diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2863-0.txt | 5633 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2863-0.zip | bin | 0 -> 69042 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2863-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 286295 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2863-h/2863-h.htm | 6117 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2863-h/images/coverb.jpg | bin | 0 -> 170941 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2863-h/images/covers.jpg | bin | 0 -> 38821 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/satcr10.txt | 5631 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/satcr10.zip | bin | 0 -> 64744 bytes |
11 files changed, 17397 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2863-0.txt b/2863-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b52d6c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/2863-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5633 @@ +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: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE*** + + +Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + SATIRES + OF CIRCUMSTANCE + LYRICS AND REVERIES + WITH MISCELLANEOUS PIECES + + + * * * * * + + BY + THOMAS HARDY + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON + 1919 + + * * * * * + + COPYRIGHT + + _First Edition_ 1914 + _Reprinted_ 1915, 1919 + _Pocket Edition_ 1919 + + * * * * * + + + + +CONTENTS + +LYRICS AND REVERIES— PAGE + In Front of the Landscape 3 + Channel Firing 7 + The Convergence of the Twain 9 + The Ghost of the Past 12 + After the Visit 14 + To Meet, or Otherwise 16 + The Difference 18 + The Sun on the Bookcase 19 + “When I set out for Lyonnesse” 20 + A Thunderstorm in Town 21 + The Torn Letter 22 + Beyond the Last Lamp 25 + The Face at the Casement 27 + Lost Love 30 + “My spirit will not haunt the mound” 31 + Wessex Heights 32 + In Death divided 35 + The Place on the Map 37 + Where the Picnic was 39 + The Schreckhorn 41 + A Singer asleep 42 + A Plaint to Man 45 + God’s Funeral 47 + Spectres that grieve 52 + “Ah, are you digging on my grave?” 54 +SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE— + I. At Tea 59 + II. In Church 60 + III. By her Aunt’s Grave 61 + IV. In the Room of the Bride-elect 62 + V. At the Watering-place 63 + VI. In the Cemetery 64 + VII. Outside the Window 65 + VIII. In the Study 66 + IX. At the Altar-rail 67 + X. In the Nuptial Chamber 68 + XI. In the Restaurant 69 + XII. At the Draper’s 70 + XIII. On the Death-bed 71 + XIV. Over the Coffin 72 + XV. In the Moonlight 73 +LYRICS AND REVERIES (_continued_)— + Self-unconscious 77 + The Discovery 80 + Tolerance 81 + Before and after Summer 82 + At Day-close in November 83 + The Year’s Awakening 84 + Under the Waterfall 85 + The Spell of the Rose 88 + St. Launce’s revisited 90 +POEMS OF 1912–13– + The Going 95 + Your Last Drive 97 + The Walk 99 + Rain on a Grace 100 + “I found her out there” 102 + Without Ceremony 104 + Lament 105 + The Haunter 107 + The Voice 109 + His Visitor 110 + A Circular 112 + A Dream or No 113 + After a Journey 115 + A Death-ray recalled 117 + Beeny Cliff 119 + At Castle Boterel 121 + Places 123 + The Phantom Horsewoman 125 +MISCELLANEOUS PIECES— + The Wistful Lady 129 + The Woman in the Rye 131 + The Cheval-Glass 132 + The Re-enactment 134 + Her Secret 140 + “She charged me” 141 + The Newcomer’s Wife 142 + A Conversation at Dawn 143 + A King’s Soliloquy 152 + The Coronation 154 + Aquae Sulis 157 + Seventy-four and Twenty 160 + The Elopement 161 + “I rose up as my custom is” 163 + A Week 165 + Had you wept 167 + Bereft, she thinks she dreams 169 + In the British Museum 170 + In the Servants’ Quarters 172 + The Obliterate Tomb 175 + “Regret not me” 183 + The Recalcitrants 185 + Starlings on the Roof 186 + The Moon looks in 187 + The Sweet Hussy 188 + The Telegram 189 + The Moth-signal 191 + Seen by the Waits 193 + The Two Soldiers 194 + The Death of Regret 195 + In the Days of Crinoline 197 + The Roman Gravemounds 199 + The Workbox 201 + The Sacrilege 203 + The Abbey Mason 210 + The Jubilee of a Magazine 222 + The Satin Shoes 224 + Exeunt Omnes 227 + A Poet 228 +POSTSCRIPT— + “Men who march away” 229 + + + + +LYRICS AND REVERIES + + +IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE + + + PLUNGING and labouring on in a tide of visions, + Dolorous and dear, + Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters + Stretching around, + Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape + Yonder and near, + + Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland + Foliage-crowned, + Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flat + Stroked by the light, + Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial + Meadow or mound. + + What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost + Under my sight, + Hindering me to discern my paced advancement + Lengthening to miles; + What were the re-creations killing the daytime + As by the night? + + O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent, + Some as with smiles, + Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundled + Over the wrecked + Cheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with anguish, + Harrowed by wiles. + + Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them— + Halo-bedecked— + And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason, + Rigid in hate, + Smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision, + Dreaded, suspect. + + Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasons + Further in date; + Instruments of strings with the tenderest passion + Vibrant, beside + Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth’s crust + Now corporate. + + Also there rose a headland of hoary aspect + Gnawed by the tide, + Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there + Guilelessly glad— + Wherefore they knew not—touched by the fringe of an ecstasy + Scantly descried. + + Later images too did the day unfurl me, + Shadowed and sad, + Clay cadavers of those who had shared in the dramas, + Laid now at ease, + Passions all spent, chiefest the one of the broad brow + Sepulture-clad. + + So did beset me scenes miscalled of the bygone, + Over the leaze, + Past the clump, and down to where lay the beheld ones; + —Yea, as the rhyme + Sung by the sea-swell, so in their pleading dumbness + Captured me these. + + For, their lost revisiting manifestations + In their own time + Much had I slighted, caring not for their purport, + Seeing behind + Things more coveted, reckoned the better worth calling + Sweet, sad, sublime. + + Thus do they now show hourly before the intenser + Stare of the mind + As they were ghosts avenging their slights by my bypast + Body-borne eyes, + Show, too, with fuller translation than rested upon them + As living kind. + + Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, saying + In their surmise, + “Ah—whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing nought + Round him that looms + Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings, + Save a few tombs?” + + + +CHANNEL FIRING + + + THAT night your great guns, unawares, + Shook all our coffins as we lay, + And broke the chancel window-squares, + We thought it was the Judgment-day + + And sat upright. While drearisome + Arose the howl of wakened hounds: + The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, + The worms drew back into the mounds, + + The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No; + It’s gunnery practice out at sea + Just as before you went below; + The world is as it used to be: + + “All nations striving strong to make + Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters + They do no more for Christés sake + Than you who are helpless in such matters. + + “That this is not the judgment-hour + For some of them’s a blessed thing, + For if it were they’d have to scour + Hell’s floor for so much threatening . . . + + “Ha, ha. It will be warmer when + I blow the trumpet (if indeed + I ever do; for you are men, + And rest eternal sorely need).” + + So down we lay again. “I wonder, + Will the world ever saner be,” + Said one, “than when He sent us under + In our indifferent century!” + + And many a skeleton shook his head. + “Instead of preaching forty year,” + My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, + “I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.” + + Again the guns disturbed the hour, + Roaring their readiness to avenge, + As far inland as Stourton Tower, + And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. + +_April_ 1914. + + + +THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN + + + (_Lines on the loss of the_ “_Titanic_”) + + I + + IN a solitude of the sea + Deep from human vanity, + And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. + + II + + Steel chambers, late the pyres + Of her salamandrine fires, + Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. + + III + + Over the mirrors meant + To glass the opulent + The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. + + IV + + Jewels in joy designed + To ravish the sensuous mind + Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. + + V + + Dim moon-eyed fishes near + Gaze at the gilded gear + And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” . . . + + VI + + Well: while was fashioning + This creature of cleaving wing, + The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything + + VII + + Prepared a sinister mate + For her—so gaily great— + A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate. + + VIII + + And as the smart ship grew + In stature, grace, and hue, + In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. + + IX + + Alien they seemed to be: + No mortal eye could see + The intimate welding of their later history, + + X + + Or sign that they were bent + By paths coincident + On being anon twin halves of one august event, + + XI + + Till the Spinner of the Years + Said “Now!” And each one hears, + And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres. + + + +THE GHOST OF THE PAST + + + WE two kept house, the Past and I, + The Past and I; + I tended while it hovered nigh, + Leaving me never alone. + It was a spectral housekeeping + Where fell no jarring tone, + As strange, as still a housekeeping + As ever has been known. + + As daily I went up the stair + And down the stair, + I did not mind the Bygone there— + The Present once to me; + Its moving meek companionship + I wished might ever be, + There was in that companionship + Something of ecstasy. + + It dwelt with me just as it was, + Just as it was + When first its prospects gave me pause + In wayward wanderings, + Before the years had torn old troths + As they tear all sweet things, + Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths + And dulled old rapturings. + + And then its form began to fade, + Began to fade, + Its gentle echoes faintlier played + At eves upon my ear + Than when the autumn’s look embrowned + The lonely chambers here, + The autumn’s settling shades embrowned + Nooks that it haunted near. + + And so with time my vision less, + Yea, less and less + Makes of that Past my housemistress, + It dwindles in my eye; + It looms a far-off skeleton + And not a comrade nigh, + A fitful far-off skeleton + Dimming as days draw by. + + + +AFTER THE VISIT +(_To F. E. D._) + + + COME again to the place + Where your presence was as a leaf that skims + Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims + The bloom on the farer’s face. + + Come again, with the feet + That were light on the green as a thistledown ball, + And those mute ministrations to one and to all + Beyond a man’s saying sweet. + + Until then the faint scent + Of the bordering flowers swam unheeded away, + And I marked not the charm in the changes of day + As the cloud-colours came and went. + + Through the dark corridors + Your walk was so soundless I did not know + Your form from a phantom’s of long ago + Said to pass on the ancient floors, + + Till you drew from the shade, + And I saw the large luminous living eyes + Regard me in fixed inquiring-wise + As those of a soul that weighed, + + Scarce consciously, + The eternal question of what Life was, + And why we were there, and by whose strange laws + That which mattered most could not be. + + + +TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE + + + WHETHER to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams, + Or whether to stay + And see thee not! How vast the difference seems + Of Yea from Nay + Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams + At no far day + On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh! + + Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make + The most I can + Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian + Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache, + While still we scan + Round our frail faltering progress for some path or plan. + + By briefest meeting something sure is won; + It will have been: + Nor God nor Daemon can undo the done, + Unsight the seen, + Make muted music be as unbegun, + Though things terrene + Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene. + + So, to the one long-sweeping symphony + From times remote + Till now, of human tenderness, shall we + Supply one note, + Small and untraced, yet that will ever be + Somewhere afloat + Amid the spheres, as part of sick Life’s antidote. + + + +THE DIFFERENCE + + + I + + SINKING down by the gate I discern the thin moon, + And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine, + But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird’s tune, + For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine. + + II + + Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such as now, + The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon; + But she will see never this gate, path, or bough, + Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune. + + + +THE SUN ON THE BOOKCASE +(_Student’s Love-song_) + + + ONCE more the cauldron of the sun + Smears the bookcase with winy red, + And here my page is, and there my bed, + And the apple-tree shadows travel along. + Soon their intangible track will be run, + And dusk grow strong + And they be fled. + + Yes: now the boiling ball is gone, + And I have wasted another day . . . + But wasted—_wasted_, do I say? + Is it a waste to have imaged one + Beyond the hills there, who, anon, + My great deeds done + Will be mine alway? + + + +“WHEN I SET OUT FOR LYONNESSE” + + + WHEN I set out for Lyonnesse, + A hundred miles away, + The rime was on the spray, + And starlight lit my lonesomeness + When I set out for Lyonnesse + A hundred miles away. + + What would bechance at Lyonnesse + While I should sojourn there + No prophet durst declare, + Nor did the wisest wizard guess + What would bechance at Lyonnesse + While I should sojourn there. + + When I came back from Lyonnesse + With magic in my eyes, + None managed to surmise + What meant my godlike gloriousness, + When I came back from Lyonnesse + With magic in my eyes. + + + +A THUNDERSTORM IN TOWN +(_A Reminiscence_) + + + SHE wore a new “terra-cotta” dress, + And we stayed, because of the pelting storm, + Within the hansom’s dry recess, + Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless + We sat on, snug and warm. + + Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain, + And the glass that had screened our forms before + Flew up, and out she sprang to her door: + I should have kissed her if the rain + Had lasted a minute more. + + + +THE TORN LETTER + + + I + + I tore your letter into strips + No bigger than the airy feathers + That ducks preen out in changing weathers + Upon the shifting ripple-tips. + + II + + In darkness on my bed alone + I seemed to see you in a vision, + And hear you say: “Why this derision + Of one drawn to you, though unknown?” + + III + + Yes, eve’s quick mood had run its course, + The night had cooled my hasty madness; + I suffered a regretful sadness + Which deepened into real remorse. + + IV + + I thought what pensive patient days + A soul must know of grain so tender, + How much of good must grace the sender + Of such sweet words in such bright phrase. + + V + + Uprising then, as things unpriced + I sought each fragment, patched and mended; + The midnight whitened ere I had ended + And gathered words I had sacrificed. + + VI + + But some, alas, of those I threw + Were past my search, destroyed for ever: + They were your name and place; and never + Did I regain those clues to you. + + VII + + I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed, + My track; that, so the Will decided, + In life, death, we should be divided, + And at the sense I ached indeed. + + VIII + + That ache for you, born long ago, + Throbs on; I never could outgrow it. + What a revenge, did you but know it! + But that, thank God, you do not know. + + + +BEYOND THE LAST LAMP +(Near Tooting Common) + + + I + + WHILE rain, with eve in partnership, + Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip, + Beyond the last lone lamp I passed + Walking slowly, whispering sadly, + Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast: + Some heavy thought constrained each face, + And blinded them to time and place. + + II + + The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed + In mental scenes no longer orbed + By love’s young rays. Each countenance + As it slowly, as it sadly + Caught the lamplight’s yellow glance + Held in suspense a misery + At things which had been or might be. + + III + + When I retrod that watery way + Some hours beyond the droop of day, + Still I found pacing there the twain + Just as slowly, just as sadly, + Heedless of the night and rain. + One could but wonder who they were + And what wild woe detained them there. + + IV + + Though thirty years of blur and blot + Have slid since I beheld that spot, + And saw in curious converse there + Moving slowly, moving sadly + That mysterious tragic pair, + Its olden look may linger on— + All but the couple; they have gone. + + V + + Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And yet + To me, when nights are weird and wet, + Without those comrades there at tryst + Creeping slowly, creeping sadly, + That lone lane does not exist. + There they seem brooding on their pain, + And will, while such a lane remain. + + + +THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT + + + IF ever joy leave + An abiding sting of sorrow, + So befell it on the morrow + Of that May eve . . . + + The travelled sun dropped + To the north-west, low and lower, + The pony’s trot grew slower, + And then we stopped. + + “This cosy house just by + I must call at for a minute, + A sick man lies within it + Who soon will die. + + “He wished to marry me, + So I am bound, when I drive near him, + To inquire, if but to cheer him, + How he may be.” + + A message was sent in, + And wordlessly we waited, + Till some one came and stated + The bulletin. + + And that the sufferer said, + For her call no words could thank her; + As his angel he must rank her + Till life’s spark fled. + + Slowly we drove away, + When I turned my head, although not + Called; why so I turned I know not + Even to this day. + + And lo, there in my view + Pressed against an upper lattice + Was a white face, gazing at us + As we withdrew. + + And well did I divine + It to be the man’s there dying, + Who but lately had been sighing + For her pledged mine. + + Then I deigned a deed of hell; + It was done before I knew it; + What devil made me do it + I cannot tell! + + Yes, while he gazed above, + I put my arm about her + That he might see, nor doubt her + My plighted Love. + + The pale face vanished quick, + As if blasted, from the casement, + And my shame and self-abasement + Began their prick. + + And they prick on, ceaselessly, + For that stab in Love’s fierce fashion + Which, unfired by lover’s passion, + Was foreign to me. + + She smiled at my caress, + But why came the soft embowment + Of her shoulder at that moment + She did not guess. + + Long long years has he lain + In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather: + What tears there, bared to weather, + Will cleanse that stain! + + Love is long-suffering, brave, + Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel; + But O, too, Love is cruel, + Cruel as the grave. + + + +LOST LOVE + + + I PLAY my sweet old airs— + The airs he knew + When our love was true— + But he does not balk + His determined walk, + And passes up the stairs. + + I sing my songs once more, + And presently hear + His footstep near + As if it would stay; + But he goes his way, + And shuts a distant door. + + So I wait for another morn + And another night + In this soul-sick blight; + And I wonder much + As I sit, why such + A woman as I was born! + + + +“MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND” + + + MY spirit will not haunt the mound + Above my breast, + But travel, memory-possessed, + To where my tremulous being found + Life largest, best. + + My phantom-footed shape will go + When nightfall grays + Hither and thither along the ways + I and another used to know + In backward days. + + And there you’ll find me, if a jot + You still should care + For me, and for my curious air; + If otherwise, then I shall not, + For you, be there. + + + + +WESSEX HEIGHTS (1896) + + + THERE are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand + For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, + Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, + I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be. + + In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man’s friend— + Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to + mend: + Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I, + But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky. + + In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways— + Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days: + They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things— + Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings. + + Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was, + And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause + Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this, + Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis. + + I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there’s a figure against the + moon, + Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune; + I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now + passed + For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast. + + There’s a ghost at Yell’ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the + night, + There’s a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a shroud + of white, + There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near, + I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear. + + As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers, + I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers; + Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know; + Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go. + + So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west, + Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest, + Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me, + And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty. + + + +IN DEATH DIVIDED + + + I + + I SHALL rot here, with those whom in their day + You never knew, + And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay, + Met not my view, + Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you. + + II + + No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower, + While earth endures, + Will fall on my mound and within the hour + Steal on to yours; + One robin never haunt our two green covertures. + + III + + Some organ may resound on Sunday noons + By where you lie, + Some other thrill the panes with other tunes + Where moulder I; + No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby. + + IV + + The simply-cut memorial at my head + Perhaps may take + A Gothic form, and that above your bed + Be Greek in make; + No linking symbol show thereon for our tale’s sake. + + V + + And in the monotonous moils of strained, hard-run + Humanity, + The eternal tie which binds us twain in one + No eye will see + Stretching across the miles that sever you from me. + + + +THE PLACE ON THE MAP + + + I + + I LOOK upon the map that hangs by me— + Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry— + And I mark a jutting height + Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea. + + II + + —’Twas a day of latter summer, hot and dry; + Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked on, she and I, + By this spot where, calmly quite, + She informed me what would happen by and by. + + III + + This hanging map depicts the coast and place, + And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case + All distinctly to my sight, + And her tension, and the aspect of her face. + + IV + + Weeks and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue, + Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too, + While she told what, as by sleight, + Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue. + + V + + For the wonder and the wormwood of the whole + Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soul + Wore a torrid tragic light + Under order-keeping’s rigorous control. + + VI + + So, the map revives her words, the spot, the time, + And the thing we found we had to face before the next year’s prime; + The charted coast stares bright, + And its episode comes back in pantomime. + + + +WHERE THE PICNIC WAS + + + WHERE we made the fire, + In the summer time, + Of branch and briar + On the hill to the sea + I slowly climb + Through winter mire, + And scan and trace + The forsaken place + Quite readily. + + Now a cold wind blows, + And the grass is gray, + But the spot still shows + As a burnt circle—aye, + And stick-ends, charred, + Still strew the sward + Whereon I stand, + Last relic of the band + Who came that day! + + Yes, I am here + Just as last year, + And the sea breathes brine + From its strange straight line + Up hither, the same + As when we four came. + —But two have wandered far + From this grassy rise + Into urban roar + Where no picnics are, + And one—has shut her eyes + For evermore. + + + +THE SCHRECKHORN +(_With thoughts of Leslie Stephen_) +(June 1897) + + + ALOOF, as if a thing of mood and whim; + Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams + Upon my nearing vision, less it seems + A looming Alp-height than a guise of him + Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb, + Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe, + Of semblance to his personality + In its quaint glooms, keen lights, and rugged trim. + + At his last change, when Life’s dull coils unwind, + Will he, in old love, hitherward escape, + And the eternal essence of his mind + Enter this silent adamantine shape, + And his low voicing haunt its slipping snows + When dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose? + + + +A SINGER ASLEEP +(_Algernon Charles Swinburne_, 1837–1909) + + + I + + In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea, + That sentrys up and down all night, all day, + From cove to promontory, from ness to bay, + The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally. + + II + + —It was as though a garland of red roses + Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun + When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun, + In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes, + Upon Victoria’s formal middle time + His leaves of rhythm and rhyme. + + III + + O that far morning of a summer day + When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay + Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes, + I walked and read with a quick glad surprise + New words, in classic guise,— + + IV + + The passionate pages of his earlier years, + Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears; + Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who + Blew them not naïvely, but as one who knew + Full well why thus he blew. + + V + + I still can hear the brabble and the roar + At those thy tunes, O still one, now passed through + That fitful fire of tongues then entered new! + Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore; + Thine swells yet more and more. + + VI + + —His singing-mistress verily was no other + Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother + Of all the tribe that feel in melodies; + Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep + Into the rambling world-encircling deep + Which hides her where none sees. + + VII + + And one can hold in thought that nightly here + His phantom may draw down to the water’s brim, + And hers come up to meet it, as a dim + Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere, + And mariners wonder as they traverse near, + Unknowing of her and him. + + VIII + + One dreams him sighing to her spectral form: + “O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line; + Where are those songs, O poetess divine + Whose very arts are love incarnadine?” + And her smile back: “Disciple true and warm, + Sufficient now are thine.” . . . + + IX + + So here, beneath the waking constellations, + Where the waves peal their everlasting strains, + And their dull subterrene reverberations + Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains— + Him once their peer in sad improvisations, + And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes— + I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines + Upon the capes and chines. + +BONCHURCH, 1910. + + + +A PLAINT TO MAN + + + WHEN you slowly emerged from the den of Time, + And gained percipience as you grew, + And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime, + + Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you + The unhappy need of creating me— + A form like your own—for praying to? + + My virtue, power, utility, + Within my maker must all abide, + Since none in myself can ever be, + + One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide + Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet, + And by none but its showman vivified. + + “Such a forced device,” you may say, “is meet + For easing a loaded heart at whiles: + Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat + + Somewhere above the gloomy aisles + Of this wailful world, or he could not bear + The irk no local hope beguiles.” + + —But since I was framed in your first despair + The doing without me has had no play + In the minds of men when shadows scare; + + And now that I dwindle day by day + Beneath the deicide eyes of seers + In a light that will not let me stay, + + And to-morrow the whole of me disappears, + The truth should be told, and the fact be faced + That had best been faced in earlier years: + + The fact of life with dependence placed + On the human heart’s resource alone, + In brotherhood bonded close and graced + + With loving-kindness fully blown, + And visioned help unsought, unknown. + +1909–10. + + + +GOD’S FUNERAL + + + I + + I saw a slowly-stepping train— + Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar— + Following in files across a twilit plain + A strange and mystic form the foremost bore. + + II + + And by contagious throbs of thought + Or latent knowledge that within me lay + And had already stirred me, I was wrought + To consciousness of sorrow even as they. + + III + + The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes, + At first seemed man-like, and anon to change + To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size, + At times endowed with wings of glorious range. + + IV + + And this phantasmal variousness + Ever possessed it as they drew along: + Yet throughout all it symboled none the less + Potency vast and loving-kindness strong. + + V + + Almost before I knew I bent + Towards the moving columns without a word; + They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went, + Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:— + + VI + + “O man-projected Figure, of late + Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive? + Whence came it we were tempted to create + One whom we can no longer keep alive? + + VII + + “Framing him jealous, fierce, at first, + We gave him justice as the ages rolled, + Will to bless those by circumstance accurst, + And longsuffering, and mercies manifold. + + VIII + + “And, tricked by our own early dream + And need of solace, we grew self-deceived, + Our making soon our maker did we deem, + And what we had imagined we believed. + + IX + + “Till, in Time’s stayless stealthy swing, + Uncompromising rude reality + Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning, + Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be. + + X + + “So, toward our myth’s oblivion, + Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope + Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon, + Whose Zion was a still abiding hope. + + XI + + “How sweet it was in years far hied + To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer, + To lie down liegely at the eventide + And feel a blest assurance he was there! + + XII + + “And who or what shall fill his place? + Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes + For some fixed star to stimulate their pace + Towards the goal of their enterprise?” . . . + + XIII + + Some in the background then I saw, + Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous, + Who chimed as one: “This figure is of straw, + This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!” + + XIV + + I could not prop their faith: and yet + Many I had known: with all I sympathized; + And though struck speechless, I did not forget + That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized. + + XV + + Still, how to bear such loss I deemed + The insistent question for each animate mind, + And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed + A pale yet positive gleam low down behind, + + XVI + + Whereof to lift the general night, + A certain few who stood aloof had said, + “See you upon the horizon that small light— + Swelling somewhat?” Each mourner shook his head. + + XVII + + And they composed a crowd of whom + Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . . + Thus dazed and puzzled ’twixt the gleam and gloom + Mechanically I followed with the rest. + +1908–10. + + + +SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE + + + “IT is not death that harrows us,” they lipped, + “The soundless cell is in itself relief, + For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped + At unawares, and at its best but brief.” + + The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone, + Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye, + As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone + From the sward near me, as from a nether sky. + + And much surprised was I that, spent and dead, + They should not, like the many, be at rest, + But stray as apparitions; hence I said, + “Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed? + + “We are among the few death sets not free, + The hurt, misrepresented names, who come + At each year’s brink, and cry to History + To do them justice, or go past them dumb. + + “We are stript of rights; our shames lie unredressed, + Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown, + Our words in morsels merely are expressed + On the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown.” + + Then all these shaken slighted visitants sped + Into the vague, and left me musing there + On fames that well might instance what they had said, + Until the New-Year’s dawn strode up the air. + + + +“AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?” + + + “AH, are you digging on my grave + My loved one?—planting rue?” + —“No: yesterday he went to wed + One of the brightest wealth has bred. + ‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said, + ‘That I should not be true.’” + + “Then who is digging on my grave? + My nearest dearest kin?” + —“Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use! + What good will planting flowers produce? + No tendance of her mound can loose + Her spirit from Death’s gin.’” + + “But some one digs upon my grave? + My enemy?—prodding sly?” + —“Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate + That shuts on all flesh soon or late, + She thought you no more worth her hate, + And cares not where you lie.” + + “Then, who is digging on my grave? + Say—since I have not guessed!” + —“O it is I, my mistress dear, + Your little dog, who still lives near, + And much I hope my movements here + Have not disturbed your rest?” + + “Ah, yes! _You_ dig upon my grave . . . + Why flashed it not on me + That one true heart was left behind! + What feeling do we ever find + To equal among human kind + A dog’s fidelity!” + + “Mistress, I dug upon your grave + To bury a bone, in case + I should be hungry near this spot + When passing on my daily trot. + I am sorry, but I quite forgot + It was your resting-place.” + + + + +SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES +IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES + + +I +AT TEA + + + THE kettle descants in a cozy drone, + And the young wife looks in her husband’s face, + And then at her guest’s, and shows in her own + Her sense that she fills an envied place; + And the visiting lady is all abloom, + And says there was never so sweet a room. + + And the happy young housewife does not know + That the woman beside her was first his choice, + Till the fates ordained it could not be so . . . + Betraying nothing in look or voice + The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, + And he throws her a stray glance yearningly. + + + +II +IN CHURCH + + + “AND now to God the Father,” he ends, + And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: + Each listener chokes as he bows and bends, + And emotion pervades the crowded aisles. + Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door, + And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more. + + The door swings softly ajar meanwhile, + And a pupil of his in the Bible class, + Who adores him as one without gloss or guile, + Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile + And re-enact at the vestry-glass + Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show + That had moved the congregation so. + + + +III +BY HER AUNT’S GRAVE + + + “SIXPENCE a week,” says the girl to her lover, + “Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide + In me alone, she vowed. ’Twas to cover + The cost of her headstone when she died. + And that was a year ago last June; + I’ve not yet fixed it. But I must soon.” + + “And where is the money now, my dear?” + “O, snug in my purse . . . Aunt was _so_ slow + In saving it—eighty weeks, or near.” . . . + “Let’s spend it,” he hints. “For she won’t know. + There’s a dance to-night at the Load of Hay.” + She passively nods. And they go that way. + + + +IV +IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT + + + “WOULD it had been the man of our wish!” + Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she + In the wedding-dress—the wife to be— + “Then why were you so mollyish + As not to insist on him for me!” + The mother, amazed: “Why, dearest one, + Because you pleaded for this or none!” + + “But Father and you should have stood out strong! + Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find + That you were right and that I was wrong; + This man is a dolt to the one declined . . . + Ah!—here he comes with his button-hole rose. + Good God—I must marry him I suppose!” + + + +V +AT A WATERING-PLACE + + + THEY sit and smoke on the esplanade, + The man and his friend, and regard the bay + Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed, + Smile sallowly in the decline of day. + And saunterers pass with laugh and jest— + A handsome couple among the rest. + + “That smart proud pair,” says the man to his friend, + “Are to marry next week . . . How little he thinks + That dozens of days and nights on end + I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links + Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm . . . + Well, bliss is in ignorance: what’s the harm!” + + + +VI +IN THE CEMETERY + + + “YOU see those mothers squabbling there?” + Remarks the man of the cemetery. + One says in tears, ‘’_Tis mine lies here_!’ + Another, ‘_Nay_, _mine_, _you Pharisee_!’ + Another, ‘_How dare you move my flowers_ + _And put your own on this grave of ours_!’ + But all their children were laid therein + At different times, like sprats in a tin. + + “And then the main drain had to cross, + And we moved the lot some nights ago, + And packed them away in the general foss + With hundreds more. But their folks don’t know, + And as well cry over a new-laid drain + As anything else, to ease your pain!” + + + +VII +OUTSIDE THE WINDOW + + + “MY stick!” he says, and turns in the lane + To the house just left, whence a vixen voice + Comes out with the firelight through the pane, + And he sees within that the girl of his choice + Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare + For something said while he was there. + + “At last I behold her soul undraped!” + Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself; + “My God—’tis but narrowly I have escaped.— + My precious porcelain proves it delf.” + His face has reddened like one ashamed, + And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed. + + + +VIII +IN THE STUDY + + + HE enters, and mute on the edge of a chair + Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there, + A type of decayed gentility; + And by some small signs he well can guess + That she comes to him almost breakfastless. + + “I have called—I hope I do not err— + I am looking for a purchaser + Of some score volumes of the works + Of eminent divines I own,— + Left by my father—though it irks + My patience to offer them.” And she smiles + As if necessity were unknown; + “But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles + I have wished, as I am fond of art, + To make my rooms a little smart.” + And lightly still she laughs to him, + As if to sell were a mere gay whim, + And that, to be frank, Life were indeed + To her not vinegar and gall, + But fresh and honey-like; and Need + No household skeleton at all. + + + +IX +AT THE ALTAR-RAIL + + + “MY bride is not coming, alas!” says the groom, + And the telegram shakes in his hand. “I own + It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room + When I went to the Cattle-Show alone, + And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps, + And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps. + + “Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife— + ’Twas foolish perhaps!—to forsake the ways + Of the flaring town for a farmer’s life. + She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says: + ‘_It’s sweet of you_, _dear_, _to prepare me a nest_, + _But a swift_, _short_, _gay life suits me best_. + _What I really am you have never gleaned_; + _I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned_.’” + + + +X +IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER + + + “O THAT mastering tune?” And up in the bed + Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride; + “And why?” asks the man she had that day wed, + With a start, as the band plays on outside. + “It’s the townsfolks’ cheery compliment + Because of our marriage, my Innocent.” + + “O but you don’t know! ’Tis the passionate air + To which my old Love waltzed with me, + And I swore as we spun that none should share + My home, my kisses, till death, save he! + And he dominates me and thrills me through, + And it’s he I embrace while embracing you!” + + + +XI +IN THE RESTAURANT + + + “BUT hear. If you stay, and the child be born, + It will pass as your husband’s with the rest, + While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn + Will be gleaming at us from east to west; + And the child will come as a life despised; + I feel an elopement is ill-advised!” + + “O you realize not what it is, my dear, + To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms + Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here, + And nightly take him into my arms! + Come to the child no name or fame, + Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.” + + + +XII +AT THE DRAPER’S + + + “I STOOD at the back of the shop, my dear, + But you did not perceive me. + Well, when they deliver what you were shown + _I_ shall know nothing of it, believe me!” + + And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said, + “O, I didn’t see you come in there— + Why couldn’t you speak?”—“Well, I didn’t. I left + That you should not notice I’d been there. + + “You were viewing some lovely things. ‘_Soon required_ + _For a widow_, _of latest fashion_’; + And I knew ’twould upset you to meet the man + Who had to be cold and ashen + + “And screwed in a box before they could dress you + ‘_In the last new note in mourning_,’ + As they defined it. So, not to distress you, + I left you to your adorning.” + + + +XIII +ON THE DEATH-BED + + + “I’LL tell—being past all praying for— + Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war, + And got some scent of the intimacy + That was under way between her and me; + And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost + One night, at the very time almost + That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead, + And secretly buried him. Nothing was said. + + “The news of the battle came next day; + He was scheduled missing. I hurried away, + Got out there, visited the field, + And sent home word that a search revealed + He was one of the slain; though, lying alone + And stript, his body had not been known. + + “But she suspected. I lost her love, + Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above; + And my time’s now come, and I’ll pay the score, + Though it be burning for evermore.” + + + +XIV +OVER THE COFFIN + + + THEY stand confronting, the coffin between, + His wife of old, and his wife of late, + And the dead man whose they both had been + Seems listening aloof, as to things past date. + —“I have called,” says the first. “Do you marvel or not?” + “In truth,” says the second, “I do—somewhat.” + + “Well, there was a word to be said by me! . . . + I divorced that man because of you— + It seemed I must do it, boundenly; + But now I am older, and tell you true, + For life is little, and dead lies he; + I would I had let alone you two! + And both of us, scorning parochial ways, + Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs’ days.” + + + +XV +IN THE MOONLIGHT + + + “O LONELY workman, standing there + In a dream, why do you stare and stare + At her grave, as no other grave there were? + + “If your great gaunt eyes so importune + Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon, + Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!” + + “Why, fool, it is what I would rather see + Than all the living folk there be; + But alas, there is no such joy for me!” + + “Ah—she was one you loved, no doubt, + Through good and evil, through rain and drought, + And when she passed, all your sun went out?” + + “Nay: she was the woman I did not love, + Whom all the others were ranked above, + Whom during her life I thought nothing of.” + + + + +LYRICS AND REVERIES +(_continued_) + + +SELF-UNCONSCIOUS + + + ALONG the way + He walked that day, + Watching shapes that reveries limn, + And seldom he + Had eyes to see + The moment that encompassed him. + + Bright yellowhammers + Made mirthful clamours, + And billed long straws with a bustling air, + And bearing their load + Flew up the road + That he followed, alone, without interest there. + + From bank to ground + And over and round + They sidled along the adjoining hedge; + Sometimes to the gutter + Their yellow flutter + Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge. + + The smooth sea-line + With a metal shine, + And flashes of white, and a sail thereon, + He would also descry + With a half-wrapt eye + Between the projects he mused upon. + + Yes, round him were these + Earth’s artistries, + But specious plans that came to his call + Did most engage + His pilgrimage, + While himself he did not see at all. + + Dead now as sherds + Are the yellow birds, + And all that mattered has passed away; + Yet God, the Elf, + Now shows him that self + As he was, and should have been shown, that day. + + O it would have been good + Could he then have stood + At a focussed distance, and conned the whole, + But now such vision + Is mere derision, + Nor soothes his body nor saves his soul. + + Not much, some may + Incline to say, + To see therein, had it all been seen. + Nay! he is aware + A thing was there + That loomed with an immortal mien. + + + +THE DISCOVERY + + + I WANDERED to a crude coast + Like a ghost; + Upon the hills I saw fires— + Funeral pyres + Seemingly—and heard breaking + Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking. + + And so I never once guessed + A Love-nest, + Bowered and candle-lit, lay + In my way, + Till I found a hid hollow, + Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow. + + + +TOLERANCE + + + “IT is a foolish thing,” said I, + “To bear with such, and pass it by; + Yet so I do, I know not why!” + + And at each clash I would surmise + That if I had acted otherwise + I might have saved me many sighs. + + But now the only happiness + In looking back that I possess— + Whose lack would leave me comfortless— + + Is to remember I refrained + From masteries I might have gained, + And for my tolerance was disdained; + + For see, a tomb. And if it were + I had bent and broke, I should not dare + To linger in the shadows there. + + + +BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER + + + I + + LOOKING forward to the spring + One puts up with anything. + On this February day, + Though the winds leap down the street, + Wintry scourgings seem but play, + And these later shafts of sleet + —Sharper pointed than the first— + And these later snows—the worst— + Are as a half-transparent blind + Riddled by rays from sun behind. + + II + + Shadows of the October pine + Reach into this room of mine: + On the pine there stands a bird; + He is shadowed with the tree. + Mutely perched he bills no word; + Blank as I am even is he. + For those happy suns are past, + Fore-discerned in winter last. + When went by their pleasure, then? + I, alas, perceived not when. + + + +AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER + + + THE ten hours’ light is abating, + And a late bird flies across, + Where the pines, like waltzers waiting, + Give their black heads a toss. + + Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time, + Float past like specks in the eye; + I set every tree in my June time, + And now they obscure the sky. + + And the children who ramble through here + Conceive that there never has been + A time when no tall trees grew here, + A time when none will be seen. + + + +THE YEAR’S AWAKENING + + + HOW do you know that the pilgrim track + Along the belting zodiac + Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds + Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds + And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud + Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud, + And never as yet a tinct of spring + Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling; + O vespering bird, how do you know, + How do you know? + + How do you know, deep underground, + Hid in your bed from sight and sound, + Without a turn in temperature, + With weather life can scarce endure, + That light has won a fraction’s strength, + And day put on some moments’ length, + Whereof in merest rote will come, + Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb; + O crocus root, how do you know, + How do you know? + +_February_ 1910. + + + +UNDER THE WATERFALL + + + “WHENEVER I plunge my arm, like this, + In a basin of water, I never miss + The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day + Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray. + Hence the only prime + And real love-rhyme + That I know by heart, + And that leaves no smart, + Is the purl of a little valley fall + About three spans wide and two spans tall + Over a table of solid rock, + And into a scoop of the self-same block; + The purl of a runlet that never ceases + In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces; + With a hollow boiling voice it speaks + And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.” + + “And why gives this the only prime + Idea to you of a real love-rhyme? + And why does plunging your arm in a bowl + Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?” + + “Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone, + Though where precisely none ever has known, + Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized, + And by now with its smoothness opalized, + Is a drinking-glass: + For, down that pass + My lover and I + Walked under a sky + Of blue with a leaf-woven awning of green, + In the burn of August, to paint the scene, + And we placed our basket of fruit and wine + By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine; + And when we had drunk from the glass together, + Arched by the oak-copse from the weather, + I held the vessel to rinse in the fall, + Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall, + Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss + With long bared arms. There the glass still is. + And, as said, if I thrust my arm below + Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe + From the past awakens a sense of that time, + And the glass both used, and the cascade’s rhyme. + The basin seems the pool, and its edge + The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge, + And the leafy pattern of china-ware + The hanging plants that were bathing there. + By night, by day, when it shines or lours, + There lies intact that chalice of ours, + And its presence adds to the rhyme of love + Persistently sung by the fall above. + No lip has touched it since his and mine + In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.” + + + +THE SPELL OF THE ROSE + + + “I MEAN to build a hall anon, + And shape two turrets there, + And a broad newelled stair, + And a cool well for crystal water; + Yes; I will build a hall anon, + Plant roses love shall feed upon, + And apple trees and pear.” + + He set to build the manor-hall, + And shaped the turrets there, + And the broad newelled stair, + And the cool well for crystal water; + He built for me that manor-hall, + And planted many trees withal, + But no rose anywhere. + + And as he planted never a rose + That bears the flower of love, + Though other flowers throve + A frost-wind moved our souls to sever + Since he had planted never a rose; + And misconceits raised horrid shows, + And agonies came thereof. + + “I’ll mend these miseries,” then said I, + And so, at dead of night, + I went and, screened from sight, + That nought should keep our souls in severance, + I set a rose-bush. “This,” said I, + “May end divisions dire and wry, + And long-drawn days of blight.” + + But I was called from earth—yea, called + Before my rose-bush grew; + And would that now I knew + What feels he of the tree I planted, + And whether, after I was called + To be a ghost, he, as of old, + Gave me his heart anew! + + Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees + I set but saw not grow, + And he, beside its glow— + Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me— + Ay, there beside that queen of trees + He sees me as I was, though sees + Too late to tell me so! + + + +ST. LAUNCE’S REVISITED + + + SLIP back, Time! + Yet again I am nearing + Castle and keep, uprearing + Gray, as in my prime. + + At the inn + Smiling close, why is it + Not as on my visit + When hope and I were twin? + + Groom and jade + Whom I found here, moulder; + Strange the tavern-holder, + Strange the tap-maid. + + Here I hired + Horse and man for bearing + Me on my wayfaring + To the door desired. + + Evening gloomed + As I journeyed forward + To the faces shoreward, + Till their dwelling loomed. + + If again + Towards the Atlantic sea there + I should speed, they’d be there + Surely now as then? . . . + + Why waste thought, + When I know them vanished + Under earth; yea, banished + Ever into nought. + + + + +POEMS OF 1912–13 + + + _Veteris vestigia flammae_ + + + +THE GOING + + + WHY did you give no hint that night + That quickly after the morrow’s dawn, + And calmly, as if indifferent quite, + You would close your term here, up and be gone + Where I could not follow + With wing of swallow + To gain one glimpse of you ever anon! + + Never to bid good-bye, + Or give me the softest call, + Or utter a wish for a word, while I + Saw morning harden upon the wall, + Unmoved, unknowing + That your great going + Had place that moment, and altered all. + + Why do you make me leave the house + And think for a breath it is you I see + At the end of the alley of bending boughs + Where so often at dusk you used to be; + Till in darkening dankness + The yawning blankness + Of the perspective sickens me! + + You were she who abode + By those red-veined rocks far West, + You were the swan-necked one who rode + Along the beetling Beeny Crest, + And, reining nigh me, + Would muse and eye me, + While Life unrolled us its very best. + + Why, then, latterly did we not speak, + Did we not think of those days long dead, + And ere your vanishing strive to seek + That time’s renewal? We might have said, + “In this bright spring weather + We’ll visit together + Those places that once we visited.” + + Well, well! All’s past amend, + Unchangeable. It must go. + I seem but a dead man held on end + To sink down soon . . . O you could not know + That such swift fleeing + No soul foreseeing— + Not even I—would undo me so! + +_December_ 1912. + + + +YOUR LAST DRIVE + + + HERE by the moorway you returned, + And saw the borough lights ahead + That lit your face—all undiscerned + To be in a week the face of the dead, + And you told of the charm of that haloed view + That never again would beam on you. + + And on your left you passed the spot + Where eight days later you were to lie, + And be spoken of as one who was not; + Beholding it with a cursory eye + As alien from you, though under its tree + You soon would halt everlastingly. + + I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat + At your side that eve I should not have seen + That the countenance I was glancing at + Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen, + Nor have read the writing upon your face, + “I go hence soon to my resting-place; + + “You may miss me then. But I shall not know + How many times you visit me there, + Or what your thoughts are, or if you go + There never at all. And I shall not care. + Should you censure me I shall take no heed + And even your praises I shall not need.” + + True: never you’ll know. And you will not mind. + But shall I then slight you because of such? + Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find + The thought “What profit?” move me much + Yet the fact indeed remains the same, + You are past love, praise, indifference, blame. + +_December_ 1912. + + + +THE WALK + + + YOU did not walk with me + Of late to the hill-top tree + By the gated ways, + As in earlier days; + You were weak and lame, + So you never came, + And I went alone, and I did not mind, + Not thinking of you as left behind. + + I walked up there to-day + Just in the former way: + Surveyed around + The familiar ground + By myself again: + What difference, then? + Only that underlying sense + Of the look of a room on returning thence. + + + +RAIN ON A GRAVE + + + CLOUDS spout upon her + Their waters amain + In ruthless disdain,— + Her who but lately + Had shivered with pain + As at touch of dishonour + If there had lit on her + So coldly, so straightly + Such arrows of rain. + + She who to shelter + Her delicate head + Would quicken and quicken + Each tentative tread + If drops chanced to pelt her + That summertime spills + In dust-paven rills + When thunder-clouds thicken + And birds close their bills. + + Would that I lay there + And she were housed here! + Or better, together + Were folded away there + Exposed to one weather + We both,—who would stray there + When sunny the day there, + Or evening was clear + At the prime of the year. + + Soon will be growing + Green blades from her mound, + And daises be showing + Like stars on the ground, + Till she form part of them— + Ay—the sweet heart of them, + Loved beyond measure + With a child’s pleasure + All her life’s round. + +_Jan._ 31, 1913. + + + +“I FOUND HER OUT THERE” + + + I FOUND her out there + On a slope few see, + That falls westwardly + To the salt-edged air, + Where the ocean breaks + On the purple strand, + And the hurricane shakes + The solid land. + + I brought her here, + And have laid her to rest + In a noiseless nest + No sea beats near. + She will never be stirred + In her loamy cell + By the waves long heard + And loved so well. + + So she does not sleep + By those haunted heights + The Atlantic smites + And the blind gales sweep, + Whence she often would gaze + At Dundagel’s far head, + While the dipping blaze + Dyed her face fire-red; + + And would sigh at the tale + Of sunk Lyonnesse, + As a wind-tugged tress + Flapped her cheek like a flail; + Or listen at whiles + With a thought-bound brow + To the murmuring miles + She is far from now. + + Yet her shade, maybe, + Will creep underground + Till it catch the sound + Of that western sea + As it swells and sobs + Where she once domiciled, + And joy in its throbs + With the heart of a child. + + + +WITHOUT CEREMONY + + + IT was your way, my dear, + To be gone without a word + When callers, friends, or kin + Had left, and I hastened in + To rejoin you, as I inferred. + + And when you’d a mind to career + Off anywhere—say to town— + You were all on a sudden gone + Before I had thought thereon, + Or noticed your trunks were down. + + So, now that you disappear + For ever in that swift style, + Your meaning seems to me + Just as it used to be: + “Good-bye is not worth while!” + + + +LAMENT + + + HOW she would have loved + A party to-day!— + Bright-hatted and gloved, + With table and tray + And chairs on the lawn + Her smiles would have shone + With welcomings . . . But + She is shut, she is shut + From friendship’s spell + In the jailing shell + Of her tiny cell. + + Or she would have reigned + At a dinner to-night + With ardours unfeigned, + And a generous delight; + All in her abode + She’d have freely bestowed + On her guests . . . But alas, + She is shut under grass + Where no cups flow, + Powerless to know + That it might be so. + + And she would have sought + With a child’s eager glance + The shy snowdrops brought + By the new year’s advance, + And peered in the rime + Of Candlemas-time + For crocuses . . . chanced + It that she were not tranced + From sights she loved best; + Wholly possessed + By an infinite rest! + + And we are here staying + Amid these stale things + Who care not for gaying, + And those junketings + That used so to joy her, + And never to cloy her + As us they cloy! . . . But + She is shut, she is shut + From the cheer of them, dead + To all done and said + In a yew-arched bed. + + + +THE HAUNTER + + + HE does not think that I haunt here nightly: + How shall I let him know + That whither his fancy sets him wandering + I, too, alertly go?— + Hover and hover a few feet from him + Just as I used to do, + But cannot answer his words addressed me— + Only listen thereto! + + When I could answer he did not say them: + When I could let him know + How I would like to join in his journeys + Seldom he wished to go. + Now that he goes and wants me with him + More than he used to do, + Never he sees my faithful phantom + Though he speaks thereto. + + Yes, I accompany him to places + Only dreamers know, + Where the shy hares limp long paces, + Where the night rooks go; + Into old aisles where the past is all to him, + Close as his shade can do, + Always lacking the power to call to him, + Near as I reach thereto! + + What a good haunter I am, O tell him, + Quickly make him know + If he but sigh since my loss befell him + Straight to his side I go. + Tell him a faithful one is doing + All that love can do + Still that his path may be worth pursuing, + And to bring peace thereto. + + + +THE VOICE + + + WOMAN much missed, how you call to me, call to me, + Saying that now you are not as you were + When you had changed from the one who was all to me, + But as at first, when our day was fair. + + Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, + Standing as when I drew near to the town + Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, + Even to the original air-blue gown! + + Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness + Travelling across the wet mead to me here, + You being ever consigned to existlessness, + Heard no more again far or near? + + Thus I; faltering forward, + Leaves around me falling, + Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward + And the woman calling. + +_December_ 1912. + + + +HIS VISITOR + + + I COME across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker + To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more: + I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train, + And need no setting open of the long familiar door + As before. + + The change I notice in my once own quarters! + A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be, + The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered, + And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea + As with me. + + I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt servants; + They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and strong, + But strangers quite, who never knew my rule here, + Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song + Float along. + + So I don’t want to linger in this re-decked dwelling, + I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold, + And I make again for Mellstock to return here never, + And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold + Souls of old. + +1913. + + + +A CIRCULAR + + + AS “legal representative” + I read a missive not my own, + On new designs the senders give + For clothes, in tints as shown. + + Here figure blouses, gowns for tea, + And presentation-trains of state, + Charming ball-dresses, millinery, + Warranted up to date. + + And this gay-pictured, spring-time shout + Of Fashion, hails what lady proud? + Her who before last year was out + Was costumed in a shroud. + + + +A DREAM OR NO + + + WHY go to Saint-Juliot? What’s Juliot to me? + I was but made fancy + By some necromancy + That much of my life claims the spot as its key. + + Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West, + And a maiden abiding + Thereat as in hiding; + Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed. + + And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago, + There lonely I found her, + The sea-birds around her, + And other than nigh things uncaring to know. + + So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed) + That quickly she drew me + To take her unto me, + And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed. + + But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see; + Can she ever have been here, + And shed her life’s sheen here, + The woman I thought a long housemate with me? + + Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist? + Or a Vallency Valley + With stream and leafed alley, + Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist? + +_February_ 1913. + + + +AFTER A JOURNEY + + + HERETO I come to interview a ghost; + Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me? + Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost, + And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me. + Where you will next be there’s no knowing, + Facing round about me everywhere, + With your nut-coloured hair, + And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going. + + Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last; + Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you; + What have you now found to say of our past— + Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you? + Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division? + Things were not lastly as firstly well + With us twain, you tell? + But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision. + + I see what you are doing: you are leading me on + To the spots we knew when we haunted here together, + The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone + At the then fair hour in the then fair weather, + And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow + That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago, + When you were all aglow, + And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow! + + Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see, + The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily, + Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me, + For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily. + Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours, + The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again! + I am just the same as when + Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers. + +PENTARGAN BAY. + + + +A DEATH-DAY RECALLED + + + BEENY did not quiver, + Juliot grew not gray, + Thin Valency’s river + Held its wonted way. + Bos seemed not to utter + Dimmest note of dirge, + Targan mouth a mutter + To its creamy surge. + + Yet though these, unheeding, + Listless, passed the hour + Of her spirit’s speeding, + She had, in her flower, + Sought and loved the places— + Much and often pined + For their lonely faces + When in towns confined. + + Why did not Valency + In his purl deplore + One whose haunts were whence he + Drew his limpid store? + Why did Bos not thunder, + Targan apprehend + Body and breath were sunder + Of their former friend? + + + +BEENY CLIFF +_March_ 1870—_March_ 1913 + + + I + + O THE opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, + And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free— + The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me. + + II + + The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away + In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say, + As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day. + + III + + A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, + And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, + And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main. + + IV + + —Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, + And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, + And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by? + + V + + What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore, + The woman now is—elsewhere—whom the ambling pony bore, + And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will see it nevermore. + + + +AT CASTLE BOTEREL + + + As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, + And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, + I look behind at the fading byway, + And see on its slope, now glistening wet, + Distinctly yet + + Myself and a girlish form benighted + In dry March weather. We climb the road + Beside a chaise. We had just alighted + To ease the sturdy pony’s load + When he sighed and slowed. + + What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of + Matters not much, nor to what it led,— + Something that life will not be balked of + Without rude reason till hope is dead, + And feeling fled. + + It filled but a minute. But was there ever + A time of such quality, since or before, + In that hill’s story? To one mind never, + Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore, + By thousands more. + + Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border, + And much have they faced there, first and last, + Of the transitory in Earth’s long order; + But what they record in colour and cast + Is—that we two passed. + + And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour, + In mindless rote, has ruled from sight + The substance now, one phantom figure + Remains on the slope, as when that night + Saw us alight. + + I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking, + I look back at it amid the rain + For the very last time; for my sand is sinking, + And I shall traverse old love’s domain + Never again. + +_March_ 1913. + + + +PLACES + + + NOBODY says: Ah, that is the place + Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago, + What none of the Three Towns cared to know— + The birth of a little girl of grace— + The sweetest the house saw, first or last; + Yet it was so + On that day long past. + + Nobody thinks: There, there she lay + In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower, + And listened, just after the bedtime hour, + To the stammering chimes that used to play + The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune + In Saint Andrew’s tower + Night, morn, and noon. + + Nobody calls to mind that here + Upon Boterel Hill, where the carters skid, + With cheeks whose airy flush outbid + Fresh fruit in bloom, and free of fear, + She cantered down, as if she must fall + (Though she never did), + To the charm of all. + + Nay: one there is to whom these things, + That nobody else’s mind calls back, + Have a savour that scenes in being lack, + And a presence more than the actual brings; + To whom to-day is beneaped and stale, + And its urgent clack + But a vapid tale. + +PLYMOUTH, _March_ 1913. + + + +THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN + + + I + + QUEER are the ways of a man I know: + He comes and stands + In a careworn craze, + And looks at the sands + And the seaward haze, + With moveless hands + And face and gaze, + Then turns to go . . . + And what does he see when he gazes so? + + II + + They say he sees as an instant thing + More clear than to-day, + A sweet soft scene + That once was in play + By that briny green; + Yes, notes alway + Warm, real, and keen, + What his back years bring— + A phantom of his own figuring. + + III + + Of this vision of his they might say more: + Not only there + Does he see this sight, + But everywhere + In his brain—day, night, + As if on the air + It were drawn rose bright— + Yea, far from that shore + Does he carry this vision of heretofore: + + IV + + A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried, + He withers daily, + Time touches her not, + But she still rides gaily + In his rapt thought + On that shagged and shaly + Atlantic spot, + And as when first eyed + Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide. + + + + +MISCELLANEOUS PIECES + + +THE WISTFUL LADY + + + “LOVE, while you were away there came to me— + From whence I cannot tell— + A plaintive lady pale and passionless, + Who bent her eyes upon me critically, + And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness, + As if she knew me well.” + + “I saw no lady of that wistful sort + As I came riding home. + Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrain + By memories sadder than she can support, + Or by unhappy vacancy of brain, + To leave her roof and roam?” + + “Ah, but she knew me. And before this time + I have seen her, lending ear + To my light outdoor words, and pondering each, + Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime, + As if she fain would close with me in speech, + And yet would not come near. + + “And once I saw her beckoning with her hand + As I came into sight + At an upper window. And I at last went out; + But when I reached where she had seemed to stand, + And wandered up and down and searched about, + I found she had vanished quite.” + + Then thought I how my dead Love used to say, + With a small smile, when she + Was waning wan, that she would hover round + And show herself after her passing day + To any newer Love I might have found, + But show her not to me. + + + +THE WOMAN IN THE RYE + + + “WHY do you stand in the dripping rye, + Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee, + When there are firesides near?” said I. + “I told him I wished him dead,” said she. + + “Yea, cried it in my haste to one + Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still; + And die he did. And I hate the sun, + And stand here lonely, aching, chill; + + “Stand waiting, waiting under skies + That blow reproach, the while I see + The rooks sheer off to where he lies + Wrapt in a peace withheld from me.” + + + +THE CHEVAL-GLASS + + + WHY do you harbour that great cheval-glass + Filling up your narrow room? + You never preen or plume, + Or look in a week at your full-length figure— + Picture of bachelor gloom! + + “Well, when I dwelt in ancient England, + Renting the valley farm, + Thoughtless of all heart-harm, + I used to gaze at the parson’s daughter, + A creature of nameless charm. + + “Thither there came a lover and won her, + Carried her off from my view. + O it was then I knew + Misery of a cast undreamt of— + More than, indeed, my due! + + “Then far rumours of her ill-usage + Came, like a chilling breath + When a man languisheth; + Followed by news that her mind lost balance, + And, in a space, of her death. + + “Soon sank her father; and next was the auction— + Everything to be sold: + Mid things new and old + Stood this glass in her former chamber, + Long in her use, I was told. + + “Well, I awaited the sale and bought it . . . + There by my bed it stands, + And as the dawn expands + Often I see her pale-faced form there + Brushing her hair’s bright bands. + + “There, too, at pallid midnight moments + Quick she will come to my call, + Smile from the frame withal + Ponderingly, as she used to regard me + Passing her father’s wall. + + “So that it was for its revelations + I brought it oversea, + And drag it about with me . . . + Anon I shall break it and bury its fragments + Where my grave is to be.” + + + +THE RE-ENACTMENT + + + BETWEEN the folding sea-downs, + In the gloom + Of a wailful wintry nightfall, + When the boom + Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb, + + Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley + From the shore + To the chamber where I darkled, + Sunk and sore + With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before + + To salute me in the dwelling + That of late + I had hired to waste a while in— + Vague of date, + Quaint, and remote—wherein I now expectant sate; + + On the solitude, unsignalled, + Broke a man + Who, in air as if at home there, + Seemed to scan + Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span. + + A stranger’s and no lover’s + Eyes were these, + Eyes of a man who measures + What he sees + But vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies. + + Yea, his bearing was so absent + As he stood, + It bespoke a chord so plaintive + In his mood, + That soon I judged he would not wrong my quietude. + + “Ah—the supper is just ready,” + Then he said, + “And the years’-long binned Madeira + Flashes red!” + (There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.) + + “You will forgive my coming, + Lady fair? + I see you as at that time + Rising there, + The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air. + + “Yet no. How so? You wear not + The same gown, + Your locks show woful difference, + Are not brown: + What, is it not as when I hither came from town? + + “And the place . . . But you seem other— + Can it be? + What’s this that Time is doing + Unto me? + _You_ dwell here, unknown woman? . . . Whereabouts, then, is she? + + “And the house—things are much shifted.— + Put them where + They stood on this night’s fellow; + Shift her chair: + Here was the couch: and the piano should be there.” + + I indulged him, verily nerve-strained + Being alone, + And I moved the things as bidden, + One by one, + And feigned to push the old piano where he had shown. + + “Aha—now I can see her! + Stand aside: + Don’t thrust her from the table + Where, meek-eyed, + She makes attempt with matron-manners to preside. + + “She serves me: now she rises, + Goes to play . . . + But you obstruct her, fill her + With dismay, + And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!” + + And, as ’twere useless longer + To persist, + He sighed, and sought the entry + Ere I wist, + And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist. + + That here some mighty passion + Once had burned, + Which still the walls enghosted, + I discerned, + And that by its strong spell mine might be overturned. + + I sat depressed; till, later, + My Love came; + But something in the chamber + Dimmed our flame,— + An emanation, making our due words fall tame, + + As if the intenser drama + Shown me there + Of what the walls had witnessed + Filled the air, + And left no room for later passion anywhere. + + So came it that our fervours + Did quite fail + Of future consummation— + Being made quail + By the weird witchery of the parlour’s hidden tale, + + Which I, as years passed, faintly + Learnt to trace,— + One of sad love, born full-winged + In that place + Where the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face. + + And as that month of winter + Circles round, + And the evening of the date-day + Grows embrowned, + I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound. + + There, often—lone, forsaken— + Queries breed + Within me; whether a phantom + Had my heed + On that strange night, or was it some wrecked heart indeed? + + + +HER SECRET + + + THAT love’s dull smart distressed my heart + He shrewdly learnt to see, + But that I was in love with a dead man + Never suspected he. + + He searched for the trace of a pictured face, + He watched each missive come, + And a note that seemed like a love-line + Made him look frozen and glum. + + He dogged my feet to the city street, + He followed me to the sea, + But not to the neighbouring churchyard + Did he dream of following me. + + + +“SHE CHARGED ME” + + + SHE charged me with having said this and that + To another woman long years before, + In the very parlour where we sat,— + + Sat on a night when the endless pour + Of rain on the roof and the road below + Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . . + + —So charged she me; and the Cupid’s bow + Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face, + And her white forefinger lifted slow. + + Had she done it gently, or shown a trace + That not too curiously would she view + A folly passed ere her reign had place, + + A kiss might have ended it. But I knew + From the fall of each word, and the pause between, + That the curtain would drop upon us two + Ere long, in our play of slave and queen. + + + +THE NEWCOMER’S WIFE + + + HE paused on the sill of a door ajar + That screened a lively liquor-bar, + For the name had reached him through the door + Of her he had married the week before. + + “We called her the Hack of the Parade; + But she was discreet in the games she played; + If slightly worn, she’s pretty yet, + And gossips, after all, forget. + + “And he knows nothing of her past; + I am glad the girl’s in luck at last; + Such ones, though stale to native eyes, + Newcomers snatch at as a prize.” + + “Yes, being a stranger he sees her blent + Of all that’s fresh and innocent, + Nor dreams how many a love-campaign + She had enjoyed before his reign!” + + That night there was the splash of a fall + Over the slimy harbour-wall: + They searched, and at the deepest place + Found him with crabs upon his face. + + + +A CONVERSATION AT DAWN + + + HE lay awake, with a harassed air, + And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair, + Seemed trouble-tried + As the dawn drew in on their faces there. + + The chamber looked far over the sea + From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay, + And stepping a stride + He parted the window-drapery. + + Above the level horizon spread + The sunrise, firing them foot to head + From its smouldering lair, + And painting their pillows with dyes of red. + + “What strange disquiets have stirred you, dear, + This dragging night, with starts in fear + Of me, as it were, + Or of something evil hovering near?” + + “My husband, can I have fear of you? + What should one fear from a man whom few, + Or none, had matched + In that late long spell of delays undue!” + + He watched her eyes in the heaving sun: + “Then what has kept, O reticent one, + Those lids unlatched— + Anything promised I’ve not yet done?” + + “O it’s not a broken promise of yours + (For what quite lightly your lip assures + The due time brings) + That has troubled my sleep, and no waking cures!” . . . + + “I have shaped my will; ’tis at hand,” said he; + “I subscribe it to-day, that no risk there be + In the hap of things + Of my leaving you menaced by poverty.” + + “That a boon provision I’m safe to get, + Signed, sealed by my lord as it were a debt, + I cannot doubt, + Or ever this peering sun be set.” + + “But you flung my arms away from your side, + And faced the wall. No month-old bride + Ere the tour be out + In an air so loth can be justified? + + “Ah—had you a male friend once loved well, + Upon whose suit disaster fell + And frustrance swift? + Honest you are, and may care to tell.” + + She lay impassive, and nothing broke + The stillness other than, stroke by stroke, + The lazy lift + Of the tide below them; till she spoke: + + “I once had a friend—a Love, if you will— + Whose wife forsook him, and sank until + She was made a thrall + In a prison-cell for a deed of ill . . . + + “He remained alone; and we met—to love, + But barring legitimate joy thereof + Stood a doorless wall, + Though we prized each other all else above. + + “And this was why, though I’d touched my prime, + I put off suitors from time to time— + Yourself with the rest— + Till friends, who approved you, called it crime, + + “And when misgivings weighed on me + In my lover’s absence, hurriedly, + And much distrest, + I took you . . . Ah, that such could be! . . . + + “Now, saw you when crossing from yonder shore + At yesternoon, that the packet bore + On a white-wreathed bier + A coffined body towards the fore? + + “Well, while you stood at the other end, + The loungers talked, and I could but lend + A listening ear, + For they named the dead. ’Twas the wife of my friend. + + “He was there, but did not note me, veiled, + Yet I saw that a joy, as of one unjailed, + Now shone in his gaze; + He knew not his hope of me just had failed! + + “They had brought her home: she was born in this isle; + And he will return to his domicile, + And pass his days + Alone, and not as he dreamt erstwhile!” + + “—So you’ve lost a sprucer spouse than I!” + She held her peace, as if fain deny + She would indeed + For his pleasure’s sake, but could lip no lie. + + “One far less formal and plain and slow!” + She let the laconic assertion go + As if of need + She held the conviction that it was so. + + “Regard me as his he always should, + He had said, and wed me he vowed he would + In his prime or sere + Most verily do, if ever he could. + + “And this fulfilment is now his aim, + For a letter, addressed in my maiden name, + Has dogged me here, + Reminding me faithfully of his claim. + + “And it started a hope like a lightning-streak + That I might go to him—say for a week— + And afford you right + To put me away, and your vows unspeak. + + “To be sure you have said, as of dim intent, + That marriage is a plain event + Of black and white, + Without any ghost of sentiment, + + “And my heart has quailed.—But deny it true + That you will never this lock undo! + No God intends + To thwart the yearning He’s father to!” + + The husband hemmed, then blandly bowed + In the light of the angry morning cloud. + “So my idyll ends, + And a drama opens!” he mused aloud; + + And his features froze. “You may take it as true + That I will never this lock undo + For so depraved + A passion as that which kindles you.” + + Said she: “I am sorry you see it so; + I had hoped you might have let me go, + And thus been saved + The pain of learning there’s more to know.” + + “More? What may that be? Gad, I think + You have told me enough to make me blink! + Yet if more remain + Then own it to me. I will not shrink!” + + “Well, it is this. As we could not see + That a legal marriage could ever be, + To end our pain + We united ourselves informally; + + “And vowed at a chancel-altar nigh, + With book and ring, a lifelong tie; + A contract vain + To the world, but real to Him on High.” + + “And you became as his wife?”—“I did.”— + He stood as stiff as a caryatid, + And said, “Indeed! . . . + No matter. You’re mine, whatever you ye hid!” + + “But is it right! When I only gave + My hand to you in a sweat to save, + Through desperate need + (As I thought), my fame, for I was not brave!” + + “To save your fame? Your meaning is dim, + For nobody knew of your altar-whim?” + “I mean—I feared + There might be fruit of my tie with him; + + “And to cloak it by marriage I’m not the first, + Though, maybe, morally most accurst + Through your unpeered + And strict uprightness. That’s the worst! + + “While yesterday his worn contours + Convinced me that love like his endures, + And that my troth-plight + Had been his, in fact, and not truly yours.” + + “So, my lady, you raise the veil by degrees . . . + I own this last is enough to freeze + The warmest wight! + Now hear the other side, if you please: + + “I did say once, though without intent, + That marriage is a plain event + Of black and white, + Whatever may be its sentiment. + + “I’ll act accordingly, none the less + That you soiled the contract in time of stress, + Thereto induced + By the feared results of your wantonness. + + “But the thing is over, and no one knows, + And it’s nought to the future what you disclose. + That you’ll be loosed + For such an episode, don’t suppose! + + “No: I’ll not free you. And if it appear + There was too good ground for your first fear + From your amorous tricks, + I’ll father the child. Yes, by God, my dear. + + “Even should you fly to his arms, I’ll damn + Opinion, and fetch you; treat as sham + Your mutinous kicks, + And whip you home. That’s the sort I am!” + + She whitened. “Enough . . . Since you disapprove + I’ll yield in silence, and never move + Till my last pulse ticks + A footstep from the domestic groove.” + + “Then swear it,” he said, “and your king uncrown.” + He drew her forth in her long white gown, + And she knelt and swore. + “Good. Now you may go and again lie down + + “Since you’ve played these pranks and given no sign, + You shall crave this man of yours; pine and pine + With sighings sore, + ’Till I’ve starved your love for him; nailed you mine. + + “I’m a practical man, and want no tears; + You’ve made a fool of me, it appears; + That you don’t again + Is a lesson I’ll teach you in future years.” + + She answered not, but lay listlessly + With her dark dry eyes on the coppery sea, + That now and then + Flung its lazy flounce at the neighbouring quay. + +1910. + + + +A KING’S SOLILOQUY +ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL + + + FROM the slow march and muffled drum + And crowds distrest, + And book and bell, at length I have come + To my full rest. + + A ten years’ rule beneath the sun + Is wound up here, + And what I have done, what left undone, + Figures out clear. + + Yet in the estimate of such + It grieves me more + That I by some was loved so much + Than that I bore, + + From others, judgment of that hue + Which over-hope + Breeds from a theoretic view + Of regal scope. + + For kingly opportunities + Right many have sighed; + How best to bear its devilries + Those learn who have tried! + + I have eaten the fat and drunk the sweet, + Lived the life out + From the first greeting glad drum-beat + To the last shout. + + What pleasure earth affords to kings + I have enjoyed + Through its long vivid pulse-stirrings + Even till it cloyed. + + What days of drudgery, nights of stress + Can cark a throne, + Even one maintained in peacefulness, + I too have known. + + And so, I think, could I step back + To life again, + I should prefer the average track + Of average men, + + Since, as with them, what kingship would + It cannot do, + Nor to first thoughts however good + Hold itself true. + + Something binds hard the royal hand, + As all that be, + And it is That has shaped, has planned + My acts and me. + +_May_ 1910. + + + +THE CORONATION + + + AT Westminster, hid from the light of day, + Many who once had shone as monarchs lay. + + Edward the Pious, and two Edwards more, + The second Richard, Henrys three or four; + + That is to say, those who were called the Third, + Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth (the much self-widowered), + + And James the Scot, and near him Charles the Second, + And, too, the second George could there be reckoned. + + Of women, Mary and Queen Elizabeth, + And Anne, all silent in a musing death; + + And William’s Mary, and Mary, Queen of Scots, + And consort-queens whose names oblivion blots; + + And several more whose chronicle one sees + Adorning ancient royal pedigrees. + + —Now, as they drowsed on, freed from Life’s old thrall, + And heedless, save of things exceptional, + + Said one: “What means this throbbing thudding sound + That reaches to us here from overground; + + “A sound of chisels, augers, planes, and saws, + Infringing all ecclesiastic laws? + + “And these tons-weight of timber on us pressed, + Unfelt here since we entered into rest? + + “Surely, at least to us, being corpses royal, + A meet repose is owing by the loyal?” + + “—Perhaps a scaffold!” Mary Stuart sighed, + “If such still be. It was that way I died.” + + “—Ods! Far more like,” said he the many-wived, + “That for a wedding ’tis this work’s contrived. + + “Ha-ha! I never would bow down to Rimmon, + But I had a rare time with those six women!” + + “Not all at once?” gasped he who loved confession. + “Nay, nay!” said Hal. “That would have been transgression.” + + “—They build a catafalque here, black and tall, + Perhaps,” mused Richard, “for some funeral?” + + And Anne chimed in: “Ah, yes: it maybe so!” + “Nay!” squeaked Eliza. “Little you seem to know— + + “Clearly ’tis for some crowning here in state, + As they crowned us at our long bygone date; + + “Though we’d no such a power of carpentry, + But let the ancient architecture be; + + “If I were up there where the parsons sit, + In one of my gold robes, I’d see to it!” + + “But you are not,” Charles chuckled. “You are here, + And never will know the sun again, my dear!” + + “Yea,” whispered those whom no one had addressed; + “With slow, sad march, amid a folk distressed, + We were brought here, to take our dusty rest. + + “And here, alas, in darkness laid below, + We’ll wait and listen, and endure the show . . . + Clamour dogs kingship; afterwards not so!” + +1911. + + + +AQUAE SULIS + + + THE chimes called midnight, just at interlune, + And the daytime talk of the Roman investigations + Was checked by silence, save for the husky tune + The bubbling waters played near the excavations. + + And a warm air came up from underground, + And a flutter, as of a filmy shape unsepulchred, + That collected itself, and waited, and looked around: + Nothing was seen, but utterances could be heard: + + Those of the goddess whose shrine was beneath the pile + Of the God with the baldachined altar overhead: + “And what did you get by raising this nave and aisle + Close on the site of the temple I tenanted? + + “The notes of your organ have thrilled down out of view + To the earth-clogged wrecks of my edifice many a year, + Though stately and shining once—ay, long ere you + Had set up crucifix and candle here. + + “Your priests have trampled the dust of mine without rueing, + Despising the joys of man whom I so much loved, + Though my springs boil on by your Gothic arcades and pewing, + And sculptures crude . . . Would Jove they could be removed!” + + “—Repress, O lady proud, your traditional ires; + You know not by what a frail thread we equally hang; + It is said we are images both—twitched by people’s desires; + And that I, like you, fail as a song men yesterday sang!” + + * * * * * + + And the olden dark hid the cavities late laid bare, + And all was suspended and soundless as before, + Except for a gossamery noise fading off in the air, + And the boiling voice of the waters’ medicinal pour. + +BATH. + + + +SEVENTY-FOUR AND TWENTY + + + HERE goes a man of seventy-four, + Who sees not what life means for him, + And here another in years a score + Who reads its very figure and trim. + + The one who shall walk to-day with me + Is not the youth who gazes far, + But the breezy wight who cannot see + What Earth’s ingrained conditions are. + + + +THE ELOPEMENT + + + “A WOMAN never agreed to it!” said my knowing friend to me. + “That one thing she’d refuse to do for Solomon’s mines in fee: + No woman ever will make herself look older than she is.” + I did not answer; but I thought, “you err there, ancient Quiz.” + + It took a rare one, true, to do it; for she was surely rare— + As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair. + And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate case, + Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young face. + + I have told no one about it, should perhaps make few believe, + But I think it over now that life looms dull and years bereave, + How blank we stood at our bright wits’ end, two frail barks in + distress, + How self-regard in her was slain by her large tenderness. + + I said: “The only chance for us in a crisis of this kind + Is going it thorough!”—“Yes,” she calmly breathed. “Well, I don’t + mind.” + And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her brow; + Ay—she was a right rare woman then, whatever she may be now. + + That night we heard a coach drive up, and questions asked below. + “A gent with an elderly wife, sir,” was returned from the bureau. + And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken + We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth again. + + How many years ago it was! Some fifty can it be + Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me? + But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last, + And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the past. + + + +“I ROSE UP AS MY CUSTOM IS” + + + I ROSE up as my custom is + On the eve of All-Souls’ day, + And left my grave for an hour or so + To call on those I used to know + Before I passed away. + + I visited my former Love + As she lay by her husband’s side; + I asked her if life pleased her, now + She was rid of a poet wrung in brow, + And crazed with the ills he eyed; + + Who used to drag her here and there + Wherever his fancies led, + And point out pale phantasmal things, + And talk of vain vague purposings + That she discredited. + + She was quite civil, and replied, + “Old comrade, is that you? + Well, on the whole, I like my life.— + I know I swore I’d be no wife, + But what was I to do? + + “You see, of all men for my sex + A poet is the worst; + Women are practical, and they + Crave the wherewith to pay their way, + And slake their social thirst. + + “You were a poet—quite the ideal + That we all love awhile: + But look at this man snoring here— + He’s no romantic chanticleer, + Yet keeps me in good style. + + “He makes no quest into my thoughts, + But a poet wants to know + What one has felt from earliest days, + Why one thought not in other ways, + And one’s Loves of long ago.” + + Her words benumbed my fond frail ghost; + The nightmares neighed from their stalls + The vampires screeched, the harpies flew, + And under the dim dawn I withdrew + To Death’s inviolate halls. + + + +A WEEK + + + ON Monday night I closed my door, + And thought you were not as heretofore, + And little cared if we met no more. + + I seemed on Tuesday night to trace + Something beyond mere commonplace + In your ideas, and heart, and face. + + On Wednesday I did not opine + Your life would ever be one with mine, + Though if it were we should well combine. + + On Thursday noon I liked you well, + And fondly felt that we must dwell + Not far apart, whatever befell. + + On Friday it was with a thrill + In gazing towards your distant vill + I owned you were my dear one still. + + I saw you wholly to my mind + On Saturday—even one who shrined + All that was best of womankind. + + As wing-clipt sea-gull for the sea + On Sunday night I longed for thee, + Without whom life were waste to me! + + + +HAD YOU WEPT + + + HAD you wept; had you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray, + Dewy as the face of the dawn, in your large and luminous eye, + Then would have come back all the joys the tidings had slain that day, + And a new beginning, a fresh fair heaven, have smoothed the things + awry. + But you were less feebly human, and no passionate need for clinging + Possessed your soul to overthrow reserve when I came near; + Ay, though you suffer as much as I from storms the hours are bringing + Upon your heart and mine, I never see you shed a tear. + + The deep strong woman is weakest, the weak one is the strong; + The weapon of all weapons best for winning, you have not used; + Have you never been able, or would you not, through the evil times and + long? + Has not the gift been given you, or such gift have you refused? + When I bade me not absolve you on that evening or the morrow, + Why did you not make war on me with those who weep like rain? + You felt too much, so gained no balm for all your torrid sorrow, + And hence our deep division, and our dark undying pain. + + + +BEREFT, SHE THINKS SHE DREAMS + + + I DREAM that the dearest I ever knew + Has died and been entombed. + I am sure it’s a dream that cannot be true, + But I am so overgloomed + By its persistence, that I would gladly + Have quick death take me, + Rather than longer think thus sadly; + So wake me, wake me! + + It has lasted days, but minute and hour + I expect to get aroused + And find him as usual in the bower + Where we so happily housed. + Yet stays this nightmare too appalling, + And like a web shakes me, + And piteously I keep on calling, + And no one wakes me! + + + +IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM + + + “WHAT do you see in that time-touched stone, + When nothing is there + But ashen blankness, although you give it + A rigid stare? + + “You look not quite as if you saw, + But as if you heard, + Parting your lips, and treading softly + As mouse or bird. + + “It is only the base of a pillar, they’ll tell you, + That came to us + From a far old hill men used to name + Areopagus.” + + —“I know no art, and I only view + A stone from a wall, + But I am thinking that stone has echoed + The voice of Paul, + + “Paul as he stood and preached beside it + Facing the crowd, + A small gaunt figure with wasted features, + Calling out loud + + “Words that in all their intimate accents + Pattered upon + That marble front, and were far reflected, + And then were gone. + + “I’m a labouring man, and know but little, + Or nothing at all; + But I can’t help thinking that stone once echoed + The voice of Paul.” + + + +IN THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS + + + “MAN, you too, aren’t you, one of these rough followers of the + criminal? + All hanging hereabout to gather how he’s going to bear + Examination in the hall.” She flung disdainful glances on + The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there, + Who warmed them by its flare. + + “No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know nothing of the trial here, + Or criminal, if so he be.—I chanced to come this way, + And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold now; + I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play, + That I see not every day.” + + “Ha, ha!” then laughed the constables who also stood to warm + themselves, + The while another maiden scrutinized his features hard, + As the blaze threw into contrast every line and knot that wrinkled + them, + Exclaiming, “Why, last night when he was brought in by the guard, + You were with him in the yard!” + + “Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I say! You know you speak mistakenly. + Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar + Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble marketings, + Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are + Afoot by morning star?” + + “O, come, come!” laughed the constables. “Why, man, you speak the + dialect + He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs. + So own it. We sha’n’t hurt ye. There he’s speaking now! His + syllables + Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares, + As this pretty girl declares.” + + “And you shudder when his chain clinks!” she rejoined. “O yes, I + noticed it. + And you winced, too, when those cuffs they gave him echoed to us here. + They’ll soon be coming down, and you may then have to defend yourself + Unless you hold your tongue, or go away and keep you clear + When he’s led to judgment near!” + + “No! I’ll be damned in hell if I know anything about the man! + No single thing about him more than everybody knows! + Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with blasphemies?” . . . + —His face convulses as the morning cock that moment crows, + And he stops, and turns, and goes. + + + +THE OBLITERATE TOMB + + + “MORE than half my life long + Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong, + But they all have shrunk away into the silence + Like a lost song. + + “And the day has dawned and come + For forgiveness, when the past may hold it dumb + On the once reverberate words of hatred uttered + Half in delirium . . . + + “With folded lips and hands + They lie and wait what next the Will commands, + And doubtless think, if think they can: ‘Let discord + Sink with Life’s sands!’ + + “By these late years their names, + Their virtues, their hereditary claims, + May be as near defacement at their grave-place + As are their fames.” + + —Such thoughts bechanced to seize + A traveller’s mind—a man of memories— + As he set foot within the western city + Where had died these + + Who in their lifetime deemed + Him their chief enemy—one whose brain had schemed + To get their dingy greatness deeplier dingied + And disesteemed. + + So, sojourning in their town, + He mused on them and on their once renown, + And said, “I’ll seek their resting-place to-morrow + Ere I lie down, + + “And end, lest I forget, + Those ires of many years that I regret, + Renew their names, that men may see some liegeness + Is left them yet.” + + Duly next day he went + And sought the church he had known them to frequent, + And wandered in the precincts, set on eyeing + Where they lay pent, + + Till by remembrance led + He stood at length beside their slighted bed, + Above which, truly, scarce a line or letter + Could now be read. + + “Thus years obliterate + Their graven worth, their chronicle, their date! + At once I’ll garnish and revive the record + Of their past state, + + “That still the sage may say + In pensive progress here where they decay, + ‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents + Told in their day.’” + + While speaking thus he turned, + For a form shadowed where they lay inurned, + And he beheld a stranger in foreign vesture, + And tropic-burned. + + “Sir, I am right pleased to view + That ancestors of mine should interest you, + For I have come of purpose here to trace them . . . + They are time-worn, true, + + “But that’s a fault, at most, + Sculptors can cure. On the Pacific coast + I have vowed for long that relics of my forbears + I’d trace ere lost, + + “And hitherward I come, + Before this same old Time shall strike me numb, + To carry it out.”—“Strange, this is!” said the other; + “What mind shall plumb + + “Coincident design! + Though these my father’s enemies were and mine, + I nourished a like purpose—to restore them + Each letter and line.” + + “Such magnanimity + Is now not needed, sir; for you will see + That since I am here, a thing like this is, plainly, + Best done by me.” + + The other bowed, and left, + Crestfallen in sentiment, as one bereft + Of some fair object he had been moved to cherish, + By hands more deft. + + And as he slept that night + The phantoms of the ensepulchred stood up-right + Before him, trembling that he had set him seeking + Their charnel-site. + + And, as unknowing his ruth, + Asked as with terrors founded not on truth + Why he should want them. “Ha,” they hollowly hackered, + “You come, forsooth, + + “By stealth to obliterate + Our graven worth, our chronicle, our date, + That our descendant may not gild the record + Of our past state, + + “And that no sage may say + In pensive progress near where we decay: + ‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents + Told in their day.’” + + Upon the morrow he went + And to that town and churchyard never bent + His ageing footsteps till, some twelvemonths onward, + An accident + + Once more detained him there; + And, stirred by hauntings, he must needs repair + To where the tomb was. Lo, it stood still wasting + In no man’s care. + + “The travelled man you met + The last time,” said the sexton, “has not yet + Appeared again, though wealth he had in plenty. + —Can he forget? + + “The architect was hired + And came here on smart summons as desired, + But never the descendant came to tell him + What he required.” + + And so the tomb remained + Untouched, untended, crumbling, weather-stained, + And though the one-time foe was fain to right it + He still refrained. + + “I’ll set about it when + I am sure he’ll come no more. Best wait till then.” + But so it was that never the stranger entered + That city again. + + And the well-meaner died + While waiting tremulously unsatisfied + That no return of the family’s foreign scion + Would still betide. + + And many years slid by, + And active church-restorers cast their eye + Upon the ancient garth and hoary building + The tomb stood nigh. + + And when they had scraped each wall, + Pulled out the stately pews, and smartened all, + “It will be well,” declared the spruce church-warden, + “To overhaul + + “And broaden this path where shown; + Nothing prevents it but an old tombstone + Pertaining to a family forgotten, + Of deeds unknown. + + “Their names can scarce be read, + Depend on’t, all who care for them are dead.” + So went the tomb, whose shards were as path-paving + Distributed. + + Over it and about + Men’s footsteps beat, and wind and water-spout, + Until the names, aforetime gnawed by weathers, + Were quite worn out. + + So that no sage can say + In pensive progress near where they decay, + “This stone records a luminous line whose talents + Told in their day.” + + + +“REGRET NOT ME” + + + REGRET not me; + Beneath the sunny tree + I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully. + + Swift as the light + I flew my faery flight; + Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night. + + I did not know + That heydays fade and go, + But deemed that what was would be always so. + + I skipped at morn + Between the yellowing corn, + Thinking it good and glorious to be born. + + I ran at eves + Among the piled-up sheaves, + Dreaming, “I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves.” + + Now soon will come + The apple, pear, and plum + And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum. + + Again you will fare + To cider-makings rare, + And junketings; but I shall not be there. + + Yet gaily sing + Until the pewter ring + Those songs we sang when we went gipsying. + + And lightly dance + Some triple-timed romance + In coupled figures, and forget mischance; + + And mourn not me + Beneath the yellowing tree; + For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully. + + + +THE RECALCITRANTS + + + LET us off and search, and find a place + Where yours and mine can be natural lives, + Where no one comes who dissects and dives + And proclaims that ours is a curious case, + That its touch of romance can scarcely grace. + + You would think it strange at first, but then + Everything has been strange in its time. + When some one said on a day of the prime + He would bow to no brazen god again + He doubtless dazed the mass of men. + + None will recognize us as a pair whose claims + To righteous judgment we care not making; + Who have doubted if breath be worth the taking, + And have no respect for the current fames + Whence the savour has flown while abide the names. + + We have found us already shunned, disdained, + And for re-acceptance have not once striven; + Whatever offence our course has given + The brunt thereof we have long sustained. + Well, let us away, scorned unexplained. + + + +STARLINGS ON THE ROOF + + + “NO smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot, + The people who lived here have left the spot, + And others are coming who knew them not. + + “If you listen anon, with an ear intent, + The voices, you’ll find, will be different + From the well-known ones of those who went.” + + “Why did they go? Their tones so bland + Were quite familiar to our band; + The comers we shall not understand.” + + “They look for a new life, rich and strange; + They do not know that, let them range + Wherever they may, they will get no change. + + “They will drag their house-gear ever so far + In their search for a home no miseries mar; + They will find that as they were they are, + + “That every hearth has a ghost, alack, + And can be but the scene of a bivouac + Till they move perforce—no time to pack!” + + + +THE MOON LOOKS IN + + + I + + I have risen again, + And awhile survey + By my chilly ray + Through your window-pane + Your upturned face, + As you think, “Ah-she + Now dreams of me + In her distant place!” + + II + + I pierce her blind + In her far-off home: + She fixes a comb, + And says in her mind, + “I start in an hour; + Whom shall I meet? + Won’t the men be sweet, + And the women sour!” + + + +THE SWEET HUSSY + + + IN his early days he was quite surprised + When she told him she was compromised + By meetings and lingerings at his whim, + And thinking not of herself but him; + While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round + That scandal should so soon abound, + (As she had raised them to nine or ten + Of antecedent nice young men) + And in remorse he thought with a sigh, + How good she is, and how bad am I!— + It was years before he understood + That she was the wicked one—he the good. + + + +THE TELEGRAM + + + “O HE’S suffering—maybe dying—and I not there to aid, + And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go? + Only the nurse’s brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed, + As by stealth, to let me know. + + “He was the best and brightest!—candour shone upon his brow, + And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he, + And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he’s sinking now, + Far, far removed from me!” + + —The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair, + And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade, + And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware + That she lives no more a maid, + + But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she trod + To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history known + In its last particular to him—aye, almost as to God, + And believed her quite his own. + + So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon, + And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace, + And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon + At this idle watering-place . . . + + What now I see before me is a long lane overhung + With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave. + And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young, + Ere a woman held me slave. + + + +THE MOTH-SIGNAL +(_On Egdon Heath_) + + + “WHAT are you still, still thinking,” + He asked in vague surmise, + “That stare at the wick unblinking + With those great lost luminous eyes?” + + “O, I see a poor moth burning + In the candle-flame,” said she, + “Its wings and legs are turning + To a cinder rapidly.” + + “Moths fly in from the heather,” + He said, “now the days decline.” + “I know,” said she. “The weather, + I hope, will at last be fine. + + “I think,” she added lightly, + “I’ll look out at the door. + The ring the moon wears nightly + May be visible now no more.” + + She rose, and, little heeding, + Her husband then went on + With his attentive reading + In the annals of ages gone. + + Outside the house a figure + Came from the tumulus near, + And speedily waxed bigger, + And clasped and called her Dear. + + “I saw the pale-winged token + You sent through the crack,” sighed she. + “That moth is burnt and broken + With which you lured out me. + + “And were I as the moth is + It might be better far + For one whose marriage troth is + Shattered as potsherds are!” + + Then grinned the Ancient Briton + From the tumulus treed with pine: + “So, hearts are thwartly smitten + In these days as in mine!” + + + +SEEN BY THE WAITS + + + THROUGH snowy woods and shady + We went to play a tune + To the lonely manor-lady + By the light of the Christmas moon. + + We violed till, upward glancing + To where a mirror leaned, + We saw her airily dancing, + Deeming her movements screened; + + Dancing alone in the room there, + Thin-draped in her robe of night; + Her postures, glassed in the gloom there, + Were a strange phantasmal sight. + + She had learnt (we heard when homing) + That her roving spouse was dead; + Why she had danced in the gloaming + We thought, but never said. + + + +THE TWO SOLDIERS + + + JUST at the corner of the wall + We met—yes, he and I— + Who had not faced in camp or hall + Since we bade home good-bye, + And what once happened came back—all— + Out of those years gone by. + + And that strange woman whom we knew + And loved—long dead and gone, + Whose poor half-perished residue, + Tombless and trod, lay yon! + But at this moment to our view + Rose like a phantom wan. + + And in his fixed face I could see, + Lit by a lurid shine, + The drama re-enact which she + Had dyed incarnadine + For us, and more. And doubtless he + Beheld it too in mine. + + A start, as at one slightly known, + And with an indifferent air + We passed, without a sign being shown + That, as it real were, + A memory-acted scene had thrown + Its tragic shadow there. + + + +THE DEATH OF REGRET + + + I OPENED my shutter at sunrise, + And looked at the hill hard by, + And I heartily grieved for the comrade + Who wandered up there to die. + + I let in the morn on the morrow, + And failed not to think of him then, + As he trod up that rise in the twilight, + And never came down again. + + I undid the shutter a week thence, + But not until after I’d turned + Did I call back his last departure + By the upland there discerned. + + Uncovering the casement long later, + I bent to my toil till the gray, + When I said to myself, “Ah—what ails me, + To forget him all the day!” + + As daily I flung back the shutter + In the same blank bald routine, + He scarcely once rose to remembrance + Through a month of my facing the scene. + + And ah, seldom now do I ponder + At the window as heretofore + On the long valued one who died yonder, + And wastes by the sycamore. + + + +IN THE DAYS OF CRINOLINE + + + A PLAIN tilt-bonnet on her head + She took the path across the leaze. + —Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said, + “Too dowdy that, for coquetries, + So I can hoe at ease.” + + But when she had passed into the heath, + And gained the wood beyond the flat, + She raised her skirts, and from beneath + Unpinned and drew as from a sheath + An ostrich-feathered hat. + + And where the hat had hung she now + Concealed and pinned the dowdy hood, + And set the hat upon her brow, + And thus emerging from the wood + Tripped on in jaunty mood. + + The sun was low and crimson-faced + As two came that way from the town, + And plunged into the wood untraced . . . + When separately therefrom they paced + The sun had quite gone down. + + The hat and feather disappeared, + The dowdy hood again was donned, + And in the gloom the fair one neared + Her home and husband dour, who conned + Calmly his blue-eyed blonde. + + “To-day,” he said, “you have shown good sense, + A dress so modest and so meek + Should always deck your goings hence + Alone.” And as a recompense + He kissed her on the cheek. + + + +THE ROMAN GRAVEMOUNDS + + + BY Rome’s dim relics there walks a man, + Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade; + I guess what impels him to scrape and scan; + Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed. + + “Vast was Rome,” he must muse, “in the world’s regard, + Vast it looms there still, vast it ever will be;” + And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard + Left by those who are held in such memory. + + But no; in his basket, see, he has brought + A little white furred thing, stiff of limb, + Whose life never won from the world a thought; + It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him. + + And to make it a grave he has come to the spot, + And he delves in the ancient dead’s long home; + Their fames, their achievements, the man knows not; + The furred thing is all to him—nothing Rome! + + “Here say you that Cæsar’s warriors lie?— + But my little white cat was my only friend! + Could she but live, might the record die + Of Cæsar, his legions, his aims, his end!” + + Well, Rome’s long rule here is oft and again + A theme for the sages of history, + And the small furred life was worth no one’s pen; + Yet its mourner’s mood has a charm for me. + +_November_ 1910. + + + +THE WORKBOX + + + “SEE, here’s the workbox, little wife, + That I made of polished oak.” + He was a joiner, of village life; + She came of borough folk. + + He holds the present up to her + As with a smile she nears + And answers to the profferer, + “’Twill last all my sewing years!” + + “I warrant it will. And longer too. + ’Tis a scantling that I got + Off poor John Wayward’s coffin, who + Died of they knew not what. + + “The shingled pattern that seems to cease + Against your box’s rim + Continues right on in the piece + That’s underground with him. + + “And while I worked it made me think + Of timber’s varied doom; + One inch where people eat and drink, + The next inch in a tomb. + + “But why do you look so white, my dear, + And turn aside your face? + You knew not that good lad, I fear, + Though he came from your native place?” + + “How could I know that good young man, + Though he came from my native town, + When he must have left there earlier than + I was a woman grown?” + + “Ah no. I should have understood! + It shocked you that I gave + To you one end of a piece of wood + Whose other is in a grave?” + + “Don’t, dear, despise my intellect, + Mere accidental things + Of that sort never have effect + On my imaginings.” + + Yet still her lips were limp and wan, + Her face still held aside, + As if she had known not only John, + But known of what he died. + + + +THE SACRILEGE +A BALLAD-TRAGEDY +(_Circa_ 182-) + + +PART I + + + “I HAVE a Love I love too well + Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor; + I have a Love I love too well, + To whom, ere she was mine, + ‘Such is my love for you,’ I said, + ‘That you shall have to hood your head + A silken kerchief crimson-red, + Wove finest of the fine.’ + + “And since this Love, for one mad moon, + On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor, + Since this my Love for one mad moon + Did clasp me as her king, + I snatched a silk-piece red and rare + From off a stall at Priddy Fair, + For handkerchief to hood her hair + When we went gallanting. + + “Full soon the four weeks neared their end + Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor; + And when the four weeks neared their end, + And their swift sweets outwore, + I said, ‘What shall I do to own + Those beauties bright as tulips blown, + And keep you here with me alone + As mine for evermore?’ + + “And as she drowsed within my van + On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor— + And as she drowsed within my van, + And dawning turned to day, + She heavily raised her sloe-black eyes + And murmured back in softest wise, + ‘One more thing, and the charms you prize + Are yours henceforth for aye. + + “‘And swear I will I’ll never go + While Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor + To meet the Cornish Wrestler Joe + For dance and dallyings. + If you’ll to yon cathedral shrine, + And finger from the chest divine + Treasure to buy me ear-drops fine, + And richly jewelled rings.’ + + “I said: ‘I am one who has gathered gear + From Marlbury Downs to Dunkery Tor, + Who has gathered gear for many a year + From mansion, mart and fair; + But at God’s house I’ve stayed my hand, + Hearing within me some command— + Curbed by a law not of the land + From doing damage there.’ + + “Whereat she pouts, this Love of mine, + As Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor, + And still she pouts, this Love of mine, + So cityward I go. + But ere I start to do the thing, + And speed my soul’s imperilling + For one who is my ravishing + And all the joy I know, + + “I come to lay this charge on thee— + On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor— + I come to lay this charge on thee + With solemn speech and sign: + Should things go ill, and my life pay + For botchery in this rash assay, + You are to take hers likewise—yea, + The month the law takes mine. + + “For should my rival, Wrestler Joe, + Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor— + My reckless rival, Wrestler Joe, + My Love’s possessor be, + My tortured spirit would not rest, + But wander weary and distrest + Throughout the world in wild protest: + The thought nigh maddens me!” + + +PART II + + + Thus did he speak—this brother of mine— + On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor, + Born at my birth of mother of mine, + And forthwith went his way + To dare the deed some coming night . . . + I kept the watch with shaking sight, + The moon at moments breaking bright, + At others glooming gray. + + For three full days I heard no sound + Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor, + I heard no sound at all around + Whether his fay prevailed, + Or one malign the master were, + Till some afoot did tidings bear + How that, for all his practised care, + He had been caught and jailed. + + They had heard a crash when twelve had chimed + By Mendip east of Dunkery Tor, + When twelve had chimed and moonlight climbed; + They watched, and he was tracked + By arch and aisle and saint and knight + Of sculptured stonework sheeted white + In the cathedral’s ghostly light, + And captured in the act. + + Yes; for this Love he loved too well + Where Dunkery sights the Severn shore, + All for this Love he loved too well + He burst the holy bars, + Seized golden vessels from the chest + To buy her ornaments of the best, + At her ill-witchery’s request + And lure of eyes like stars . . . + + When blustering March confused the sky + In Toneborough Town by Exon Moor, + When blustering March confused the sky + They stretched him; and he died. + Down in the crowd where I, to see + The end of him, stood silently, + With a set face he lipped to me— + “Remember.” “Ay!” I cried. + + By night and day I shadowed her + From Toneborough Deane to Dunkery Tor, + I shadowed her asleep, astir, + And yet I could not bear— + Till Wrestler Joe anon began + To figure as her chosen man, + And took her to his shining van— + To doom a form so fair! + + He made it handsome for her sake— + And Dunkery smiled to Exon Moor— + He made it handsome for her sake, + Painting it out and in; + And on the door of apple-green + A bright brass knocker soon was seen, + And window-curtains white and clean + For her to sit within. + + And all could see she clave to him + As cleaves a cloud to Dunkery Tor, + Yea, all could see she clave to him, + And every day I said, + “A pity it seems to part those two + That hourly grow to love more true: + Yet she’s the wanton woman who + Sent one to swing till dead!” + + That blew to blazing all my hate, + While Dunkery frowned on Exon Moor, + And when the river swelled, her fate + Came to her pitilessly . . . + I dogged her, crying: “Across that plank + They use as bridge to reach yon bank + A coat and hat lie limp and dank; + Your goodman’s, can they be?” + + She paled, and went, I close behind— + And Exon frowned to Dunkery Tor, + She went, and I came up behind + And tipped the plank that bore + Her, fleetly flitting across to eye + What such might bode. She slid awry; + And from the current came a cry, + A gurgle; and no more. + + How that befell no mortal knew + From Marlbury Downs to Exon Moor; + No mortal knew that deed undue + But he who schemed the crime, + Which night still covers . . . But in dream + Those ropes of hair upon the stream + He sees, and he will hear that scream + Until his judgment-time. + + + +THE ABBEY MASON +(_Inventor of the_ “_Perpendicular_” _Style of Gothic Architecture_) + + + THE new-vamped Abbey shaped apace + In the fourteenth century of grace; + + (The church which, at an after date, + Acquired cathedral rank and state.) + + Panel and circumscribing wall + Of latest feature, trim and tall, + + Rose roundabout the Norman core + In prouder pose than theretofore, + + Encasing magically the old + With parpend ashlars manifold. + + The trowels rang out, and tracery + Appeared where blanks had used to be. + + Men toiled for pleasure more than pay, + And all went smoothly day by day, + + Till, in due course, the transept part + Engrossed the master-mason’s art. + + —Home-coming thence he tossed and turned + Throughout the night till the new sun burned. + + “What fearful visions have inspired + These gaingivings?” his wife inquired; + + “As if your tools were in your hand + You have hammered, fitted, muttered, planned; + + “You have thumped as you were working hard: + I might have found me bruised and scarred. + + “What then’s amiss. What eating care + Looms nigh, whereof I am unaware?” + + He answered not, but churchward went, + Viewing his draughts with discontent; + + And fumbled there the livelong day + Till, hollow-eyed, he came away. + + —’Twas said, “The master-mason’s ill!” + And all the abbey works stood still. + + Quoth Abbot Wygmore: “Why, O why + Distress yourself? You’ll surely die!” + + The mason answered, trouble-torn, + “This long-vogued style is quite outworn! + + “The upper archmould nohow serves + To meet the lower tracery curves: + + “The ogees bend too far away + To give the flexures interplay. + + “This it is causes my distress . . . + So it will ever be unless + + “New forms be found to supersede + The circle when occasions need. + + “To carry it out I have tried and toiled, + And now perforce must own me foiled! + + “Jeerers will say: ‘Here was a man + Who could not end what he began!’” + + —So passed that day, the next, the next; + The abbot scanned the task, perplexed; + + The townsmen mustered all their wit + To fathom how to compass it, + + But no raw artistries availed + Where practice in the craft had failed . . . + + —One night he tossed, all open-eyed, + And early left his helpmeet’s side. + + Scattering the rushes of the floor + He wandered from the chamber door + + And sought the sizing pile, whereon + Struck dimly a cadaverous dawn + + Through freezing rain, that drenched the board + Of diagram-lines he last had scored— + + Chalked phantasies in vain begot + To knife the architectural knot— + + In front of which he dully stood, + Regarding them in hopeless mood. + + He closelier looked; then looked again: + The chalk-scratched draught-board faced the rain, + + Whose icicled drops deformed the lines + Innumerous of his lame designs, + + So that they streamed in small white threads + From the upper segments to the heads + + Of arcs below, uniting them + Each by a stalactitic stem. + + —At once, with eyes that struck out sparks, + He adds accessory cusping-marks, + + Then laughs aloud. The thing was done + So long assayed from sun to sun . . . + + —Now in his joy he grew aware + Of one behind him standing there, + + And, turning, saw the abbot, who + The weather’s whim was watching too. + + Onward to Prime the abbot went, + Tacit upon the incident. + + —Men now discerned as days revolved + The ogive riddle had been solved; + + Templates were cut, fresh lines were chalked + Where lines had been defaced and balked, + + And the work swelled and mounted higher, + Achievement distancing desire; + + Here jambs with transoms fixed between, + Where never the like before had been— + + There little mullions thinly sawn + Where meeting circles once were drawn. + + “We knew,” men said, “the thing would go + After his craft-wit got aglow, + + “And, once fulfilled what he has designed, + We’ll honour him and his great mind!” + + When matters stood thus poised awhile, + And all surroundings shed a smile, + + The master-mason on an eve + Homed to his wife and seemed to grieve . . . + + —“The abbot spoke to me to-day: + He hangs about the works alway. + + “He knows the source as well as I + Of the new style men magnify. + + “He said: ‘You pride yourself too much + On your creation. Is it such? + + “‘Surely the hand of God it is + That conjured so, and only His!— + + “‘Disclosing by the frost and rain + Forms your invention chased in vain; + + “‘Hence the devices deemed so great + You copied, and did not create.’ + + “I feel the abbot’s words are just, + And that all thanks renounce I must. + + “Can a man welcome praise and pelf + For hatching art that hatched itself? . . . + + “So, I shall own the deft design + Is Heaven’s outshaping, and not mine.” + + “What!” said she. “Praise your works ensure + To throw away, and quite obscure + + “Your beaming and beneficent star? + Better you leave things as they are! + + “Why, think awhile. Had not your zest + In your loved craft curtailed your rest— + + “Had you not gone there ere the day + The sun had melted all away!” + + —But, though his good wife argued so, + The mason let the people know + + That not unaided sprang the thought + Whereby the glorious fane was wrought, + + But that by frost when dawn was dim + The method was disclosed to him. + + “Yet,” said the townspeople thereat, + “’Tis your own doing, even with that!” + + But he—chafed, childlike, in extremes— + The temperament of men of dreams— + + Aloofly scrupled to admit + That he did aught but borrow it, + + And diffidently made request + That with the abbot all should rest. + + —As none could doubt the abbot’s word, + Or question what the church averred, + + The mason was at length believed + Of no more count than he conceived, + + And soon began to lose the fame + That late had gathered round his name . . . + + —Time passed, and like a living thing + The pile went on embodying, + + And workmen died, and young ones grew, + And the old mason sank from view + + And Abbots Wygmore and Staunton went + And Horton sped the embellishment. + + But not till years had far progressed + Chanced it that, one day, much impressed, + + Standing within the well-graced aisle, + He asked who first conceived the style; + + And some decrepit sage detailed + How, when invention nought availed, + + The cloud-cast waters in their whim + Came down, and gave the hint to him + + Who struck each arc, and made each mould; + And how the abbot would not hold + + As sole begetter him who applied + Forms the Almighty sent as guide; + + And how the master lost renown, + And wore in death no artist’s crown. + + —Then Horton, who in inner thought + Had more perceptions than he taught, + + Replied: “Nay; art can but transmute; + Invention is not absolute; + + “Things fail to spring from nought at call, + And art-beginnings most of all. + + “He did but what all artists do, + Wait upon Nature for his cue.” + + —“Had you been here to tell them so + Lord Abbot, sixty years ago, + + “The mason, now long underground, + Doubtless a different fate had found. + + “He passed into oblivion dim, + And none knew what became of him! + + “His name? ’Twas of some common kind + And now has faded out of mind.” + + The Abbot: “It shall not be hid! + I’ll trace it.” . . . But he never did. + + —When longer yet dank death had wormed + The brain wherein the style had germed + + From Gloucester church it flew afar— + The style called Perpendicular.— + + To Winton and to Westminster + It ranged, and grew still beautifuller: + + From Solway Frith to Dover Strand + Its fascinations starred the land, + + Not only on cathedral walls + But upon courts and castle halls, + + Till every edifice in the isle + Was patterned to no other style, + + And till, long having played its part, + The curtain fell on Gothic art. + + —Well: when in Wessex on your rounds, + Take a brief step beyond its bounds, + + And enter Gloucester: seek the quoin + Where choir and transept interjoin, + + And, gazing at the forms there flung + Against the sky by one unsung— + + The ogee arches transom-topped, + The tracery-stalks by spandrels stopped, + + Petrified lacework—lightly lined + On ancient massiveness behind— + + Muse that some minds so modest be + As to renounce fame’s fairest fee, + + (Like him who crystallized on this spot + His visionings, but lies forgot, + + And many a mediaeval one + Whose symmetries salute the sun) + + While others boom a baseless claim, + And upon nothing rear a name. + + + +THE JUBILEE OF A MAGAZINE +(_To the Editor_) + + + YES; your up-dated modern page— + All flower-fresh, as it appears— + Can claim a time-tried lineage, + + That reaches backward fifty years + (Which, if but short for sleepy squires, + Is much in magazines’ careers). + + —Here, on your cover, never tires + The sower, reaper, thresher, while + As through the seasons of our sires + + Each wills to work in ancient style + With seedlip, sickle, share and flail, + Though modes have since moved many a mile! + + The steel-roped plough now rips the vale, + With cog and tooth the sheaves are won, + Wired wheels drum out the wheat like hail; + + But if we ask, what has been done + To unify the mortal lot + Since your bright leaves first saw the sun, + + Beyond mechanic furtherance—what + Advance can rightness, candour, claim? + Truth bends abashed, and answers not. + + Despite your volumes’ gentle aim + To straighten visions wry and wrong, + Events jar onward much the same! + + —Had custom tended to prolong, + As on your golden page engrained, + Old processes of blade and prong, + + And best invention been retained + For high crusades to lessen tears + Throughout the race, the world had gained! . . . + But too much, this, for fifty years. + + + +THE SATIN SHOES + + + “IF ever I walk to church to wed, + As other maidens use, + And face the gathered eyes,” she said, + “I’ll go in satin shoes!” + + She was as fair as early day + Shining on meads unmown, + And her sweet syllables seemed to play + Like flute-notes softly blown. + + The time arrived when it was meet + That she should be a bride; + The satin shoes were on her feet, + Her father was at her side. + + They stood within the dairy door, + And gazed across the green; + The church loomed on the distant moor, + But rain was thick between. + + “The grass-path hardly can be stepped, + The lane is like a pool!”— + Her dream is shown to be inept, + Her wish they overrule. + + “To go forth shod in satin soft + A coach would be required!” + For thickest boots the shoes were doffed— + Those shoes her soul desired . . . + + All day the bride, as overborne, + Was seen to brood apart, + And that the shoes had not been worn + Sat heavy on her heart. + + From her wrecked dream, as months flew on, + Her thought seemed not to range. + “What ails the wife?” they said anon, + “That she should be so strange?” . . . + + Ah—what coach comes with furtive glide— + A coach of closed-up kind? + It comes to fetch the last year’s bride, + Who wanders in her mind. + + She strove with them, and fearfully ran + Stairward with one low scream: + “Nay—coax her,” said the madhouse man, + “With some old household theme.” + + “If you will go, dear, you must fain + Put on those shoes—the pair + Meant for your marriage, which the rain + Forbade you then to wear.” + + She clapped her hands, flushed joyous hues; + “O yes—I’ll up and ride + If I am to wear my satin shoes + And be a proper bride!” + + Out then her little foot held she, + As to depart with speed; + The madhouse man smiled pleasantly + To see the wile succeed. + + She turned to him when all was done, + And gave him her thin hand, + Exclaiming like an enraptured one, + “This time it will be grand!” + + She mounted with a face elate, + Shut was the carriage door; + They drove her to the madhouse gate, + And she was seen no more . . . + + Yet she was fair as early day + Shining on meads unmown, + And her sweet syllables seemed to play + Like flute-notes softly blown. + + + +EXEUNT OMNES + + + I + + EVERYBODY else, then, going, + And I still left where the fair was? . . . + Much have I seen of neighbour loungers + Making a lusty showing, + Each now past all knowing. + + II + + There is an air of blankness + In the street and the littered spaces; + Thoroughfare, steeple, bridge and highway + Wizen themselves to lankness; + Kennels dribble dankness. + + III + + Folk all fade. And whither, + As I wait alone where the fair was? + Into the clammy and numbing night-fog + Whence they entered hither. + Soon do I follow thither! + +_June_ 2, 1913. + + + +A POET + + + ATTENTIVE eyes, fantastic heed, + Assessing minds, he does not need, + Nor urgent writs to sup or dine, + Nor pledges in the roseate wine. + + For loud acclaim he does not care + By the august or rich or fair, + Nor for smart pilgrims from afar, + Curious on where his hauntings are. + + But soon or later, when you hear + That he has doffed this wrinkled gear, + Some evening, at the first star-ray, + Come to his graveside, pause and say: + + “Whatever the message his to tell, + Two bright-souled women loved him well.” + Stand and say that amid the dim: + It will be praise enough for him. + +_July_ 1914. + + + +POSTSCRIPT +“MEN WHO MARCH AWAY” +(SONG OF THE SOLDIERS) + + + WHAT of the faith and fire within us + Men who march away + Ere the barn-cocks say + Night is growing gray, + To hazards whence no tears can win us; + What of the faith and fire within us + Men who march away? + + Is it a purblind prank, O think you, + Friend with the musing eye, + Who watch us stepping by + With doubt and dolorous sigh? + Can much pondering so hoodwink you! + Is it a purblind prank, O think you, + Friend with the musing eye? + + Nay. We well see what we are doing, + Though some may not see— + Dalliers as they be— + England’s need are we; + Her distress would leave us rueing: + Nay. We well see what we are doing, + Though some may not see! + + In our heart of hearts believing + Victory crowns the just, + And that braggarts must + Surely bite the dust, + Press we to the field ungrieving, + In our heart of hearts believing + Victory crowns the just. + + Hence the faith and fire within us + Men who march away + Ere the barn-cocks say + Night is growing gray, + To hazards whence no tears can win us: + Hence the faith and fire within us + Men who march away. + +_September_ 5, 1914. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE*** + + +******* This file should be named 2863-0.txt or 2863-0.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. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + 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. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/2863-0.zip b/2863-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e3945ac --- /dev/null +++ b/2863-0.zip diff --git a/2863-h.zip b/2863-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b00e995 --- /dev/null +++ b/2863-h.zip 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. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + 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. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +</pre></body> +</html> diff --git a/2863-h/images/coverb.jpg b/2863-h/images/coverb.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9531381 --- /dev/null +++ b/2863-h/images/coverb.jpg diff --git a/2863-h/images/covers.jpg b/2863-h/images/covers.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1f2622 --- /dev/null +++ b/2863-h/images/covers.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7d88f42 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #2863 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2863) diff --git a/old/satcr10.txt b/old/satcr10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..157af76 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/satcr10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5631 @@ +Project Gutenberg Etext of Satires of Circumstance etc. by Hardy +#9 in our series by Thomas Hardy + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words +are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they +need about what they can legally do with the texts. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + +Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in: +Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, +Iowa, Indiana, and Vermont. As the requirements for other states +are met, additions to this list will be made and fund raising will +begin in the additional states. These donations should be made to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655 + + +Title: Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with +Miscellaneous Pieces + +Author: Thomas Hardy + +Release Date: October, 2001 [Etext #2863] +[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule] + +Edition: 10 + + +Project Gutenberg Etext of Satires of Circumstance etc. by Hardy +******This file should be named satcr10.txt or satcr10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, satcr11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, satcr10a.txt + + +This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, +from the 1919 Macmillan and Co edition. + + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any +of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after +the official publication date. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our sites at: +http://gutenberg.net +http://promo.net/pg + + +Those of you who want to download our Etexts before announcment +can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext01 +or +ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext01 + +Or /etext00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext +files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+ +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third +of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we +manage to get some real funding. + +Something is needed to create a future for Project Gutenberg for +the next 100 years. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in: +Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, +Iowa, Indiana, and Vermont. As the requirements for other states +are met, additions to this list will be made and fund raising will +begin in the additional states. + +All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and will be tax deductible to the extent +permitted by law. + +Mail to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Avenue +Oxford, MS 38655 [USA] + +We are working with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation to build more stable support and ensure the +future of Project Gutenberg. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +You can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org +if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if +it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . . + +We would prefer to send you this information by email. + + +Example command-line FTP session: + +ftp metalab.unc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg +cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext01, etc. +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] +GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books] + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain etexts, and royalty free copyright licenses. +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, +from the 1919 Macmillan and Co edition. + + + + + +SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE WITH MISCELLANEOUS PIECES + +by Thomas Hardy + + + + +Contents: + +Lyrics and Reveries + In Front of the Landscape + Channel Firing + The Convergence of the Twain + The Ghost of the Past + After the Visit + To Meet, or Otherwise + The Difference + The Sun on the Bookcase + "When I set out for Lyonnesse" + A Thunderstorm in Town + The Torn Letter + Beyond the Last Lamp + The Face at the Casement + Lost Love + "My spirit will not haunt the mound" + "Wessex Heights + In Death divided + The Place on the Map + Where the Picnic was + The Schreckhorn + A Singer asleep + A Plaint to Man + God's Funeral + Spectres that grieve + "Ah, are you digging on my grave?" +Satires of Circumstance + At Tea + In Church + By her Aunt's Grave + In the Room of the Bride-elect + At the Watering-place + In the Cemetery + Outside the Window + In the Study + At the Altar-rail + In the Nuptial Chamber + In the Restaurant + At the Draper's + On the Death-bed + Over the Coffin + In the Moonlight + Self-unconscious + The Discovery + Tolerance + Before and after Summer + At Day-close in November + The Year's Awakening + Under the Waterfall + The Spell of the Rose + St. Launce's revisited +Poems of 1912-13- + The Going + Your Last Drive + The Walk + Rain on a Grace + "I found her out there" + Without Ceremony + Lament + The Haunter + The Voice + His Visitor + A Circular + A Dream or No + After a Journey + A Death-ray recalled + Beeny Cliff + At Castle Boterel + Places + The Phantom Horsewoman +Miscellaneous Pieces + The Wistful Lady + The Woman in the Rye + The Cheval-Glass + The Re-enactment + Her Secret + "She charged me" + The Newcomer's Wife + A Conversation at Dawn + A King's Soliloquy + The Coronation + Aquae Sulis + Seventy-four and Twenty + The Elopement + "I rose up as my custom is" + A Week + Had you wept + Bereft, she thinks she dreams + In the British Museum + In the Servants' Quarters + The Obliterate Tomb + "Regret not me" + The Recalcitrants + Starlings on the Roof + The Moon looks in + The Sweet Hussy + The Telegram + The Moth-signal + Seen by the Waits + The Two Soldiers + The Death of Regret + In the Days of Crinoline + The Roman Gravemounds + The Workbox + The Sacrilege + The Abbey Mason + The Jubilee of a Magazine + The Satin Shoes + Exeunt Omnes + A Poet +Postscript + "Men who march away" + + + +IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE + + + +Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions, + Dolorous and dear, +Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters + Stretching around, +Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape + Yonder and near, + +Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland + Foliage-crowned, +Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flat + Stroked by the light, +Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial + Meadow or mound. + +What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost + Under my sight, +Hindering me to discern my paced advancement + Lengthening to miles; +What were the re-creations killing the daytime + As by the night? + +O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent, + Some as with smiles, +Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundled + Over the wrecked +Cheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with anguish, + Harrowed by wiles. + +Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them - + Halo-bedecked - +And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason, + Rigid in hate, +Smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision, + Dreaded, suspect. + +Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasons + Further in date; +Instruments of strings with the tenderest passion + Vibrant, beside +Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth's crust + Now corporate. + +Also there rose a headland of hoary aspect + Gnawed by the tide, +Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there + Guilelessly glad - +Wherefore they knew not--touched by the fringe of an ecstasy + Scantly descried. + +Later images too did the day unfurl me, + Shadowed and sad, +Clay cadavers of those who had shared in the dramas, + Laid now at ease, +Passions all spent, chiefest the one of the broad brow + Sepulture-clad. + +So did beset me scenes miscalled of the bygone, + Over the leaze, +Past the clump, and down to where lay the beheld ones; + --Yea, as the rhyme +Sung by the sea-swell, so in their pleading dumbness + Captured me these. + +For, their lost revisiting manifestations + In their own time +Much had I slighted, caring not for their purport, + Seeing behind +Things more coveted, reckoned the better worth calling + Sweet, sad, sublime. + +Thus do they now show hourly before the intenser + Stare of the mind +As they were ghosts avenging their slights by my bypast + Body-borne eyes, +Show, too, with fuller translation than rested upon them + As living kind. + +Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, saying + In their surmise, +"Ah--whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing nought + Round him that looms +Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings, + Save a few tombs?" + + + +CHANNEL FIRING + + + +That night your great guns, unawares, +Shook all our coffins as we lay, +And broke the chancel window-squares, +We thought it was the Judgment-day + +And sat upright. While drearisome +Arose the howl of wakened hounds: +The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, +The worms drew back into the mounds, + +The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No; +It's gunnery practice out at sea +Just as before you went below; +The world is as it used to be: + +"All nations striving strong to make +Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters +They do no more for Christes sake +Than you who are helpless in such matters. + +"That this is not the judgment-hour +For some of them's a blessed thing, +For if it were they'd have to scour +Hell's floor for so much threatening . . . + +"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when +I blow the trumpet (if indeed +I ever do; for you are men, +And rest eternal sorely need)." + +So down we lay again. "I wonder, +Will the world ever saner be," +Said one, "than when He sent us under +In our indifferent century!" + +And many a skeleton shook his head. +"Instead of preaching forty year," +My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, +"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer." + +Again the guns disturbed the hour, +Roaring their readiness to avenge, +As far inland as Stourton Tower, +And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. + +April 1914. + + + +THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN + + + +(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic") + +I + + In a solitude of the sea + Deep from human vanity, +And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. + +II + + Steel chambers, late the pyres + Of her salamandrine fires, +Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. + +III + + Over the mirrors meant + To glass the opulent +The sea-worm crawls--grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. + +IV + + Jewels in joy designed + To ravish the sensuous mind +Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. + +V + + Dim moon-eyed fishes near + Gaze at the gilded gear +And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" . . . + +VI + + Well: while was fashioning + This creature of cleaving wing, +The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything + +VII + + Prepared a sinister mate + For her--so gaily great - +A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate. + +VIII + + And as the smart ship grew + In stature, grace, and hue, +In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. + +IX + + Alien they seemed to be: + No mortal eye could see +The intimate welding of their later history, + +X + + Or sign that they were bent + By paths coincident +On being anon twin halves of one august event, + +XI + + Till the Spinner of the Years + Said "Now!" And each one hears, +And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres. + + + +THE GHOST OF THE PAST + + + +We two kept house, the Past and I, + The Past and I; +I tended while it hovered nigh, + Leaving me never alone. +It was a spectral housekeeping + Where fell no jarring tone, +As strange, as still a housekeeping + As ever has been known. + +As daily I went up the stair + And down the stair, +I did not mind the Bygone there - + The Present once to me; +Its moving meek companionship + I wished might ever be, +There was in that companionship + Something of ecstasy. + +It dwelt with me just as it was, + Just as it was +When first its prospects gave me pause + In wayward wanderings, +Before the years had torn old troths + As they tear all sweet things, +Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths + And dulled old rapturings. + +And then its form began to fade, + Began to fade, +Its gentle echoes faintlier played + At eves upon my ear +Than when the autumn's look embrowned + The lonely chambers here, +The autumn's settling shades embrowned + Nooks that it haunted near. + +And so with time my vision less, + Yea, less and less +Makes of that Past my housemistress, + It dwindles in my eye; +It looms a far-off skeleton + And not a comrade nigh, +A fitful far-off skeleton + Dimming as days draw by. + + + +AFTER THE VISIT +(To F. E. D.) + + + + Come again to the place +Where your presence was as a leaf that skims +Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims + The bloom on the farer's face. + + Come again, with the feet +That were light on the green as a thistledown ball, +And those mute ministrations to one and to all + Beyond a man's saying sweet. + + Until then the faint scent +Of the bordering flowers swam unheeded away, +And I marked not the charm in the changes of day + As the cloud-colours came and went. + + Through the dark corridors +Your walk was so soundless I did not know +Your form from a phantom's of long ago + Said to pass on the ancient floors, + + Till you drew from the shade, +And I saw the large luminous living eyes +Regard me in fixed inquiring-wise + As those of a soul that weighed, + + Scarce consciously, +The eternal question of what Life was, +And why we were there, and by whose strange laws + That which mattered most could not be. + + + +TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE + + + +Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams, + Or whether to stay +And see thee not! How vast the difference seems + Of Yea from Nay +Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams + At no far day +On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh! + +Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make + The most I can +Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian +Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache, + While still we scan +Round our frail faltering progress for some path or plan. + +By briefest meeting something sure is won; + It will have been: +Nor God nor Daemon can undo the done, + Unsight the seen, +Make muted music be as unbegun, + Though things terrene +Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene. + +So, to the one long-sweeping symphony + From times remote +Till now, of human tenderness, shall we + Supply one note, +Small and untraced, yet that will ever be + Somewhere afloat +Amid the spheres, as part of sick Life's antidote. + + + +THE DIFFERENCE + + + +I + +Sinking down by the gate I discern the thin moon, +And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine, +But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird's tune, +For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine. + +II + +Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such as now, +The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon; +But she will see never this gate, path, or bough, +Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune. + + + +THE SUN ON THE BOOKCASE +(Student's Love-song) + + + +Once more the cauldron of the sun +Smears the bookcase with winy red, +And here my page is, and there my bed, +And the apple-tree shadows travel along. +Soon their intangible track will be run, + And dusk grow strong + And they be fled. + +Yes: now the boiling ball is gone, +And I have wasted another day . . . +But wasted--WASTED, do I say? +Is it a waste to have imaged one +Beyond the hills there, who, anon, + My great deeds done + Will be mine alway? + + + +"WHEN I SET OUT FOR LYONNESSE" + + + +When I set out for Lyonnesse, + A hundred miles away, + The rime was on the spray, +And starlight lit my lonesomeness +When I set out for Lyonnesse + A hundred miles away. + +What would bechance at Lyonnesse + While I should sojourn there + No prophet durst declare, +Nor did the wisest wizard guess +What would bechance at Lyonnesse + While I should sojourn there. + +When I came back from Lyonnesse + With magic in my eyes, + None managed to surmise +What meant my godlike gloriousness, +When I came back from Lyonnesse + With magic in my eyes. + + + +A THUNDERSTORM IN TOWN +(A Reminiscence) + + + +She wore a new "terra-cotta" dress, +And we stayed, because of the pelting storm, +Within the hansom's dry recess, +Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless + We sat on, snug and warm. + +Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain, +And the glass that had screened our forms before +Flew up, and out she sprang to her door: +I should have kissed her if the rain + Had lasted a minute more. + + + +THE TORN LETTER + + + +I + +I tore your letter into strips + No bigger than the airy feathers + That ducks preen out in changing weathers +Upon the shifting ripple-tips. + +II + +In darkness on my bed alone + I seemed to see you in a vision, + And hear you say: "Why this derision +Of one drawn to you, though unknown?" + +III + +Yes, eve's quick mood had run its course, + The night had cooled my hasty madness; + I suffered a regretful sadness +Which deepened into real remorse. + +IV + +I thought what pensive patient days + A soul must know of grain so tender, + How much of good must grace the sender +Of such sweet words in such bright phrase. + +V + +Uprising then, as things unpriced + I sought each fragment, patched and mended; + The midnight whitened ere I had ended +And gathered words I had sacrificed. + +VI + +But some, alas, of those I threw + Were past my search, destroyed for ever: + They were your name and place; and never +Did I regain those clues to you. + +VII + +I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed, + My track; that, so the Will decided, + In life, death, we should be divided, +And at the sense I ached indeed. + +VIII + +That ache for you, born long ago, + Throbs on; I never could outgrow it. + What a revenge, did you but know it! +But that, thank God, you do not know. + + + +BEYOND THE LAST LAMP +(Near Tooting Common) + + + +I + +While rain, with eve in partnership, +Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip, +Beyond the last lone lamp I passed + Walking slowly, whispering sadly, + Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast: +Some heavy thought constrained each face, +And blinded them to time and place. + +II + +The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed +In mental scenes no longer orbed +By love's young rays. Each countenance + As it slowly, as it sadly + Caught the lamplight's yellow glance +Held in suspense a misery +At things which had been or might be. + +III + +When I retrod that watery way +Some hours beyond the droop of day, +Still I found pacing there the twain + Just as slowly, just as sadly, + Heedless of the night and rain. +One could but wonder who they were +And what wild woe detained them there. + +IV + +Though thirty years of blur and blot +Have slid since I beheld that spot, +And saw in curious converse there + Moving slowly, moving sadly + That mysterious tragic pair, +Its olden look may linger on - +All but the couple; they have gone. + +V + +Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And yet +To me, when nights are weird and wet, +Without those comrades there at tryst + Creeping slowly, creeping sadly, + That lone lane does not exist. +There they seem brooding on their pain, +And will, while such a lane remain. + + + +THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT + + + + If ever joy leave +An abiding sting of sorrow, +So befell it on the morrow + Of that May eve . . . + + The travelled sun dropped +To the north-west, low and lower, +The pony's trot grew slower, + And then we stopped. + + "This cosy house just by +I must call at for a minute, +A sick man lies within it + Who soon will die. + + "He wished to marry me, +So I am bound, when I drive near him, +To inquire, if but to cheer him, + How he may be." + + A message was sent in, +And wordlessly we waited, +Till some one came and stated + The bulletin. + + And that the sufferer said, +For her call no words could thank her; +As his angel he must rank her + Till life's spark fled. + + Slowly we drove away, +When I turned my head, although not +Called; why so I turned I know not + Even to this day. + + And lo, there in my view +Pressed against an upper lattice +Was a white face, gazing at us + As we withdrew. + + And well did I divine +It to be the man's there dying, +Who but lately had been sighing + For her pledged mine. + + Then I deigned a deed of hell; +It was done before I knew it; +What devil made me do it + I cannot tell! + + Yes, while he gazed above, +I put my arm about her +That he might see, nor doubt her + My plighted Love. + + The pale face vanished quick, +As if blasted, from the casement, +And my shame and self-abasement + Began their prick. + + And they prick on, ceaselessly, +For that stab in Love's fierce fashion +Which, unfired by lover's passion, + Was foreign to me. + + She smiled at my caress, +But why came the soft embowment +Of her shoulder at that moment + She did not guess. + + Long long years has he lain +In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather: +What tears there, bared to weather, + Will cleanse that stain! + + Love is long-suffering, brave, +Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel; +But O, too, Love is cruel, + Cruel as the grave. + + + +LOST LOVE + + + +I play my sweet old airs - + The airs he knew + When our love was true - + But he does not balk + His determined walk, +And passes up the stairs. + +I sing my songs once more, + And presently hear + His footstep near + As if it would stay; + But he goes his way, +And shuts a distant door. + +So I wait for another morn + And another night + In this soul-sick blight; + And I wonder much + As I sit, why such +A woman as I was born! + + + +"MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND" + + + +My spirit will not haunt the mound + Above my breast, +But travel, memory-possessed, +To where my tremulous being found + Life largest, best. + +My phantom-footed shape will go + When nightfall grays +Hither and thither along the ways +I and another used to know + In backward days. + +And there you'll find me, if a jot + You still should care +For me, and for my curious air; +If otherwise, then I shall not, + For you, be there. + + + +WESSEX HEIGHTS (1896) + + + +There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand +For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, +Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, +I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be. + +In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man's friend - +Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to +mend: +Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I, +But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky. + +In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways - +Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days: +They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things - +Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings. + +Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was, +And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause +Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this, +Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis. + +I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the +moon, +Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune; +I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now +passed +For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast. + +There's a ghost at Yell'ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the +night, +There's a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a +shroud of white, +There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near, +I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear. + +As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers, +I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers; +Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know; +Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go. + +So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west, +Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest, +Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me, +And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty. + + + +IN DEATH DIVIDED + + + +I + + I shall rot here, with those whom in their day + You never knew, + And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay, + Met not my view, +Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you. + +II + + No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower, + While earth endures, + Will fall on my mound and within the hour + Steal on to yours; +One robin never haunt our two green covertures. + +III + + Some organ may resound on Sunday noons + By where you lie, + Some other thrill the panes with other tunes + Where moulder I; +No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby. + +IV + + The simply-cut memorial at my head + Perhaps may take + A Gothic form, and that above your bed + Be Greek in make; +No linking symbol show thereon for our tale's sake. + +V + + And in the monotonous moils of strained, hard-run + Humanity, + The eternal tie which binds us twain in one + No eye will see +Stretching across the miles that sever you from me. + + + +THE PLACE ON THE MAP + + + +I + + I look upon the map that hangs by me - +Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry - + And I mark a jutting height +Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea. + +II + + --'Twas a day of latter summer, hot and dry; +Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked on, she and I, + By this spot where, calmly quite, +She informed me what would happen by and by. + +III + + This hanging map depicts the coast and place, +And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case + All distinctly to my sight, +And her tension, and the aspect of her face. + +IV + + Weeks and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue, +Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too, + While she told what, as by sleight, +Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue. + +V + + For the wonder and the wormwood of the whole +Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soul + Wore a torrid tragic light +Under order-keeping's rigorous control. + +VI + + So, the map revives her words, the spot, the time, +And the thing we found we had to face before the next year's prime; + The charted coast stares bright, +And its episode comes back in pantomime. + + + +WHERE THE PICNIC WAS + + + +Where we made the fire, +In the summer time, +Of branch and briar +On the hill to the sea +I slowly climb +Through winter mire, +And scan and trace +The forsaken place +Quite readily. + +Now a cold wind blows, +And the grass is gray, +But the spot still shows +As a burnt circle--aye, +And stick-ends, charred, +Still strew the sward +Whereon I stand, +Last relic of the band +Who came that day! + +Yes, I am here +Just as last year, +And the sea breathes brine +From its strange straight line +Up hither, the same +As when we four came. +- But two have wandered far +From this grassy rise +Into urban roar +Where no picnics are, +And one--has shut her eyes +For evermore. + + + +THE SCHRECKHORN +(With thoughts of Leslie Stephen) +(June 1897) + + + +Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim; +Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams +Upon my nearing vision, less it seems +A looming Alp-height than a guise of him +Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb, +Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe, +Of semblance to his personality +In its quaint glooms, keen lights, and rugged trim. + +At his last change, when Life's dull coils unwind, +Will he, in old love, hitherward escape, +And the eternal essence of his mind +Enter this silent adamantine shape, +And his low voicing haunt its slipping snows +When dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose? + + + +A SINGER ASLEEP +(Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909) + + + +I + +In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea, +That sentrys up and down all night, all day, +From cove to promontory, from ness to bay, + The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally. + +II + +- It was as though a garland of red roses +Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun +When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun, +In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes, +Upon Victoria's formal middle time + His leaves of rhythm and rhyme. + +III + +O that far morning of a summer day +When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay +Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes, +I walked and read with a quick glad surprise + New words, in classic guise, - + +IV + +The passionate pages of his earlier years, +Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears; +Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who +Blew them not naively, but as one who knew + Full well why thus he blew. + +V + +I still can hear the brabble and the roar +At those thy tunes, O still one, now passed through +That fitful fire of tongues then entered new! +Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore; + Thine swells yet more and more. + +VI + +- His singing-mistress verily was no other +Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother +Of all the tribe that feel in melodies; +Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep +Into the rambling world-encircling deep + Which hides her where none sees. + +VII + +And one can hold in thought that nightly here +His phantom may draw down to the water's brim, +And hers come up to meet it, as a dim +Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere, +And mariners wonder as they traverse near, + Unknowing of her and him. + +VIII + +One dreams him sighing to her spectral form: +"O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line; +Where are those songs, O poetess divine +Whose very arts are love incarnadine?" +And her smile back: "Disciple true and warm, + Sufficient now are thine." . . . + +IX + +So here, beneath the waking constellations, +Where the waves peal their everlasting strains, +And their dull subterrene reverberations +Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains - +Him once their peer in sad improvisations, +And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes - +I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines + Upon the capes and chines. + +BONCHURCH, 1910. + + + +A PLAINT TO MAN + + + +When you slowly emerged from the den of Time, +And gained percipience as you grew, +And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime, + +Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you +The unhappy need of creating me - +A form like your own--for praying to? + +My virtue, power, utility, +Within my maker must all abide, +Since none in myself can ever be, + +One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide +Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet, +And by none but its showman vivified. + +"Such a forced device," you may say, "is meet +For easing a loaded heart at whiles: +Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat + +Somewhere above the gloomy aisles +Of this wailful world, or he could not bear +The irk no local hope beguiles." + +- But since I was framed in your first despair +The doing without me has had no play +In the minds of men when shadows scare; + +And now that I dwindle day by day +Beneath the deicide eyes of seers +In a light that will not let me stay, + +And to-morrow the whole of me disappears, +The truth should be told, and the fact be faced +That had best been faced in earlier years: + +The fact of life with dependence placed +On the human heart's resource alone, +In brotherhood bonded close and graced + +With loving-kindness fully blown, +And visioned help unsought, unknown. + +1909-10. + + + +GOD'S FUNERAL + + + +I + + I saw a slowly-stepping train - +Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar - +Following in files across a twilit plain +A strange and mystic form the foremost bore. + +II + + And by contagious throbs of thought +Or latent knowledge that within me lay +And had already stirred me, I was wrought +To consciousness of sorrow even as they. + +III + + The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes, +At first seemed man-like, and anon to change +To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size, +At times endowed with wings of glorious range. + +IV + + And this phantasmal variousness +Ever possessed it as they drew along: +Yet throughout all it symboled none the less +Potency vast and loving-kindness strong. + +V + + Almost before I knew I bent +Towards the moving columns without a word; +They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went, +Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:- + +VI + + "O man-projected Figure, of late +Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive? +Whence came it we were tempted to create +One whom we can no longer keep alive? + +VII + + "Framing him jealous, fierce, at first, +We gave him justice as the ages rolled, +Will to bless those by circumstance accurst, +And longsuffering, and mercies manifold. + +VIII + + "And, tricked by our own early dream +And need of solace, we grew self-deceived, +Our making soon our maker did we deem, +And what we had imagined we believed. + +IX + + "Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing, +Uncompromising rude reality +Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning, +Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be. + +X + + "So, toward our myth's oblivion, +Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope +Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon, +Whose Zion was a still abiding hope. + +XI + + "How sweet it was in years far hied +To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer, +To lie down liegely at the eventide +And feel a blest assurance he was there! + +XII + + "And who or what shall fill his place? +Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes +For some fixed star to stimulate their pace +Towards the goal of their enterprise?" . . . + +XIII + + Some in the background then I saw, +Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous, +Who chimed as one: "This figure is of straw, +This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!" + +XIV + + I could not prop their faith: and yet +Many I had known: with all I sympathized; +And though struck speechless, I did not forget +That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized. + +XV + + Still, how to bear such loss I deemed +The insistent question for each animate mind, +And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed +A pale yet positive gleam low down behind, + +XVI + + Whereof to lift the general night, +A certain few who stood aloof had said, +"See you upon the horizon that small light - +Swelling somewhat?" Each mourner shook his head. + +XVII + + And they composed a crowd of whom +Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . . +Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom +Mechanically I followed with the rest. + +1908-10. + + + +SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE + + + +"It is not death that harrows us," they lipped, +"The soundless cell is in itself relief, +For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped +At unawares, and at its best but brief." + +The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone, +Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye, +As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone +From the sward near me, as from a nether sky. + +And much surprised was I that, spent and dead, +They should not, like the many, be at rest, +But stray as apparitions; hence I said, +"Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed? + +"We are among the few death sets not free, +The hurt, misrepresented names, who come +At each year's brink, and cry to History +To do them justice, or go past them dumb. + +"We are stript of rights; our shames lie unredressed, +Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown, +Our words in morsels merely are expressed +On the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown." + +Then all these shaken slighted visitants sped +Into the vague, and left me musing there +On fames that well might instance what they had said, +Until the New-Year's dawn strode up the air. + + + +"AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?" + + + +"Ah, are you digging on my grave + My loved one?--planting rue?" +- "No: yesterday he went to wed +One of the brightest wealth has bred. +'It cannot hurt her now,' he said, + 'That I should not be true.'" + +"Then who is digging on my grave? + My nearest dearest kin?" +- "Ah, no; they sit and think, 'What use! +What good will planting flowers produce? +No tendance of her mound can loose + Her spirit from Death's gin.'" + +"But some one digs upon my grave? + My enemy?--prodding sly?" +- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate +That shuts on all flesh soon or late, +She thought you no more worth her hate, + And cares not where you lie." + +"Then, who is digging on my grave? + Say--since I have not guessed!" +- "O it is I, my mistress dear, +Your little dog, who still lives near, +And much I hope my movements here + Have not disturbed your rest?" + +"Ah, yes! YOU dig upon my grave . . . + Why flashed it not on me +That one true heart was left behind! +What feeling do we ever find +To equal among human kind + A dog's fidelity!" + +"Mistress, I dug upon your grave + To bury a bone, in case +I should be hungry near this spot +When passing on my daily trot. +I am sorry, but I quite forgot + It was your resting-place." + + + + +SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES +IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES + + + + +I--AT TEA + + + +The kettle descants in a cozy drone, +And the young wife looks in her husband's face, +And then at her guest's, and shows in her own +Her sense that she fills an envied place; +And the visiting lady is all abloom, +And says there was never so sweet a room. + +And the happy young housewife does not know +That the woman beside her was first his choice, +Till the fates ordained it could not be so . . . +Betraying nothing in look or voice +The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, +And he throws her a stray glance yearningly. + + + +II--IN CHURCH + + + +"And now to God the Father," he ends, +And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: +Each listener chokes as he bows and bends, +And emotion pervades the crowded aisles. +Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door, +And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more. + +The door swings softly ajar meanwhile, +And a pupil of his in the Bible class, +Who adores him as one without gloss or guile, +Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile +And re-enact at the vestry-glass +Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show +That had moved the congregation so. + + + +III--BY HER AUNT'S GRAVE + + + +"Sixpence a week," says the girl to her lover, +"Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide +In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover +The cost of her headstone when she died. +And that was a year ago last June; +I've not yet fixed it. But I must soon." + +"And where is the money now, my dear?" +"O, snug in my purse . . . Aunt was SO slow +In saving it--eighty weeks, or near." . . . +"Let's spend it," he hints. "For she won't know. +There's a dance to-night at the Load of Hay." +She passively nods. And they go that way. + + + +IV--IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT + + + +"Would it had been the man of our wish!" +Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she +In the wedding-dress--the wife to be - +"Then why were you so mollyish +As not to insist on him for me!" +The mother, amazed: "Why, dearest one, +Because you pleaded for this or none!" + +"But Father and you should have stood out strong! +Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find +That you were right and that I was wrong; +This man is a dolt to the one declined . . . +Ah!--here he comes with his button-hole rose. +Good God--I must marry him I suppose!" + + + +V--AT A WATERING-PLACE + + + +They sit and smoke on the esplanade, +The man and his friend, and regard the bay +Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed, +Smile sallowly in the decline of day. +And saunterers pass with laugh and jest - +A handsome couple among the rest. + +"That smart proud pair," says the man to his friend, +"Are to marry next week . . . How little he thinks +That dozens of days and nights on end +I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links +Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm . . . +Well, bliss is in ignorance: what's the harm!" + + + +VI --IN THE CEMETERY + + + +"You see those mothers squabbling there?" +Remarks the man of the cemetery. +One says in tears, ''Tis mine lies here!' +Another, 'Nay, mine, you Pharisee!' +Another, 'How dare you move my flowers +And put your own on this grave of ours!' +But all their children were laid therein +At different times, like sprats in a tin. + +"And then the main drain had to cross, +And we moved the lot some nights ago, +And packed them away in the general foss +With hundreds more. But their folks don't know, +And as well cry over a new-laid drain +As anything else, to ease your pain!" + + + +VII--OUTSIDE THE WINDOW + + + +"My stick!" he says, and turns in the lane +To the house just left, whence a vixen voice +Comes out with the firelight through the pane, +And he sees within that the girl of his choice +Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare +For something said while he was there. + +"At last I behold her soul undraped!" +Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself; +"My God--'tis but narrowly I have escaped. - +My precious porcelain proves it delf." +His face has reddened like one ashamed, +And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed. + + + +VIII--IN THE STUDY + + + +He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair +Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there, +A type of decayed gentility; +And by some small signs he well can guess +That she comes to him almost breakfastless. + +"I have called--I hope I do not err - +I am looking for a purchaser +Of some score volumes of the works +Of eminent divines I own, - +Left by my father--though it irks +My patience to offer them." And she smiles +As if necessity were unknown; +"But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles +I have wished, as I am fond of art, +To make my rooms a little smart." +And lightly still she laughs to him, +As if to sell were a mere gay whim, +And that, to be frank, Life were indeed +To her not vinegar and gall, +But fresh and honey-like; and Need +No household skeleton at all. + + + +IX--AT THE ALTAR-RAIL + + + +"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom, +And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own +It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room +When I went to the Cattle-Show alone, +And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps, +And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps. + +"Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife - +'Twas foolish perhaps!--to forsake the ways +Of the flaring town for a farmer's life. +She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says: +'It's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest, +But a swift, short, gay life suits me best. +What I really am you have never gleaned; +I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned.'" + + + +X--IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER + + + +"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed +Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride; +"And why?" asks the man she had that day wed, +With a start, as the band plays on outside. +"It's the townsfolks' cheery compliment +Because of our marriage, my Innocent." + +"O but you don't know! 'Tis the passionate air +To which my old Love waltzed with me, +And I swore as we spun that none should share +My home, my kisses, till death, save he! +And he dominates me and thrills me through, +And it's he I embrace while embracing you!" + + + +XI--IN THE RESTAURANT + + + +"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born, +It will pass as your husband's with the rest, +While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn +Will be gleaming at us from east to west; +And the child will come as a life despised; +I feel an elopement is ill-advised!" + +"O you realize not what it is, my dear, +To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms +Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here, +And nightly take him into my arms! +Come to the child no name or fame, +Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame." + + + +XII--AT THE DRAPER'S + + + +"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear, + But you did not perceive me. +Well, when they deliver what you were shown + _I_ shall know nothing of it, believe me!" + +And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said, + "O, I didn't see you come in there - +Why couldn't you speak?"--"Well, I didn't. I left + That you should not notice I'd been there. + +"You were viewing some lovely things. 'Soon required + For a widow, of latest fashion'; +And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man + Who had to be cold and ashen + +"And screwed in a box before they could dress you + 'In the last new note in mourning,' +As they defined it. So, not to distress you, + I left you to your adorning." + + + +XIII--ON THE DEATH-BED + + + +"I'll tell--being past all praying for - +Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war, +And got some scent of the intimacy +That was under way between her and me; +And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost +One night, at the very time almost +That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead, +And secretly buried him. Nothing was said. + +"The news of the battle came next day; +He was scheduled missing. I hurried away, +Got out there, visited the field, +And sent home word that a search revealed +He was one of the slain; though, lying alone + And stript, his body had not been known. + +"But she suspected. I lost her love, + Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above; +And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score, +Though it be burning for evermore." + + + +XIV--OVER THE COFFIN + + + +They stand confronting, the coffin between, +His wife of old, and his wife of late, +And the dead man whose they both had been +Seems listening aloof, as to things past date. +--"I have called," says the first. "Do you marvel or not?" +"In truth," says the second, "I do--somewhat." + +"Well, there was a word to be said by me! . . . +I divorced that man because of you - +It seemed I must do it, boundenly; +But now I am older, and tell you true, +For life is little, and dead lies he; +I would I had let alone you two! +And both of us, scorning parochial ways, +Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs' days." + + + +XV--IN THE MOONLIGHT + + + +"O lonely workman, standing there +In a dream, why do you stare and stare +At her grave, as no other grave there were? + +"If your great gaunt eyes so importune +Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon, +Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!" + +"Why, fool, it is what I would rather see +Than all the living folk there be; +But alas, there is no such joy for me!" + +"Ah--she was one you loved, no doubt, +Through good and evil, through rain and drought, +And when she passed, all your sun went out?" + +"Nay: she was the woman I did not love, +Whom all the others were ranked above, +Whom during her life I thought nothing of." + + + + +LYRICS AND REVERIES +(continued) + + + + +SELF-UNCONSCIOUS + + + + Along the way + He walked that day, +Watching shapes that reveries limn, + And seldom he + Had eyes to see +The moment that encompassed him. + + Bright yellowhammers + Made mirthful clamours, +And billed long straws with a bustling air, + And bearing their load + Flew up the road +That he followed, alone, without interest there. + + From bank to ground + And over and round +They sidled along the adjoining hedge; + Sometimes to the gutter + Their yellow flutter +Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge. + + The smooth sea-line + With a metal shine, +And flashes of white, and a sail thereon, + He would also descry + With a half-wrapt eye +Between the projects he mused upon. + + Yes, round him were these + Earth's artistries, +But specious plans that came to his call + Did most engage + His pilgrimage, +While himself he did not see at all. + + Dead now as sherds + Are the yellow birds, +And all that mattered has passed away; + Yet God, the Elf, + Now shows him that self +As he was, and should have been shown, that day. + + O it would have been good + Could he then have stood +At a focussed distance, and conned the whole, + But now such vision + Is mere derision, +Nor soothes his body nor saves his soul. + + Not much, some may + Incline to say, +To see therein, had it all been seen. + Nay! he is aware + A thing was there +That loomed with an immortal mien. + + + +THE DISCOVERY + + + + I wandered to a crude coast + Like a ghost; + Upon the hills I saw fires - + Funeral pyres + Seemingly--and heard breaking +Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking. + + And so I never once guessed + A Love-nest, + Bowered and candle-lit, lay + In my way, + Till I found a hid hollow, +Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow. + + + +TOLERANCE + + + +"It is a foolish thing," said I, +"To bear with such, and pass it by; +Yet so I do, I know not why!" + +And at each clash I would surmise +That if I had acted otherwise +I might have saved me many sighs. + +But now the only happiness +In looking back that I possess - +Whose lack would leave me comfortless - + +Is to remember I refrained +From masteries I might have gained, +And for my tolerance was disdained; + +For see, a tomb. And if it were +I had bent and broke, I should not dare +To linger in the shadows there. + + + +BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER + + + +I + +Looking forward to the spring +One puts up with anything. +On this February day, +Though the winds leap down the street, +Wintry scourgings seem but play, +And these later shafts of sleet +--Sharper pointed than the first - +And these later snows--the worst - +Are as a half-transparent blind +Riddled by rays from sun behind. + +II + +Shadows of the October pine +Reach into this room of mine: +On the pine there stands a bird; +He is shadowed with the tree. +Mutely perched he bills no word; +Blank as I am even is he. +For those happy suns are past, +Fore-discerned in winter last. +When went by their pleasure, then? +I, alas, perceived not when. + + + +AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER + + + +The ten hours' light is abating, + And a late bird flies across, +Where the pines, like waltzers waiting, + Give their black heads a toss. + +Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time, + Float past like specks in the eye; +I set every tree in my June time, + And now they obscure the sky. + +And the children who ramble through here + Conceive that there never has been +A time when no tall trees grew here, + A time when none will be seen. + + + +THE YEAR'S AWAKENING + + + +How do you know that the pilgrim track +Along the belting zodiac +Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds +Is traced by now to the Fishes' bounds +And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud +Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud, +And never as yet a tinct of spring +Has shown in the Earth's apparelling; + O vespering bird, how do you know, + How do you know? + +How do you know, deep underground, +Hid in your bed from sight and sound, +Without a turn in temperature, +With weather life can scarce endure, +That light has won a fraction's strength, +And day put on some moments' length, +Whereof in merest rote will come, +Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb; + O crocus root, how do you know, + How do you know? + +February 1910. + + + +UNDER THE WATERFALL + + + +"Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, +In a basin of water, I never miss +The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day +Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray. + Hence the only prime + And real love-rhyme + That I know by heart, + And that leaves no smart, +Is the purl of a little valley fall +About three spans wide and two spans tall +Over a table of solid rock, +And into a scoop of the self-same block; +The purl of a runlet that never ceases +In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces; +With a hollow boiling voice it speaks +And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks." + +"And why gives this the only prime +Idea to you of a real love-rhyme? +And why does plunging your arm in a bowl +Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul? +Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone, +Though where precisely none ever has known, +Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized, +And by now with its smoothness opalized, + Is a drinking-glass: + For, down that pass + My lover and I + Walked under a sky +Of blue with a leaf-woven awning of green, +In the burn of August, to paint the scene, +And we placed our basket of fruit and wine +By the runlet's rim, where we sat to dine; +And when we had drunk from the glass together, +Arched by the oak-copse from the weather, +I held the vessel to rinse in the fall, +Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall, +Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss +With long bared arms. There the glass still is. +And, as said, if I thrust my arm below +Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe +From the past awakens a sense of that time, +And the glass both used, and the cascade's rhyme. +The basin seems the pool, and its edge +The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge, +And the leafy pattern of china-ware +The hanging plants that were bathing there. +By night, by day, when it shines or lours, +There lies intact that chalice of ours, +And its presence adds to the rhyme of love +Persistently sung by the fall above. +No lip has touched it since his and mine +In turns therefrom sipped lovers' wine." + + + +THE SPELL OF THE ROSE + + + + "I mean to build a hall anon, + And shape two turrets there, + And a broad newelled stair, +And a cool well for crystal water; + Yes; I will build a hall anon, + Plant roses love shall feed upon, + And apple trees and pear." + + He set to build the manor-hall, + And shaped the turrets there, + And the broad newelled stair, +And the cool well for crystal water; + He built for me that manor-hall, + And planted many trees withal, + But no rose anywhere. + + And as he planted never a rose + That bears the flower of love, + Though other flowers throve +A frost-wind moved our souls to sever + Since he had planted never a rose; + And misconceits raised horrid shows, + And agonies came thereof. + + "I'll mend these miseries," then said I, + And so, at dead of night, + I went and, screened from sight, +That nought should keep our souls in severance, + I set a rose-bush. "This," said I, + "May end divisions dire and wry, + And long-drawn days of blight." + + But I was called from earth--yea, called + Before my rose-bush grew; + And would that now I knew +What feels he of the tree I planted, + And whether, after I was called + To be a ghost, he, as of old, + Gave me his heart anew! + + Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees + I set but saw not grow, + And he, beside its glow - +Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me - + Ay, there beside that queen of trees + He sees me as I was, though sees + Too late to tell me so! + + + +ST. LAUNCE'S REVISITED + + + + Slip back, Time! +Yet again I am nearing +Castle and keep, uprearing + Gray, as in my prime. + + At the inn +Smiling close, why is it +Not as on my visit + When hope and I were twin? + + Groom and jade +Whom I found here, moulder; +Strange the tavern-holder, + Strange the tap-maid. + + Here I hired +Horse and man for bearing +Me on my wayfaring + To the door desired. + + Evening gloomed +As I journeyed forward +To the faces shoreward, + Till their dwelling loomed. + + If again +Towards the Atlantic sea there +I should speed, they'd be there + Surely now as then? . . . + + Why waste thought, +When I know them vanished +Under earth; yea, banished + Ever into nought. + + + + +POEMS OF 1912-13 +Veteris vestigia flammae + + + + +THE GOING + + + +Why did you give no hint that night +That quickly after the morrow's dawn, +And calmly, as if indifferent quite, +You would close your term here, up and be gone + Where I could not follow + With wing of swallow +To gain one glimpse of you ever anon! + + Never to bid good-bye, + Or give me the softest call, +Or utter a wish for a word, while I +Saw morning harden upon the wall, + Unmoved, unknowing + That your great going +Had place that moment, and altered all. + +Why do you make me leave the house +And think for a breath it is you I see +At the end of the alley of bending boughs +Where so often at dusk you used to be; + Till in darkening dankness + The yawning blankness +Of the perspective sickens me! + + You were she who abode + By those red-veined rocks far West, +You were the swan-necked one who rode +Along the beetling Beeny Crest, + And, reining nigh me, + Would muse and eye me, +While Life unrolled us its very best. + +Why, then, latterly did we not speak, +Did we not think of those days long dead, +And ere your vanishing strive to seek +That time's renewal? We might have said, + "In this bright spring weather + We'll visit together +Those places that once we visited." + + Well, well! All's past amend, + Unchangeable. It must go. +I seem but a dead man held on end +To sink down soon . . . O you could not know + That such swift fleeing + No soul foreseeing - +Not even I--would undo me so! + +December 1912. + + + +YOUR LAST DRIVE + + + +Here by the moorway you returned, +And saw the borough lights ahead +That lit your face--all undiscerned +To be in a week the face of the dead, +And you told of the charm of that haloed view +That never again would beam on you. + +And on your left you passed the spot +Where eight days later you were to lie, +And be spoken of as one who was not; +Beholding it with a cursory eye +As alien from you, though under its tree +You soon would halt everlastingly. + +I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat +At your side that eve I should not have seen +That the countenance I was glancing at +Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen, +Nor have read the writing upon your face, +"I go hence soon to my resting-place; + +"You may miss me then. But I shall not know +How many times you visit me there, +Or what your thoughts are, or if you go +There never at all. And I shall not care. +Should you censure me I shall take no heed +And even your praises I shall not need." + +True: never you'll know. And you will not mind. +But shall I then slight you because of such? +Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find +The thought "What profit?" move me much +Yet the fact indeed remains the same, +You are past love, praise, indifference, blame. + +December 1912. + + + +THE WALK + + + + You did not walk with me + Of late to the hill-top tree + By the gated ways, + As in earlier days; + You were weak and lame, + So you never came, +And I went alone, and I did not mind, +Not thinking of you as left behind. + + I walked up there to-day + Just in the former way: + Surveyed around + The familiar ground + By myself again: + What difference, then? +Only that underlying sense +Of the look of a room on returning thence. + + + +RAIN ON A GRAVE + + + +Clouds spout upon her + Their waters amain + In ruthless disdain, - +Her who but lately + Had shivered with pain +As at touch of dishonour +If there had lit on her +So coldly, so straightly + Such arrows of rain. + +She who to shelter + Her delicate head +Would quicken and quicken + Each tentative tread +If drops chanced to pelt her + That summertime spills + In dust-paven rills +When thunder-clouds thicken + And birds close their bills. + +Would that I lay there + And she were housed here! +Or better, together +Were folded away there +Exposed to one weather +We both,--who would stray there +When sunny the day there, + Or evening was clear + At the prime of the year. + +Soon will be growing + Green blades from her mound, +And daises be showing + Like stars on the ground, +Till she form part of them - +Ay--the sweet heart of them, +Loved beyond measure +With a child's pleasure + All her life's round. + +Jan. 31, 1913. + + + +"I FOUND HER OUT THERE" + + + +I found her out there +On a slope few see, +That falls westwardly +To the salt-edged air, +Where the ocean breaks +On the purple strand, +And the hurricane shakes +The solid land. + +I brought her here, +And have laid her to rest +In a noiseless nest +No sea beats near. +She will never be stirred +In her loamy cell +By the waves long heard +And loved so well. + +So she does not sleep +By those haunted heights +The Atlantic smites +And the blind gales sweep, +Whence she often would gaze +At Dundagel's far head, +While the dipping blaze +Dyed her face fire-red; + +And would sigh at the tale +Of sunk Lyonnesse, +As a wind-tugged tress +Flapped her cheek like a flail; +Or listen at whiles +With a thought-bound brow +To the murmuring miles +She is far from now. + +Yet her shade, maybe, +Will creep underground +Till it catch the sound +Of that western sea +As it swells and sobs +Where she once domiciled, +And joy in its throbs +With the heart of a child. + + + +WITHOUT CEREMONY + + + +It was your way, my dear, +To be gone without a word +When callers, friends, or kin +Had left, and I hastened in +To rejoin you, as I inferred. + +And when you'd a mind to career +Off anywhere--say to town - +You were all on a sudden gone +Before I had thought thereon, +Or noticed your trunks were down. + +So, now that you disappear +For ever in that swift style, +Your meaning seems to me +Just as it used to be: +"Good-bye is not worth while!" + + + +LAMENT + + + +How she would have loved +A party to-day! - +Bright-hatted and gloved, +With table and tray +And chairs on the lawn +Her smiles would have shone +With welcomings . . . But +She is shut, she is shut + From friendship's spell + In the jailing shell + Of her tiny cell. + +Or she would have reigned +At a dinner to-night +With ardours unfeigned, +And a generous delight; +All in her abode +She'd have freely bestowed +On her guests . . . But alas, +She is shut under grass + Where no cups flow, + Powerless to know + That it might be so. + +And she would have sought +With a child's eager glance +The shy snowdrops brought +By the new year's advance, +And peered in the rime +Of Candlemas-time +For crocuses . . . chanced +It that she were not tranced + From sights she loved best; + Wholly possessed + By an infinite rest! + +And we are here staying +Amid these stale things +Who care not for gaying, +And those junketings +That used so to joy her, +And never to cloy her +As us they cloy! . . . But +She is shut, she is shut + From the cheer of them, dead + To all done and said + In a yew-arched bed. + + + +THE HAUNTER + + + +He does not think that I haunt here nightly: + How shall I let him know +That whither his fancy sets him wandering + I, too, alertly go? - +Hover and hover a few feet from him + Just as I used to do, +But cannot answer his words addressed me - + Only listen thereto! + +When I could answer he did not say them: + When I could let him know +How I would like to join in his journeys + Seldom he wished to go. +Now that he goes and wants me with him + More than he used to do, +Never he sees my faithful phantom + Though he speaks thereto. + +Yes, I accompany him to places + Only dreamers know, +Where the shy hares limp long paces, + Where the night rooks go; +Into old aisles where the past is all to him, + Close as his shade can do, +Always lacking the power to call to him, + Near as I reach thereto! + +What a good haunter I am, O tell him, + Quickly make him know +If he but sigh since my loss befell him + Straight to his side I go. +Tell him a faithful one is doing + All that love can do +Still that his path may be worth pursuing, + And to bring peace thereto. + + + +THE VOICE + + + +Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, +Saying that now you are not as you were +When you had changed from the one who was all to me, +But as at first, when our day was fair. + +Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, +Standing as when I drew near to the town +Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, +Even to the original air-blue gown! + +Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness +Travelling across the wet mead to me here, +You being ever consigned to existlessness, +Heard no more again far or near? + + Thus I; faltering forward, + Leaves around me falling, +Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward + And the woman calling. + +December 1912. + + + +HIS VISITOR + + + +I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker +To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more: +I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train, +And need no setting open of the long familiar door + As before. + +The change I notice in my once own quarters! +A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be, +The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered, +And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea + As with me. + +I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt servants; +They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and strong, +But strangers quite, who never knew my rule here, +Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song + Float along. + +So I don't want to linger in this re-decked dwelling, +I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold, +And I make again for Mellstock to return here never, +And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold + Souls of old. + +1913. + + + +A CIRCULAR + + + +As "legal representative" +I read a missive not my own, +On new designs the senders give + For clothes, in tints as shown. + +Here figure blouses, gowns for tea, +And presentation-trains of state, +Charming ball-dresses, millinery, + Warranted up to date. + +And this gay-pictured, spring-time shout +Of Fashion, hails what lady proud? +Her who before last year was out + Was costumed in a shroud. + + + +A DREAM OR NO + + + +Why go to Saint-Juliot? What's Juliot to me? + I was but made fancy + By some necromancy +That much of my life claims the spot as its key. + +Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West, + And a maiden abiding + Thereat as in hiding; +Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed. + +And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago, + There lonely I found her, + The sea-birds around her, +And other than nigh things uncaring to know. + +So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed) + That quickly she drew me + To take her unto me, +And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed. + +But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see; + Can she ever have been here, + And shed her life's sheen here, +The woman I thought a long housemate with me? + +Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist? + Or a Vallency Valley + With stream and leafed alley, +Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist? + +February 1913. + + + +AFTER A JOURNEY + + + +Hereto I come to interview a ghost; + Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me? +Up the cliff, down, till I'm lonely, lost, + And the unseen waters' ejaculations awe me. +Where you will next be there's no knowing, + Facing round about me everywhere, + With your nut-coloured hair, +And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going. + +Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last; + Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you; +What have you now found to say of our past - + Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you? +Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division? + Things were not lastly as firstly well + With us twain, you tell? +But all's closed now, despite Time's derision. + +I see what you are doing: you are leading me on + To the spots we knew when we haunted here together, +The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone + At the then fair hour in the then fair weather, +And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow + That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago, + When you were all aglow, +And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow! + +Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see, + The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily, +Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me, + For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily. +Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours, + The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again! + I am just the same as when +Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers. + +PENTARGAN BAY. + + + +A DEATH-DAY RECALLED + + + +Beeny did not quiver, + Juliot grew not gray, +Thin Valency's river + Held its wonted way. +Bos seemed not to utter + Dimmest note of dirge, +Targan mouth a mutter + To its creamy surge. + +Yet though these, unheeding, + Listless, passed the hour +Of her spirit's speeding, + She had, in her flower, +Sought and loved the places - + Much and often pined +For their lonely faces + When in towns confined. + +Why did not Valency + In his purl deplore +One whose haunts were whence he + Drew his limpid store? +Why did Bos not thunder, + Targan apprehend +Body and breath were sunder + Of their former friend? + + + +BEENY CLIFF +March 1870--March 1913 + + + +I + +O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, +And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free - +The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me. + +II + +The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away +In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say, +As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day. + +III + +A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, +And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, +And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main. + +IV + +--Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, +And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, +And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by? + +V + +What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore, +The woman now is--elsewhere--whom the ambling pony bore, +And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will see it nevermore. + + + +AT CASTLE BOTEREL + + + +As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, + And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, +I look behind at the fading byway, + And see on its slope, now glistening wet, + Distinctly yet + +Myself and a girlish form benighted + In dry March weather. We climb the road +Beside a chaise. We had just alighted + To ease the sturdy pony's load + When he sighed and slowed. + +What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of + Matters not much, nor to what it led, - +Something that life will not be balked of + Without rude reason till hope is dead, + And feeling fled. + +It filled but a minute. But was there ever + A time of such quality, since or before, +In that hill's story? To one mind never, + Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore, + By thousands more. + +Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border, + And much have they faced there, first and last, +Of the transitory in Earth's long order; + But what they record in colour and cast + Is--that we two passed. + +And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour, + In mindless rote, has ruled from sight +The substance now, one phantom figure + Remains on the slope, as when that night + Saw us alight. + +I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking, + I look back at it amid the rain +For the very last time; for my sand is sinking, + And I shall traverse old love's domain + Never again. + +March 1913. + + + +PLACES + + + +Nobody says: Ah, that is the place +Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago, +What none of the Three Towns cared to know-- +The birth of a little girl of grace - +The sweetest the house saw, first or last; + Yet it was so + On that day long past. + +Nobody thinks: There, there she lay +In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower, +And listened, just after the bedtime hour, +To the stammering chimes that used to play +The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune + In Saint Andrew's tower + Night, morn, and noon. + +Nobody calls to mind that here +Upon Boterel Hill, where the carters skid, +With cheeks whose airy flush outbid +Fresh fruit in bloom, and free of fear, +She cantered down, as if she must fall + (Though she never did), + To the charm of all. + +Nay: one there is to whom these things, +That nobody else's mind calls back, +Have a savour that scenes in being lack, +And a presence more than the actual brings; +To whom to-day is beneaped and stale, + And its urgent clack + But a vapid tale. + +PLYMOUTH, March 1913. + + + +THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN + + + +I + +Queer are the ways of a man I know: + He comes and stands + In a careworn craze, + And looks at the sands + And the seaward haze, + With moveless hands + And face and gaze, + Then turns to go . . . +And what does he see when he gazes so? + +II + +They say he sees as an instant thing + More clear than to-day, + A sweet soft scene + That once was in play + By that briny green; + Yes, notes alway + Warm, real, and keen, + What his back years bring - +A phantom of his own figuring. + +III + +Of this vision of his they might say more: + Not only there + Does he see this sight, + But everywhere + In his brain--day, night, + As if on the air + It were drawn rose bright - + Yea, far from that shore +Does he carry this vision of heretofore: + +IV + +A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried, + He withers daily, + Time touches her not, + But she still rides gaily + In his rapt thought + On that shagged and shaly + Atlantic spot, + And as when first eyed +Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide. + + + + +MISCELLANEOUS PIECES + + + + +THE WISTFUL LADY + + + +'Love, while you were away there came to me - + From whence I cannot tell - +A plaintive lady pale and passionless, +Who bent her eyes upon me critically, +And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness, + As if she knew me well." + +"I saw no lady of that wistful sort + As I came riding home. +Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrain +By memories sadder than she can support, +Or by unhappy vacancy of brain, + To leave her roof and roam?" + +"Ah, but she knew me. And before this time + I have seen her, lending ear +To my light outdoor words, and pondering each, +Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime, +As if she fain would close with me in speech, + And yet would not come near. + +"And once I saw her beckoning with her hand + As I came into sight +At an upper window. And I at last went out; +But when I reached where she had seemed to stand, +And wandered up and down and searched about, + I found she had vanished quite." + +Then thought I how my dead Love used to say, + With a small smile, when she +Was waning wan, that she would hover round +And show herself after her passing day +To any newer Love I might have found, + But show her not to me. + + + +THE WOMAN IN THE RYE + + + +"Why do you stand in the dripping rye, +Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee, +When there are firesides near?" said I. +"I told him I wished him dead," said she. + +"Yea, cried it in my haste to one +Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still; +And die he did. And I hate the sun, +And stand here lonely, aching, chill; + +"Stand waiting, waiting under skies +That blow reproach, the while I see +The rooks sheer off to where he lies +Wrapt in a peace withheld from me." + + + +THE CHEVAL-GLASS + + + +Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass + Filling up your narrow room? + You never preen or plume, +Or look in a week at your full-length figure - + Picture of bachelor gloom! + +"Well, when I dwelt in ancient England, + Renting the valley farm, + Thoughtless of all heart-harm, +I used to gaze at the parson's daughter, + A creature of nameless charm. + +"Thither there came a lover and won her, + Carried her off from my view. + O it was then I knew +Misery of a cast undreamt of - + More than, indeed, my due! + +"Then far rumours of her ill-usage + Came, like a chilling breath + When a man languisheth; +Followed by news that her mind lost balance, + And, in a space, of her death. + +"Soon sank her father; and next was the auction - + Everything to be sold: + Mid things new and old +Stood this glass in her former chamber, + Long in her use, I was told. + +"Well, I awaited the sale and bought it . . . + There by my bed it stands, + And as the dawn expands +Often I see her pale-faced form there + Brushing her hair's bright bands. + +"There, too, at pallid midnight moments + Quick she will come to my call, + Smile from the frame withal +Ponderingly, as she used to regard me + Passing her father's wall. + +"So that it was for its revelations + I brought it oversea, + And drag it about with me . . . +Anon I shall break it and bury its fragments + Where my grave is to be." + + + +THE RE-ENACTMENT + + + + Between the folding sea-downs, + In the gloom + Of a wailful wintry nightfall, + When the boom +Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb, + + Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley + From the shore + To the chamber where I darkled, + Sunk and sore +With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before + + To salute me in the dwelling + That of late + I had hired to waste a while in - + Vague of date, +Quaint, and remote--wherein I now expectant sate; + + On the solitude, unsignalled, + Broke a man + Who, in air as if at home there, + Seemed to scan +Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span. + + A stranger's and no lover's + Eyes were these, + Eyes of a man who measures + What he sees +But vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies. + + Yea, his bearing was so absent + As he stood, + It bespoke a chord so plaintive + In his mood, +That soon I judged he would not wrong my quietude. + + "Ah--the supper is just ready," + Then he said, + "And the years'-long binned Madeira + Flashes red!" +(There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.) + + "You will forgive my coming, + Lady fair? + I see you as at that time + Rising there, +The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air. + + "Yet no. How so? You wear not + The same gown, + Your locks show woful difference, + Are not brown: +What, is it not as when I hither came from town? + + "And the place . . . But you seem other - + Can it be? + What's this that Time is doing + Unto me? +YOU dwell here, unknown woman? . . . Whereabouts, then, is she? + + "And the house--things are much shifted. - + Put them where + They stood on this night's fellow; + Shift her chair: +Here was the couch: and the piano should be there." + + I indulged him, verily nerve-strained + Being alone, + And I moved the things as bidden, + One by one, +And feigned to push the old piano where he had shown. + + "Aha--now I can see her! + Stand aside: + Don't thrust her from the table + Where, meek-eyed, +She makes attempt with matron-manners to preside. + + "She serves me: now she rises, + Goes to play . . . + But you obstruct her, fill her + With dismay, +And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!" + + And, as 'twere useless longer + To persist, + He sighed, and sought the entry + Ere I wist, +And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist. + + That here some mighty passion + Once had burned, + Which still the walls enghosted, + I discerned, +And that by its strong spell mine might be overturned. + + I sat depressed; till, later, + My Love came; + But something in the chamber + Dimmed our flame, - +An emanation, making our due words fall tame, + + As if the intenser drama + Shown me there + Of what the walls had witnessed + Filled the air, +And left no room for later passion anywhere. + + So came it that our fervours + Did quite fail + Of future consummation - + Being made quail +By the weird witchery of the parlour's hidden tale, + + Which I, as years passed, faintly + Learnt to trace, - + One of sad love, born full-winged + In that place +Where the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face. + + And as that month of winter + Circles round, + And the evening of the date-day + Grows embrowned, +I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound. + + There, often--lone, forsaken - + Queries breed + Within me; whether a phantom + Had my heed +On that strange night, or was it some wrecked heart indeed? + + + +HER SECRET + + + +That love's dull smart distressed my heart + He shrewdly learnt to see, +But that I was in love with a dead man + Never suspected he. + +He searched for the trace of a pictured face, + He watched each missive come, +And a note that seemed like a love-line + Made him look frozen and glum. + +He dogged my feet to the city street, + He followed me to the sea, +But not to the neighbouring churchyard + Did he dream of following me. + + + +"SHE CHARGED ME" + + + +She charged me with having said this and that +To another woman long years before, +In the very parlour where we sat, - + +Sat on a night when the endless pour +Of rain on the roof and the road below +Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . . + +- So charged she me; and the Cupid's bow +Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face, +And her white forefinger lifted slow. + +Had she done it gently, or shown a trace +That not too curiously would she view +A folly passed ere her reign had place, + +A kiss might have ended it. But I knew +From the fall of each word, and the pause between, +That the curtain would drop upon us two +Ere long, in our play of slave and queen. + + + +THE NEWCOMER'S WIFE + + + +He paused on the sill of a door ajar +That screened a lively liquor-bar, +For the name had reached him through the door +Of her he had married the week before. + +"We called her the Hack of the Parade; +But she was discreet in the games she played; +If slightly worn, she's pretty yet, +And gossips, after all, forget. + +"And he knows nothing of her past; +I am glad the girl's in luck at last; +Such ones, though stale to native eyes, +Newcomers snatch at as a prize." + +"Yes, being a stranger he sees her blent +Of all that's fresh and innocent, +Nor dreams how many a love-campaign +She had enjoyed before his reign!" + +That night there was the splash of a fall +Over the slimy harbour-wall: +They searched, and at the deepest place +Found him with crabs upon his face. + + + +A CONVERSATION AT DAWN + + + +He lay awake, with a harassed air, +And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair, + Seemed trouble-tried +As the dawn drew in on their faces there. + +The chamber looked far over the sea +From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay, + And stepping a stride +He parted the window-drapery. + +Above the level horizon spread +The sunrise, firing them foot to head + From its smouldering lair, +And painting their pillows with dyes of red. + +"What strange disquiets have stirred you, dear, +This dragging night, with starts in fear + Of me, as it were, +Or of something evil hovering near?" + +"My husband, can I have fear of you? +What should one fear from a man whom few, + Or none, had matched +In that late long spell of delays undue!" + +He watched her eyes in the heaving sun: +"Then what has kept, O reticent one, + Those lids unlatched - +Anything promised I've not yet done?" + +"O it's not a broken promise of yours +(For what quite lightly your lip assures + The due time brings) +That has troubled my sleep, and no waking cures!" . . . + +"I have shaped my will; 'tis at hand," said he; +"I subscribe it to-day, that no risk there be + In the hap of things +Of my leaving you menaced by poverty." + +"That a boon provision I'm safe to get, +Signed, sealed by my lord as it were a debt, + I cannot doubt, +Or ever this peering sun be set." + +"But you flung my arms away from your side, +And faced the wall. No month-old bride + Ere the tour be out +In an air so loth can be justified? + +"Ah--had you a male friend once loved well, +Upon whose suit disaster fell + And frustrance swift? +Honest you are, and may care to tell." + +She lay impassive, and nothing broke +The stillness other than, stroke by stroke, + The lazy lift +Of the tide below them; till she spoke: + +"I once had a friend--a Love, if you will - +Whose wife forsook him, and sank until + She was made a thrall +In a prison-cell for a deed of ill . . . + +"He remained alone; and we met--to love, +But barring legitimate joy thereof + Stood a doorless wall, +Though we prized each other all else above. + +"And this was why, though I'd touched my prime, +I put off suitors from time to time - + Yourself with the rest - +Till friends, who approved you, called it crime, + +"And when misgivings weighed on me +In my lover's absence, hurriedly, + And much distrest, +I took you . . . Ah, that such could be! . . . + +"Now, saw you when crossing from yonder shore +At yesternoon, that the packet bore + On a white-wreathed bier +A coffined body towards the fore? + +"Well, while you stood at the other end, +The loungers talked, and I could but lend + A listening ear, +For they named the dead. 'Twas the wife of my friend. + +"He was there, but did not note me, veiled, +Yet I saw that a joy, as of one unjailed, + Now shone in his gaze; +He knew not his hope of me just had failed! + +"They had brought her home: she was born in this isle; +And he will return to his domicile, + And pass his days +Alone, and not as he dreamt erstwhile!" + +"--So you've lost a sprucer spouse than I!" +She held her peace, as if fain deny + She would indeed +For his pleasure's sake, but could lip no lie. + +"One far less formal and plain and slow!" +She let the laconic assertion go + As if of need +She held the conviction that it was so. + +"Regard me as his he always should, +He had said, and wed me he vowed he would + In his prime or sere +Most verily do, if ever he could. + +"And this fulfilment is now his aim, +For a letter, addressed in my maiden name, + Has dogged me here, +Reminding me faithfully of his claim. + +"And it started a hope like a lightning-streak +That I might go to him--say for a week - + And afford you right +To put me away, and your vows unspeak. + +"To be sure you have said, as of dim intent, +That marriage is a plain event + Of black and white, +Without any ghost of sentiment, + +"And my heart has quailed.--But deny it true +That you will never this lock undo! + No God intends +To thwart the yearning He's father to!" + +The husband hemmed, then blandly bowed +In the light of the angry morning cloud. + "So my idyll ends, +And a drama opens!" he mused aloud; + +And his features froze. "You may take it as true +That I will never this lock undo + For so depraved +A passion as that which kindles you." + +Said she: "I am sorry you see it so; +I had hoped you might have let me go, + And thus been saved +The pain of learning there's more to know." + +"More? What may that be? Gad, I think +You have told me enough to make me blink! + Yet if more remain +Then own it to me. I will not shrink!" + +"Well, it is this. As we could not see +That a legal marriage could ever be, + To end our pain +We united ourselves informally; + +"And vowed at a chancel-altar nigh, +With book and ring, a lifelong tie; + A contract vain +To the world, but real to Him on High." + +"And you became as his wife?"--"I did." - +He stood as stiff as a caryatid, + And said, "Indeed! . . . +No matter. You're mine, whatever you ye hid!" + +"But is it right! When I only gave +My hand to you in a sweat to save, + Through desperate need +(As I thought), my fame, for I was not brave!" + +"To save your fame? Your meaning is dim, +For nobody knew of your altar-whim?" + "I mean--I feared +There might be fruit of my tie with him; + +"And to cloak it by marriage I'm not the first, +Though, maybe, morally most accurst + Through your unpeered +And strict uprightness. That's the worst! + +"While yesterday his worn contours +Convinced me that love like his endures, + And that my troth-plight +Had been his, in fact, and not truly yours." + +"So, my lady, you raise the veil by degrees . . . +I own this last is enough to freeze + The warmest wight! +Now hear the other side, if you please: + +"I did say once, though without intent, +That marriage is a plain event + Of black and white, +Whatever may be its sentiment. + +"I'll act accordingly, none the less +That you soiled the contract in time of stress, + Thereto induced +By the feared results of your wantonness. + +"But the thing is over, and no one knows, +And it's nought to the future what you disclose. + That you'll be loosed +For such an episode, don't suppose! + +"No: I'll not free you. And if it appear +There was too good ground for your first fear + From your amorous tricks, +I'll father the child. Yes, by God, my dear. + +"Even should you fly to his arms, I'll damn +Opinion, and fetch you; treat as sham + Your mutinous kicks, +And whip you home. That's the sort I am!" + +She whitened. "Enough . . . Since you disapprove +I'll yield in silence, and never move + Till my last pulse ticks +A footstep from the domestic groove." + +"Then swear it," he said, "and your king uncrown." +He drew her forth in her long white gown, + And she knelt and swore. +"Good. Now you may go and again lie down + +"Since you've played these pranks and given no sign, +You shall crave this man of yours; pine and pine + With sighings sore, +'Till I've starved your love for him; nailed you mine. + +"I'm a practical man, and want no tears; +You've made a fool of me, it appears; + That you don't again +Is a lesson I'll teach you in future years." + +She answered not, but lay listlessly +With her dark dry eyes on the coppery sea, + That now and then +Flung its lazy flounce at the neighbouring quay. + +1910. + + + +A KING'S SOLILOQUY +ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL + + + +From the slow march and muffled drum + And crowds distrest, +And book and bell, at length I have come + To my full rest. + +A ten years' rule beneath the sun + Is wound up here, +And what I have done, what left undone, + Figures out clear. + +Yet in the estimate of such + It grieves me more +That I by some was loved so much + Than that I bore, + +From others, judgment of that hue + Which over-hope +Breeds from a theoretic view + Of regal scope. + +For kingly opportunities + Right many have sighed; +How best to bear its devilries + Those learn who have tried! + +I have eaten the fat and drunk the sweet, + Lived the life out +From the first greeting glad drum-beat + To the last shout. + +What pleasure earth affords to kings + I have enjoyed +Through its long vivid pulse-stirrings + Even till it cloyed. + +What days of drudgery, nights of stress + Can cark a throne, +Even one maintained in peacefulness, + I too have known. + +And so, I think, could I step back + To life again, +I should prefer the average track + Of average men, + +Since, as with them, what kingship would + It cannot do, +Nor to first thoughts however good + Hold itself true. + +Something binds hard the royal hand, + As all that be, +And it is That has shaped, has planned + My acts and me. + +May 1910. + + + +THE CORONATION + + + +At Westminster, hid from the light of day, +Many who once had shone as monarchs lay. + +Edward the Pious, and two Edwards more, +The second Richard, Henrys three or four; + +That is to say, those who were called the Third, +Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth (the much self-widowered), + +And James the Scot, and near him Charles the Second, +And, too, the second George could there be reckoned. + +Of women, Mary and Queen Elizabeth, +And Anne, all silent in a musing death; + +And William's Mary, and Mary, Queen of Scots, +And consort-queens whose names oblivion blots; + +And several more whose chronicle one sees +Adorning ancient royal pedigrees. + +- Now, as they drowsed on, freed from Life's old thrall, +And heedless, save of things exceptional, + +Said one: "What means this throbbing thudding sound +That reaches to us here from overground; + +"A sound of chisels, augers, planes, and saws, +Infringing all ecclesiastic laws? + +"And these tons-weight of timber on us pressed, +Unfelt here since we entered into rest? + +"Surely, at least to us, being corpses royal, +A meet repose is owing by the loyal?" + +"--Perhaps a scaffold!" Mary Stuart sighed, +"If such still be. It was that way I died." + +"--Ods! Far more like," said he the many-wived, +"That for a wedding 'tis this work's contrived. + +"Ha-ha! I never would bow down to Rimmon, +But I had a rare time with those six women!" + +"Not all at once?" gasped he who loved confession. +"Nay, nay!" said Hal. "That would have been transgression." + +"--They build a catafalque here, black and tall, +Perhaps," mused Richard, "for some funeral?" + +And Anne chimed in: "Ah, yes: it maybe so!" +"Nay!" squeaked Eliza. "Little you seem to know - + +"Clearly 'tis for some crowning here in state, +As they crowned us at our long bygone date; + +"Though we'd no such a power of carpentry, +But let the ancient architecture be; + +"If I were up there where the parsons sit, +In one of my gold robes, I'd see to it!" + +"But you are not," Charles chuckled. "You are here, +And never will know the sun again, my dear!" + +"Yea," whispered those whom no one had addressed; +"With slow, sad march, amid a folk distressed, +We were brought here, to take our dusty rest. + +"And here, alas, in darkness laid below, +We'll wait and listen, and endure the show . . . +Clamour dogs kingship; afterwards not so!" + +1911. + + + +AQUAE SULIS + + + +The chimes called midnight, just at interlune, +And the daytime talk of the Roman investigations +Was checked by silence, save for the husky tune +The bubbling waters played near the excavations. + +And a warm air came up from underground, +And a flutter, as of a filmy shape unsepulchred, +That collected itself, and waited, and looked around: +Nothing was seen, but utterances could be heard: + +Those of the goddess whose shrine was beneath the pile +Of the God with the baldachined altar overhead: +"And what did you get by raising this nave and aisle +Close on the site of the temple I tenanted? + +"The notes of your organ have thrilled down out of view +To the earth-clogged wrecks of my edifice many a year, +Though stately and shining once--ay, long ere you +Had set up crucifix and candle here. + +"Your priests have trampled the dust of mine without rueing, +Despising the joys of man whom I so much loved, +Though my springs boil on by your Gothic arcades and pewing, +And sculptures crude . . . Would Jove they could be removed!" + +"--Repress, O lady proud, your traditional ires; +You know not by what a frail thread we equally hang; +It is said we are images both--twitched by people's desires; +And that I, like you, fail as a song men yesterday sang!" + +* * * + +And the olden dark hid the cavities late laid bare, +And all was suspended and soundless as before, +Except for a gossamery noise fading off in the air, +And the boiling voice of the waters' medicinal pour. + +BATH. + + + +SEVENTY-FOUR AND TWENTY + + + +Here goes a man of seventy-four, +Who sees not what life means for him, +And here another in years a score +Who reads its very figure and trim. + +The one who shall walk to-day with me +Is not the youth who gazes far, +But the breezy wight who cannot see +What Earth's ingrained conditions are. + + + +THE ELOPEMENT + + + +"A woman never agreed to it!" said my knowing friend to me. +"That one thing she'd refuse to do for Solomon's mines in fee: +No woman ever will make herself look older than she is." +I did not answer; but I thought, "you err there, ancient Quiz." + +It took a rare one, true, to do it; for she was surely rare - +As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair. +And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate +case, +Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young face. + +I have told no one about it, should perhaps make few believe, +But I think it over now that life looms dull and years bereave, +How blank we stood at our bright wits' end, two frail barks in +distress, +How self-regard in her was slain by her large tenderness. + +I said: "The only chance for us in a crisis of this kind +Is going it thorough!"--"Yes," she calmly breathed. "Well, I don't +mind." +And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her +brow; +Ay--she was a right rare woman then, whatever she may be now. + +That night we heard a coach drive up, and questions asked below. +"A gent with an elderly wife, sir," was returned from the bureau. +And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken +We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth again. + +How many years ago it was! Some fifty can it be +Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me? +But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last, +And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the past. + + + +"I ROSE UP AS MY CUSTOM IS" + + + +I rose up as my custom is + On the eve of All-Souls' day, +And left my grave for an hour or so +To call on those I used to know + Before I passed away. + +I visited my former Love + As she lay by her husband's side; +I asked her if life pleased her, now +She was rid of a poet wrung in brow, + And crazed with the ills he eyed; + +Who used to drag her here and there + Wherever his fancies led, +And point out pale phantasmal things, +And talk of vain vague purposings + That she discredited. + +She was quite civil, and replied, + "Old comrade, is that you? +Well, on the whole, I like my life. - +I know I swore I'd be no wife, + But what was I to do? + +"You see, of all men for my sex + A poet is the worst; +Women are practical, and they +Crave the wherewith to pay their way, + And slake their social thirst. + +"You were a poet--quite the ideal + That we all love awhile: +But look at this man snoring here - +He's no romantic chanticleer, + Yet keeps me in good style. + +"He makes no quest into my thoughts, + But a poet wants to know +What one has felt from earliest days, +Why one thought not in other ways, + And one's Loves of long ago." + +Her words benumbed my fond frail ghost; + The nightmares neighed from their stalls +The vampires screeched, the harpies flew, +And under the dim dawn I withdrew + To Death's inviolate halls. + + + +A WEEK + + + +On Monday night I closed my door, +And thought you were not as heretofore, +And little cared if we met no more. + +I seemed on Tuesday night to trace +Something beyond mere commonplace +In your ideas, and heart, and face. + +On Wednesday I did not opine +Your life would ever be one with mine, +Though if it were we should well combine. + +On Thursday noon I liked you well, +And fondly felt that we must dwell +Not far apart, whatever befell. + +On Friday it was with a thrill +In gazing towards your distant vill +I owned you were my dear one still. + +I saw you wholly to my mind +On Saturday--even one who shrined +All that was best of womankind. + +As wing-clipt sea-gull for the sea +On Sunday night I longed for thee, +Without whom life were waste to me! + + + +HAD YOU WEPT + + + +Had you wept; had you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray, +Dewy as the face of the dawn, in your large and luminous eye, +Then would have come back all the joys the tidings had slain that +day, +And a new beginning, a fresh fair heaven, have smoothed the things +awry. +But you were less feebly human, and no passionate need for clinging +Possessed your soul to overthrow reserve when I came near; +Ay, though you suffer as much as I from storms the hours are +bringing +Upon your heart and mine, I never see you shed a tear. + +The deep strong woman is weakest, the weak one is the strong; +The weapon of all weapons best for winning, you have not used; +Have you never been able, or would you not, through the evil times +and long? +Has not the gift been given you, or such gift have you refused? +When I bade me not absolve you on that evening or the morrow, +Why did you not make war on me with those who weep like rain? +You felt too much, so gained no balm for all your torrid sorrow, +And hence our deep division, and our dark undying pain. + + + +BEREFT, SHE THINKS SHE DREAMS + + + +I dream that the dearest I ever knew + Has died and been entombed. +I am sure it's a dream that cannot be true, + But I am so overgloomed +By its persistence, that I would gladly + Have quick death take me, +Rather than longer think thus sadly; + So wake me, wake me! + +It has lasted days, but minute and hour + I expect to get aroused +And find him as usual in the bower + Where we so happily housed. +Yet stays this nightmare too appalling, + And like a web shakes me, +And piteously I keep on calling, + And no one wakes me! + + + +IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM + + + +"What do you see in that time-touched stone, + When nothing is there +But ashen blankness, although you give it + A rigid stare? + +"You look not quite as if you saw, + But as if you heard, +Parting your lips, and treading softly + As mouse or bird. + +"It is only the base of a pillar, they'll tell you, + That came to us +From a far old hill men used to name + Areopagus." + +- "I know no art, and I only view + A stone from a wall, +But I am thinking that stone has echoed + The voice of Paul, + +"Paul as he stood and preached beside it + Facing the crowd, +A small gaunt figure with wasted features, + Calling out loud + +"Words that in all their intimate accents + Pattered upon +That marble front, and were far reflected, + And then were gone. + +"I'm a labouring man, and know but little, + Or nothing at all; +But I can't help thinking that stone once echoed + The voice of Paul." + + + +IN THE SERVANTS' QUARTERS + + + +"Man, you too, aren't you, one of these rough followers of the +criminal? +All hanging hereabout to gather how he's going to bear +Examination in the hall." She flung disdainful glances on +The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there, + Who warmed them by its flare. + +"No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know nothing of the trial here, +Or criminal, if so he be.--I chanced to come this way, +And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold now; +I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play, + That I see not every day." + +"Ha, ha!" then laughed the constables who also stood to warm +themselves, +The while another maiden scrutinized his features hard, +As the blaze threw into contrast every line and knot that wrinkled +them, +Exclaiming, "Why, last night when he was brought in by the guard, + You were with him in the yard!" + +"Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I say! You know you speak mistakenly. +Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar +Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble marketings, +Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are + Afoot by morning star?" + +"O, come, come!" laughed the constables. "Why, man, you speak the +dialect +He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs. +So own it. We sha'n't hurt ye. There he's speaking now! His +syllables +Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares, + As this pretty girl declares." + +"And you shudder when his chain clinks!" she rejoined. "O yes, I +noticed it. +And you winced, too, when those cuffs they gave him echoed to us +here. +They'll soon be coming down, and you may then have to defend +yourself +Unless you hold your tongue, or go away and keep you clear + When he's led to judgment near!" + +"No! I'll be damned in hell if I know anything about the man! +No single thing about him more than everybody knows! +Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with blasphemies?" . +. . +- His face convulses as the morning cock that moment crows, + And he stops, and turns, and goes. + + + +THE OBLITERATE TOMB + + + + "More than half my life long +Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong, +But they all have shrunk away into the silence + Like a lost song. + + "And the day has dawned and come +For forgiveness, when the past may hold it dumb +On the once reverberate words of hatred uttered + Half in delirium . . . + + "With folded lips and hands +They lie and wait what next the Will commands, +And doubtless think, if think they can: 'Let discord + Sink with Life's sands!' + + "By these late years their names, +Their virtues, their hereditary claims, +May be as near defacement at their grave-place + As are their fames." + + --Such thoughts bechanced to seize +A traveller's mind--a man of memories - +As he set foot within the western city + Where had died these + + Who in their lifetime deemed +Him their chief enemy--one whose brain had schemed +To get their dingy greatness deeplier dingied + And disesteemed. + + So, sojourning in their town, +He mused on them and on their once renown, +And said, "I'll seek their resting-place to-morrow + Ere I lie down, + + "And end, lest I forget, +Those ires of many years that I regret, +Renew their names, that men may see some liegeness + Is left them yet." + + Duly next day he went +And sought the church he had known them to frequent, +And wandered in the precincts, set on eyeing + Where they lay pent, + + Till by remembrance led +He stood at length beside their slighted bed, +Above which, truly, scarce a line or letter + Could now be read. + + "Thus years obliterate +Their graven worth, their chronicle, their date! +At once I'll garnish and revive the record + Of their past state, + + "That still the sage may say +In pensive progress here where they decay, +'This stone records a luminous line whose talents + Told in their day.'" + + While speaking thus he turned, +For a form shadowed where they lay inurned, +And he beheld a stranger in foreign vesture, + And tropic-burned. + + "Sir, I am right pleased to view +That ancestors of mine should interest you, +For I have come of purpose here to trace them . . . + They are time-worn, true, + + "But that's a fault, at most, +Sculptors can cure. On the Pacific coast +I have vowed for long that relics of my forbears + I'd trace ere lost, + + "And hitherward I come, +Before this same old Time shall strike me numb, +To carry it out."--"Strange, this is!" said the other; + "What mind shall plumb + + "Coincident design! +Though these my father's enemies were and mine, +I nourished a like purpose--to restore them + Each letter and line." + + "Such magnanimity +Is now not needed, sir; for you will see +That since I am here, a thing like this is, plainly, + Best done by me." + + The other bowed, and left, +Crestfallen in sentiment, as one bereft +Of some fair object he had been moved to cherish, + By hands more deft. + + And as he slept that night +The phantoms of the ensepulchred stood up-right +Before him, trembling that he had set him seeking + Their charnel-site. + + And, as unknowing his ruth, +Asked as with terrors founded not on truth +Why he should want them. "Ha," they hollowly hackered, + "You come, forsooth, + + "By stealth to obliterate +Our graven worth, our chronicle, our date, +That our descendant may not gild the record + Of our past state, + + "And that no sage may say +In pensive progress near where we decay: +'This stone records a luminous line whose talents + Told in their day.'" + + Upon the morrow he went +And to that town and churchyard never bent +His ageing footsteps till, some twelvemonths onward, + An accident + + Once more detained him there; +And, stirred by hauntings, he must needs repair +To where the tomb was. Lo, it stood still wasting + In no man's care. + + "The travelled man you met +The last time," said the sexton, "has not yet +Appeared again, though wealth he had in plenty. + --Can he forget? + + "The architect was hired +And came here on smart summons as desired, +But never the descendant came to tell him + What he required." + + And so the tomb remained +Untouched, untended, crumbling, weather-stained, +And though the one-time foe was fain to right it + He still refrained. + + "I'll set about it when +I am sure he'll come no more. Best wait till then." +But so it was that never the stranger entered + That city again. + + And the well-meaner died +While waiting tremulously unsatisfied +That no return of the family's foreign scion + Would still betide. + + And many years slid by, +And active church-restorers cast their eye +Upon the ancient garth and hoary building + The tomb stood nigh. + + And when they had scraped each wall, +Pulled out the stately pews, and smartened all, +"It will be well," declared the spruce church-warden, + "To overhaul + + "And broaden this path where shown; +Nothing prevents it but an old tombstone +Pertaining to a family forgotten, + Of deeds unknown. + + "Their names can scarce be read, +Depend on't, all who care for them are dead." +So went the tomb, whose shards were as path-paving + Distributed. + + Over it and about +Men's footsteps beat, and wind and water-spout, +Until the names, aforetime gnawed by weathers, + Were quite worn out. + + So that no sage can say +In pensive progress near where they decay, +"This stone records a luminous line whose talents + Told in their day." + + + +"REGRET NOT ME" + + + + Regret not me; + Beneath the sunny tree +I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully. + + Swift as the light + I flew my faery flight; +Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night. + + I did not know + That heydays fade and go, +But deemed that what was would be always so. + + I skipped at morn + Between the yellowing corn, +Thinking it good and glorious to be born. + + I ran at eves + Among the piled-up sheaves, +Dreaming, "I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves." + + Now soon will come + The apple, pear, and plum +And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum. + + Again you will fare + To cider-makings rare, +And junketings; but I shall not be there. + + Yet gaily sing + Until the pewter ring +Those songs we sang when we went gipsying. + + And lightly dance + Some triple-timed romance +In coupled figures, and forget mischance; + + And mourn not me + Beneath the yellowing tree; +For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully. + + + +THE RECALCITRANTS + + + +Let us off and search, and find a place +Where yours and mine can be natural lives, +Where no one comes who dissects and dives +And proclaims that ours is a curious case, +That its touch of romance can scarcely grace. + +You would think it strange at first, but then +Everything has been strange in its time. +When some one said on a day of the prime +He would bow to no brazen god again +He doubtless dazed the mass of men. + +None will recognize us as a pair whose claims +To righteous judgment we care not making; +Who have doubted if breath be worth the taking, +And have no respect for the current fames +Whence the savour has flown while abide the names. + +We have found us already shunned, disdained, +And for re-acceptance have not once striven; +Whatever offence our course has given +The brunt thereof we have long sustained. +Well, let us away, scorned unexplained. + + + +STARLINGS ON THE ROOF + + + +"No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot, +The people who lived here have left the spot, +And others are coming who knew them not. + +If you listen anon, with an ear intent, +The voices, you'll find, will be different +From the well-known ones of those who went." + +"Why did they go? Their tones so bland +Were quite familiar to our band; +The comers we shall not understand." + +"They look for a new life, rich and strange; +They do not know that, let them range +Wherever they may, they will get no change. + +"They will drag their house-gear ever so far +In their search for a home no miseries mar; +They will find that as they were they are, + +"That every hearth has a ghost, alack, +And can be but the scene of a bivouac +Till they move perforce--no time to pack!" + + + +THE MOON LOOKS IN + + + +I + +I have risen again, +And awhile survey +By my chilly ray +Through your window-pane +Your upturned face, +As you think, "Ah-she +Now dreams of me +In her distant place!" + +II + +I pierce her blind +In her far-off home: +She fixes a comb, +And says in her mind, +"I start in an hour; +Whom shall I meet? +Won't the men be sweet, +And the women sour!" + + + +THE SWEET HUSSY + + + +In his early days he was quite surprised +When she told him she was compromised +By meetings and lingerings at his whim, +And thinking not of herself but him; +While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round +That scandal should so soon abound, +(As she had raised them to nine or ten +Of antecedent nice young men) +And in remorse he thought with a sigh, +How good she is, and how bad am I! - +It was years before he understood +That she was the wicked one--he the good. + + + +THE TELEGRAM + + + +"O he's suffering--maybe dying--and I not there to aid, +And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go? +Only the nurse's brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed, + As by stealth, to let me know. + +"He was the best and brightest!--candour shone upon his brow, +And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he, +And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he's sinking now, + Far, far removed from me!" + +- The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair, +And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade, +And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware + That she lives no more a maid, + +But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she +trod +To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history known +In its last particular to him--aye, almost as to God, + And believed her quite his own. + +So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon, +And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace, +And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon + At this idle watering-place . . . + +What now I see before me is a long lane overhung +With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave. +And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young, + Ere a woman held me slave. + + + +THE MOTH-SIGNAL +(On Egdon Heath) + + + +"What are you still, still thinking," + He asked in vague surmise, +"That stare at the wick unblinking + With those great lost luminous eyes?" + +"O, I see a poor moth burning + In the candle-flame," said she, +Its wings and legs are turning + To a cinder rapidly." + +"Moths fly in from the heather," + He said, "now the days decline." +"I know," said she. "The weather, + I hope, will at last be fine. + +"I think," she added lightly, + "I'll look out at the door. +The ring the moon wears nightly + May be visible now no more." + +She rose, and, little heeding, + Her husband then went on +With his attentive reading + In the annals of ages gone. + +Outside the house a figure + Came from the tumulus near, +And speedily waxed bigger, + And clasped and called her Dear. + +"I saw the pale-winged token + You sent through the crack," sighed she. +"That moth is burnt and broken + With which you lured out me. + +"And were I as the moth is + It might be better far +For one whose marriage troth is + Shattered as potsherds are!" + +Then grinned the Ancient Briton + From the tumulus treed with pine: +"So, hearts are thwartly smitten + In these days as in mine!" + + + +SEEN BY THE WAITS + + + +Through snowy woods and shady + We went to play a tune +To the lonely manor-lady + By the light of the Christmas moon. + +We violed till, upward glancing + To where a mirror leaned, +We saw her airily dancing, + Deeming her movements screened; + +Dancing alone in the room there, + Thin-draped in her robe of night; +Her postures, glassed in the gloom there, + Were a strange phantasmal sight. + +She had learnt (we heard when homing) + That her roving spouse was dead; +Why she had danced in the gloaming + We thought, but never said. + + + +THE TWO SOLDIERS + + + +Just at the corner of the wall + We met--yes, he and I - +Who had not faced in camp or hall + Since we bade home good-bye, +And what once happened came back--all - + Out of those years gone by. + +And that strange woman whom we knew + And loved--long dead and gone, +Whose poor half-perished residue, + Tombless and trod, lay yon! +But at this moment to our view + Rose like a phantom wan. + +And in his fixed face I could see, + Lit by a lurid shine, +The drama re-enact which she + Had dyed incarnadine +For us, and more. And doubtless he + Beheld it too in mine. + +A start, as at one slightly known, + And with an indifferent air +We passed, without a sign being shown + That, as it real were, +A memory-acted scene had thrown + Its tragic shadow there. + + + +THE DEATH OF REGRET + + + +I opened my shutter at sunrise, + And looked at the hill hard by, +And I heartily grieved for the comrade + Who wandered up there to die. + +I let in the morn on the morrow, + And failed not to think of him then, +As he trod up that rise in the twilight, + And never came down again. + +I undid the shutter a week thence, + But not until after I'd turned +Did I call back his last departure + By the upland there discerned. + +Uncovering the casement long later, + I bent to my toil till the gray, +When I said to myself, "Ah--what ails me, + To forget him all the day!" + +As daily I flung back the shutter + In the same blank bald routine, +He scarcely once rose to remembrance + Through a month of my facing the scene. + +And ah, seldom now do I ponder + At the window as heretofore +On the long valued one who died yonder, + And wastes by the sycamore. + + + +IN THE DAYS OF CRINOLINE + + + +A plain tilt-bonnet on her head +She took the path across the leaze. +- Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said, +"Too dowdy that, for coquetries, + So I can hoe at ease. + +But when she had passed into the heath, +And gained the wood beyond the flat, +She raised her skirts, and from beneath +Unpinned and drew as from a sheath + An ostrich-feathered hat. + +And where the hat had hung she now +Concealed and pinned the dowdy hood, +And set the hat upon her brow, +And thus emerging from the wood + Tripped on in jaunty mood. + +The sun was low and crimson-faced +As two came that way from the town, +And plunged into the wood untraced . . . +When separately therefrom they paced + The sun had quite gone down. + +The hat and feather disappeared, +The dowdy hood again was donned, +And in the gloom the fair one neared +Her home and husband dour, who conned + Calmly his blue-eyed blonde. + +"To-day," he said, "you have shown good sense, +A dress so modest and so meek +Should always deck your goings hence +Alone." And as a recompense + He kissed her on the cheek. + + + +THE ROMAN GRAVEMOUNDS + + + +By Rome's dim relics there walks a man, +Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade; +I guess what impels him to scrape and scan; +Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed. + +"Vast was Rome," he must muse, "in the world's regard, +Vast it looms there still, vast it ever will be;" +And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard +Left by those who are held in such memory. + +But no; in his basket, see, he has brought +A little white furred thing, stiff of limb, +Whose life never won from the world a thought; +It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him. + +And to make it a grave he has come to the spot, +And he delves in the ancient dead's long home; +Their fames, their achievements, the man knows not; +The furred thing is all to him--nothing Rome! + +"Here say you that Caesar's warriors lie? - +But my little white cat was my only friend! +Could she but live, might the record die +Of Caesar, his legions, his aims, his end!" + +Well, Rome's long rule here is oft and again +A theme for the sages of history, +And the small furred life was worth no one's pen; +Yet its mourner's mood has a charm for me. + +November 1910. + + + +THE WORKBOX + + + +"See, here's the workbox, little wife, + That I made of polished oak." +He was a joiner, of village life; + She came of borough folk. + +He holds the present up to her +As with a smile she nears +And answers to the profferer, +"'Twill last all my sewing years!" + +"I warrant it will. And longer too. +'Tis a scantling that I got +Off poor John Wayward's coffin, who +Died of they knew not what. + +"The shingled pattern that seems to cease +Against your box's rim +Continues right on in the piece +That's underground with him. + +"And while I worked it made me think +Of timber's varied doom; +One inch where people eat and drink, +The next inch in a tomb. + +"But why do you look so white, my dear, +And turn aside your face? +You knew not that good lad, I fear, +Though he came from your native place?" + +"How could I know that good young man, +Though he came from my native town, +When he must have left there earlier than +I was a woman grown?" + +"Ah no. I should have understood! +It shocked you that I gave +To you one end of a piece of wood +Whose other is in a grave?" + +"Don't, dear, despise my intellect, +Mere accidental things +Of that sort never have effect +On my imaginings." + +Yet still her lips were limp and wan, +Her face still held aside, +As if she had known not only John, +But known of what he died. + + + +THE SACRILEGE +A BALLAD-TRAGEDY +(Circa 182-) + + + +PART I + +"I have a Love I love too well +Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor; +I have a Love I love too well, + To whom, ere she was mine, +'Such is my love for you,' I said, +'That you shall have to hood your head +A silken kerchief crimson-red, + Wove finest of the fine.' + +"And since this Love, for one mad moon, +On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor, +Since this my Love for one mad moon + Did clasp me as her king, +I snatched a silk-piece red and rare +From off a stall at Priddy Fair, +For handkerchief to hood her hair + When we went gallanting. + +"Full soon the four weeks neared their end +Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor; +And when the four weeks neared their end, + And their swift sweets outwore, +I said, 'What shall I do to own +Those beauties bright as tulips blown, +And keep you here with me alone + As mine for evermore?' + +"And as she drowsed within my van +On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor - +And as she drowsed within my van, + And dawning turned to day, +She heavily raised her sloe-black eyes +And murmured back in softest wise, +'One more thing, and the charms you prize + Are yours henceforth for aye. + +"'And swear I will I'll never go +While Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor +To meet the Cornish Wrestler Joe + For dance and dallyings. +If you'll to yon cathedral shrine, +And finger from the chest divine +Treasure to buy me ear-drops fine, + And richly jewelled rings.' + +"I said: 'I am one who has gathered gear +From Marlbury Downs to Dunkery Tor, +Who has gathered gear for many a year + From mansion, mart and fair; +But at God's house I've stayed my hand, +Hearing within me some command - +Curbed by a law not of the land + From doing damage there.' + +"Whereat she pouts, this Love of mine, +As Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor, +And still she pouts, this Love of mine, + So cityward I go. +But ere I start to do the thing, +And speed my soul's imperilling +For one who is my ravishing + And all the joy I know, + +"I come to lay this charge on thee - +On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor - +I come to lay this charge on thee + With solemn speech and sign: +Should things go ill, and my life pay +For botchery in this rash assay, +You are to take hers likewise--yea, + The month the law takes mine. + +"For should my rival, Wrestler Joe, +Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor - +My reckless rival, Wrestler Joe, + My Love's possessor be, +My tortured spirit would not rest, +But wander weary and distrest +Throughout the world in wild protest: + The thought nigh maddens me!" + +PART II + +Thus did he speak--this brother of mine - +On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor, +Born at my birth of mother of mine, + And forthwith went his way +To dare the deed some coming night . . . +I kept the watch with shaking sight, +The moon at moments breaking bright, + At others glooming gray. + +For three full days I heard no sound +Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor, +I heard no sound at all around + Whether his fay prevailed, +Or one malign the master were, +Till some afoot did tidings bear +How that, for all his practised care, + He had been caught and jailed. + +They had heard a crash when twelve had chimed +By Mendip east of Dunkery Tor, +When twelve had chimed and moonlight climbed; + They watched, and he was tracked +By arch and aisle and saint and knight +Of sculptured stonework sheeted white +In the cathedral's ghostly light, + And captured in the act. + +Yes; for this Love he loved too well +Where Dunkery sights the Severn shore, +All for this Love he loved too well + He burst the holy bars, +Seized golden vessels from the chest +To buy her ornaments of the best, +At her ill-witchery's request + And lure of eyes like stars . . . + +When blustering March confused the sky +In Toneborough Town by Exon Moor, +When blustering March confused the sky + They stretched him; and he died. +Down in the crowd where I, to see +The end of him, stood silently, +With a set face he lipped to me - + "Remember." "Ay!" I cried. + +By night and day I shadowed her +From Toneborough Deane to Dunkery Tor, +I shadowed her asleep, astir, + And yet I could not bear - +Till Wrestler Joe anon began +To figure as her chosen man, +And took her to his shining van - + To doom a form so fair! + +He made it handsome for her sake - +And Dunkery smiled to Exon Moor - +He made it handsome for her sake, + Painting it out and in; +And on the door of apple-green +A bright brass knocker soon was seen, +And window-curtains white and clean + For her to sit within. + +And all could see she clave to him +As cleaves a cloud to Dunkery Tor, +Yea, all could see she clave to him, + And every day I said, +"A pity it seems to part those two +That hourly grow to love more true: +Yet she's the wanton woman who + Sent one to swing till dead!" + +That blew to blazing all my hate, +While Dunkery frowned on Exon Moor, +And when the river swelled, her fate + Came to her pitilessly . . . +I dogged her, crying: "Across that plank +They use as bridge to reach yon bank +A coat and hat lie limp and dank; + Your goodman's, can they be?" + +She paled, and went, I close behind - +And Exon frowned to Dunkery Tor, +She went, and I came up behind + And tipped the plank that bore +Her, fleetly flitting across to eye +What such might bode. She slid awry; +And from the current came a cry, + A gurgle; and no more. + +How that befell no mortal knew +From Marlbury Downs to Exon Moor; +No mortal knew that deed undue + But he who schemed the crime, +Which night still covers . . . But in dream +Those ropes of hair upon the stream +He sees, and he will hear that scream + Until his judgment-time. + + + +THE ABBEY MASON +(Inventor of the "Perpendicular" Style of Gothic Architecture) + + + +The new-vamped Abbey shaped apace +In the fourteenth century of grace; + +(The church which, at an after date, +Acquired cathedral rank and state.) + +Panel and circumscribing wall +Of latest feature, trim and tall, + +Rose roundabout the Norman core +In prouder pose than theretofore, + +Encasing magically the old +With parpend ashlars manifold. + +The trowels rang out, and tracery +Appeared where blanks had used to be. + +Men toiled for pleasure more than pay, +And all went smoothly day by day, + +Till, in due course, the transept part +Engrossed the master-mason's art. + +- Home-coming thence he tossed and turned +Throughout the night till the new sun burned. + +"What fearful visions have inspired +These gaingivings?" his wife inquired; + +"As if your tools were in your hand +You have hammered, fitted, muttered, planned; + +"You have thumped as you were working hard: +I might have found me bruised and scarred. + +"What then's amiss. What eating care +Looms nigh, whereof I am unaware?" + +He answered not, but churchward went, +Viewing his draughts with discontent; + +And fumbled there the livelong day +Till, hollow-eyed, he came away. + +- 'Twas said, "The master-mason's ill!" +And all the abbey works stood still. + +Quoth Abbot Wygmore: "Why, O why +Distress yourself? You'll surely die!" + +The mason answered, trouble-torn, +"This long-vogued style is quite outworn! + +"The upper archmould nohow serves +To meet the lower tracery curves: + +"The ogees bend too far away +To give the flexures interplay. + +"This it is causes my distress . . . +So it will ever be unless + +"New forms be found to supersede +The circle when occasions need. + +"To carry it out I have tried and toiled, +And now perforce must own me foiled! + +"Jeerers will say: 'Here was a man +Who could not end what he began!'" + +- So passed that day, the next, the next; +The abbot scanned the task, perplexed; + +The townsmen mustered all their wit +To fathom how to compass it, + +But no raw artistries availed +Where practice in the craft had failed . . . + +- One night he tossed, all open-eyed, +And early left his helpmeet's side. + +Scattering the rushes of the floor +He wandered from the chamber door + +And sought the sizing pile, whereon +Struck dimly a cadaverous dawn + +Through freezing rain, that drenched the board +Of diagram-lines he last had scored - + +Chalked phantasies in vain begot +To knife the architectural knot - + +In front of which he dully stood, +Regarding them in hopeless mood. + +He closelier looked; then looked again: +The chalk-scratched draught-board faced the rain, + +Whose icicled drops deformed the lines +Innumerous of his lame designs, + +So that they streamed in small white threads +From the upper segments to the heads + +Of arcs below, uniting them +Each by a stalactitic stem. + +- At once, with eyes that struck out sparks, +He adds accessory cusping-marks, + +Then laughs aloud. The thing was done +So long assayed from sun to sun . . . + +- Now in his joy he grew aware +Of one behind him standing there, + +And, turning, saw the abbot, who +The weather's whim was watching too. + +Onward to Prime the abbot went, +Tacit upon the incident. + +- Men now discerned as days revolved +The ogive riddle had been solved; + +Templates were cut, fresh lines were chalked +Where lines had been defaced and balked, + +And the work swelled and mounted higher, +Achievement distancing desire; + +Here jambs with transoms fixed between, +Where never the like before had been - + +There little mullions thinly sawn +Where meeting circles once were drawn. + +"We knew," men said, "the thing would go +After his craft-wit got aglow, + +"And, once fulfilled what he has designed, +We'll honour him and his great mind!" + +When matters stood thus poised awhile, +And all surroundings shed a smile, + +The master-mason on an eve +Homed to his wife and seemed to grieve . . . + +- "The abbot spoke to me to-day: +He hangs about the works alway. + +"He knows the source as well as I +Of the new style men magnify. + +"He said: 'You pride yourself too much +On your creation. Is it such? + +"'Surely the hand of God it is +That conjured so, and only His! - + +"'Disclosing by the frost and rain +Forms your invention chased in vain; + +"'Hence the devices deemed so great +You copied, and did not create.' + +"I feel the abbot's words are just, +And that all thanks renounce I must. + +"Can a man welcome praise and pelf +For hatching art that hatched itself? . . . + +"So, I shall own the deft design +Is Heaven's outshaping, and not mine." + +"What!" said she. "Praise your works ensure +To throw away, and quite obscure + +"Your beaming and beneficent star? +Better you leave things as they are! + +"Why, think awhile. Had not your zest +In your loved craft curtailed your rest - + +"Had you not gone there ere the day +The sun had melted all away!" + +- But, though his good wife argued so, +The mason let the people know + +That not unaided sprang the thought +Whereby the glorious fane was wrought, + +But that by frost when dawn was dim +The method was disclosed to him. + +"Yet," said the townspeople thereat, +"'Tis your own doing, even with that!" + +But he--chafed, childlike, in extremes - +The temperament of men of dreams - + +Aloofly scrupled to admit +That he did aught but borrow it, + +And diffidently made request +That with the abbot all should rest. + +- As none could doubt the abbot's word, +Or question what the church averred, + +The mason was at length believed +Of no more count than he conceived, + +And soon began to lose the fame +That late had gathered round his name . . . + +- Time passed, and like a living thing +The pile went on embodying, + +And workmen died, and young ones grew, +And the old mason sank from view + +And Abbots Wygmore and Staunton went +And Horton sped the embellishment. + +But not till years had far progressed +Chanced it that, one day, much impressed, + +Standing within the well-graced aisle, +He asked who first conceived the style; + +And some decrepit sage detailed +How, when invention nought availed, + +The cloud-cast waters in their whim +Came down, and gave the hint to him + +Who struck each arc, and made each mould; +And how the abbot would not hold + +As sole begetter him who applied +Forms the Almighty sent as guide; + +And how the master lost renown, +And wore in death no artist's crown. + +- Then Horton, who in inner thought +Had more perceptions than he taught, + +Replied: "Nay; art can but transmute; +Invention is not absolute; + +"Things fail to spring from nought at call, +And art-beginnings most of all. + +"He did but what all artists do, +Wait upon Nature for his cue." + +- "Had you been here to tell them so +Lord Abbot, sixty years ago, + +"The mason, now long underground, +Doubtless a different fate had found. + +"He passed into oblivion dim, +And none knew what became of him! + +"His name? 'Twas of some common kind +And now has faded out of mind." + +The Abbot: "It shall not be hid! +I'll trace it." . . . But he never did. + +- When longer yet dank death had wormed +The brain wherein the style had germed + +From Gloucester church it flew afar - +The style called Perpendicular. - + +To Winton and to Westminster +It ranged, and grew still beautifuller: + +From Solway Frith to Dover Strand +Its fascinations starred the land, + +Not only on cathedral walls +But upon courts and castle halls, + +Till every edifice in the isle +Was patterned to no other style, + +And till, long having played its part, +The curtain fell on Gothic art. + +- Well: when in Wessex on your rounds, +Take a brief step beyond its bounds, + +And enter Gloucester: seek the quoin +Where choir and transept interjoin, + +And, gazing at the forms there flung +Against the sky by one unsung - + +The ogee arches transom-topped, +The tracery-stalks by spandrels stopped, + +Petrified lacework--lightly lined +On ancient massiveness behind - + +Muse that some minds so modest be +As to renounce fame's fairest fee, + +(Like him who crystallized on this spot +His visionings, but lies forgot, + +And many a mediaeval one +Whose symmetries salute the sun) + +While others boom a baseless claim, +And upon nothing rear a name. + + + +THE JUBILEE OF A MAGAZINE +(To the Editor) + + + +Yes; your up-dated modern page - +All flower-fresh, as it appears - +Can claim a time-tried lineage, + +That reaches backward fifty years +(Which, if but short for sleepy squires, +Is much in magazines' careers). + +- Here, on your cover, never tires +The sower, reaper, thresher, while +As through the seasons of our sires + +Each wills to work in ancient style +With seedlip, sickle, share and flail, +Though modes have since moved many a mile! + +The steel-roped plough now rips the vale, +With cog and tooth the sheaves are won, +Wired wheels drum out the wheat like hail; + +But if we ask, what has been done +To unify the mortal lot +Since your bright leaves first saw the sun, + +Beyond mechanic furtherance--what +Advance can rightness, candour, claim? +Truth bends abashed, and answers not. + +Despite your volumes' gentle aim +To straighten visions wry and wrong, +Events jar onward much the same! + +- Had custom tended to prolong, +As on your golden page engrained, +Old processes of blade and prong, + +And best invention been retained +For high crusades to lessen tears +Throughout the race, the world had gained! . . . +But too much, this, for fifty years. + + + +THE SATIN SHOES + + + +"If ever I walk to church to wed, + As other maidens use, +And face the gathered eyes," she said, + "I'll go in satin shoes!" + +She was as fair as early day + Shining on meads unmown, +And her sweet syllables seemed to play + Like flute-notes softly blown. + +The time arrived when it was meet + That she should be a bride; +The satin shoes were on her feet, + Her father was at her side. + +They stood within the dairy door, + And gazed across the green; +The church loomed on the distant moor, + But rain was thick between. + +"The grass-path hardly can be stepped, + The lane is like a pool!" - +Her dream is shown to be inept, + Her wish they overrule. + +"To go forth shod in satin soft + A coach would be required!" +For thickest boots the shoes were doffed - + Those shoes her soul desired . . . + +All day the bride, as overborne, + Was seen to brood apart, +And that the shoes had not been worn + Sat heavy on her heart. + +From her wrecked dream, as months flew on, + Her thought seemed not to range. +What ails the wife?" they said anon, + "That she should be so strange?" . . . + +Ah--what coach comes with furtive glide - + A coach of closed-up kind? +It comes to fetch the last year's bride, + Who wanders in her mind. + +She strove with them, and fearfully ran + Stairward with one low scream: +"Nay--coax her," said the madhouse man, + "With some old household theme." + +"If you will go, dear, you must fain + Put on those shoes--the pair +Meant for your marriage, which the rain + Forbade you then to wear." + +She clapped her hands, flushed joyous hues; + "O yes--I'll up and ride +If I am to wear my satin shoes + And be a proper bride!" + +Out then her little foot held she, + As to depart with speed; +The madhouse man smiled pleasantly + To see the wile succeed. + +She turned to him when all was done, + And gave him her thin hand, +Exclaiming like an enraptured one, + "This time it will be grand!" + +She mounted with a face elate, + Shut was the carriage door; +They drove her to the madhouse gate, + And she was seen no more . . . + +Yet she was fair as early day + Shining on meads unmown, +And her sweet syllables seemed to play + Like flute-notes softly blown. + + + +EXEUNT OMNES + + + +I + + Everybody else, then, going, +And I still left where the fair was? . . . +Much have I seen of neighbour loungers + Making a lusty showing, + Each now past all knowing. + +II + + There is an air of blankness +In the street and the littered spaces; +Thoroughfare, steeple, bridge and highway + Wizen themselves to lankness; + Kennels dribble dankness. + +III + + Folk all fade. And whither, +As I wait alone where the fair was? +Into the clammy and numbing night-fog + Whence they entered hither. + Soon do I follow thither! + +June 2, 1913. + + + +A POET + + + +Attentive eyes, fantastic heed, +Assessing minds, he does not need, +Nor urgent writs to sup or dine, +Nor pledges in the roseate wine. + +For loud acclaim he does not care +By the august or rich or fair, +Nor for smart pilgrims from afar, +Curious on where his hauntings are. + +But soon or later, when you hear +That he has doffed this wrinkled gear, +Some evening, at the first star-ray, +Come to his graveside, pause and say: + +"Whatever the message his to tell, +Two bright-souled women loved him well." +Stand and say that amid the dim: +It will be praise enough for him. + +July 1914. + + + +POSTSCRIPT +"MEN WHO MARCH AWAY" +(SONG OF THE SOLDIERS) + + + +What of the faith and fire within us + Men who march away + Ere the barn-cocks say + Night is growing gray, +To hazards whence no tears can win us; +What of the faith and fire within us + Men who march away? + +Is it a purblind prank, O think you, + Friend with the musing eye, + Who watch us stepping by + With doubt and dolorous sigh? +Can much pondering so hoodwink you! +Is it a purblind prank, O think you, + Friend with the musing eye? + +Nay. We well see what we are doing, + Though some may not see - + Dalliers as they be - + England's need are we; +Her distress would leave us rueing: +Nay. We well see what we are doing, + Though some may not see! + +In our heart of hearts believing + Victory crowns the just, + And that braggarts must + Surely bite the dust, +Press we to the field ungrieving, +In our heart of hearts believing + Victory crowns the just. + +Hence the faith and fire within us + Men who march away + Ere the barn-cocks say + Night is growing gray, +To hazards whence no tears can win us: +Hence the faith and fire within us + Men who march away. + +September 5, 1914. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Satires of Circumstance etc. by Hardy + diff --git a/old/satcr10.zip b/old/satcr10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..65d7dab --- /dev/null +++ b/old/satcr10.zip |
