils unwind,<br /> +Will he, in old love, hitherward escape,<br /> +And the eternal essence of his mind<br /> +Enter this silent adamantine shape,<br /> +And his low voicing haunt its slipping snows<br /> +When dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose?</p> +<h3><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>A +SINGER ASLEEP<br /> +(<i>Algernon Charles Swinburne</i>, 1837–1909)</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry">In this fair niche above the unslumbering +sea,<br /> +That sentrys up and down all night, all day,<br /> +From cove to promontory, from ness to bay,<br /> + The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be +Pillowed eternally.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry">—It was as though a garland of red +roses<br /> +Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun<br /> +When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun,<br /> +In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes,<br /> +Upon Victoria’s formal middle time<br /> + His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">III</p> +<p class="poetry">O that far morning of a summer day<br /> +When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay<br /> +<a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>Glassing +the sunshine into my bent eyes,<br /> +I walked and read with a quick glad surprise<br /> + New words, in classic guise,—</p> +<p style="text-align: center">IV</p> +<p class="poetry">The passionate pages of his earlier years,<br +/> +Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears;<br /> +Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who<br /> +Blew them not naïvely, but as one who knew<br /> + Full well why thus he blew.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">V</p> +<p class="poetry">I still can hear the brabble and the roar<br /> +At those thy tunes, O still one, now passed through<br /> +That fitful fire of tongues then entered new!<br /> +Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore;<br /> + Thine swells yet more and more.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VI</p> +<p class="poetry">—His singing-mistress verily was no +other<br /> +Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother<br /> +Of all the tribe that feel in melodies;<br /> +Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep<br /> +Into the rambling world-encircling deep<br /> + Which hides her where none sees.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page44"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 44</span>VII</p> +<p class="poetry">And one can hold in thought that nightly +here<br /> +His phantom may draw down to the water’s brim,<br /> +And hers come up to meet it, as a dim<br /> +Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere,<br /> +And mariners wonder as they traverse near,<br /> + Unknowing of her and him.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VIII</p> +<p class="poetry">One dreams him sighing to her spectral form:<br +/> +“O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line;<br /> +Where are those songs, O poetess divine<br /> +Whose very arts are love incarnadine?”<br /> +And her smile back: “Disciple true and warm,<br /> + Sufficient now are thine.” . . .</p> +<p style="text-align: center">IX</p> +<p class="poetry">So here, beneath the waking constellations,<br +/> +Where the waves peal their everlasting strains,<br /> +And their dull subterrene reverberations<br /> +Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains—<br /> +Him once their peer in sad improvisations,<br /> +And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes—<br /> +I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines<br /> + Upon the capes and chines.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Bonchurch</span>, 1910.</p> +<h3><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>A +PLAINT TO MAN</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> you slowly +emerged from the den of Time,<br /> +And gained percipience as you grew,<br /> +And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,</p> +<p class="poetry">Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you<br /> +The unhappy need of creating me—<br /> +A form like your own—for praying to?</p> +<p class="poetry">My virtue, power, utility,<br /> +Within my maker must all abide,<br /> +Since none in myself can ever be,</p> +<p class="poetry">One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide<br /> +Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet,<br /> +And by none but its showman vivified.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Such a forced device,” you may +say, “is meet<br /> +For easing a loaded heart at whiles:<br /> +Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +46</span>Somewhere above the gloomy aisles<br /> +Of this wailful world, or he could not bear<br /> +The irk no local hope beguiles.”</p> +<p class="poetry">—But since I was framed in your first +despair<br /> +The doing without me has had no play<br /> +In the minds of men when shadows scare;</p> +<p class="poetry">And now that I dwindle day by day<br /> +Beneath the deicide eyes of seers<br /> +In a light that will not let me stay,</p> +<p class="poetry">And to-morrow the whole of me disappears,<br /> +The truth should be told, and the fact be faced<br /> +That had best been faced in earlier years:</p> +<p class="poetry">The fact of life with dependence placed<br /> +On the human heart’s resource alone,<br /> +In brotherhood bonded close and graced</p> +<p class="poetry">With loving-kindness fully blown,<br /> +And visioned help unsought, unknown.</p> +<p>1909–10.</p> +<h3><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +47</span>GOD’S FUNERAL</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"> I saw a slowly-stepping +train—<br /> +Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar—<br /> +Following in files across a twilit plain<br /> +A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry"> And by contagious throbs of +thought<br /> +Or latent knowledge that within me lay<br /> +And had already stirred me, I was wrought<br /> +To consciousness of sorrow even as they.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">III</p> +<p class="poetry"> The fore-borne shape, to my +blurred eyes,<br /> +At first seemed man-like, and anon to change<br /> +To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,<br /> +At times endowed with wings of glorious range.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page48"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 48</span>IV</p> +<p class="poetry"> And this phantasmal +variousness<br /> +Ever possessed it as they drew along:<br /> +Yet throughout all it symboled none the less<br /> +Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">V</p> +<p class="poetry"> Almost before I knew I +bent<br /> +Towards the moving columns without a word;<br /> +They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,<br /> +Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:—</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VI</p> +<p class="poetry"> “O man-projected +Figure, of late<br /> +Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?<br /> +Whence came it we were tempted to create<br /> +One whom we can no longer keep alive?</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VII</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Framing him jealous, +fierce, at first,<br /> +We gave him justice as the ages rolled,<br /> +Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,<br /> +And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page49"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 49</span>VIII</p> +<p class="poetry"> “And, tricked by our +own early dream<br /> +And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,<br /> +Our making soon our maker did we deem,<br /> +And what we had imagined we believed.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">IX</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Till, in Time’s +stayless stealthy swing,<br /> +Uncompromising rude reality<br /> +Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,<br /> +Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">X</p> +<p class="poetry"> “So, toward our +myth’s oblivion,<br /> +Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope<br /> +Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,<br /> +Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">XI</p> +<p class="poetry"> “How sweet it was in +years far hied<br /> +To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,<br /> +To lie down liegely at the eventide<br /> +And feel a blest assurance he was there!</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page50"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 50</span>XII</p> +<p class="poetry"> “And who or what shall +fill his place?<br /> +Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes<br /> +For some fixed star to stimulate their pace<br /> +Towards the goal of their enterprise?” . . .</p> +<p style="text-align: center">XIII</p> +<p class="poetry"> Some in the background then I +saw,<br /> +Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,<br /> +Who chimed as one: “This figure is of straw,<br /> +This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">XIV</p> +<p class="poetry"> I could not prop their faith: +and yet<br /> +Many I had known: with all I sympathized;<br /> +And though struck speechless, I did not forget<br /> +That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">XV</p> +<p class="poetry"> Still, how to bear such loss +I deemed<br /> +The insistent question for each animate mind,<br /> +And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed<br /> +A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page51"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 51</span>XVI</p> +<p class="poetry"> Whereof to lift the general +night,<br /> +A certain few who stood aloof had said,<br /> +“See you upon the horizon that small light—<br /> +Swelling somewhat?” Each mourner shook his head.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">XVII</p> +<p class="poetry"> And they composed a crowd of +whom<br /> +Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . .<br /> +Thus dazed and puzzled ’twixt the gleam and gloom<br /> +Mechanically I followed with the rest.</p> +<p>1908–10.</p> +<h3><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +52</span>SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">It</span> is not +death that harrows us,” they lipped,<br /> +“The soundless cell is in itself relief,<br /> +For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped<br /> +At unawares, and at its best but brief.”</p> +<p class="poetry">The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,<br +/> +Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,<br /> +As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone<br /> +From the sward near me, as from a nether sky.</p> +<p class="poetry">And much surprised was I that, spent and +dead,<br /> +They should not, like the many, be at rest,<br /> +But stray as apparitions; hence I said,<br /> +“Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?</p> +<p class="poetry">“We are among the few death sets not +free,<br /> +The hurt, misrepresented names, who come<br /> +<a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>At each +year’s brink, and cry to History<br /> +To do them justice, or go past them dumb.</p> +<p class="poetry">“We are stript of rights; our shames lie +unredressed,<br /> +Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown,<br /> +Our words in morsels merely are expressed<br /> +On the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Then all these shaken slighted visitants +sped<br /> +Into the vague, and left me musing there<br /> +On fames that well might instance what they had said,<br /> +Until the New-Year’s dawn strode up the air.</p> +<h3><a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +54</span>“AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?”</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Ah</span>, are you +digging on my grave<br /> + My loved one?—planting rue?”<br /> +—“No: yesterday he went to wed<br /> +One of the brightest wealth has bred.<br /> +‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,<br /> + ‘That I should not be true.’”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Then who is digging on my grave?<br /> + My nearest dearest kin?”<br /> +—“Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use!<br /> +What good will planting flowers produce?<br /> +No tendance of her mound can loose<br /> + Her spirit from Death’s gin.’”</p> +<p class="poetry">“But some one digs upon my grave?<br /> + My enemy?—prodding sly?”<br /> +—“Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate<br /> +That shuts on all flesh soon or late,<br /> +She thought you no more worth her hate,<br /> + And cares not where you lie.”</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +55</span>“Then, who is digging on my grave?<br /> + Say—since I have not guessed!”<br /> +—“O it is I, my mistress dear,<br /> +Your little dog, who still lives near,<br /> +And much I hope my movements here<br /> + Have not disturbed your rest?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ah, yes! <i>You</i> dig upon my +grave . . .<br /> + Why flashed it not on me<br /> +That one true heart was left behind!<br /> +What feeling do we ever find<br /> +To equal among human kind<br /> + A dog’s fidelity!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Mistress, I dug upon your grave<br /> + To bury a bone, in case<br /> +I should be hungry near this spot<br /> +When passing on my daily trot.<br /> +I am sorry, but I quite forgot<br /> + It was your resting-place.”</p> +<h2><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +57</span>SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES</span></h2> +<h3><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>I<br +/> +AT TEA</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> kettle descants +in a cozy drone,<br /> +And the young wife looks in her husband’s face,<br /> +And then at her guest’s, and shows in her own<br /> +Her sense that she fills an envied place;<br /> +And the visiting lady is all abloom,<br /> +And says there was never so sweet a room.</p> +<p class="poetry">And the happy young housewife does not know<br +/> +That the woman beside her was first his choice,<br /> +Till the fates ordained it could not be so . . .<br /> +Betraying nothing in look or voice<br /> +The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,<br /> +And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.</p> +<h3><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>II<br +/> +IN CHURCH</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">And</span> now to +God the Father,” he ends,<br /> +And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:<br /> +Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,<br /> +And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.<br /> +Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,<br /> +And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.</p> +<p class="poetry">The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,<br /> +And a pupil of his in the Bible class,<br /> +Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,<br /> +Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile<br /> +And re-enact at the vestry-glass<br /> +Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show<br /> +That had moved the congregation so.</p> +<h3><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>III<br +/> +BY HER AUNT’S GRAVE</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Sixpence</span> a +week,” says the girl to her lover,<br /> +“Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide<br /> +In me alone, she vowed. ’Twas to cover<br /> +The cost of her headstone when she died.<br /> +And that was a year ago last June;<br /> +I’ve not yet fixed it. But I must soon.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“And where is the money now, my +dear?”<br /> +“O, snug in my purse . . . Aunt was <i>so</i> slow<br /> +In saving it—eighty weeks, or near.” . . .<br /> +“Let’s spend it,” he hints. “For +she won’t know.<br /> +There’s a dance to-night at the Load of Hay.”<br /> +She passively nods. And they go that way.</p> +<h3><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>IV<br +/> +IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Would</span> it had +been the man of our wish!”<br /> +Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she<br /> +In the wedding-dress—the wife to be—<br /> +“Then why were you so mollyish<br /> +As not to insist on him for me!”<br /> +The mother, amazed: “Why, dearest one,<br /> +Because you pleaded for this or none!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“But Father and you should have stood out +strong!<br /> +Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find<br /> +That you were right and that I was wrong;<br /> +This man is a dolt to the one declined . . .<br /> +Ah!—here he comes with his button-hole rose.<br /> +Good God—I must marry him I suppose!”</p> +<h3><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>V<br +/> +AT A WATERING-PLACE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">They</span> sit and smoke +on the esplanade,<br /> +The man and his friend, and regard the bay<br /> +Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,<br /> +Smile sallowly in the decline of day.<br /> +And saunterers pass with laugh and jest—<br /> +A handsome couple among the rest.</p> +<p class="poetry">“That smart proud pair,” says the +man to his friend,<br /> +“Are to marry next week . . . How little he thinks<br /> +That dozens of days and nights on end<br /> +I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links<br /> +Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm . . .<br /> +Well, bliss is in ignorance: what’s the harm!”</p> +<h3><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>VI <br +/> +IN THE CEMETERY</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">You</span> see those +mothers squabbling there?”<br /> +Remarks the man of the cemetery.<br /> +One says in tears, ‘’<i>Tis mine lies +here</i>!’<br /> +Another, ‘<i>Nay</i>, <i>mine</i>, <i>you +Pharisee</i>!’<br /> +Another, ‘<i>How dare you move my flowers</i><br /> +<i>And put your own on this grave of ours</i>!’<br /> +But all their children were laid therein<br /> +At different times, like sprats in a tin.</p> +<p class="poetry">“And then the main drain had to cross,<br +/> +And we moved the lot some nights ago,<br /> +And packed them away in the general foss<br /> +With hundreds more. But their folks don’t know,<br /> +And as well cry over a new-laid drain<br /> +As anything else, to ease your pain!”</p> +<h3><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>VII<br +/> +OUTSIDE THE WINDOW</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">My</span> +stick!” he says, and turns in the lane<br /> +To the house just left, whence a vixen voice<br /> +Comes out with the firelight through the pane,<br /> +And he sees within that the girl of his choice<br /> +Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare<br /> +For something said while he was there.</p> +<p class="poetry">“At last I behold her soul +undraped!”<br /> +Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;<br /> +“My God—’tis but narrowly I have +escaped.—<br /> +My precious porcelain proves it delf.”<br /> +His face has reddened like one ashamed,<br /> +And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.</p> +<h3><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>VIII<br /> +IN THE STUDY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">He</span> enters, and mute +on the edge of a chair<br /> +Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,<br /> +A type of decayed gentility;<br /> +And by some small signs he well can guess<br /> +That she comes to him almost breakfastless.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I have called—I hope I do not +err—<br /> +I am looking for a purchaser<br /> +Of some score volumes of the works<br /> +Of eminent divines I own,—<br /> +Left by my father—though it irks<br /> +My patience to offer them.” And she smiles<br /> +As if necessity were unknown;<br /> +“But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles<br /> +I have wished, as I am fond of art,<br /> +To make my rooms a little smart.”<br /> +And lightly still she laughs to him,<br /> +As if to sell were a mere gay whim,<br /> +And that, to be frank, Life were indeed<br /> +To her not vinegar and gall,<br /> +But fresh and honey-like; and Need<br /> +No household skeleton at all.</p> +<h3><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>IX<br +/> +AT THE ALTAR-RAIL</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">My</span> bride is +not coming, alas!” says the groom,<br /> +And the telegram shakes in his hand. “I own<br /> +It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room<br /> +When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,<br /> +And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,<br /> +And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ay, she won me to ask her to be my +wife—<br /> +’Twas foolish perhaps!—to forsake the ways<br /> +Of the flaring town for a farmer’s life.<br /> +She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:<br /> +‘<i>It’s sweet of you</i>, <i>dear</i>, <i>to prepare +me a nest</i>,<br /> +<i>But a swift</i>, <i>short</i>, <i>gay life suits me +best</i>.<br /> +<i>What I really am you have never gleaned</i>;<br /> +<i>I had eaten the apple ere you were +weaned</i>.’”</p> +<h3><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>X<br +/> +IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER</h3> +<p class="poetry">“O <span class="smcap">that</span> +mastering tune?” And up in the bed<br /> +Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;<br /> +“And why?” asks the man she had that day wed,<br /> +With a start, as the band plays on outside.<br /> +“It’s the townsfolks’ cheery compliment<br /> +Because of our marriage, my Innocent.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“O but you don’t know! +’Tis the passionate air<br /> +To which my old Love waltzed with me,<br /> +And I swore as we spun that none should share<br /> +My home, my kisses, till death, save he!<br /> +And he dominates me and thrills me through,<br /> +And it’s he I embrace while embracing you!”</p> +<h3><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>XI<br +/> +IN THE RESTAURANT</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">But</span> +hear. If you stay, and the child be born,<br /> +It will pass as your husband’s with the rest,<br /> +While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn<br /> +Will be gleaming at us from east to west;<br /> +And the child will come as a life despised;<br /> +I feel an elopement is ill-advised!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“O you realize not what it is, my +dear,<br /> +To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms<br /> +Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here,<br /> +And nightly take him into my arms!<br /> +Come to the child no name or fame,<br /> +Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.”</p> +<h3><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>XII<br +/> +AT THE DRAPER’S</h3> +<p class="poetry">“I <span class="smcap">stood</span> at +the back of the shop, my dear,<br /> + But you did not perceive me.<br /> +Well, when they deliver what you were shown<br /> + <i>I</i> shall know nothing of it, believe +me!”</p> +<p class="poetry">And he coughed and coughed as she paled and +said,<br /> + “O, I didn’t see you come in +there—<br /> +Why couldn’t you speak?”—“Well, I +didn’t. I left<br /> + That you should not notice I’d been there.</p> +<p class="poetry">“You were viewing some lovely +things. ‘<i>Soon required</i><br /> + <i>For a widow</i>, <i>of latest +fashion</i>’;<br /> +And I knew ’twould upset you to meet the man<br /> + Who had to be cold and ashen</p> +<p class="poetry">“And screwed in a box before they could +dress you<br /> + ‘<i>In the last new note in +mourning</i>,’<br /> +As they defined it. So, not to distress you,<br /> + I left you to your adorning.”</p> +<h3><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>XIII<br /> +ON THE DEATH-BED</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">I’ll</span> +tell—being past all praying for—<br /> +Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war,<br /> +And got some scent of the intimacy<br /> +That was under way between her and me;<br /> +And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost<br /> +One night, at the very time almost<br /> +That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,<br /> +And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.</p> +<p class="poetry">“The news of the battle came next day;<br +/> +He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,<br /> +Got out there, visited the field,<br /> +And sent home word that a search revealed<br /> +He was one of the slain; though, lying alone<br /> +And stript, his body had not been known.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But she suspected. I lost her +love,<br /> + Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;<br /> +And my time’s now come, and I’ll pay the score,<br /> +Though it be burning for evermore.”</p> +<h3><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>XIV<br +/> +OVER THE COFFIN</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">They</span> stand +confronting, the coffin between,<br /> +His wife of old, and his wife of late,<br /> +And the dead man whose they both had been<br /> +Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.<br /> +—“I have called,” says the first. +“Do you marvel or not?”<br /> +“In truth,” says the second, “I +do—somewhat.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Well, there was a word to be said by me! +. . .<br /> +I divorced that man because of you—<br /> +It seemed I must do it, boundenly;<br /> +But now I am older, and tell you true,<br /> +For life is little, and dead lies he;<br /> +I would I had let alone you two!<br /> +And both of us, scorning parochial ways,<br /> +Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs’ +days.”</p> +<h3><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>XV<br +/> +IN THE MOONLIGHT</h3> +<p class="poetry">“O <span class="smcap">lonely</span> +workman, standing there<br /> +In a dream, why do you stare and stare<br /> +At her grave, as no other grave there were?</p> +<p class="poetry">“If your great gaunt eyes so importune<br +/> +Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,<br /> +Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Why, fool, it is what I would rather +see<br /> +Than all the living folk there be;<br /> +But alas, there is no such joy for me!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ah—she was one you loved, no +doubt,<br /> +Through good and evil, through rain and drought,<br /> +And when she passed, all your sun went out?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Nay: she was the woman I did not +love,<br /> +Whom all the others were ranked above,<br /> +Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”</p> +<h2><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>LYRICS +AND REVERIES<br /> +(<i>continued</i>)</h2> +<h3><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>SELF-UNCONSCIOUS</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Along</span> the way<br /> + He walked that day,<br /> +Watching shapes that reveries limn,<br /> + And seldom he<br /> + Had eyes to see<br /> +The moment that encompassed him.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Bright yellowhammers<br /> + Made mirthful clamours,<br /> +And billed long straws with a bustling air,<br /> + And bearing their load<br /> + Flew up the road<br /> +That he followed, alone, without interest there.</p> +<p class="poetry"> From bank to ground<br /> + And over and round<br /> +They sidled along the adjoining hedge;<br /> + Sometimes to the gutter<br /> + Their yellow flutter<br /> +Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page78"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 78</span>The smooth sea-line<br /> + With a metal shine,<br /> +And flashes of white, and a sail thereon,<br /> + He would also descry<br /> + With a half-wrapt eye<br /> +Between the projects he mused upon.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Yes, round him were these<br +/> + Earth’s artistries,<br /> +But specious plans that came to his call<br /> + Did most engage<br /> + His pilgrimage,<br /> +While himself he did not see at all.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Dead now as sherds<br /> + Are the yellow birds,<br /> +And all that mattered has passed away;<br /> + Yet God, the Elf,<br /> + Now shows him that self<br /> +As he was, and should have been shown, that day.</p> +<p class="poetry"> O it would have been good<br +/> + Could he then have stood<br /> +At a focussed distance, and conned the whole,<br /> + But now such vision<br /> + Is mere derision,<br /> +Nor soothes his body nor saves his soul.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page79"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 79</span>Not much, some may<br /> + Incline to say,<br /> +To see therein, had it all been seen.<br /> + Nay! he is aware<br /> + A thing was there<br /> +That loomed with an immortal mien.</p> +<h3><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>THE +DISCOVERY</h3> +<p class="poetry"> I <span +class="smcap">wandered</span> to a crude coast<br /> + Like a ghost;<br /> + Upon the hills I saw fires—<br /> + Funeral pyres<br /> + Seemingly—and heard breaking<br /> +Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And so I never once +guessed<br /> + A Love-nest,<br /> + Bowered and candle-lit, lay<br /> + In my way,<br /> + Till I found a hid hollow,<br /> +Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow.</p> +<h3><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>TOLERANCE</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">It</span> is a +foolish thing,” said I,<br /> +“To bear with such, and pass it by;<br /> +Yet so I do, I know not why!”</p> +<p class="poetry">And at each clash I would surmise<br /> +That if I had acted otherwise<br /> +I might have saved me many sighs.</p> +<p class="poetry">But now the only happiness<br /> +In looking back that I possess—<br /> +Whose lack would leave me comfortless—</p> +<p class="poetry">Is to remember I refrained<br /> +From masteries I might have gained,<br /> +And for my tolerance was disdained;</p> +<p class="poetry">For see, a tomb. And if it were<br /> +I had bent and broke, I should not dare<br /> +To linger in the shadows there.</p> +<h3><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>BEFORE +AND AFTER SUMMER</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Looking</span> forward to +the spring<br /> +One puts up with anything.<br /> +On this February day,<br /> +Though the winds leap down the street,<br /> +Wintry scourgings seem but play,<br /> +And these later shafts of sleet<br /> +—Sharper pointed than the first—<br /> +And these later snows—the worst—<br /> +Are as a half-transparent blind<br /> +Riddled by rays from sun behind.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry">Shadows of the October pine<br /> +Reach into this room of mine:<br /> +On the pine there stands a bird;<br /> +He is shadowed with the tree.<br /> +Mutely perched he bills no word;<br /> +Blank as I am even is he.<br /> +For those happy suns are past,<br /> +Fore-discerned in winter last.<br /> +When went by their pleasure, then?<br /> +I, alas, perceived not when.</p> +<h3><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>AT +DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> ten hours’ +light is abating,<br /> + And a late bird flies across,<br /> +Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,<br /> + Give their black heads a toss.</p> +<p class="poetry">Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,<br /> + Float past like specks in the eye;<br /> +I set every tree in my June time,<br /> + And now they obscure the sky.</p> +<p class="poetry">And the children who ramble through here<br /> + Conceive that there never has been<br /> +A time when no tall trees grew here,<br /> + A time when none will be seen.</p> +<h3><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>THE +YEAR’S AWAKENING</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">How</span> do you know that +the pilgrim track<br /> +Along the belting zodiac<br /> +Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds<br /> +Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds<br /> +And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud<br /> +Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,<br /> +And never as yet a tinct of spring<br /> +Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling;<br /> + O vespering bird, how do you know,<br /> + How do you know?</p> +<p class="poetry">How do you know, deep underground,<br /> +Hid in your bed from sight and sound,<br /> +Without a turn in temperature,<br /> +With weather life can scarce endure,<br /> +That light has won a fraction’s strength,<br /> +And day put on some moments’ length,<br /> +Whereof in merest rote will come,<br /> +Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;<br /> + O crocus root, how do you know,<br /> + How do you know?</p> +<p><i>February</i> 1910.</p> +<h3><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>UNDER +THE WATERFALL</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Whenever</span> I +plunge my arm, like this,<br /> +In a basin of water, I never miss<br /> +The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day<br /> +Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.<br /> + Hence the only prime<br /> + And real love-rhyme<br /> + That I know by heart,<br /> + And that leaves no smart,<br /> +Is the purl of a little valley fall<br /> +About three spans wide and two spans tall<br /> +Over a table of solid rock,<br /> +And into a scoop of the self-same block;<br /> +The purl of a runlet that never ceases<br /> +In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;<br /> +With a hollow boiling voice it speaks<br /> +And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“And why gives this the only prime<br /> +Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?<br /> +And why does plunging your arm in a bowl<br /> +Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?”</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>“Well, under the fall, in a crease of the +stone,<br /> +Though where precisely none ever has known,<br /> +Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,<br /> +And by now with its smoothness opalized,<br /> + Is a drinking-glass:<br /> + For, down that pass<br /> + My lover and I<br /> + Walked under a sky<br /> +Of blue with a leaf-woven awning of green,<br /> +In the burn of August, to paint the scene,<br /> +And we placed our basket of fruit and wine<br /> +By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;<br /> +And when we had drunk from the glass together,<br /> +Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,<br /> +I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,<br /> +Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall,<br /> +Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss<br /> +With long bared arms. There the glass still is.<br /> +And, as said, if I thrust my arm below<br /> +Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe<br /> +From the past awakens a sense of that time,<br /> +And the glass both used, and the cascade’s rhyme.<br /> +The basin seems the pool, and its edge<br /> +The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,<br /> +And the leafy pattern of china-ware<br /> +The hanging plants that were bathing there.<br /> +<a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>By night, +by day, when it shines or lours,<br /> +There lies intact that chalice of ours,<br /> +And its presence adds to the rhyme of love<br /> +Persistently sung by the fall above.<br /> +No lip has touched it since his and mine<br /> +In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.”</p> +<h3><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>THE +SPELL OF THE ROSE</h3> +<p class="poetry"> “I <span +class="smcap">mean</span> to build a hall anon,<br /> + And shape two turrets there,<br /> + And a broad newelled stair,<br /> +And a cool well for crystal water;<br /> + Yes; I will build a hall anon,<br /> + Plant roses love shall feed upon,<br /> + And apple trees and +pear.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> He set to build the +manor-hall,<br /> + And shaped the turrets there,<br +/> + And the broad newelled stair,<br +/> +And the cool well for crystal water;<br /> + He built for me that manor-hall,<br /> + And planted many trees withal,<br /> + But no rose anywhere.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And as he planted never a +rose<br /> + That bears the flower of love,<br +/> + Though other flowers throve<br /> +A frost-wind moved our souls to sever<br /> + Since he had planted never a rose;<br /> + And misconceits raised horrid shows,<br /> + And agonies came thereof.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page89"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 89</span>“I’ll mend these +miseries,” then said I,<br /> + And so, at dead of night,<br /> + I went and, screened from +sight,<br /> +That nought should keep our souls in severance,<br /> + I set a rose-bush. “This,” said +I,<br /> + “May end divisions dire and wry,<br /> + And long-drawn days of +blight.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> But I was called from +earth—yea, called<br /> + Before my rose-bush grew;<br /> + And would that now I knew<br /> +What feels he of the tree I planted,<br /> + And whether, after I was called<br /> + To be a ghost, he, as of old,<br /> + Gave me his heart anew!</p> +<p class="poetry"> Perhaps now blooms that queen +of trees<br /> + I set but saw not grow,<br /> + And he, beside its glow—<br +/> +Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me—<br /> + Ay, there beside that queen of trees<br /> + He sees me as I was, though sees<br /> + Too late to tell me so!</p> +<h3><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>ST. +LAUNCE’S REVISITED</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Slip</span> back, Time!<br /> +Yet again I am nearing<br /> +Castle and keep, uprearing<br /> + Gray, as in my prime.</p> +<p class="poetry"> At the inn<br /> +Smiling close, why is it<br /> +Not as on my visit<br /> + When hope and I were twin?</p> +<p class="poetry"> Groom and jade<br /> +Whom I found here, moulder;<br /> +Strange the tavern-holder,<br /> + Strange the tap-maid.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Here I hired<br /> +Horse and man for bearing<br /> +Me on my wayfaring<br /> + To the door desired.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Evening gloomed<br /> +As I journeyed forward<br /> +To the faces shoreward,<br /> + Till their dwelling loomed.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page91"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 91</span>If again<br /> +Towards the Atlantic sea there<br /> +I should speed, they’d be there<br /> + Surely now as then? . . .</p> +<p class="poetry"> Why waste thought,<br /> +When I know them vanished<br /> +Under earth; yea, banished<br /> + Ever into nought.</p> +<h2><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>POEMS +OF 1912–13</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Veteris vestigia flammae</i></p> +<h3><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>THE +GOING</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Why</span> did you give no +hint that night<br /> +That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,<br /> +And calmly, as if indifferent quite,<br /> +You would close your term here, up and be gone<br /> + Where I could not follow<br /> + With wing of swallow<br /> +To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!</p> +<p class="poetry"> Never to bid good-bye,<br /> + Or give me the softest call,<br /> +Or utter a wish for a word, while I<br /> +Saw morning harden upon the wall,<br /> + Unmoved, unknowing<br /> + That your great going<br /> +Had place that moment, and altered all.</p> +<p class="poetry">Why do you make me leave the house<br /> +And think for a breath it is you I see<br /> +At the end of the alley of bending boughs<br /> +Where so often at dusk you used to be;<br /> + Till in darkening dankness<br /> + The yawning blankness<br /> +Of the perspective sickens me!</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page96"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 96</span>You were she who abode<br /> + By those red-veined rocks far West,<br /> +You were the swan-necked one who rode<br /> +Along the beetling Beeny Crest,<br /> + And, reining nigh me,<br /> + Would muse and eye me,<br /> +While Life unrolled us its very best.</p> +<p class="poetry">Why, then, latterly did we not speak,<br /> +Did we not think of those days long dead,<br /> +And ere your vanishing strive to seek<br /> +That time’s renewal? We might have said,<br /> + “In this bright spring weather<br /> + We’ll visit together<br /> +Those places that once we visited.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> Well, well! All’s +past amend,<br /> + Unchangeable. It must go.<br /> +I seem but a dead man held on end<br /> +To sink down soon . . . O you could not know<br /> + That such swift fleeing<br /> + No soul foreseeing—<br /> +Not even I—would undo me so!</p> +<p><i>December</i> 1912.</p> +<h3><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>YOUR +LAST DRIVE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Here</span> by the moorway +you returned,<br /> +And saw the borough lights ahead<br /> +That lit your face—all undiscerned<br /> +To be in a week the face of the dead,<br /> +And you told of the charm of that haloed view<br /> +That never again would beam on you.</p> +<p class="poetry">And on your left you passed the spot<br /> +Where eight days later you were to lie,<br /> +And be spoken of as one who was not;<br /> +Beholding it with a cursory eye<br /> +As alien from you, though under its tree<br /> +You soon would halt everlastingly.</p> +<p class="poetry">I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat<br /> +At your side that eve I should not have seen<br /> +That the countenance I was glancing at<br /> +Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen,<br /> +Nor have read the writing upon your face,<br /> +“I go hence soon to my resting-place;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>“You may miss me then. But I shall not +know<br /> +How many times you visit me there,<br /> +Or what your thoughts are, or if you go<br /> +There never at all. And I shall not care.<br /> +Should you censure me I shall take no heed<br /> +And even your praises I shall not need.”</p> +<p class="poetry">True: never you’ll know. And you +will not mind.<br /> +But shall I then slight you because of such?<br /> +Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find<br /> +The thought “What profit?” move me much<br /> +Yet the fact indeed remains the same,<br /> +You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.</p> +<p><i>December</i> 1912.</p> +<h3><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>THE +WALK</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">You</span> did not walk with me<br /> + Of late to the hill-top tree<br /> + By the gated ways,<br /> + As in earlier days;<br /> + You were weak and lame,<br /> + So you never came,<br /> +And I went alone, and I did not mind,<br /> +Not thinking of you as left behind.</p> +<p class="poetry"> I walked up there to-day<br +/> + Just in the former way:<br /> + Surveyed around<br /> + The familiar ground<br /> + By myself again:<br /> + What difference, then?<br /> +Only that underlying sense<br /> +Of the look of a room on returning thence.</p> +<h3><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>RAIN +ON A GRAVE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Clouds</span> spout upon +her<br /> + Their waters amain<br /> + In ruthless disdain,—<br /> +Her who but lately<br /> + Had shivered with pain<br /> +As at touch of dishonour<br /> +If there had lit on her<br /> +So coldly, so straightly<br /> + Such arrows of rain.</p> +<p class="poetry">She who to shelter<br /> + Her delicate head<br /> +Would quicken and quicken<br /> + Each tentative tread<br /> +If drops chanced to pelt her<br /> + That summertime spills<br /> + In dust-paven rills<br /> +When thunder-clouds thicken<br /> + And birds close their bills.</p> +<p class="poetry">Would that I lay there<br /> + And she were housed here!<br /> +<a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>Or +better, together<br /> +Were folded away there<br /> +Exposed to one weather<br /> +We both,—who would stray there<br /> +When sunny the day there,<br /> + Or evening was clear<br /> + At the prime of the year.</p> +<p class="poetry">Soon will be growing<br /> + Green blades from her mound,<br /> +And daises be showing<br /> + Like stars on the ground,<br /> +Till she form part of them—<br /> +Ay—the sweet heart of them,<br /> +Loved beyond measure<br /> +With a child’s pleasure<br /> + All her life’s round.</p> +<p><i>Jan.</i> 31, 1913.</p> +<h3><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>“I FOUND HER OUT THERE”</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">found</span> her out +there<br /> +On a slope few see,<br /> +That falls westwardly<br /> +To the salt-edged air,<br /> +Where the ocean breaks<br /> +On the purple strand,<br /> +And the hurricane shakes<br /> +The solid land.</p> +<p class="poetry">I brought her here,<br /> +And have laid her to rest<br /> +In a noiseless nest<br /> +No sea beats near.<br /> +She will never be stirred<br /> +In her loamy cell<br /> +By the waves long heard<br /> +And loved so well.</p> +<p class="poetry">So she does not sleep<br /> +By those haunted heights<br /> +The Atlantic smites<br /> +And the blind gales sweep,<br /> +<a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span>Whence +she often would gaze<br /> +At Dundagel’s far head,<br /> +While the dipping blaze<br /> +Dyed her face fire-red;</p> +<p class="poetry">And would sigh at the tale<br /> +Of sunk Lyonnesse,<br /> +As a wind-tugged tress<br /> +Flapped her cheek like a flail;<br /> +Or listen at whiles<br /> +With a thought-bound brow<br /> +To the murmuring miles<br /> +She is far from now.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet her shade, maybe,<br /> +Will creep underground<br /> +Till it catch the sound<br /> +Of that western sea<br /> +As it swells and sobs<br /> +Where she once domiciled,<br /> +And joy in its throbs<br /> +With the heart of a child.</p> +<h3><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +104</span>WITHOUT CEREMONY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">It</span> was your way, my +dear,<br /> +To be gone without a word<br /> +When callers, friends, or kin<br /> +Had left, and I hastened in<br /> +To rejoin you, as I inferred.</p> +<p class="poetry">And when you’d a mind to career<br /> +Off anywhere—say to town—<br /> +You were all on a sudden gone<br /> +Before I had thought thereon,<br /> +Or noticed your trunks were down.</p> +<p class="poetry">So, now that you disappear<br /> +For ever in that swift style,<br /> +Your meaning seems to me<br /> +Just as it used to be:<br /> +“Good-bye is not worth while!”</p> +<h3><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span>LAMENT</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">How</span> she would have +loved<br /> +A party to-day!—<br /> +Bright-hatted and gloved,<br /> +With table and tray<br /> +And chairs on the lawn<br /> +Her smiles would have shone<br /> +With welcomings . . . But<br /> +She is shut, she is shut<br /> + From friendship’s spell<br /> + In the jailing shell<br /> + Of her tiny cell.</p> +<p class="poetry">Or she would have reigned<br /> +At a dinner to-night<br /> +With ardours unfeigned,<br /> +And a generous delight;<br /> +All in her abode<br /> +She’d have freely bestowed<br /> +On her guests . . . But alas,<br /> +She is shut under grass<br /> + Where no cups flow,<br /> + Powerless to know<br /> + That it might be so.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +106</span>And she would have sought<br /> +With a child’s eager glance<br /> +The shy snowdrops brought<br /> +By the new year’s advance,<br /> +And peered in the rime<br /> +Of Candlemas-time<br /> +For crocuses . . . chanced<br /> +It that she were not tranced<br /> + From sights she loved best;<br /> + Wholly possessed<br /> + By an infinite rest!</p> +<p class="poetry">And we are here staying<br /> +Amid these stale things<br /> +Who care not for gaying,<br /> +And those junketings<br /> +That used so to joy her,<br /> +And never to cloy her<br /> +As us they cloy! . . . But<br /> +She is shut, she is shut<br /> + From the cheer of them, dead<br /> + To all done and said<br /> + In a yew-arched bed.</p> +<h3><a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>THE +HAUNTER</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">He</span> does not think +that I haunt here nightly:<br /> + How shall I let him know<br /> +That whither his fancy sets him wandering<br /> + I, too, alertly go?—<br /> +Hover and hover a few feet from him<br /> + Just as I used to do,<br /> +But cannot answer his words addressed me—<br /> + Only listen thereto!</p> +<p class="poetry">When I could answer he did not say them:<br /> + When I could let him know<br /> +How I would like to join in his journeys<br /> + Seldom he wished to go.<br /> +Now that he goes and wants me with him<br /> + More than he used to do,<br /> +Never he sees my faithful phantom<br /> + Though he speaks thereto.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yes, I accompany him to places<br /> + Only dreamers know,<br /> +Where the shy hares limp long paces,<br /> + Where the night rooks go;<br /> +<a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>Into old +aisles where the past is all to him,<br /> + Close as his shade can do,<br /> +Always lacking the power to call to him,<br /> + Near as I reach thereto!</p> +<p class="poetry">What a good haunter I am, O tell him,<br /> + Quickly make him know<br /> +If he but sigh since my loss befell him<br /> + Straight to his side I go.<br /> +Tell him a faithful one is doing<br /> + All that love can do<br /> +Still that his path may be worth pursuing,<br /> + And to bring peace thereto.</p> +<h3><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>THE +VOICE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Woman</span> much missed, +how you call to me, call to me,<br /> +Saying that now you are not as you were<br /> +When you had changed from the one who was all to me,<br /> +But as at first, when our day was fair.</p> +<p class="poetry">Can it be you that I hear? Let me view +you, then,<br /> +Standing as when I drew near to the town<br /> +Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,<br /> +Even to the original air-blue gown!</p> +<p class="poetry">Or is it only the breeze, in its +listlessness<br /> +Travelling across the wet mead to me here,<br /> +You being ever consigned to existlessness,<br /> +Heard no more again far or near?</p> +<p class="poetry"> Thus I; faltering forward,<br +/> + Leaves around me falling,<br /> +Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward<br /> + And the woman calling.</p> +<p><i>December</i> 1912.</p> +<h3><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>HIS +VISITOR</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">come</span> across from +Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker<br /> +To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more:<br /> +I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train,<br /> +And need no setting open of the long familiar door<br /> + As before.</p> +<p class="poetry">The change I notice in my once own quarters!<br +/> +A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be,<br /> +The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered,<br /> +And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea<br /> + As with me.</p> +<p class="poetry">I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt +servants;<br /> +They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and +strong,<br /> +<a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>But +strangers quite, who never knew my rule here,<br /> +Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song<br /> + Float along.</p> +<p class="poetry">So I don’t want to linger in this +re-decked dwelling,<br /> +I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold,<br /> +And I make again for Mellstock to return here never,<br /> +And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold<br /> + Souls of old.</p> +<p>1913.</p> +<h3><a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>A +CIRCULAR</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">As</span> “legal +representative”<br /> +I read a missive not my own,<br /> +On new designs the senders give<br /> + For clothes, in tints as shown.</p> +<p class="poetry">Here figure blouses, gowns for tea,<br /> +And presentation-trains of state,<br /> +Charming ball-dresses, millinery,<br /> + Warranted up to date.</p> +<p class="poetry">And this gay-pictured, spring-time shout<br /> +Of Fashion, hails what lady proud?<br /> +Her who before last year was out<br /> + Was costumed in a shroud.</p> +<h3><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>A +DREAM OR NO</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Why</span> go to +Saint-Juliot? What’s Juliot to me?<br /> + I was but made fancy<br /> + By some necromancy<br /> +That much of my life claims the spot as its key.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yes. I have had dreams of that place in +the West,<br /> + And a maiden abiding<br /> + Thereat as in hiding;<br /> +Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and +brown-tressed.</p> +<p class="poetry">And of how, coastward bound on a night long +ago,<br /> + There lonely I found her,<br /> + The sea-birds around her,<br /> +And other than nigh things uncaring to know.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +114</span>So sweet her life there (in my thought has it +seemed)<br /> + That quickly she drew me<br /> + To take her unto me,<br /> +And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed.</p> +<p class="poetry">But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I +see;<br /> + Can she ever have been here,<br /> + And shed her life’s sheen here,<br /> +The woman I thought a long housemate with me?</p> +<p class="poetry">Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot +exist?<br /> + Or a Vallency Valley<br /> + With stream and leafed alley,<br /> +Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist?</p> +<p><i>February</i> 1913.</p> +<h3><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +115</span>AFTER A JOURNEY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Hereto</span> I come to +interview a ghost;<br /> + Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?<br /> +Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost,<br /> + And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me.<br +/> +Where you will next be there’s no knowing,<br /> + Facing round about me everywhere,<br /> + With your nut-coloured hair,<br /> +And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at +last;<br /> + Through the years, through the dead scenes I have +tracked you;<br /> +What have you now found to say of our past—<br /> + Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked +you?<br /> +Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?<br /> + Things were not lastly as firstly well<br /> + With us twain, you tell?<br /> +But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +116</span>I see what you are doing: you are leading me on<br /> + To the spots we knew when we haunted here +together,<br /> +The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone<br /> + At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,<br +/> +And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow<br /> + That it seems to call out to me from forty years +ago,<br /> + When you were all aglow,<br /> +And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!</p> +<p class="poetry">Ignorant of what there is flitting here to +see,<br /> + The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily,<br +/> +Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me,<br /> + For the stars close their shutters and the dawn +whitens hazily.<br /> +Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours,<br /> + The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again!<br +/> + I am just the same as when<br /> +Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Pentargan Bay</span>.</p> +<h3><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>A +DEATH-DAY RECALLED</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Beeny</span> did not +quiver,<br /> + Juliot grew not gray,<br /> +Thin Valency’s river<br /> + Held its wonted way.<br /> +Bos seemed not to utter<br /> + Dimmest note of dirge,<br /> +Targan mouth a mutter<br /> + To its creamy surge.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet though these, unheeding,<br /> + Listless, passed the hour<br /> +Of her spirit’s speeding,<br /> + She had, in her flower,<br /> +Sought and loved the places—<br /> + Much and often pined<br /> +For their lonely faces<br /> + When in towns confined.</p> +<p class="poetry">Why did not Valency<br /> + In his purl deplore<br /> +One whose haunts were whence he<br /> + Drew his limpid store?<br /> +<a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>Why did +Bos not thunder,<br /> + Targan apprehend<br /> +Body and breath were sunder<br /> + Of their former friend?</p> +<h3><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +119</span>BEENY CLIFF<br /> +<i>March</i> 1870—<i>March</i> 1913</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry">O <span class="smcap">the</span> opal and the +sapphire of that wandering western sea,<br /> +And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping +free—<br /> +The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry">The pale mews plained below us, and the waves +seemed far away<br /> +In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling +say,<br /> +As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March +day.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page120"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 120</span>III</p> +<p class="poetry">A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew +an irised rain,<br /> +And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured +stain,<br /> +And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the +main.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">IV</p> +<p class="poetry">—Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks +old Beeny to the sky,<br /> +And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,<br +/> +And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and +by?</p> +<p style="text-align: center">V</p> +<p class="poetry">What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild +weird western shore,<br /> +The woman now is—elsewhere—whom the ambling pony +bore,<br /> +And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will see it nevermore.</p> +<h3><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>AT +CASTLE BOTEREL</h3> +<p class="poetry">As I drive to the junction of lane and +highway,<br /> + And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,<br /> +I look behind at the fading byway,<br /> + And see on its slope, now glistening wet,<br /> + Distinctly yet</p> +<p class="poetry">Myself and a girlish form benighted<br /> + In dry March weather. We climb the road<br /> +Beside a chaise. We had just alighted<br /> + To ease the sturdy pony’s load<br /> + When he sighed and slowed.</p> +<p class="poetry">What we did as we climbed, and what we talked +of<br /> + Matters not much, nor to what it led,—<br /> +Something that life will not be balked of<br /> + Without rude reason till hope is dead,<br /> + And feeling fled.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span>It filled but a minute. But was there ever<br /> + A time of such quality, since or before,<br /> +In that hill’s story? To one mind never,<br /> + Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, +foot-sore,<br /> + By thousands more.</p> +<p class="poetry">Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep +border,<br /> + And much have they faced there, first and last,<br +/> +Of the transitory in Earth’s long order;<br /> + But what they record in colour and cast<br /> + Is—that we two passed.</p> +<p class="poetry">And to me, though Time’s unflinching +rigour,<br /> + In mindless rote, has ruled from sight<br /> +The substance now, one phantom figure<br /> + Remains on the slope, as when that night<br /> + Saw us alight.</p> +<p class="poetry">I look and see it there, shrinking, +shrinking,<br /> + I look back at it amid the rain<br /> +For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,<br /> + And I shall traverse old love’s domain<br /> + Never again.</p> +<p><i>March</i> 1913.</p> +<h3><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +123</span>PLACES</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Nobody</span> says: Ah, +that is the place<br /> +Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago,<br /> +What none of the Three Towns cared to know—<br /> +The birth of a little girl of grace—<br /> +The sweetest the house saw, first or last;<br /> + Yet it was so<br /> + On that day long past.</p> +<p class="poetry">Nobody thinks: There, there she lay<br /> +In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,<br /> +And listened, just after the bedtime hour,<br /> +To the stammering chimes that used to play<br /> +The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune<br /> + In Saint Andrew’s tower<br /> + Night, morn, and noon.</p> +<p class="poetry">Nobody calls to mind that here<br /> +Upon Boterel Hill, where the carters skid,<br /> +<a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>With +cheeks whose airy flush outbid<br /> +Fresh fruit in bloom, and free of fear,<br /> +She cantered down, as if she must fall<br /> + (Though she never did),<br /> + To the charm of all.</p> +<p class="poetry">Nay: one there is to whom these things,<br /> +That nobody else’s mind calls back,<br /> +Have a savour that scenes in being lack,<br /> +And a presence more than the actual brings;<br /> +To whom to-day is beneaped and stale,<br /> + And its urgent clack<br /> + But a vapid tale.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Plymouth</span>, <i>March</i> 1913.</p> +<h3><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>THE +PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Queer</span> are the ways +of a man I know:<br /> + He comes and stands<br /> + In a careworn craze,<br /> + And looks at the sands<br /> + And the seaward haze,<br /> + With moveless hands<br /> + And face and gaze,<br /> + Then turns to go . . .<br /> +And what does he see when he gazes so?</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry">They say he sees as an instant thing<br /> + More clear than to-day,<br /> + A sweet soft scene<br /> + That once was in play<br /> + By that briny green;<br /> + Yes, notes alway<br /> + Warm, real, and keen,<br /> + What his back years bring—<br /> +A phantom of his own figuring.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page126"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 126</span>III</p> +<p class="poetry">Of this vision of his they might say more:<br +/> + Not only there<br /> + Does he see this sight,<br /> + But everywhere<br /> + In his brain—day, night,<br /> + As if on the air<br /> + It were drawn rose bright—<br /> + Yea, far from that shore<br /> +Does he carry this vision of heretofore:</p> +<p style="text-align: center">IV</p> +<p class="poetry">A ghost-girl-rider. And though, +toil-tried,<br /> + He withers daily,<br /> + Time touches her not,<br /> + But she still rides gaily<br /> + In his rapt thought<br /> + On that shagged and shaly<br /> + Atlantic spot,<br /> + And as when first eyed<br /> +Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.</p> +<h2><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +127</span>MISCELLANEOUS PIECES</h2> +<h3><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>THE +WISTFUL LADY</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Love</span>, while +you were away there came to me—<br /> + From whence I cannot tell—<br /> +A plaintive lady pale and passionless,<br /> +Who bent her eyes upon me critically,<br /> +And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness,<br /> + As if she knew me well.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“I saw no lady of that wistful sort<br /> + As I came riding home.<br /> +Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrain<br /> +By memories sadder than she can support,<br /> +Or by unhappy vacancy of brain,<br /> + To leave her roof and roam?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ah, but she knew me. And before +this time<br /> + I have seen her, lending ear<br /> +To my light outdoor words, and pondering each,<br /> +Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime,<br /> +As if she fain would close with me in speech,<br /> + And yet would not come near.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +130</span>“And once I saw her beckoning with her hand<br /> + As I came into sight<br /> +At an upper window. And I at last went out;<br /> +But when I reached where she had seemed to stand,<br /> +And wandered up and down and searched about,<br /> + I found she had vanished quite.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Then thought I how my dead Love used to say,<br +/> + With a small smile, when she<br /> +Was waning wan, that she would hover round<br /> +And show herself after her passing day<br /> +To any newer Love I might have found,<br /> + But show her not to me.</p> +<h3><a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 131</span>THE +WOMAN IN THE RYE</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Why</span> do you +stand in the dripping rye,<br /> +Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,<br /> +When there are firesides near?” said I.<br /> +“I told him I wished him dead,” said she.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Yea, cried it in my haste to one<br /> +Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still;<br /> +And die he did. And I hate the sun,<br /> +And stand here lonely, aching, chill;</p> +<p class="poetry">“Stand waiting, waiting under skies<br /> +That blow reproach, the while I see<br /> +The rooks sheer off to where he lies<br /> +Wrapt in a peace withheld from me.”</p> +<h3><a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>THE +CHEVAL-GLASS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Why</span> do you harbour +that great cheval-glass<br /> + Filling up your narrow room?<br /> + You never preen or plume,<br /> +Or look in a week at your full-length figure—<br /> + Picture of bachelor gloom!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Well, when I dwelt in ancient +England,<br /> + Renting the valley farm,<br /> + Thoughtless of all heart-harm,<br /> +I used to gaze at the parson’s daughter,<br /> + A creature of nameless charm.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Thither there came a lover and won +her,<br /> + Carried her off from my view.<br /> + O it was then I knew<br /> +Misery of a cast undreamt of—<br /> + More than, indeed, my due!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Then far rumours of her ill-usage<br /> + Came, like a chilling breath<br /> + When a man languisheth;<br /> +Followed by news that her mind lost balance,<br /> + And, in a space, of her death.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +133</span>“Soon sank her father; and next was the +auction—<br /> + Everything to be sold:<br /> + Mid things new and old<br /> +Stood this glass in her former chamber,<br /> + Long in her use, I was told.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Well, I awaited the sale and bought it . +. .<br /> + There by my bed it stands,<br /> + And as the dawn expands<br /> +Often I see her pale-faced form there<br /> + Brushing her hair’s bright bands.</p> +<p class="poetry">“There, too, at pallid midnight +moments<br /> + Quick she will come to my call,<br /> + Smile from the frame withal<br /> +Ponderingly, as she used to regard me<br /> + Passing her father’s wall.</p> +<p class="poetry">“So that it was for its revelations<br /> + I brought it oversea,<br /> + And drag it about with me . . .<br /> +Anon I shall break it and bury its fragments<br /> + Where my grave is to be.”</p> +<h3><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>THE +RE-ENACTMENT</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Between</span> the folding sea-downs,<br /> + In the gloom<br /> + Of a wailful wintry nightfall,<br /> + When the boom<br /> +Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,</p> +<p class="poetry"> Throbbed up the copse-clothed +valley<br /> + From the shore<br /> + To the chamber where I darkled,<br /> + Sunk and sore<br /> +With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before</p> +<p class="poetry"> To salute me in the +dwelling<br /> + That of late<br /> + I had hired to waste a while in—<br /> + Vague of date,<br /> +Quaint, and remote—wherein I now expectant sate;</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page135"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 135</span>On the solitude, unsignalled,<br /> + Broke a man<br /> + Who, in air as if at home there,<br /> + Seemed to scan<br /> +Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.</p> +<p class="poetry"> A stranger’s and no +lover’s<br /> + Eyes were these,<br /> + Eyes of a man who measures<br /> + What he sees<br /> +But vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Yea, his bearing was so +absent<br /> + As he stood,<br /> + It bespoke a chord so plaintive<br /> + In his mood,<br /> +That soon I judged he would not wrong my quietude.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Ah—the supper is +just ready,”<br /> + Then he said,<br /> + “And the years’-long binned Madeira<br +/> + Flashes red!”<br /> +(There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.)</p> +<p class="poetry"> “You will forgive my +coming,<br /> + Lady fair?<br /> + I see you as at that time<br /> + Rising there,<br /> +The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page136"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 136</span>“Yet no. How so? +You wear not<br /> + The same gown,<br /> + Your locks show woful difference,<br /> + Are not brown:<br /> +What, is it not as when I hither came from town?</p> +<p class="poetry"> “And the place . . . +But you seem other—<br /> + Can it be?<br /> + What’s this that Time is doing<br /> + Unto me?<br /> +<i>You</i> dwell here, unknown woman? . . . Whereabouts, then, is +she?</p> +<p class="poetry"> “And the +house—things are much shifted.—<br /> + Put them where<br /> + They stood on this night’s fellow;<br /> + Shift her chair:<br /> +Here was the couch: and the piano should be there.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> I indulged him, verily +nerve-strained<br /> + Being alone,<br /> + And I moved the things as bidden,<br /> + One by one,<br /> +And feigned to push the old piano where he had shown.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page137"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 137</span>“Aha—now I can see +her!<br /> + Stand aside:<br /> + Don’t thrust her from the table<br /> + Where, meek-eyed,<br /> +She makes attempt with matron-manners to preside.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “She serves me: now she +rises,<br /> + Goes to play . . .<br /> + But you obstruct her, fill her<br /> + With dismay,<br /> +And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!”</p> +<p class="poetry"> And, as ’twere useless +longer<br /> + To persist,<br /> + He sighed, and sought the entry<br /> + Ere I wist,<br /> +And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist.</p> +<p class="poetry"> That here some mighty +passion<br /> + Once had burned,<br /> + Which still the walls enghosted,<br /> + I discerned,<br /> +And that by its strong spell mine might be overturned.</p> +<p class="poetry"> I sat depressed; till, +later,<br /> + My Love came;<br /> + <a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +138</span>But something in the chamber<br /> + Dimmed our flame,—<br /> +An emanation, making our due words fall tame,</p> +<p class="poetry"> As if the intenser drama<br +/> + Shown me there<br /> + Of what the walls had witnessed<br /> + Filled the air,<br /> +And left no room for later passion anywhere.</p> +<p class="poetry"> So came it that our +fervours<br /> + Did quite fail<br /> + Of future consummation—<br /> + Being made quail<br /> +By the weird witchery of the parlour’s hidden tale,</p> +<p class="poetry"> Which I, as years passed, +faintly<br /> + Learnt to trace,—<br /> + One of sad love, born full-winged<br /> + In that place<br /> +Where the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And as that month of +winter<br /> + Circles round,<br /> + And the evening of the date-day<br /> + Grows embrowned,<br /> +I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page139"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 139</span>There, often—lone, +forsaken—<br /> + Queries breed<br /> + Within me; whether a phantom<br /> + Had my heed<br /> +On that strange night, or was it some wrecked heart indeed?</p> +<h3><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>HER +SECRET</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">That</span> love’s +dull smart distressed my heart<br /> + He shrewdly learnt to see,<br /> +But that I was in love with a dead man<br /> + Never suspected he.</p> +<p class="poetry">He searched for the trace of a pictured +face,<br /> + He watched each missive come,<br /> +And a note that seemed like a love-line<br /> + Made him look frozen and glum.</p> +<p class="poetry">He dogged my feet to the city street,<br /> + He followed me to the sea,<br /> +But not to the neighbouring churchyard<br /> + Did he dream of following me.</p> +<h3><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +141</span>“SHE CHARGED ME”</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">She</span> charged me with +having said this and that<br /> +To another woman long years before,<br /> +In the very parlour where we sat,—</p> +<p class="poetry">Sat on a night when the endless pour<br /> +Of rain on the roof and the road below<br /> +Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">—So charged she me; and the Cupid’s +bow<br /> +Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face,<br /> +And her white forefinger lifted slow.</p> +<p class="poetry">Had she done it gently, or shown a trace<br /> +That not too curiously would she view<br /> +A folly passed ere her reign had place,</p> +<p class="poetry">A kiss might have ended it. But I knew<br +/> +From the fall of each word, and the pause between,<br /> +That the curtain would drop upon us two<br /> +Ere long, in our play of slave and queen.</p> +<h3><a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>THE +NEWCOMER’S WIFE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">He</span> paused on the +sill of a door ajar<br /> +That screened a lively liquor-bar,<br /> +For the name had reached him through the door<br /> +Of her he had married the week before.</p> +<p class="poetry">“We called her the Hack of the Parade;<br +/> +But she was discreet in the games she played;<br /> +If slightly worn, she’s pretty yet,<br /> +And gossips, after all, forget.</p> +<p class="poetry">“And he knows nothing of her past;<br /> +I am glad the girl’s in luck at last;<br /> +Such ones, though stale to native eyes,<br /> +Newcomers snatch at as a prize.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Yes, being a stranger he sees her +blent<br /> +Of all that’s fresh and innocent,<br /> +Nor dreams how many a love-campaign<br /> +She had enjoyed before his reign!”</p> +<p class="poetry">That night there was the splash of a fall<br /> +Over the slimy harbour-wall:<br /> +They searched, and at the deepest place<br /> +Found him with crabs upon his face.</p> +<h3><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>A +CONVERSATION AT DAWN</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">He</span> lay awake, with a +harassed air,<br /> +And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair,<br /> + Seemed trouble-tried<br /> +As the dawn drew in on their faces there.</p> +<p class="poetry">The chamber looked far over the sea<br /> +From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay,<br /> + And stepping a stride<br /> +He parted the window-drapery.</p> +<p class="poetry">Above the level horizon spread<br /> +The sunrise, firing them foot to head<br /> + From its smouldering lair,<br /> +And painting their pillows with dyes of red.</p> +<p class="poetry">“What strange disquiets have stirred you, +dear,<br /> +This dragging night, with starts in fear<br /> + Of me, as it were,<br /> +Or of something evil hovering near?”</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +144</span>“My husband, can I have fear of you?<br /> +What should one fear from a man whom few,<br /> + Or none, had matched<br /> +In that late long spell of delays undue!”</p> +<p class="poetry">He watched her eyes in the heaving sun:<br /> +“Then what has kept, O reticent one,<br /> + Those lids unlatched—<br /> +Anything promised I’ve not yet done?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“O it’s not a broken promise of +yours<br /> +(For what quite lightly your lip assures<br /> + The due time brings)<br /> +That has troubled my sleep, and no waking cures!” . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">“I have shaped my will; ’tis at +hand,” said he;<br /> +“I subscribe it to-day, that no risk there be<br /> + In the hap of things<br /> +Of my leaving you menaced by poverty.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“That a boon provision I’m safe to +get,<br /> +Signed, sealed by my lord as it were a debt,<br /> + I cannot doubt,<br /> +Or ever this peering sun be set.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“But you flung my arms away from your +side,<br /> +And faced the wall. No month-old bride<br /> + Ere the tour be out<br /> +In an air so loth can be justified?</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +145</span>“Ah—had you a male friend once loved +well,<br /> +Upon whose suit disaster fell<br /> + And frustrance swift?<br /> +Honest you are, and may care to tell.”</p> +<p class="poetry">She lay impassive, and nothing broke<br /> +The stillness other than, stroke by stroke,<br /> + The lazy lift<br /> +Of the tide below them; till she spoke:</p> +<p class="poetry">“I once had a friend—a Love, if you +will—<br /> +Whose wife forsook him, and sank until<br /> + She was made a thrall<br /> +In a prison-cell for a deed of ill . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">“He remained alone; and we met—to +love,<br /> +But barring legitimate joy thereof<br /> + Stood a doorless wall,<br /> +Though we prized each other all else above.</p> +<p class="poetry">“And this was why, though I’d +touched my prime,<br /> +I put off suitors from time to time—<br /> + Yourself with the rest—<br /> +Till friends, who approved you, called it crime,</p> +<p class="poetry">“And when misgivings weighed on me<br /> +In my lover’s absence, hurriedly,<br /> + And much distrest,<br /> +I took you . . . Ah, that such could be! . . .</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +146</span>“Now, saw you when crossing from yonder shore<br +/> +At yesternoon, that the packet bore<br /> + On a white-wreathed bier<br /> +A coffined body towards the fore?</p> +<p class="poetry">“Well, while you stood at the other +end,<br /> +The loungers talked, and I could but lend<br /> + A listening ear,<br /> +For they named the dead. ’Twas the wife of my +friend.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He was there, but did not note me, +veiled,<br /> +Yet I saw that a joy, as of one unjailed,<br /> + Now shone in his gaze;<br /> +He knew not his hope of me just had failed!</p> +<p class="poetry">“They had brought her home: she was born +in this isle;<br /> +And he will return to his domicile,<br /> + And pass his days<br /> +Alone, and not as he dreamt erstwhile!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“—So you’ve lost a sprucer +spouse than I!”<br /> +She held her peace, as if fain deny<br /> + She would indeed<br /> +For his pleasure’s sake, but could lip no lie.</p> +<p class="poetry">“One far less formal and plain and +slow!”<br /> +She let the laconic assertion go<br /> + As if of need<br /> +She held the conviction that it was so.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +147</span>“Regard me as his he always should,<br /> +He had said, and wed me he vowed he would<br /> + In his prime or sere<br /> +Most verily do, if ever he could.</p> +<p class="poetry">“And this fulfilment is now his aim,<br +/> +For a letter, addressed in my maiden name,<br /> + Has dogged me here,<br /> +Reminding me faithfully of his claim.</p> +<p class="poetry">“And it started a hope like a +lightning-streak<br /> +That I might go to him—say for a week—<br /> + And afford you right<br /> +To put me away, and your vows unspeak.</p> +<p class="poetry">“To be sure you have said, as of dim +intent,<br /> +That marriage is a plain event<br /> + Of black and white,<br /> +Without any ghost of sentiment,</p> +<p class="poetry">“And my heart has quailed.—But deny +it true<br /> +That you will never this lock undo!<br /> + No God intends<br /> +To thwart the yearning He’s father to!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The husband hemmed, then blandly bowed<br /> +In the light of the angry morning cloud.<br /> + “So my idyll ends,<br /> +And a drama opens!” he mused aloud;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +148</span>And his features froze. “You may take it as +true<br /> +That I will never this lock undo<br /> + For so depraved<br /> +A passion as that which kindles you.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Said she: “I am sorry you see it so;<br +/> +I had hoped you might have let me go,<br /> + And thus been saved<br /> +The pain of learning there’s more to know.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“More? What may that be? Gad, +I think<br /> +You have told me enough to make me blink!<br /> + Yet if more remain<br /> +Then own it to me. I will not shrink!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Well, it is this. As we could not +see<br /> +That a legal marriage could ever be,<br /> + To end our pain<br /> +We united ourselves informally;</p> +<p class="poetry">“And vowed at a chancel-altar nigh,<br /> +With book and ring, a lifelong tie;<br /> + A contract vain<br /> +To the world, but real to Him on High.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“And you became as his +wife?”—“I did.”—<br /> +He stood as stiff as a caryatid,<br /> + And said, “Indeed! . . .<br /> +No matter. You’re mine, whatever you ye +hid!”</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +149</span>“But is it right! When I only gave<br /> +My hand to you in a sweat to save,<br /> + Through desperate need<br /> +(As I thought), my fame, for I was not brave!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“To save your fame? Your meaning is +dim,<br /> +For nobody knew of your altar-whim?”<br /> + “I mean—I feared<br /> +There might be fruit of my tie with him;</p> +<p class="poetry">“And to cloak it by marriage I’m +not the first,<br /> +Though, maybe, morally most accurst<br /> + Through your unpeered<br /> +And strict uprightness. That’s the worst!</p> +<p class="poetry">“While yesterday his worn contours<br /> +Convinced me that love like his endures,<br /> + And that my troth-plight<br /> +Had been his, in fact, and not truly yours.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“So, my lady, you raise the veil by +degrees . . .<br /> +I own this last is enough to freeze<br /> + The warmest wight!<br /> +Now hear the other side, if you please:</p> +<p class="poetry">“I did say once, though without +intent,<br /> +That marriage is a plain event<br /> + Of black and white,<br /> +Whatever may be its sentiment.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +150</span>“I’ll act accordingly, none the less<br /> +That you soiled the contract in time of stress,<br /> + Thereto induced<br /> +By the feared results of your wantonness.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But the thing is over, and no one +knows,<br /> +And it’s nought to the future what you disclose.<br /> + That you’ll be loosed<br /> +For such an episode, don’t suppose!</p> +<p class="poetry">“No: I’ll not free you. And +if it appear<br /> +There was too good ground for your first fear<br /> + From your amorous tricks,<br /> +I’ll father the child. Yes, by God, my dear.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Even should you fly to his arms, +I’ll damn<br /> +Opinion, and fetch you; treat as sham<br /> + Your mutinous kicks,<br /> +And whip you home. That’s the sort I am!”</p> +<p class="poetry">She whitened. “Enough . . . Since you +disapprove<br /> +I’ll yield in silence, and never move<br /> + Till my last pulse ticks<br /> +A footstep from the domestic groove.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Then swear it,” he said, +“and your king uncrown.”<br /> +He drew her forth in her long white gown,<br /> + And she knelt and swore.<br /> +“Good. Now you may go and again lie down</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +151</span>“Since you’ve played these pranks and given +no sign,<br /> +You shall crave this man of yours; pine and pine<br /> + With sighings sore,<br /> +’Till I’ve starved your love for him; nailed you +mine.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I’m a practical man, and want no +tears;<br /> +You’ve made a fool of me, it appears;<br /> + That you don’t again<br /> +Is a lesson I’ll teach you in future years.”</p> +<p class="poetry">She answered not, but lay listlessly<br /> +With her dark dry eyes on the coppery sea,<br /> + That now and then<br /> +Flung its lazy flounce at the neighbouring quay.</p> +<p>1910.</p> +<h3><a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>A +KING’S SOLILOQUY<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">From</span> the slow march +and muffled drum<br /> + And crowds distrest,<br /> +And book and bell, at length I have come<br /> + To my full rest.</p> +<p class="poetry">A ten years’ rule beneath the sun<br /> + Is wound up here,<br /> +And what I have done, what left undone,<br /> + Figures out clear.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet in the estimate of such<br /> + It grieves me more<br /> +That I by some was loved so much<br /> + Than that I bore,</p> +<p class="poetry">From others, judgment of that hue<br /> + Which over-hope<br /> +Breeds from a theoretic view<br /> + Of regal scope.</p> +<p class="poetry">For kingly opportunities<br /> + Right many have sighed;<br /> +How best to bear its devilries<br /> + Those learn who have tried!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>I have eaten the fat and drunk the sweet,<br /> + Lived the life out<br /> +From the first greeting glad drum-beat<br /> + To the last shout.</p> +<p class="poetry">What pleasure earth affords to kings<br /> + I have enjoyed<br /> +Through its long vivid pulse-stirrings<br /> + Even till it cloyed.</p> +<p class="poetry">What days of drudgery, nights of stress<br /> + Can cark a throne,<br /> +Even one maintained in peacefulness,<br /> + I too have known.</p> +<p class="poetry">And so, I think, could I step back<br /> + To life again,<br /> +I should prefer the average track<br /> + Of average men,</p> +<p class="poetry">Since, as with them, what kingship would<br /> + It cannot do,<br /> +Nor to first thoughts however good<br /> + Hold itself true.</p> +<p class="poetry">Something binds hard the royal hand,<br /> + As all that be,<br /> +And it is That has shaped, has planned<br /> + My acts and me.</p> +<p><i>May</i> 1910.</p> +<h3><a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>THE +CORONATION</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">At</span> Westminster, hid +from the light of day,<br /> +Many who once had shone as monarchs lay.</p> +<p class="poetry">Edward the Pious, and two Edwards more,<br /> +The second Richard, Henrys three or four;</p> +<p class="poetry">That is to say, those who were called the +Third,<br /> +Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth (the much self-widowered),</p> +<p class="poetry">And James the Scot, and near him Charles the +Second,<br /> +And, too, the second George could there be reckoned.</p> +<p class="poetry">Of women, Mary and Queen Elizabeth,<br /> +And Anne, all silent in a musing death;</p> +<p class="poetry">And William’s Mary, and Mary, Queen of +Scots,<br /> +And consort-queens whose names oblivion blots;</p> +<p class="poetry">And several more whose chronicle one sees<br /> +Adorning ancient royal pedigrees.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +155</span>—Now, as they drowsed on, freed from Life’s +old thrall,<br /> +And heedless, save of things exceptional,</p> +<p class="poetry">Said one: “What means this throbbing +thudding sound<br /> +That reaches to us here from overground;</p> +<p class="poetry">“A sound of chisels, augers, planes, and +saws,<br /> +Infringing all ecclesiastic laws?</p> +<p class="poetry">“And these tons-weight of timber on us +pressed,<br /> +Unfelt here since we entered into rest?</p> +<p class="poetry">“Surely, at least to us, being corpses +royal,<br /> +A meet repose is owing by the loyal?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“—Perhaps a scaffold!” Mary +Stuart sighed,<br /> +“If such still be. It was that way I died.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“—Ods! Far more like,” +said he the many-wived,<br /> +“That for a wedding ’tis this work’s +contrived.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ha-ha! I never would bow down to +Rimmon,<br /> +But I had a rare time with those six women!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Not all at once?” gasped he who +loved confession.<br /> +<a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +156</span>“Nay, nay!” said Hal. “That +would have been transgression.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“—They build a catafalque here, +black and tall,<br /> +Perhaps,” mused Richard, “for some +funeral?”</p> +<p class="poetry">And Anne chimed in: “Ah, yes: it maybe +so!”<br /> +“Nay!” squeaked Eliza. “Little you seem +to know—</p> +<p class="poetry">“Clearly ’tis for some crowning +here in state,<br /> +As they crowned us at our long bygone date;</p> +<p class="poetry">“Though we’d no such a power of +carpentry,<br /> +But let the ancient architecture be;</p> +<p class="poetry">“If I were up there where the parsons +sit,<br /> +In one of my gold robes, I’d see to it!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“But you are not,” Charles +chuckled. “You are here,<br /> +And never will know the sun again, my dear!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Yea,” whispered those whom no one +had addressed;<br /> +“With slow, sad march, amid a folk distressed,<br /> +We were brought here, to take our dusty rest.</p> +<p class="poetry">“And here, alas, in darkness laid +below,<br /> +We’ll wait and listen, and endure the show . . .<br /> +Clamour dogs kingship; afterwards not so!”</p> +<p>1911.</p> +<h3><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +157</span>AQUAE SULIS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> chimes called +midnight, just at interlune,<br /> +And the daytime talk of the Roman investigations<br /> +Was checked by silence, save for the husky tune<br /> +The bubbling waters played near the excavations.</p> +<p class="poetry">And a warm air came up from underground,<br /> +And a flutter, as of a filmy shape unsepulchred,<br /> +That collected itself, and waited, and looked around:<br /> +Nothing was seen, but utterances could be heard:</p> +<p class="poetry">Those of the goddess whose shrine was beneath +the pile<br /> +Of the God with the baldachined altar overhead:<br /> +“And what did you get by raising this nave and aisle<br /> +Close on the site of the temple I tenanted?</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>“The notes of your organ have thrilled down out +of view<br /> +To the earth-clogged wrecks of my edifice many a year,<br /> +Though stately and shining once—ay, long ere you<br /> +Had set up crucifix and candle here.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Your priests have trampled the dust of +mine without rueing,<br /> +Despising the joys of man whom I so much loved,<br /> +Though my springs boil on by your Gothic arcades and pewing,<br +/> +And sculptures crude . . . Would Jove they could be +removed!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“—Repress, O lady proud, your +traditional ires;<br /> +You know not by what a frail thread we equally hang;<br /> +It is said we are images both—twitched by people’s +desires;<br /> +And that I, like you, fail as a song men yesterday +sang!”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p class="poetry">And the olden dark hid the cavities late laid +bare,<br /> +And all was suspended and soundless as before,<br /> +<a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>Except +for a gossamery noise fading off in the air,<br /> +And the boiling voice of the waters’ medicinal pour.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Bath</span>.</p> +<h3><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +160</span>SEVENTY-FOUR AND TWENTY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Here</span> goes a man of +seventy-four,<br /> +Who sees not what life means for him,<br /> +And here another in years a score<br /> +Who reads its very figure and trim.</p> +<p class="poetry">The one who shall walk to-day with me<br /> +Is not the youth who gazes far,<br /> +But the breezy wight who cannot see<br /> +What Earth’s ingrained conditions are.</p> +<h3><a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>THE +ELOPEMENT</h3> +<p class="poetry">“A <span class="smcap">woman</span> never +agreed to it!” said my knowing friend to me.<br /> +“That one thing she’d refuse to do for +Solomon’s mines in fee:<br /> +No woman ever will make herself look older than she is.”<br +/> +I did not answer; but I thought, “you err there, ancient +Quiz.”</p> +<p class="poetry">It took a rare one, true, to do it; for she was +surely rare—<br /> +As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair.<br +/> +And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate +case,<br /> +Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young +face.</p> +<p class="poetry">I have told no one about it, should perhaps +make few believe,<br /> +But I think it over now that life looms dull and years +bereave,<br /> +<a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>How +blank we stood at our bright wits’ end, two frail barks in +distress,<br /> +How self-regard in her was slain by her large tenderness.</p> +<p class="poetry">I said: “The only chance for us in a +crisis of this kind<br /> +Is going it thorough!”—“Yes,” she calmly +breathed. “Well, I don’t mind.”<br /> +And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her +brow;<br /> +Ay—she was a right rare woman then, whatever she may be +now.</p> +<p class="poetry">That night we heard a coach drive up, and +questions asked below.<br /> +“A gent with an elderly wife, sir,” was returned from +the bureau.<br /> +And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public +ken<br /> +We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth +again.</p> +<p class="poetry">How many years ago it was! Some fifty can +it be<br /> +Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me?<br +/> +But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last,<br +/> +And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the +past.</p> +<h3><a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +163</span>“I ROSE UP AS MY CUSTOM IS”</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">rose</span> up as my +custom is<br /> + On the eve of All-Souls’ day,<br /> +And left my grave for an hour or so<br /> +To call on those I used to know<br /> + Before I passed away.</p> +<p class="poetry">I visited my former Love<br /> + As she lay by her husband’s side;<br /> +I asked her if life pleased her, now<br /> +She was rid of a poet wrung in brow,<br /> + And crazed with the ills he eyed;</p> +<p class="poetry">Who used to drag her here and there<br /> + Wherever his fancies led,<br /> +And point out pale phantasmal things,<br /> +And talk of vain vague purposings<br /> + That she discredited.</p> +<p class="poetry">She was quite civil, and replied,<br /> + “Old comrade, is that you?<br /> +Well, on the whole, I like my life.—<br /> +I know I swore I’d be no wife,<br /> + But what was I to do?</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +164</span>“You see, of all men for my sex<br /> + A poet is the worst;<br /> +Women are practical, and they<br /> +Crave the wherewith to pay their way,<br /> + And slake their social thirst.</p> +<p class="poetry">“You were a poet—quite the ideal<br +/> + That we all love awhile:<br /> +But look at this man snoring here—<br /> +He’s no romantic chanticleer,<br /> + Yet keeps me in good style.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He makes no quest into my thoughts,<br +/> + But a poet wants to know<br /> +What one has felt from earliest days,<br /> +Why one thought not in other ways,<br /> + And one’s Loves of long ago.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Her words benumbed my fond frail ghost;<br /> + The nightmares neighed from their stalls<br /> +The vampires screeched, the harpies flew,<br /> +And under the dim dawn I withdrew<br /> + To Death’s inviolate halls.</p> +<h3><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>A +WEEK</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">On</span> Monday night I +closed my door,<br /> +And thought you were not as heretofore,<br /> +And little cared if we met no more.</p> +<p class="poetry">I seemed on Tuesday night to trace<br /> +Something beyond mere commonplace<br /> +In your ideas, and heart, and face.</p> +<p class="poetry">On Wednesday I did not opine<br /> +Your life would ever be one with mine,<br /> +Though if it were we should well combine.</p> +<p class="poetry">On Thursday noon I liked you well,<br /> +And fondly felt that we must dwell<br /> +Not far apart, whatever befell.</p> +<p class="poetry">On Friday it was with a thrill<br /> +In gazing towards your distant vill<br /> +I owned you were my dear one still.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +166</span>I saw you wholly to my mind<br /> +On Saturday—even one who shrined<br /> +All that was best of womankind.</p> +<p class="poetry">As wing-clipt sea-gull for the sea<br /> +On Sunday night I longed for thee,<br /> +Without whom life were waste to me!</p> +<h3><a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>HAD +YOU WEPT</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Had</span> you wept; had +you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray,<br /> +Dewy as the face of the dawn, in your large and luminous eye,<br +/> +Then would have come back all the joys the tidings had slain that +day,<br /> +And a new beginning, a fresh fair heaven, have smoothed the +things awry.<br /> +But you were less feebly human, and no passionate need for +clinging<br /> +Possessed your soul to overthrow reserve when I came near;<br /> +Ay, though you suffer as much as I from storms the hours are +bringing<br /> +Upon your heart and mine, I never see you shed a tear.</p> +<p class="poetry">The deep strong woman is weakest, the weak one +is the strong;<br /> +The weapon of all weapons best for winning, you have not used;<br +/> +<a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>Have you +never been able, or would you not, through the evil times and +long?<br /> +Has not the gift been given you, or such gift have you +refused?<br /> +When I bade me not absolve you on that evening or the morrow,<br +/> +Why did you not make war on me with those who weep like rain?<br +/> +You felt too much, so gained no balm for all your torrid +sorrow,<br /> +And hence our deep division, and our dark undying pain.</p> +<h3><a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +169</span>BEREFT, SHE THINKS SHE DREAMS</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">dream</span> that the +dearest I ever knew<br /> + Has died and been entombed.<br /> +I am sure it’s a dream that cannot be true,<br /> + But I am so overgloomed<br /> +By its persistence, that I would gladly<br /> + Have quick death take me,<br /> +Rather than longer think thus sadly;<br /> + So wake me, wake me!</p> +<p class="poetry">It has lasted days, but minute and hour<br /> + I expect to get aroused<br /> +And find him as usual in the bower<br /> + Where we so happily housed.<br /> +Yet stays this nightmare too appalling,<br /> + And like a web shakes me,<br /> +And piteously I keep on calling,<br /> + And no one wakes me!</p> +<h3><a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>IN +THE BRITISH MUSEUM</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">What</span> do you +see in that time-touched stone,<br /> + When nothing is there<br /> +But ashen blankness, although you give it<br /> + A rigid stare?</p> +<p class="poetry">“You look not quite as if you saw,<br /> + But as if you heard,<br /> +Parting your lips, and treading softly<br /> + As mouse or bird.</p> +<p class="poetry">“It is only the base of a pillar, +they’ll tell you,<br /> + That came to us<br /> +From a far old hill men used to name<br /> + Areopagus.”</p> +<p class="poetry">—“I know no art, and I only view<br +/> + A stone from a wall,<br /> +But I am thinking that stone has echoed<br /> + The voice of Paul,</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +171</span>“Paul as he stood and preached beside it<br /> + Facing the crowd,<br /> +A small gaunt figure with wasted features,<br /> + Calling out loud</p> +<p class="poetry">“Words that in all their intimate +accents<br /> + Pattered upon<br /> +That marble front, and were far reflected,<br /> + And then were gone.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I’m a labouring man, and know but +little,<br /> + Or nothing at all;<br /> +But I can’t help thinking that stone once echoed<br /> + The voice of Paul.”</p> +<h3><a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>IN +THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Man</span>, you too, +aren’t you, one of these rough followers of the +criminal?<br /> +All hanging hereabout to gather how he’s going to bear<br +/> +Examination in the hall.” She flung disdainful +glances on<br /> +The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there,<br /> + Who warmed them by its flare.</p> +<p class="poetry">“No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know +nothing of the trial here,<br /> +Or criminal, if so he be.—I chanced to come this way,<br /> +And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold +now;<br /> +I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play,<br /> + That I see not every day.”</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +173</span>“Ha, ha!” then laughed the constables who +also stood to warm themselves,<br /> +The while another maiden scrutinized his features hard,<br /> +As the blaze threw into contrast every line and knot that +wrinkled them,<br /> +Exclaiming, “Why, last night when he was brought in by the +guard,<br /> + You were with him in the yard!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I +say! You know you speak mistakenly.<br /> +Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar<br /> +Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble +marketings,<br /> +Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are<br /> + Afoot by morning star?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“O, come, come!” laughed the +constables. “Why, man, you speak the dialect<br /> +He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs.<br /> +So own it. We sha’n’t hurt ye. There +he’s speaking now! His syllables<br /> +Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares,<br /> + As this pretty girl declares.”</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +174</span>“And you shudder when his chain clinks!” +she rejoined. “O yes, I noticed it.<br /> +And you winced, too, when those cuffs they gave him echoed to us +here.<br /> +They’ll soon be coming down, and you may then have to +defend yourself<br /> +Unless you hold your tongue, or go away and keep you clear<br /> + When he’s led to judgment near!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“No! I’ll be damned in hell +if I know anything about the man!<br /> +No single thing about him more than everybody knows!<br /> +Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with +blasphemies?” . . .<br /> +—His face convulses as the morning cock that moment +crows,<br /> + And he stops, and turns, and goes.</p> +<h3><a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>THE +OBLITERATE TOMB</h3> +<p class="poetry"> “<span +class="smcap">More</span> than half my life long<br /> +Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong,<br /> +But they all have shrunk away into the silence<br /> + Like a lost song.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “And the day has dawned +and come<br /> +For forgiveness, when the past may hold it dumb<br /> +On the once reverberate words of hatred uttered<br /> + Half in delirium . . .</p> +<p class="poetry"> “With folded lips and +hands<br /> +They lie and wait what next the Will commands,<br /> +And doubtless think, if think they can: ‘Let discord<br /> + Sink with Life’s sands!’</p> +<p class="poetry"> “By these late years +their names,<br /> +Their virtues, their hereditary claims,<br /> +May be as near defacement at their grave-place<br /> + As are their fames.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page176"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 176</span>—Such thoughts bechanced to +seize<br /> +A traveller’s mind—a man of memories—<br /> +As he set foot within the western city<br /> + Where had died these</p> +<p class="poetry"> Who in their lifetime +deemed<br /> +Him their chief enemy—one whose brain had schemed<br /> +To get their dingy greatness deeplier dingied<br /> + And disesteemed.</p> +<p class="poetry"> So, sojourning in their +town,<br /> +He mused on them and on their once renown,<br /> +And said, “I’ll seek their resting-place to-morrow<br +/> + Ere I lie down,</p> +<p class="poetry"> “And end, lest I +forget,<br /> +Those ires of many years that I regret,<br /> +Renew their names, that men may see some liegeness<br /> + Is left them yet.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> Duly next day he went<br /> +And sought the church he had known them to frequent,<br /> +And wandered in the precincts, set on eyeing<br /> + Where they lay pent,</p> +<p class="poetry"> Till by remembrance led<br /> +He stood at length beside their slighted bed,<br /> +Above which, truly, scarce a line or letter<br /> + Could now be read.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page177"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 177</span>“Thus years obliterate<br /> +Their graven worth, their chronicle, their date!<br /> +At once I’ll garnish and revive the record<br /> + Of their past state,</p> +<p class="poetry"> “That still the sage +may say<br /> +In pensive progress here where they decay,<br /> +‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents<br /> + Told in their day.’”</p> +<p class="poetry"> While speaking thus he +turned,<br /> +For a form shadowed where they lay inurned,<br /> +And he beheld a stranger in foreign vesture,<br /> + And tropic-burned.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Sir, I am right +pleased to view<br /> +That ancestors of mine should interest you,<br /> +For I have come of purpose here to trace them . . .<br /> + They are time-worn, true,</p> +<p class="poetry"> “But that’s a +fault, at most,<br /> +Sculptors can cure. On the Pacific coast<br /> +I have vowed for long that relics of my forbears<br /> + I’d trace ere lost,</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page178"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 178</span>“And hitherward I come,<br /> +Before this same old Time shall strike me numb,<br /> +To carry it out.”—“Strange, this is!” +said the other;<br /> + “What mind shall plumb</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Coincident design!<br +/> +Though these my father’s enemies were and mine,<br /> +I nourished a like purpose—to restore them<br /> + Each letter and line.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Such magnanimity<br /> +Is now not needed, sir; for you will see<br /> +That since I am here, a thing like this is, plainly,<br /> + Best done by me.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> The other bowed, and left,<br +/> +Crestfallen in sentiment, as one bereft<br /> +Of some fair object he had been moved to cherish,<br /> + By hands more deft.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And as he slept that night<br +/> +The phantoms of the ensepulchred stood up-right<br /> +Before him, trembling that he had set him seeking<br /> + Their charnel-site.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page179"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 179</span>And, as unknowing his ruth,<br /> +Asked as with terrors founded not on truth<br /> +Why he should want them. “Ha,” they hollowly +hackered,<br /> + “You come, forsooth,</p> +<p class="poetry"> “By stealth to +obliterate<br /> +Our graven worth, our chronicle, our date,<br /> +That our descendant may not gild the record<br /> + Of our past state,</p> +<p class="poetry"> “And that no sage may +say<br /> +In pensive progress near where we decay:<br /> +‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents<br /> + Told in their day.’”</p> +<p class="poetry"> Upon the morrow he went<br /> +And to that town and churchyard never bent<br /> +His ageing footsteps till, some twelvemonths onward,<br /> + An accident</p> +<p class="poetry"> Once more detained him +there;<br /> +And, stirred by hauntings, he must needs repair<br /> +To where the tomb was. Lo, it stood still wasting<br /> + In no man’s care.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page180"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 180</span>“The travelled man you met<br +/> +The last time,” said the sexton, “has not yet<br /> +Appeared again, though wealth he had in plenty.<br /> + —Can he forget?</p> +<p class="poetry"> “The architect was +hired<br /> +And came here on smart summons as desired,<br /> +But never the descendant came to tell him<br /> + What he required.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> And so the tomb remained<br +/> +Untouched, untended, crumbling, weather-stained,<br /> +And though the one-time foe was fain to right it<br /> + He still refrained.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “I’ll set about +it when<br /> +I am sure he’ll come no more. Best wait till +then.”<br /> +But so it was that never the stranger entered<br /> + That city again.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And the well-meaner died<br +/> +While waiting tremulously unsatisfied<br /> +That no return of the family’s foreign scion<br /> + Would still betide.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page181"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 181</span>And many years slid by,<br /> +And active church-restorers cast their eye<br /> +Upon the ancient garth and hoary building<br /> + The tomb stood nigh.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And when they had scraped +each wall,<br /> +Pulled out the stately pews, and smartened all,<br /> +“It will be well,” declared the spruce +church-warden,<br /> + “To overhaul</p> +<p class="poetry"> “And broaden this path +where shown;<br /> +Nothing prevents it but an old tombstone<br /> +Pertaining to a family forgotten,<br /> + Of deeds unknown.</p> +<p class="poetry"> “Their names can scarce +be read,<br /> +Depend on’t, all who care for them are dead.”<br /> +So went the tomb, whose shards were as path-paving<br /> + Distributed.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Over it and about<br /> +Men’s footsteps beat, and wind and water-spout,<br /> +Until the names, aforetime gnawed by weathers,<br /> + Were quite worn out.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a name="page182"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 182</span>So that no sage can say<br /> +In pensive progress near where they decay,<br /> +“This stone records a luminous line whose talents<br /> + Told in their day.”</p> +<h3><a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +183</span>“REGRET NOT ME”</h3> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Regret</span> not me;<br /> + Beneath the sunny tree<br /> +I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Swift as +the light<br /> + I flew my faery flight;<br /> +Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.</p> +<p class="poetry"> I did not +know<br /> + That heydays fade and go,<br /> +But deemed that what was would be always so.</p> +<p class="poetry"> I skipped +at morn<br /> + Between the yellowing corn,<br /> +Thinking it good and glorious to be born.</p> +<p class="poetry"> I ran at +eves<br /> + Among the piled-up sheaves,<br /> +Dreaming, “I grieve not, therefore nothing +grieves.”</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a +name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>Now soon +will come<br /> + The apple, pear, and plum<br /> +And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Again you +will fare<br /> + To cider-makings rare,<br /> +And junketings; but I shall not be there.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Yet gaily +sing<br /> + Until the pewter ring<br /> +Those songs we sang when we went gipsying.</p> +<p class="poetry"> And lightly +dance<br /> + Some triple-timed romance<br /> +In coupled figures, and forget mischance;</p> +<p class="poetry"> And mourn +not me<br /> + Beneath the yellowing tree;<br /> +For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully.</p> +<h3><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>THE +RECALCITRANTS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Let</span> us off and +search, and find a place<br /> +Where yours and mine can be natural lives,<br /> +Where no one comes who dissects and dives<br /> +And proclaims that ours is a curious case,<br /> +That its touch of romance can scarcely grace.</p> +<p class="poetry">You would think it strange at first, but +then<br /> +Everything has been strange in its time.<br /> +When some one said on a day of the prime<br /> +He would bow to no brazen god again<br /> +He doubtless dazed the mass of men.</p> +<p class="poetry">None will recognize us as a pair whose +claims<br /> +To righteous judgment we care not making;<br /> +Who have doubted if breath be worth the taking,<br /> +And have no respect for the current fames<br /> +Whence the savour has flown while abide the names.</p> +<p class="poetry">We have found us already shunned, disdained,<br +/> +And for re-acceptance have not once striven;<br /> +Whatever offence our course has given<br /> +The brunt thereof we have long sustained.<br /> +Well, let us away, scorned unexplained.</p> +<h3><a name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +186</span>STARLINGS ON THE ROOF</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">No</span> smoke +spreads out of this chimney-pot,<br /> +The people who lived here have left the spot,<br /> +And others are coming who knew them not.</p> +<p class="poetry">“If you listen anon, with an ear +intent,<br /> +The voices, you’ll find, will be different<br /> +From the well-known ones of those who went.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Why did they go? Their tones so +bland<br /> +Were quite familiar to our band;<br /> +The comers we shall not understand.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“They look for a new life, rich and +strange;<br /> +They do not know that, let them range<br /> +Wherever they may, they will get no change.</p> +<p class="poetry">“They will drag their house-gear ever so +far<br /> +In their search for a home no miseries mar;<br /> +They will find that as they were they are,</p> +<p class="poetry">“That every hearth has a ghost, alack,<br +/> +And can be but the scene of a bivouac<br /> +Till they move perforce—no time to pack!”</p> +<h3><a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>THE +MOON LOOKS IN</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry">I have risen again,<br /> +And awhile survey<br /> +By my chilly ray<br /> +Through your window-pane<br /> +Your upturned face,<br /> +As you think, “Ah-she<br /> +Now dreams of me<br /> +In her distant place!”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry">I pierce her blind<br /> +In her far-off home:<br /> +She fixes a comb,<br /> +And says in her mind,<br /> +“I start in an hour;<br /> +Whom shall I meet?<br /> +Won’t the men be sweet,<br /> +And the women sour!”</p> +<h3><a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>THE +SWEET HUSSY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">In</span> his early days he +was quite surprised<br /> +When she told him she was compromised<br /> +By meetings and lingerings at his whim,<br /> +And thinking not of herself but him;<br /> +While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round<br /> +That scandal should so soon abound,<br /> +(As she had raised them to nine or ten<br /> +Of antecedent nice young men)<br /> +And in remorse he thought with a sigh,<br /> +How good she is, and how bad am I!—<br /> +It was years before he understood<br /> +That she was the wicked one—he the good.</p> +<h3><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>THE +TELEGRAM</h3> +<p class="poetry">“O <span class="smcap">he’s</span> +suffering—maybe dying—and I not there to aid,<br /> +And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go?<br +/> +Only the nurse’s brief twelve words thus hurriedly +conveyed,<br /> + As by stealth, to let me know.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He was the best and +brightest!—candour shone upon his brow,<br /> +And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he,<br /> +And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he’s sinking +now,<br /> + Far, far removed from me!”</p> +<p class="poetry">—The yachts ride mute at anchor and the +fulling moon is fair,<br /> +And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth +parade,<br /> +And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware<br /> + That she lives no more a maid,</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +190</span>But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the +ground she trod<br /> +To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history +known<br /> +In its last particular to him—aye, almost as to God,<br /> + And believed her quite his own.</p> +<p class="poetry">So great her absentmindedness she droops as in +a swoon,<br /> +And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace,<br /> +And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon<br /> + At this idle watering-place . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">What now I see before me is a long lane +overhung<br /> +With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the +grave.<br /> +And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when +young,<br /> + Ere a woman held me slave.</p> +<h3><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 191</span>THE +MOTH-SIGNAL<br /> +(<i>On Egdon Heath</i>)</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">What</span> are you +still, still thinking,”<br /> + He asked in vague surmise,<br /> +“That stare at the wick unblinking<br /> + With those great lost luminous eyes?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“O, I see a poor moth burning<br /> + In the candle-flame,” said she,<br /> +“Its wings and legs are turning<br /> + To a cinder rapidly.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Moths fly in from the heather,”<br +/> + He said, “now the days decline.”<br /> +“I know,” said she. “The weather,<br /> + I hope, will at last be fine.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I think,” she added lightly,<br /> + “I’ll look out at the door.<br /> +The ring the moon wears nightly<br /> + May be visible now no more.”</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page192"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +192</span>She rose, and, little heeding,<br /> + Her husband then went on<br /> +With his attentive reading<br /> + In the annals of ages gone.</p> +<p class="poetry">Outside the house a figure<br /> + Came from the tumulus near,<br /> +And speedily waxed bigger,<br /> + And clasped and called her Dear.</p> +<p class="poetry">“I saw the pale-winged token<br /> + You sent through the crack,” sighed she.<br /> +“That moth is burnt and broken<br /> + With which you lured out me.</p> +<p class="poetry">“And were I as the moth is<br /> + It might be better far<br /> +For one whose marriage troth is<br /> + Shattered as potsherds are!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Then grinned the Ancient Briton<br /> + From the tumulus treed with pine:<br /> +“So, hearts are thwartly smitten<br /> + In these days as in mine!”</p> +<h3><a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>SEEN +BY THE WAITS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Through</span> snowy woods +and shady<br /> + We went to play a tune<br /> +To the lonely manor-lady<br /> + By the light of the Christmas moon.</p> +<p class="poetry">We violed till, upward glancing<br /> + To where a mirror leaned,<br /> +We saw her airily dancing,<br /> + Deeming her movements screened;</p> +<p class="poetry">Dancing alone in the room there,<br /> + Thin-draped in her robe of night;<br /> +Her postures, glassed in the gloom there,<br /> + Were a strange phantasmal sight.</p> +<p class="poetry">She had learnt (we heard when homing)<br /> + That her roving spouse was dead;<br /> +Why she had danced in the gloaming<br /> + We thought, but never said.</p> +<h3><a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>THE +TWO SOLDIERS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Just</span> at the corner +of the wall<br /> + We met—yes, he and I—<br /> +Who had not faced in camp or hall<br /> + Since we bade home good-bye,<br /> +And what once happened came back—all—<br /> + Out of those years gone by.</p> +<p class="poetry">And that strange woman whom we knew<br /> + And loved—long dead and gone,<br /> +Whose poor half-perished residue,<br /> + Tombless and trod, lay yon!<br /> +But at this moment to our view<br /> + Rose like a phantom wan.</p> +<p class="poetry">And in his fixed face I could see,<br /> + Lit by a lurid shine,<br /> +The drama re-enact which she<br /> + Had dyed incarnadine<br /> +For us, and more. And doubtless he<br /> + Beheld it too in mine.</p> +<p class="poetry">A start, as at one slightly known,<br /> + And with an indifferent air<br /> +We passed, without a sign being shown<br /> + That, as it real were,<br /> +A memory-acted scene had thrown<br /> + Its tragic shadow there.</p> +<h3><a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>THE +DEATH OF REGRET</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">opened</span> my shutter +at sunrise,<br /> + And looked at the hill hard by,<br /> +And I heartily grieved for the comrade<br /> + Who wandered up there to die.</p> +<p class="poetry">I let in the morn on the morrow,<br /> + And failed not to think of him then,<br /> +As he trod up that rise in the twilight,<br /> + And never came down again.</p> +<p class="poetry">I undid the shutter a week thence,<br /> + But not until after I’d turned<br /> +Did I call back his last departure<br /> + By the upland there discerned.</p> +<p class="poetry">Uncovering the casement long later,<br /> + I bent to my toil till the gray,<br /> +When I said to myself, “Ah—what ails me,<br /> + To forget him all the day!”</p> +<p class="poetry">As daily I flung back the shutter<br /> + In the same blank bald routine,<br /> +He scarcely once rose to remembrance<br /> + Through a month of my facing the scene.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +196</span>And ah, seldom now do I ponder<br /> + At the window as heretofore<br /> +On the long valued one who died yonder,<br /> + And wastes by the sycamore.</p> +<h3><a name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>IN +THE DAYS OF CRINOLINE</h3> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">plain</span> tilt-bonnet +on her head<br /> +She took the path across the leaze.<br /> +—Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said,<br /> +“Too dowdy that, for coquetries,<br /> + So I can hoe at ease.”</p> +<p class="poetry">But when she had passed into the heath,<br /> +And gained the wood beyond the flat,<br /> +She raised her skirts, and from beneath<br /> +Unpinned and drew as from a sheath<br /> + An ostrich-feathered hat.</p> +<p class="poetry">And where the hat had hung she now<br /> +Concealed and pinned the dowdy hood,<br /> +And set the hat upon her brow,<br /> +And thus emerging from the wood<br /> + Tripped on in jaunty mood.</p> +<p class="poetry">The sun was low and crimson-faced<br /> +As two came that way from the town,<br /> +And plunged into the wood untraced . . .<br /> +When separately therefrom they paced<br /> + The sun had quite gone down.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +198</span>The hat and feather disappeared,<br /> +The dowdy hood again was donned,<br /> +And in the gloom the fair one neared<br /> +Her home and husband dour, who conned<br /> + Calmly his blue-eyed blonde.</p> +<p class="poetry">“To-day,” he said, “you have +shown good sense,<br /> +A dress so modest and so meek<br /> +Should always deck your goings hence<br /> +Alone.” And as a recompense<br /> + He kissed her on the cheek.</p> +<h3><a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>THE +ROMAN GRAVEMOUNDS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">By</span> Rome’s dim +relics there walks a man,<br /> +Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade;<br /> +I guess what impels him to scrape and scan;<br /> +Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Vast was Rome,” he must muse, +“in the world’s regard,<br /> +Vast it looms there still, vast it ever will be;”<br /> +And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard<br /> +Left by those who are held in such memory.</p> +<p class="poetry">But no; in his basket, see, he has brought<br +/> +A little white furred thing, stiff of limb,<br /> +Whose life never won from the world a thought;<br /> +It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him.</p> +<p class="poetry">And to make it a grave he has come to the +spot,<br /> +And he delves in the ancient dead’s long home;<br /> +<a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>Their +fames, their achievements, the man knows not;<br /> +The furred thing is all to him—nothing Rome!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Here say you that Cæsar’s +warriors lie?—<br /> +But my little white cat was my only friend!<br /> +Could she but live, might the record die<br /> +Of Cæsar, his legions, his aims, his end!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Well, Rome’s long rule here is oft and +again<br /> +A theme for the sages of history,<br /> +And the small furred life was worth no one’s pen;<br /> +Yet its mourner’s mood has a charm for me.</p> +<p><i>November</i> 1910.</p> +<h3><a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>THE +WORKBOX</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">See</span>, +here’s the workbox, little wife,<br /> + That I made of polished oak.”<br /> +He was a joiner, of village life;<br /> + She came of borough folk.</p> +<p class="poetry">He holds the present up to her<br /> +As with a smile she nears<br /> +And answers to the profferer,<br /> +“’Twill last all my sewing years!”</p> +<p class="poetry">“I warrant it will. And longer +too.<br /> +’Tis a scantling that I got<br /> +Off poor John Wayward’s coffin, who<br /> +Died of they knew not what.</p> +<p class="poetry">“The shingled pattern that seems to +cease<br /> +Against your box’s rim<br /> +Continues right on in the piece<br /> +That’s underground with him.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +202</span>“And while I worked it made me think<br /> +Of timber’s varied doom;<br /> +One inch where people eat and drink,<br /> +The next inch in a tomb.</p> +<p class="poetry">“But why do you look so white, my +dear,<br /> +And turn aside your face?<br /> +You knew not that good lad, I fear,<br /> +Though he came from your native place?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“How could I know that good young man,<br +/> +Though he came from my native town,<br /> +When he must have left there earlier than<br /> +I was a woman grown?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Ah no. I should have +understood!<br /> +It shocked you that I gave<br /> +To you one end of a piece of wood<br /> +Whose other is in a grave?”</p> +<p class="poetry">“Don’t, dear, despise my +intellect,<br /> +Mere accidental things<br /> +Of that sort never have effect<br /> +On my imaginings.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet still her lips were limp and wan,<br /> +Her face still held aside,<br /> +As if she had known not only John,<br /> +But known of what he died.</p> +<h3><a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>THE +SACRILEGE<br /> +A BALLAD-TRAGEDY<br /> +(<i>Circa</i> 182-)</h3> +<h4><span class="smcap">Part</span> I</h4> +<p class="poetry">“I <span class="smcap">have</span> a Love +I love too well<br /> +Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor;<br /> +I have a Love I love too well,<br /> + To whom, ere she was mine,<br /> +‘Such is my love for you,’ I said,<br /> +‘That you shall have to hood your head<br /> +A silken kerchief crimson-red,<br /> + Wove finest of the fine.’</p> +<p class="poetry">“And since this Love, for one mad +moon,<br /> +On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor,<br /> +Since this my Love for one mad moon<br /> + Did clasp me as her king,<br /> +I snatched a silk-piece red and rare<br /> +From off a stall at Priddy Fair,<br /> +For handkerchief to hood her hair<br /> + When we went gallanting.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +204</span>“Full soon the four weeks neared their end<br /> +Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor;<br /> +And when the four weeks neared their end,<br /> + And their swift sweets outwore,<br /> +I said, ‘What shall I do to own<br /> +Those beauties bright as tulips blown,<br /> +And keep you here with me alone<br /> + As mine for evermore?’</p> +<p class="poetry">“And as she drowsed within my van<br /> +On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor—<br /> +And as she drowsed within my van,<br /> + And dawning turned to day,<br /> +She heavily raised her sloe-black eyes<br /> +And murmured back in softest wise,<br /> +‘One more thing, and the charms you prize<br /> + Are yours henceforth for aye.</p> +<p class="poetry">“‘And swear I will I’ll never +go<br /> +While Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor<br /> +To meet the Cornish Wrestler Joe<br /> + For dance and dallyings.<br /> +If you’ll to yon cathedral shrine,<br /> +And finger from the chest divine<br /> +Treasure to buy me ear-drops fine,<br /> + And richly jewelled rings.’</p> +<p class="poetry">“I said: ‘I am one who has gathered +gear<br /> +From Marlbury Downs to Dunkery Tor,<br /> +Who has gathered gear for many a year<br /> + From mansion, mart and fair;<br /> +<a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>But at +God’s house I’ve stayed my hand,<br /> +Hearing within me some command—<br /> +Curbed by a law not of the land<br /> + From doing damage there.’</p> +<p class="poetry">“Whereat she pouts, this Love of mine,<br +/> +As Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor,<br /> +And still she pouts, this Love of mine,<br /> + So cityward I go.<br /> +But ere I start to do the thing,<br /> +And speed my soul’s imperilling<br /> +For one who is my ravishing<br /> + And all the joy I know,</p> +<p class="poetry">“I come to lay this charge on +thee—<br /> +On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor—<br /> +I come to lay this charge on thee<br /> + With solemn speech and sign:<br /> +Should things go ill, and my life pay<br /> +For botchery in this rash assay,<br /> +You are to take hers likewise—yea,<br /> + The month the law takes mine.</p> +<p class="poetry">“For should my rival, Wrestler Joe,<br /> +Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor—<br /> +My reckless rival, Wrestler Joe,<br /> + My Love’s possessor be,<br /> +My tortured spirit would not rest,<br /> +But wander weary and distrest<br /> +Throughout the world in wild protest:<br /> + The thought nigh maddens me!”</p> +<h4><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +206</span><span class="smcap">Part</span> II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Thus did he speak—this brother of +mine—<br /> +On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor,<br /> +Born at my birth of mother of mine,<br /> + And forthwith went his way<br /> +To dare the deed some coming night . . .<br /> +I kept the watch with shaking sight,<br /> +The moon at moments breaking bright,<br /> + At others glooming gray.</p> +<p class="poetry">For three full days I heard no sound<br /> +Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor,<br /> +I heard no sound at all around<br /> + Whether his fay prevailed,<br /> +Or one malign the master were,<br /> +Till some afoot did tidings bear<br /> +How that, for all his practised care,<br /> + He had been caught and jailed.</p> +<p class="poetry">They had heard a crash when twelve had +chimed<br /> +By Mendip east of Dunkery Tor,<br /> +When twelve had chimed and moonlight climbed;<br /> + They watched, and he was tracked<br /> +By arch and aisle and saint and knight<br /> +Of sculptured stonework sheeted white<br /> +In the cathedral’s ghostly light,<br /> + And captured in the act.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +207</span>Yes; for this Love he loved too well<br /> +Where Dunkery sights the Severn shore,<br /> +All for this Love he loved too well<br /> + He burst the holy bars,<br /> +Seized golden vessels from the chest<br /> +To buy her ornaments of the best,<br /> +At her ill-witchery’s request<br /> + And lure of eyes like stars . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">When blustering March confused the sky<br /> +In Toneborough Town by Exon Moor,<br /> +When blustering March confused the sky<br /> + They stretched him; and he died.<br /> +Down in the crowd where I, to see<br /> +The end of him, stood silently,<br /> +With a set face he lipped to me—<br /> + “Remember.” “Ay!” I +cried.</p> +<p class="poetry">By night and day I shadowed her<br /> +From Toneborough Deane to Dunkery Tor,<br /> +I shadowed her asleep, astir,<br /> + And yet I could not bear—<br /> +Till Wrestler Joe anon began<br /> +To figure as her chosen man,<br /> +And took her to his shining van—<br /> + To doom a form so fair!</p> +<p class="poetry">He made it handsome for her sake—<br /> +And Dunkery smiled to Exon Moor—<br /> +He made it handsome for her sake,<br /> + Painting it out and in;<br /> +<a name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>And on +the door of apple-green<br /> +A bright brass knocker soon was seen,<br /> +And window-curtains white and clean<br /> + For her to sit within.</p> +<p class="poetry">And all could see she clave to him<br /> +As cleaves a cloud to Dunkery Tor,<br /> +Yea, all could see she clave to him,<br /> + And every day I said,<br /> +“A pity it seems to part those two<br /> +That hourly grow to love more true:<br /> +Yet she’s the wanton woman who<br /> + Sent one to swing till dead!”</p> +<p class="poetry">That blew to blazing all my hate,<br /> +While Dunkery frowned on Exon Moor,<br /> +And when the river swelled, her fate<br /> + Came to her pitilessly . . .<br /> +I dogged her, crying: “Across that plank<br /> +They use as bridge to reach yon bank<br /> +A coat and hat lie limp and dank;<br /> + Your goodman’s, can they be?”</p> +<p class="poetry">She paled, and went, I close behind—<br +/> +And Exon frowned to Dunkery Tor,<br /> +She went, and I came up behind<br /> + And tipped the plank that bore<br /> +Her, fleetly flitting across to eye<br /> +What such might bode. She slid awry;<br /> +And from the current came a cry,<br /> + A gurgle; and no more.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +209</span>How that befell no mortal knew<br /> +From Marlbury Downs to Exon Moor;<br /> +No mortal knew that deed undue<br /> + But he who schemed the crime,<br /> +Which night still covers . . . But in dream<br /> +Those ropes of hair upon the stream<br /> +He sees, and he will hear that scream<br /> + Until his judgment-time.</p> +<h3><a name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 210</span>THE +ABBEY MASON<br /> +(<i>Inventor of the</i> “<i>Perpendicular</i>” +<i>Style of Gothic Architecture</i>)</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> new-vamped Abbey +shaped apace<br /> +In the fourteenth century of grace;</p> +<p class="poetry">(The church which, at an after date,<br /> +Acquired cathedral rank and state.)</p> +<p class="poetry">Panel and circumscribing wall<br /> +Of latest feature, trim and tall,</p> +<p class="poetry">Rose roundabout the Norman core<br /> +In prouder pose than theretofore,</p> +<p class="poetry">Encasing magically the old<br /> +With parpend ashlars manifold.</p> +<p class="poetry">The trowels rang out, and tracery<br /> +Appeared where blanks had used to be.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +211</span>Men toiled for pleasure more than pay,<br /> +And all went smoothly day by day,</p> +<p class="poetry">Till, in due course, the transept part<br /> +Engrossed the master-mason’s art.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Home-coming thence he tossed and +turned<br /> +Throughout the night till the new sun burned.</p> +<p class="poetry">“What fearful visions have inspired<br /> +These gaingivings?” his wife inquired;</p> +<p class="poetry">“As if your tools were in your hand<br /> +You have hammered, fitted, muttered, planned;</p> +<p class="poetry">“You have thumped as you were working +hard:<br /> +I might have found me bruised and scarred.</p> +<p class="poetry">“What then’s amiss. What +eating care<br /> +Looms nigh, whereof I am unaware?”</p> +<p class="poetry">He answered not, but churchward went,<br /> +Viewing his draughts with discontent;</p> +<p class="poetry">And fumbled there the livelong day<br /> +Till, hollow-eyed, he came away.</p> +<p class="poetry">—’Twas said, “The +master-mason’s ill!”<br /> +And all the abbey works stood still.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>Quoth Abbot Wygmore: “Why, O why<br /> +Distress yourself? You’ll surely die!”</p> +<p class="poetry">The mason answered, trouble-torn,<br /> +“This long-vogued style is quite outworn!</p> +<p class="poetry">“The upper archmould nohow serves<br /> +To meet the lower tracery curves:</p> +<p class="poetry">“The ogees bend too far away<br /> +To give the flexures interplay.</p> +<p class="poetry">“This it is causes my distress . . .<br +/> +So it will ever be unless</p> +<p class="poetry">“New forms be found to supersede<br /> +The circle when occasions need.</p> +<p class="poetry">“To carry it out I have tried and +toiled,<br /> +And now perforce must own me foiled!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Jeerers will say: ‘Here was a +man<br /> +Who could not end what he began!’”</p> +<p class="poetry">—So passed that day, the next, the +next;<br /> +The abbot scanned the task, perplexed;</p> +<p class="poetry">The townsmen mustered all their wit<br /> +To fathom how to compass it,</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page213"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +213</span>But no raw artistries availed<br /> +Where practice in the craft had failed . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">—One night he tossed, all open-eyed,<br +/> +And early left his helpmeet’s side.</p> +<p class="poetry">Scattering the rushes of the floor<br /> +He wandered from the chamber door</p> +<p class="poetry">And sought the sizing pile, whereon<br /> +Struck dimly a cadaverous dawn</p> +<p class="poetry">Through freezing rain, that drenched the +board<br /> +Of diagram-lines he last had scored—</p> +<p class="poetry">Chalked phantasies in vain begot<br /> +To knife the architectural knot—</p> +<p class="poetry">In front of which he dully stood,<br /> +Regarding them in hopeless mood.</p> +<p class="poetry">He closelier looked; then looked again:<br /> +The chalk-scratched draught-board faced the rain,</p> +<p class="poetry">Whose icicled drops deformed the lines<br /> +Innumerous of his lame designs,</p> +<p class="poetry">So that they streamed in small white threads<br +/> +From the upper segments to the heads</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +214</span>Of arcs below, uniting them<br /> +Each by a stalactitic stem.</p> +<p class="poetry">—At once, with eyes that struck out +sparks,<br /> +He adds accessory cusping-marks,</p> +<p class="poetry">Then laughs aloud. The thing was done<br +/> +So long assayed from sun to sun . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">—Now in his joy he grew aware<br /> +Of one behind him standing there,</p> +<p class="poetry">And, turning, saw the abbot, who<br /> +The weather’s whim was watching too.</p> +<p class="poetry">Onward to Prime the abbot went,<br /> +Tacit upon the incident.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Men now discerned as days revolved<br /> +The ogive riddle had been solved;</p> +<p class="poetry">Templates were cut, fresh lines were chalked<br +/> +Where lines had been defaced and balked,</p> +<p class="poetry">And the work swelled and mounted higher,<br /> +Achievement distancing desire;</p> +<p class="poetry">Here jambs with transoms fixed between,<br /> +Where never the like before had been—</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +215</span>There little mullions thinly sawn<br /> +Where meeting circles once were drawn.</p> +<p class="poetry">“We knew,” men said, “the +thing would go<br /> +After his craft-wit got aglow,</p> +<p class="poetry">“And, once fulfilled what he has +designed,<br /> +We’ll honour him and his great mind!”</p> +<p class="poetry">When matters stood thus poised awhile,<br /> +And all surroundings shed a smile,</p> +<p class="poetry">The master-mason on an eve<br /> +Homed to his wife and seemed to grieve . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">—“The abbot spoke to me to-day:<br +/> +He hangs about the works alway.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He knows the source as well as I<br /> +Of the new style men magnify.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He said: ‘You pride yourself too +much<br /> +On your creation. Is it such?</p> +<p class="poetry">“‘Surely the hand of God it is<br +/> +That conjured so, and only His!—</p> +<p class="poetry">“‘Disclosing by the frost and +rain<br /> +Forms your invention chased in vain;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +216</span>“‘Hence the devices deemed so great<br /> +You copied, and did not create.’</p> +<p class="poetry">“I feel the abbot’s words are +just,<br /> +And that all thanks renounce I must.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Can a man welcome praise and pelf<br /> +For hatching art that hatched itself? . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">“So, I shall own the deft design<br /> +Is Heaven’s outshaping, and not mine.”</p> +<p class="poetry">“What!” said she. +“Praise your works ensure<br /> +To throw away, and quite obscure</p> +<p class="poetry">“Your beaming and beneficent star?<br /> +Better you leave things as they are!</p> +<p class="poetry">“Why, think awhile. Had not your +zest<br /> +In your loved craft curtailed your rest—</p> +<p class="poetry">“Had you not gone there ere the day<br /> +The sun had melted all away!”</p> +<p class="poetry">—But, though his good wife argued so,<br +/> +The mason let the people know</p> +<p class="poetry">That not unaided sprang the thought<br /> +Whereby the glorious fane was wrought,</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +217</span>But that by frost when dawn was dim<br /> +The method was disclosed to him.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Yet,” said the townspeople +thereat,<br /> +“’Tis your own doing, even with that!”</p> +<p class="poetry">But he—chafed, childlike, in +extremes—<br /> +The temperament of men of dreams—</p> +<p class="poetry">Aloofly scrupled to admit<br /> +That he did aught but borrow it,</p> +<p class="poetry">And diffidently made request<br /> +That with the abbot all should rest.</p> +<p class="poetry">—As none could doubt the abbot’s +word,<br /> +Or question what the church averred,</p> +<p class="poetry">The mason was at length believed<br /> +Of no more count than he conceived,</p> +<p class="poetry">And soon began to lose the fame<br /> +That late had gathered round his name . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">—Time passed, and like a living thing<br +/> +The pile went on embodying,</p> +<p class="poetry">And workmen died, and young ones grew,<br /> +And the old mason sank from view</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +218</span>And Abbots Wygmore and Staunton went<br /> +And Horton sped the embellishment.</p> +<p class="poetry">But not till years had far progressed<br /> +Chanced it that, one day, much impressed,</p> +<p class="poetry">Standing within the well-graced aisle,<br /> +He asked who first conceived the style;</p> +<p class="poetry">And some decrepit sage detailed<br /> +How, when invention nought availed,</p> +<p class="poetry">The cloud-cast waters in their whim<br /> +Came down, and gave the hint to him</p> +<p class="poetry">Who struck each arc, and made each mould;<br /> +And how the abbot would not hold</p> +<p class="poetry">As sole begetter him who applied<br /> +Forms the Almighty sent as guide;</p> +<p class="poetry">And how the master lost renown,<br /> +And wore in death no artist’s crown.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Then Horton, who in inner thought<br /> +Had more perceptions than he taught,</p> +<p class="poetry">Replied: “Nay; art can but transmute;<br +/> +Invention is not absolute;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +219</span>“Things fail to spring from nought at call,<br /> +And art-beginnings most of all.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He did but what all artists do,<br /> +Wait upon Nature for his cue.”</p> +<p class="poetry">—“Had you been here to tell them +so<br /> +Lord Abbot, sixty years ago,</p> +<p class="poetry">“The mason, now long underground,<br /> +Doubtless a different fate had found.</p> +<p class="poetry">“He passed into oblivion dim,<br /> +And none knew what became of him!</p> +<p class="poetry">“His name? ’Twas of some +common kind<br /> +And now has faded out of mind.”</p> +<p class="poetry">The Abbot: “It shall not be hid!<br /> +I’ll trace it.” . . . But he never did.</p> +<p class="poetry">—When longer yet dank death had wormed<br +/> +The brain wherein the style had germed</p> +<p class="poetry">From Gloucester church it flew afar—<br +/> +The style called Perpendicular.—</p> +<p class="poetry">To Winton and to Westminster<br /> +It ranged, and grew still beautifuller:</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +220</span>From Solway Frith to Dover Strand<br /> +Its fascinations starred the land,</p> +<p class="poetry">Not only on cathedral walls<br /> +But upon courts and castle halls,</p> +<p class="poetry">Till every edifice in the isle<br /> +Was patterned to no other style,</p> +<p class="poetry">And till, long having played its part,<br /> +The curtain fell on Gothic art.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Well: when in Wessex on your rounds,<br +/> +Take a brief step beyond its bounds,</p> +<p class="poetry">And enter Gloucester: seek the quoin<br /> +Where choir and transept interjoin,</p> +<p class="poetry">And, gazing at the forms there flung<br /> +Against the sky by one unsung—</p> +<p class="poetry">The ogee arches transom-topped,<br /> +The tracery-stalks by spandrels stopped,</p> +<p class="poetry">Petrified lacework—lightly lined<br /> +On ancient massiveness behind—</p> +<p class="poetry">Muse that some minds so modest be<br /> +As to renounce fame’s fairest fee,</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +221</span>(Like him who crystallized on this spot<br /> +His visionings, but lies forgot,</p> +<p class="poetry">And many a mediaeval one<br /> +Whose symmetries salute the sun)</p> +<p class="poetry">While others boom a baseless claim,<br /> +And upon nothing rear a name.</p> +<h3><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 222</span>THE +JUBILEE OF A MAGAZINE<br /> +(<i>To the Editor</i>)</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Yes</span>; your up-dated +modern page—<br /> +All flower-fresh, as it appears—<br /> +Can claim a time-tried lineage,</p> +<p class="poetry">That reaches backward fifty years<br /> +(Which, if but short for sleepy squires,<br /> +Is much in magazines’ careers).</p> +<p class="poetry">—Here, on your cover, never tires<br /> +The sower, reaper, thresher, while<br /> +As through the seasons of our sires</p> +<p class="poetry">Each wills to work in ancient style<br /> +With seedlip, sickle, share and flail,<br /> +Though modes have since moved many a mile!</p> +<p class="poetry">The steel-roped plough now rips the vale,<br /> +With cog and tooth the sheaves are won,<br /> +Wired wheels drum out the wheat like hail;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +223</span>But if we ask, what has been done<br /> +To unify the mortal lot<br /> +Since your bright leaves first saw the sun,</p> +<p class="poetry">Beyond mechanic furtherance—what<br /> +Advance can rightness, candour, claim?<br /> +Truth bends abashed, and answers not.</p> +<p class="poetry">Despite your volumes’ gentle aim<br /> +To straighten visions wry and wrong,<br /> +Events jar onward much the same!</p> +<p class="poetry">—Had custom tended to prolong,<br /> +As on your golden page engrained,<br /> +Old processes of blade and prong,</p> +<p class="poetry">And best invention been retained<br /> +For high crusades to lessen tears<br /> +Throughout the race, the world had gained! . . .<br /> +But too much, this, for fifty years.</p> +<h3><a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 224</span>THE +SATIN SHOES</h3> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">If</span> ever I +walk to church to wed,<br /> + As other maidens use,<br /> +And face the gathered eyes,” she said,<br /> + “I’ll go in satin shoes!”</p> +<p class="poetry">She was as fair as early day<br /> + Shining on meads unmown,<br /> +And her sweet syllables seemed to play<br /> + Like flute-notes softly blown.</p> +<p class="poetry">The time arrived when it was meet<br /> + That she should be a bride;<br /> +The satin shoes were on her feet,<br /> + Her father was at her side.</p> +<p class="poetry">They stood within the dairy door,<br /> + And gazed across the green;<br /> +The church loomed on the distant moor,<br /> + But rain was thick between.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +225</span>“The grass-path hardly can be stepped,<br /> + The lane is like a pool!”—<br /> +Her dream is shown to be inept,<br /> + Her wish they overrule.</p> +<p class="poetry">“To go forth shod in satin soft<br /> + A coach would be required!”<br /> +For thickest boots the shoes were doffed—<br /> + Those shoes her soul desired . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">All day the bride, as overborne,<br /> + Was seen to brood apart,<br /> +And that the shoes had not been worn<br /> + Sat heavy on her heart.</p> +<p class="poetry">From her wrecked dream, as months flew on,<br +/> + Her thought seemed not to range.<br /> +“What ails the wife?” they said anon,<br /> + “That she should be so strange?” . . +.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah—what coach comes with furtive +glide—<br /> + A coach of closed-up kind?<br /> +It comes to fetch the last year’s bride,<br /> + Who wanders in her mind.</p> +<p class="poetry">She strove with them, and fearfully ran<br /> + Stairward with one low scream:<br /> +“Nay—coax her,” said the madhouse man,<br /> + “With some old household theme.”</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +226</span>“If you will go, dear, you must fain<br /> + Put on those shoes—the pair<br /> +Meant for your marriage, which the rain<br /> + Forbade you then to wear.”</p> +<p class="poetry">She clapped her hands, flushed joyous hues;<br +/> + “O yes—I’ll up and ride<br /> +If I am to wear my satin shoes<br /> + And be a proper bride!”</p> +<p class="poetry">Out then her little foot held she,<br /> + As to depart with speed;<br /> +The madhouse man smiled pleasantly<br /> + To see the wile succeed.</p> +<p class="poetry">She turned to him when all was done,<br /> + And gave him her thin hand,<br /> +Exclaiming like an enraptured one,<br /> + “This time it will be grand!”</p> +<p class="poetry">She mounted with a face elate,<br /> + Shut was the carriage door;<br /> +They drove her to the madhouse gate,<br /> + And she was seen no more . . .</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet she was fair as early day<br /> + Shining on meads unmown,<br /> +And her sweet syllables seemed to play<br /> + Like flute-notes softly blown.</p> +<h3><a name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +227</span>EXEUNT OMNES</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Everybody</span> else, then, going,<br /> +And I still left where the fair was? . . .<br /> +Much have I seen of neighbour loungers<br /> + Making a lusty showing,<br /> + Each now past all knowing.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II</p> +<p class="poetry"> There is an air of +blankness<br /> +In the street and the littered spaces;<br /> +Thoroughfare, steeple, bridge and highway<br /> + Wizen themselves to lankness;<br /> + Kennels dribble dankness.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">III</p> +<p class="poetry"> Folk all fade. And +whither,<br /> +As I wait alone where the fair was?<br /> +Into the clammy and numbing night-fog<br /> + Whence they entered hither.<br /> + Soon do I follow thither!</p> +<p><i>June</i> 2, 1913.</p> +<h3><a name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 228</span>A +POET</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Attentive</span> eyes, +fantastic heed,<br /> +Assessing minds, he does not need,<br /> +Nor urgent writs to sup or dine,<br /> +Nor pledges in the roseate wine.</p> +<p class="poetry">For loud acclaim he does not care<br /> +By the august or rich or fair,<br /> +Nor for smart pilgrims from afar,<br /> +Curious on where his hauntings are.</p> +<p class="poetry">But soon or later, when you hear<br /> +That he has doffed this wrinkled gear,<br /> +Some evening, at the first star-ray,<br /> +Come to his graveside, pause and say:</p> +<p class="poetry">“Whatever the message his to tell,<br /> +Two bright-souled women loved him well.”<br /> +Stand and say that amid the dim:<br /> +It will be praise enough for him.</p> +<p><i>July</i> 1914.</p> +<h3><a name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +229</span>POSTSCRIPT<br /> +“MEN WHO MARCH AWAY”<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">(SONG OF THE SOLDIERS)</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">What</span> of the faith +and fire within us<br /> + Men who march away<br /> + Ere the barn-cocks say<br /> + Night is growing gray,<br /> +To hazards whence no tears can win us;<br /> +What of the faith and fire within us<br /> + Men who march away?</p> +<p class="poetry">Is it a purblind prank, O think you,<br /> + Friend with the musing eye,<br /> + Who watch us stepping by<br /> + With doubt and dolorous sigh?<br /> +Can much pondering so hoodwink you!<br /> +Is it a purblind prank, O think you,<br /> + Friend with the musing eye?</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +230</span>Nay. We well see what we are doing,<br /> + Though some may not see—<br /> + Dalliers as they be—<br /> + England’s need are we;<br /> +Her distress would leave us rueing:<br /> +Nay. We well see what we are doing,<br /> + Though some may not see!</p> +<p class="poetry">In our heart of hearts believing<br /> + Victory crowns the just,<br /> + And that braggarts must<br /> + Surely bite the dust,<br /> +Press we to the field ungrieving,<br /> +In our heart of hearts believing<br /> + Victory crowns the just.</p> +<p class="poetry">Hence the faith and fire within us<br /> + Men who march away<br /> + Ere the barn-cocks say<br /> + Night is growing gray,<br /> +To hazards whence no tears can win us:<br /> +Hence the faith and fire within us<br /> + Men who march away.</p> +<p><i>September</i> 5, 1914.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2863-h.htm or 2863-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/6/2863 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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