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\title{The Poetry Collection of Thomas Hardy - Volume 2}
\date{}
\author{Thomas Hardy}
\subtitle{}






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\chapter{TIME’S LAUGHINGSTOCKS AND OTHER VERSES}

\subsection{CONTENTS}


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
THE REVISITATION



\item\relax 
A TRAMPWOMAN’S TRAGEDY (182-)



\item\relax 
THE TWO ROSALINDS



\item\relax 
A SUNDAY MORNING TRAGEDY (circa 186-)



\item\relax 
THE HOUSE OF HOSPITALITIES



\item\relax 
BEREFT



\item\relax 
JOHN AND JANE



\item\relax 
THE CURATE’S KINDNESS A WORKHOUSE IRONY



\item\relax 
THE FLIRT’S TRAGEDY (17 — )



\item\relax 
THE REJECTED MEMBER’S WIFE



\item\relax 
THE FARM-WOMAN’S WINTER



\item\relax 
AUTUMN IN KING’S HINTOCK PARK



\item\relax 
SHUT OUT THAT MOON



\item\relax 
REMINISCENCES OF A DANCING MAN



\item\relax 
THE DEAD MAN WALKING



\item\relax 
MORE LOVE LYRICS



\item\relax 
HER DEFINITION



\item\relax 
THE DIVISION



\item\relax 
ON THE DEPARTURE PLATFORM



\item\relax 
IN A CATHEDRAL CITY



\item\relax 
I SAY I’LL SEEK HER



\item\relax 
HER FATHER



\item\relax 
AT WAKING



\item\relax 
FOUR FOOTPRINTS



\item\relax 
IN THE VAULTED WAY



\item\relax 
IN THE MIND’S EYE



\item\relax 
THE END OF THE EPISODE



\item\relax 
THE SIGH



\item\relax 
IN THE NIGHT SHE CAME



\item\relax 
THE CONFORMERS



\item\relax 
THE DAWN AFTER THE DANCE



\item\relax 
THE SUN ON THE LETTER



\item\relax 
THE NIGHT OF THE DANCE



\item\relax 
MISCONCEPTION



\item\relax 
THE VOICE OF THE THORN



\item\relax 
FROM HER IN THE COUNTRY



\item\relax 
HER CONFESSION



\item\relax 
TO AN IMPERSONATOR OF ROSALIND



\item\relax 
TO AN ACTRESS



\item\relax 
THE MINUTE BEFORE MEETING



\item\relax 
HE ABJURES LOVE



\item\relax 
A SET OF COUNTRY SONGS



\item\relax 
LET ME ENJOY (MINOR KEY)



\item\relax 
AT CASTERBRIDGE FAIR



\item\relax 
THE DARK-EYED GENTLEMAN



\item\relax 
TO CARREY CLAVEL



\item\relax 
THE ORPHANED OLD MAID



\item\relax 
THE SPRING CALL



\item\relax 
JULIE-JANE



\item\relax 
NEWS FOR HER MOTHER



\item\relax 
THE FIDDLER



\item\relax 
THE HUSBAND’S VIEW



\item\relax 
ROSE-ANN



\item\relax 
THE HOMECOMING



\item\relax 
PIECES OCCASIONAL AND VARIOUS



\item\relax 
A CHURCH ROMANCE



\item\relax 
THE RASH BRIDE AN EXPERIENCE OF THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE



\item\relax 
THE DEAD QUIRE



\item\relax 
THE CHRISTENING



\item\relax 
A DREAM QUESTION



\item\relax 
BY THE BARROWS



\item\relax 
A WIFE AND ANOTHER



\item\relax 
THE ROMAN ROAD



\item\relax 
THE VAMPIRINE FAIR



\item\relax 
THE REMINDER



\item\relax 
THE RAMBLER



\item\relax 
NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME



\item\relax 
AFTER THE LAST BREATH (J. H. 1813-1904)



\item\relax 
IN CHILDBED



\item\relax 
THE PINE PLANTERS (MARTY SOUTH’S REVERIE)



\item\relax 
THE DEAR



\item\relax 
ONE WE KNEW (M. H. 1772-1857)



\item\relax 
SHE HEARS THE STORM



\item\relax 
A WET NIGHT



\item\relax 
BEFORE LIFE AND AFTER



\item\relax 
NEW YEAR’S EVE



\item\relax 
GOD’S EDUCATION



\item\relax 
TO SINCERITY



\item\relax 
PANTHERA



\item\relax 
THE UNBORN



\item\relax 
THE MAN HE KILLED



\item\relax 
GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE (A MEMORY OF CHRISTIANA C-)



\item\relax 
ONE RALPH BLOSSOM SOLILOQUIZES



\item\relax 
THE NOBLE LADY’S TALE (circa 1790)



\item\relax 
UNREALIZED



\item\relax 
WAGTAIL AND BABY



\item\relax 
ABERDEEN



\item\relax 
GEORGE MEREDITH 1828-1909



\item\relax 
YELL’HAM-WOOD’S STORY



\item\relax 
A YOUNG MAN’S EPIGRAM ON EXISTENCE




\end{itemize}
\subsection{PREFACE}


In collecting the following poems I have to thank the editors and proprietors of the periodicals in which certain of them have appeared for permission to reclaim them.


Now that the miscellany is brought together, some lack of concord in pieces written at widely severed dates, and in contrasting moods and circumstances, will be obvious enough. This I cannot help, but the sense of disconnection, particularly in respect of those lyrics penned in the first person, will be immaterial when it is borne in mind that they are to be regarded, in the main, as dramatic monologues by different characters.


As a whole they will, I hope, take the reader forward, even if not far, rather than backward. I should add that some lines in the early-dated poems have been rewritten, though they have been left substantially unchanged.


T. H.


September 1909.

\section{THE REVISITATION}


As I lay awake at night-time
\forcelinebreak In an ancient country barrack known to ancient cannoneers,
\forcelinebreak And recalled the hopes that heralded each seeming brave and bright time
\forcelinebreak Of my primal purple years,


Much it haunted me that, nigh there,
\forcelinebreak I had borne my bitterest loss — when One who went, came not again;
\forcelinebreak In a joyless hour of discord, in a joyless-hued July there -
\forcelinebreak A July just such as then.


And as thus I brooded longer,
\forcelinebreak With my faint eyes on the feeble square of wan-lit window frame,
\forcelinebreak A quick conviction sprung within me, grew, and grew yet stronger,
\forcelinebreak That the month-night was the same,


Too, as that which saw her leave me
\forcelinebreak On the rugged ridge of Waterstone, the peewits plaining round;
\forcelinebreak And a lapsing twenty years had ruled that — as it were to grieve me -
\forcelinebreak I should near the once-loved ground.


Though but now a war-worn stranger
\forcelinebreak Chance had quartered here, I rose up and descended to the yard.
\forcelinebreak All was soundless, save the troopers’ horses tossing at the manger,
\forcelinebreak And the sentry keeping guard.


Through the gateway I betook me
\forcelinebreak Down the High Street and beyond the lamps, across the battered bridge,
\forcelinebreak Till the country darkness clasped me and the friendly shine forsook me,
\forcelinebreak And I bore towards the Ridge,


With a dim unowned emotion
\forcelinebreak Saying softly: “Small my reason, now at midnight, to be here . . .
\forcelinebreak Yet a sleepless swain of fifty with a brief romantic notion
\forcelinebreak May retrace a track so dear.”


Thus I walked with thoughts half-uttered
\forcelinebreak Up the lane I knew so well, the grey, gaunt, lonely Lane of Slyre;
\forcelinebreak And at whiles behind me, far at sea, a sullen thunder muttered
\forcelinebreak As I mounted high and higher.


Till, the upper roadway quitting,
\forcelinebreak I adventured on the open drouthy downland thinly grassed,
\forcelinebreak While the spry white scuts of conies flashed before me, earthward flitting,
\forcelinebreak And an arid wind went past.


Round about me bulged the barrows
\forcelinebreak As before, in antique silence — immemorial funeral piles -
\forcelinebreak Where the sleek herds trampled daily the remains of flint-tipt arrows
\forcelinebreak Mid the thyme and chamomiles;


And the Sarsen stone there, dateless,
\forcelinebreak On whose breast we had sat and told the zephyrs many a tender vow,
\forcelinebreak Held the heat of yester sun, as sank thereon one fated mateless
\forcelinebreak From those far fond hours till now.


Maybe flustered by my presence
\forcelinebreak Rose the peewits, just as all those years back, wailing soft and loud,
\forcelinebreak And revealing their pale pinions like a fitful phosphorescence
\forcelinebreak Up against the cope of cloud,


Where their dolesome exclamations
\forcelinebreak Seemed the voicings of the self-same throats I had heard when life was
\forcelinebreak green,
\forcelinebreak Though since that day uncounted frail forgotten generations
\forcelinebreak Of their kind had flecked the scene. -


And so, living long and longer
\forcelinebreak In a past that lived no more, my eyes discerned there, suddenly,
\forcelinebreak That a figure broke the skyline — first in vague contour, then stronger,
\forcelinebreak And was crossing near to me.


Some long-missed familiar gesture,
\forcelinebreak Something wonted, struck me in the figure’s pause to list and heed,
\forcelinebreak Till I fancied from its handling of its loosely wrapping vesture
\forcelinebreak That it might be She indeed.


’Twas not reasonless: below there
\forcelinebreak In the vale, had been her home; the nook might hold her even yet,
\forcelinebreak And the downlands were her father’s fief; she still might come and go there;
\forcelinebreak -
\forcelinebreak So I rose, and said, “Agnette!”


With a little leap, half-frightened,
\forcelinebreak She withdrew some steps; then letting intuition smother fear
\forcelinebreak In a place so long-accustomed, and as one whom thought enlightened,
\forcelinebreak She replied: “What — THAT voice? — here!”


”Yes, Agnette! — And did the occasion
\forcelinebreak Of our marching hither make you think I MIGHT walk where we two — ’
\forcelinebreak “O, I often come,” she murmured with a moment’s coy evasion,
\forcelinebreak ”(‘Tis not far), — and — think of you.”


Then I took her hand, and led her
\forcelinebreak To the ancient people’s stone whereon I had sat. There now sat we;
\forcelinebreak And together talked, until the first reluctant shyness fled her,
\forcelinebreak And she spoke confidingly.


”It is JUST as ere we parted!”
\forcelinebreak Said she, brimming high with joy. — ”And when, then, came you here, and why?”
\forcelinebreak “ — Dear, I could not sleep for thinking of our trystings when twin-hearted.”
\forcelinebreak She responded, “Nor could I.


”There are few things I would rather
\forcelinebreak Than be wandering at this spirit-hour — lone-lived, my kindred dead -
\forcelinebreak On this wold of well-known feature I inherit from my father:
\forcelinebreak Night or day, I have no dread . . .


”O I wonder, wonder whether
\forcelinebreak Any heartstring bore a signal-thrill between us twain or no? -
\forcelinebreak Some such influence can, at times, they say, draw severed souls together.”
\forcelinebreak I said, “Dear, we’ll dream it so.”


Each one’s hand the other’s grasping,
\forcelinebreak And a mutual forgiveness won, we sank to silent thought,
\forcelinebreak A large content in us that seemed our rended lives reclasping,
\forcelinebreak And contracting years to nought.


Till I, maybe overweary
\forcelinebreak From the lateness, and a wayfaring so full of strain and stress
\forcelinebreak For one no longer buoyant, to a peak so steep and eery,
\forcelinebreak Sank to slow unconsciousness . . .


How long I slept I knew not,
\forcelinebreak But the brief warm summer night had slid when, to my swift surprise,
\forcelinebreak A red upedging sun, of glory chambered mortals view not,
\forcelinebreak Was blazing on my eyes,


From the Milton Woods to Dole-Hill
\forcelinebreak All the spacious landscape lighting, and around about my feet
\forcelinebreak Flinging tall thin tapering shadows from the meanest mound and mole-hill,
\forcelinebreak And on trails the ewes had beat.


She was sitting still beside me,
\forcelinebreak Dozing likewise; and I turned to her, to take her hanging hand;
\forcelinebreak When, the more regarding, that which like a spectre shook and tried me
\forcelinebreak In her image then I scanned;


That which Time’s transforming chisel
\forcelinebreak Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well,
\forcelinebreak In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle -
\forcelinebreak Pits, where peonies once did dwell.


She had wakened, and perceiving
\forcelinebreak (I surmise) my sigh and shock, my quite involuntary dismay,
\forcelinebreak Up she started, and — her wasted figure all throughout it heaving -
\forcelinebreak Said, “Ah, yes: I am THUS by day!


”Can you really wince and wonder
\forcelinebreak That the sunlight should reveal you such a thing of skin and bone,
\forcelinebreak As if unaware a Death’s-head must of need lie not far under
\forcelinebreak Flesh whose years out-count your own?


”Yes: that movement was a warning
\forcelinebreak Of the worth of man’s devotion! — Yes, Sir, I am OLD,” said she,
\forcelinebreak “And the thing which should increase love turns it quickly into scorning -
\forcelinebreak And your new-won heart from me!”


Then she went, ere I could call her,
\forcelinebreak With the too proud temper ruling that had parted us before,
\forcelinebreak And I saw her form descend the slopes, and smaller grow and smaller,
\forcelinebreak Till I caught its course no more . . .


True; I might have dogged her downward;
\forcelinebreak  - But it MAY be (though I know not) that this trick on us of Time
\forcelinebreak Disconcerted and confused me. — Soon I bent my footsteps townward,
\forcelinebreak Like to one who had watched a crime.


Well I knew my native weakness,
\forcelinebreak Well I know it still. I cherished her reproach like physic-wine,
\forcelinebreak For I saw in that emaciate shape of bitterness and bleakness
\forcelinebreak A nobler soul than mine.


Did I not return, then, ever? -
\forcelinebreak Did we meet again? — mend all? — Alas, what greyhead perseveres! -
\forcelinebreak Soon I got the Route elsewhither. — Since that hour I have seen her never:
\forcelinebreak Love is lame at fifty years.

\section{A TRAMPWOMAN’S TRAGEDY (182-)}

\subsection{I}


From Wynyard’s Gap the livelong day,
\forcelinebreak The livelong day,
\forcelinebreak We beat afoot the northward way
\forcelinebreak We had travelled times before.
\forcelinebreak The sun-blaze burning on our backs,
\forcelinebreak Our shoulders sticking to our packs,
\forcelinebreak By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks
\forcelinebreak We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

\subsection{II}


Full twenty miles we jaunted on,
\forcelinebreak We jaunted on, -
\forcelinebreak My fancy-man, and jeering John,
\forcelinebreak And Mother Lee, and I.
\forcelinebreak And, as the sun drew down to west,
\forcelinebreak We climbed the toilsome Poldon crest,
\forcelinebreak And saw, of landskip sights the best,
\forcelinebreak The inn that beamed thereby.

\subsection{III}


For months we had padded side by side,
\forcelinebreak Ay, side by side
\forcelinebreak Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,
\forcelinebreak And where the Parret ran.
\forcelinebreak We’d faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
\forcelinebreak Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,
\forcelinebreak Been stung by every Marshwood midge,
\forcelinebreak I and my fancy-man.

\subsection{IV}


Lone inns we loved, my man and I,
\forcelinebreak My man and I;
\forcelinebreak “King’s Stag,” “Windwhistle” high and dry,
\forcelinebreak ”The Horse” on Hintock Green,
\forcelinebreak The cosy house at Wynyard’s Gap,
\forcelinebreak “The Hut” renowned on Bredy Knap,
\forcelinebreak And many another wayside tap
\forcelinebreak Where folk might sit unseen.

\subsection{V}


Now as we trudged — O deadly day,
\forcelinebreak O deadly day! -
\forcelinebreak I teased my fancy-man in play
\forcelinebreak And wanton idleness.
\forcelinebreak I walked alongside jeering John,
\forcelinebreak I laid his hand my waist upon;
\forcelinebreak I would not bend my glances on
\forcelinebreak My lover’s dark distress.


VI


Thus Poldon top at last we won,
\forcelinebreak At last we won,
\forcelinebreak And gained the inn at sink of sun
\forcelinebreak Far-famed as “Marshal’s Elm.”
\forcelinebreak Beneath us figured tor and lea,
\forcelinebreak From Mendip to the western sea -
\forcelinebreak I doubt if finer sight there be
\forcelinebreak Within this royal realm.


VII


Inside the settle all a-row -
\forcelinebreak All four a-row
\forcelinebreak We sat, I next to John, to show
\forcelinebreak That he had wooed and won.
\forcelinebreak And then he took me on his knee,
\forcelinebreak And swore it was his turn to be
\forcelinebreak My favoured mate, and Mother Lee
\forcelinebreak Passed to my former one.


VIII


Then in a voice I had never heard,
\forcelinebreak I had never heard,
\forcelinebreak My only Love to me: “One word,
\forcelinebreak My lady, if you please!
\forcelinebreak Whose is the child you are like to bear? -
\forcelinebreak HIS? After all my months o’ care?”
\forcelinebreak God knows ‘twas not! But, O despair!
\forcelinebreak I nodded — still to tease.

\subsection{IX}


Then up he sprung, and with his knife -
\forcelinebreak And with his knife
\forcelinebreak He let out jeering Johnny’s life,
\forcelinebreak Yes; there, at set of sun.
\forcelinebreak The slant ray through the window nigh
\forcelinebreak Gilded John’s blood and glazing eye,
\forcelinebreak Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I
\forcelinebreak Knew that the deed was done.

\subsection{X}


The taverns tell the gloomy tale,
\forcelinebreak The gloomy tale,
\forcelinebreak How that at Ivel-chester jail
\forcelinebreak My Love, my sweetheart swung;
\forcelinebreak Though stained till now by no misdeed
\forcelinebreak Save one horse ta’en in time o’ need;
\forcelinebreak (Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed
\forcelinebreak Ere his last fling he flung.)

\subsection{XI}


Thereaft I walked the world alone,
\forcelinebreak Alone, alone!
\forcelinebreak On his death-day I gave my groan
\forcelinebreak And dropt his dead-born child.
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,
\forcelinebreak None tending me; for Mother Lee
\forcelinebreak Had died at Glaston, leaving me
\forcelinebreak Unfriended on the wild.

\subsection{XII}


And in the night as I lay weak,
\forcelinebreak As I lay weak,
\forcelinebreak The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
\forcelinebreak The red moon low declined -
\forcelinebreak The ghost of him I’d die to kiss
\forcelinebreak Rose up and said: “Ah, tell me this!
\forcelinebreak Was the child mine, or was it his?
\forcelinebreak Speak, that I rest may find!”

\subsection{XIII}


O doubt not but I told him then,
\forcelinebreak I told him then,
\forcelinebreak That I had kept me from all men
\forcelinebreak Since we joined lips and swore.
\forcelinebreak Whereat he smiled, and thinned away
\forcelinebreak As the wind stirred to call up day . . .
\forcelinebreak  - ‘Tis past! And here alone I stray
\forcelinebreak Haunting the Western Moor.


NOTES. — ”Windwhistle” (Stanza iv.). The highness and dryness of Windwhistle Inn was impressed upon the writer two or three years ago, when, after climbing on a hot afternoon to the beautiful spot near which it stands and entering the inn for tea, he was informed by the landlady that none could be had, unless he would fetch water from a valley half a mile off, the house containing not a drop, owing to its situation. However, a tantalising row of full barrels behind her back testified to a wetness of a certain sort, which was not at that time desired.


“Marshal’s Elm” (Stanza vi.) so picturesquely situated, is no longer an inn, though the house, or part of it, still remains. It used to exhibit a fine old swinging sign.


“Blue Jimmy” (Stanza x.) was a notorious horse-stealer of Wessex in those days, who appropriated more than a hundred horses before he was caught, among others one belonging to a neighbour of the writer’s grandfather. He was hanged at the now demolished Ivel-chester or Ilchester jail above mentioned — that building formerly of so many sinister associations in the minds of the local peasantry, and the continual haunt of fever, which at last led to its condemnation. Its site is now an innocent-looking green meadow.


April 1902.

\section{THE TWO ROSALINDS}

\subsection{I}


The dubious daylight ended,
\forcelinebreak And I walked the Town alone, unminding whither bound and why,
\forcelinebreak As from each gaunt street and gaping square a mist of light ascended
\forcelinebreak And dispersed upon the sky.

\subsection{II}


Files of evanescent faces
\forcelinebreak Passed each other without heeding, in their travail, teen, or joy,
\forcelinebreak Some in void unvisioned listlessness inwrought with pallid traces
\forcelinebreak Of keen penury’s annoy.

\subsection{III}


Nebulous flames in crystal cages
\forcelinebreak Leered as if with discontent at city movement, murk, and grime,
\forcelinebreak And as waiting some procession of great ghosts from bygone ages
\forcelinebreak To exalt the ignoble time.

\subsection{IV}


In a colonnade high-lighted,
\forcelinebreak By a thoroughfare where stern utilitarian traffic dinned,
\forcelinebreak On a red and white emblazonment of players and parts, I sighted
\forcelinebreak The name of “Rosalind,”

\subsection{V}


And her famous mates of “Arden,”
\forcelinebreak Who observed no stricter customs than “the seasons’ difference” bade,
\forcelinebreak Who lived with running brooks for books in Nature’s wildwood garden,
\forcelinebreak And called idleness their trade . . .


VI


Now the poster stirred an ember
\forcelinebreak Still remaining from my ardours of some forty years before,
\forcelinebreak When the selfsame portal on an eve it thrilled me to remember
\forcelinebreak A like announcement bore;


VII


And expectantly I had entered,
\forcelinebreak And had first beheld in human mould a Rosalind woo and plead,
\forcelinebreak On whose transcendent figuring my speedy soul had centred
\forcelinebreak As it had been she indeed . . .


VIII


So; all other plans discarding,
\forcelinebreak I resolved on entrance, bent on seeing what I once had seen,
\forcelinebreak And approached the gangway of my earlier knowledge, disregarding
\forcelinebreak The tract of time between.

\subsection{IX}


”The words, sir?” cried a creature
\forcelinebreak Hovering mid the shine and shade as ‘twixt the live world and the tomb;
\forcelinebreak But the well-known numbers needed not for me a text or teacher
\forcelinebreak To revive and re-illume.

\subsection{X}


Then the play . . . But how unfitted
\forcelinebreak Was THIS Rosalind! — a mammet quite to me, in memories nurst,
\forcelinebreak And with chilling disappointment soon I sought the street I had quitted,
\forcelinebreak To re-ponder on the first.

\subsection{XI}


The hag still hawked, — I met her
\forcelinebreak Just without the colonnade. “So you don’t like her, sir?” said she.
\forcelinebreak “Ah — I was once that Rosalind! — I acted her — none better -
\forcelinebreak Yes — in eighteen sixty-three.

\subsection{XII}


”Thus I won Orlando to me
\forcelinebreak In my then triumphant days when I had charm and maidenhood,
\forcelinebreak Now some forty years ago. — I used to say, COME WOO ME, WOO ME!”
\forcelinebreak And she struck the attitude.

\subsection{XIII}


It was when I had gone there nightly;
\forcelinebreak And the voice — though raucous now — was yet the old one. — Clear as noon
\forcelinebreak My Rosalind was here . . . Thereon the band withinside lightly
\forcelinebreak Beat up a merry tune.

\section{A SUNDAY MORNING TRAGEDY (circa 186-)}


I bore a daughter flower-fair,
\forcelinebreak In Pydel Vale, alas for me;
\forcelinebreak I joyed to mother one so rare,
\forcelinebreak But dead and gone I now would be.


Men looked and loved her as she grew,
\forcelinebreak And she was won, alas for me;
\forcelinebreak She told me nothing, but I knew,
\forcelinebreak And saw that sorrow was to be.


I knew that one had made her thrall,
\forcelinebreak A thrall to him, alas for me;
\forcelinebreak And then, at last, she told me all,
\forcelinebreak And wondered what her end would be.


She owned that she had loved too well,
\forcelinebreak Had loved too well, unhappy she,
\forcelinebreak And bore a secret time would tell,
\forcelinebreak Though in her shroud she’d sooner be.


I plodded to her sweetheart’s door
\forcelinebreak In Pydel Vale, alas for me:
\forcelinebreak I pleaded with him, pleaded sore,
\forcelinebreak To save her from her misery.


He frowned, and swore he could not wed,
\forcelinebreak Seven times he swore it could not be;
\forcelinebreak “Poverty’s worse than shame,” he said,
\forcelinebreak Till all my hope went out of me.


“I’ve packed my traps to sail the main” -
\forcelinebreak Roughly he spake, alas did he -
\forcelinebreak “Wessex beholds me not again,
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis worse than any jail would be!”


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
There was a shepherd whom I knew,
\forcelinebreak A subtle man, alas for me:
\forcelinebreak I sought him all the pastures through,
\forcelinebreak Though better I had ceased to be.




\end{itemize}

I traced him by his lantern light,
\forcelinebreak And gave him hint, alas for me,
\forcelinebreak Of how she found her in the plight
\forcelinebreak That is so scorned in Christendie.


“Is there an herb . . . ?” I asked. “Or none?”
\forcelinebreak Yes, thus I asked him desperately.
\forcelinebreak “ — There is,” he said; “a certain one . . . “
\forcelinebreak Would he had sworn that none knew he!


“To-morrow I will walk your way,”
\forcelinebreak He hinted low, alas for me. -
\forcelinebreak Fieldwards I gazed throughout next day;
\forcelinebreak Now fields I never more would see!


The sunset-shine, as curfew strook,
\forcelinebreak As curfew strook beyond the lea,
\forcelinebreak Lit his white smock and gleaming crook,
\forcelinebreak While slowly he drew near to me.


He pulled from underneath his smock
\forcelinebreak The herb I sought, my curse to be -
\forcelinebreak “At times I use it in my flock,”
\forcelinebreak He said, and hope waxed strong in me.


“‘Tis meant to balk ill-motherings” -
\forcelinebreak (Ill-motherings! Why should they be?) -
\forcelinebreak “If not, would God have sent such things?”
\forcelinebreak So spoke the shepherd unto me.


That night I watched the poppling brew,
\forcelinebreak With bended back and hand on knee:
\forcelinebreak I stirred it till the dawnlight grew,
\forcelinebreak And the wind whiffled wailfully.


“This scandal shall be slain,” said I,
\forcelinebreak “That lours upon her innocency:
\forcelinebreak I’ll give all whispering tongues the lie;” -
\forcelinebreak But worse than whispers was to be.


“Here’s physic for untimely fruit,”
\forcelinebreak I said to her, alas for me,
\forcelinebreak Early that morn in fond salute;
\forcelinebreak And in my grave I now would be.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Next Sunday came, with sweet church chimes
\forcelinebreak In Pydel Vale, alas for me:
\forcelinebreak I went into her room betimes;
\forcelinebreak No more may such a Sunday be!




\end{itemize}

“Mother, instead of rescue nigh,”
\forcelinebreak She faintly breathed, alas for me,
\forcelinebreak “I feel as I were like to die,
\forcelinebreak And underground soon, soon should be.”


From church that noon the people walked
\forcelinebreak In twos and threes, alas for me,
\forcelinebreak Showed their new raiment — smiled and talked,
\forcelinebreak Though sackcloth-clad I longed to be.


Came to my door her lover’s friends,
\forcelinebreak And cheerly cried, alas for me,
\forcelinebreak “Right glad are we he makes amends,
\forcelinebreak For never a sweeter bride can be.”


My mouth dried, as ‘twere scorched within,
\forcelinebreak Dried at their words, alas for me:
\forcelinebreak More and more neighbours crowded in,
\forcelinebreak (O why should mothers ever be!)


“Ha-ha! Such well-kept news!” laughed they,
\forcelinebreak Yes — so they laughed, alas for me.
\forcelinebreak “Whose banns were called in church to-day?” -
\forcelinebreak Christ, how I wished my soul could flee!


“Where is she? O the stealthy miss,”
\forcelinebreak Still bantered they, alas for me,
\forcelinebreak “To keep a wedding close as this . . .”
\forcelinebreak Ay, Fortune worked thus wantonly!


“But you are pale — you did not know?”
\forcelinebreak They archly asked, alas for me,
\forcelinebreak I stammered, “Yes — some days-ago,”
\forcelinebreak While coffined clay I wished to be.


“‘Twas done to please her, we surmise?”
\forcelinebreak (They spoke quite lightly in their glee)
\forcelinebreak “Done by him as a fond surprise?”
\forcelinebreak I thought their words would madden me.


Her lover entered. “Where’s my bird? -
\forcelinebreak My bird — my flower — my picotee?
\forcelinebreak First time of asking, soon the third!”
\forcelinebreak Ah, in my grave I well may be.


To me he whispered: “Since your call — ”
\forcelinebreak So spoke he then, alas for me -
\forcelinebreak “I’ve felt for her, and righted all.”
\forcelinebreak  - I think of it to agony.


“She’s faint to-day — tired — nothing more — ”
\forcelinebreak Thus did I lie, alas for me . . .
\forcelinebreak I called her at her chamber door
\forcelinebreak As one who scarce had strength to be.


No voice replied. I went within -
\forcelinebreak O women! scourged the worst are we . . .
\forcelinebreak I shrieked. The others hastened in
\forcelinebreak And saw the stroke there dealt on me.


There she lay — silent, breathless, dead,
\forcelinebreak Stone dead she lay — wronged, sinless she! -
\forcelinebreak Ghost-white the cheeks once rosy-red:
\forcelinebreak Death had took her. Death took not me.


I kissed her colding face and hair,
\forcelinebreak I kissed her corpse — the bride to be! -
\forcelinebreak My punishment I cannot bear,
\forcelinebreak But pray God NOT to pity me.


January 1904.

\section{THE HOUSE OF HOSPITALITIES}


Here we broached the Christmas barrel,
\forcelinebreak Pushed up the charred log-ends;
\forcelinebreak Here we sang the Christmas carol,
\forcelinebreak And called in friends.


Time has tired me since we met here
\forcelinebreak When the folk now dead were young,
\forcelinebreak Since the viands were outset here
\forcelinebreak And quaint songs sung.


And the worm has bored the viol
\forcelinebreak That used to lead the tune,
\forcelinebreak Rust eaten out the dial
\forcelinebreak That struck night’s noon.


Now no Christmas brings in neighbours,
\forcelinebreak And the New Year comes unlit;
\forcelinebreak Where we sang the mole now labours,
\forcelinebreak And spiders knit.


Yet at midnight if here walking,
\forcelinebreak When the moon sheets wall and tree,
\forcelinebreak I see forms of old time talking,
\forcelinebreak Who smile on me.

\section{BEREFT}


In the black winter morning
\forcelinebreak No light will be struck near my eyes
\forcelinebreak While the clock in the stairway is warning
\forcelinebreak For five, when he used to rise.
\forcelinebreak Leave the door unbarred,
\forcelinebreak The clock unwound,
\forcelinebreak Make my lone bed hard -
\forcelinebreak Would ‘twere underground!


When the summer dawns clearly,
\forcelinebreak And the appletree-tops seem alight,
\forcelinebreak Who will undraw the curtain and cheerly
\forcelinebreak Call out that the morning is bright?


When I tarry at market
\forcelinebreak No form will cross Durnover Lea
\forcelinebreak In the gathering darkness, to hark at
\forcelinebreak Grey’s Bridge for the pit-pat o’ me.


When the supper crock’s steaming,
\forcelinebreak And the time is the time of his tread,
\forcelinebreak I shall sit by the fire and wait dreaming
\forcelinebreak In a silence as of the dead.
\forcelinebreak Leave the door unbarred,
\forcelinebreak The clock unwound,
\forcelinebreak Make my lone bed hard -
\forcelinebreak Would ‘twere underground!


1901

\section{JOHN AND JANE}

\subsection{I}


He sees the world as a boisterous place
\forcelinebreak Where all things bear a laughing face,
\forcelinebreak And humorous scenes go hourly on,
\forcelinebreak Does John.

\subsection{II}


They find the world a pleasant place
\forcelinebreak Where all is ecstasy and grace,
\forcelinebreak Where a light has risen that cannot wane,
\forcelinebreak Do John and Jane.

\subsection{III}


They see as a palace their cottage-place,
\forcelinebreak Containing a pearl of the human race,
\forcelinebreak A hero, maybe, hereafter styled,
\forcelinebreak Do John and Jane with a baby-child.

\subsection{IV}


They rate the world as a gruesome place,
\forcelinebreak Where fair looks fade to a skull’s grimace, -
\forcelinebreak As a pilgrimage they would fain get done -
\forcelinebreak Do John and Jane with their worthless son.

\section{THE CURATE’S KINDNESS A WORKHOUSE IRONY}

\subsection{I}


I thought they’d be strangers aroun’ me,
\forcelinebreak But she’s to be there!
\forcelinebreak Let me jump out o’ waggon and go back and drown me
\forcelinebreak At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

\subsection{II}


I thought: “Well, I’ve come to the Union -
\forcelinebreak The workhouse at last -
\forcelinebreak After honest hard work all the week, and Communion
\forcelinebreak O’ Zundays, these fifty years past.

\subsection{III}


“‘Tis hard; but,” I thought, “never mind it:
\forcelinebreak There’s gain in the end:
\forcelinebreak And when I get used to the place I shall find it
\forcelinebreak A home, and may find there a friend.

\subsection{IV}


“Life there will be better than t’other.
\forcelinebreak For peace is assured.
\forcelinebreak THE MEN IN ONE WING AND THEIR WIVES IN ANOTHER
\forcelinebreak Is strictly the rule of the Board.”

\subsection{V}


Just then one young Pa’son arriving
\forcelinebreak Steps up out of breath
\forcelinebreak To the side o’ the waggon wherein we were driving
\forcelinebreak To Union; and calls out and saith:


VI


“Old folks, that harsh order is altered,
\forcelinebreak Be not sick of heart!
\forcelinebreak The Guardians they poohed and they pished and they paltered
\forcelinebreak When urged not to keep you apart.


VII


“‘It is wrong,’ I maintained, ‘to divide them,
\forcelinebreak Near forty years wed.’
\forcelinebreak ‘Very well, sir. We promise, then, they shall abide them
\forcelinebreak In one wing together,’ they said.”


VIII


Then I sank — knew ‘twas quite a foredone thing
\forcelinebreak That misery should be
\forcelinebreak To the end! . . . To get freed of her there was the one thing
\forcelinebreak Had made the change welcome to me.

\subsection{IX}


To go there was ending but badly;
\forcelinebreak ’Twas shame and ‘twas pain;
\forcelinebreak “But anyhow,” thought I, “thereby I shall gladly
\forcelinebreak Get free of this forty years’ chain.”

\subsection{X}


I thought they’d be strangers aroun’ me,
\forcelinebreak But she’s to be there!
\forcelinebreak Let me jump out o’ waggon and go back and drown me
\forcelinebreak At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

\section{THE FLIRT’S TRAGEDY (17 — )}


Here alone by the logs in my chamber,
\forcelinebreak Deserted, decrepit -
\forcelinebreak Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot
\forcelinebreak Of friends I once knew -


My drama and hers begins weirdly
\forcelinebreak Its dumb re-enactment,
\forcelinebreak Each scene, sigh, and circumstance passing
\forcelinebreak In spectral review.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Wealth was mine beyond wish when I met her -
\forcelinebreak The pride of the lowland -
\forcelinebreak Embowered in Tintinhull Valley
\forcelinebreak By laurel and yew;




\end{itemize}

And love lit my soul, notwithstanding
\forcelinebreak My features’ ill favour,
\forcelinebreak Too obvious beside her perfections
\forcelinebreak Of line and of hue.


But it pleased her to play on my passion,
\forcelinebreak And whet me to pleadings
\forcelinebreak That won from her mirthful negations
\forcelinebreak And scornings undue.


Then I fled her disdains and derisions
\forcelinebreak To cities of pleasure,
\forcelinebreak And made me the crony of idlers
\forcelinebreak In every purlieu.


Of those who lent ear to my story,
\forcelinebreak A needy Adonis
\forcelinebreak Gave hint how to grizzle her garden
\forcelinebreak From roses to rue,


Could his price but be paid for so purging
\forcelinebreak My scorner of scornings:
\forcelinebreak Thus tempted, the lust to avenge me
\forcelinebreak Germed inly and grew.


I clothed him in sumptuous apparel,
\forcelinebreak Consigned to him coursers,
\forcelinebreak Meet equipage, liveried attendants
\forcelinebreak In full retinue.


So dowered, with letters of credit
\forcelinebreak He wayfared to England,
\forcelinebreak And spied out the manor she goddessed,
\forcelinebreak And handy thereto,


Set to hire him a tenantless mansion
\forcelinebreak As coign-stone of vantage
\forcelinebreak For testing what gross adulation
\forcelinebreak Of beauty could do.


He laboured through mornings and evens,
\forcelinebreak On new moons and sabbaths,
\forcelinebreak By wiles to enmesh her attention
\forcelinebreak In park, path, and pew;


And having afar played upon her,
\forcelinebreak Advanced his lines nearer,
\forcelinebreak And boldly outleaping conventions,
\forcelinebreak Bent briskly to woo.


His gay godlike face, his rare seeming
\forcelinebreak Anon worked to win her,
\forcelinebreak And later, at noontides and night-tides
\forcelinebreak They held rendezvous.


His tarriance full spent, he departed
\forcelinebreak And met me in Venice,
\forcelinebreak And lines from her told that my jilter
\forcelinebreak Was stooping to sue.


Not long could be further concealment,
\forcelinebreak She pled to him humbly:
\forcelinebreak “By our love and our sin, O protect me;
\forcelinebreak I fly unto you!”


A mighty remorse overgat me,
\forcelinebreak I heard her low anguish,
\forcelinebreak And there in the gloom of the calle
\forcelinebreak My steel ran him through.


A swift push engulphed his hot carrion
\forcelinebreak Within the canal there -
\forcelinebreak That still street of waters dividing
\forcelinebreak The city in two.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
I wandered awhile all unable
\forcelinebreak To smother my torment,
\forcelinebreak My brain racked by yells as from Tophet
\forcelinebreak Of Satan’s whole crew.




\end{itemize}

A month of unrest brought me hovering
\forcelinebreak At home in her precincts,
\forcelinebreak To whose hiding-hole local story
\forcelinebreak Afforded a clue.


Exposed, and expelled by her people,
\forcelinebreak Afar off in London
\forcelinebreak I found her alone, in a sombre
\forcelinebreak And soul-stifling mew.


Still burning to make reparation
\forcelinebreak I pleaded to wive her,
\forcelinebreak And father her child, and thus faintly
\forcelinebreak My mischief undo.


She yielded, and spells of calm weather
\forcelinebreak Succeeded the tempest;
\forcelinebreak And one sprung of him stood as scion
\forcelinebreak Of my bone and thew . . .


But Time unveils sorrows and secrets,
\forcelinebreak And so it befell now:
\forcelinebreak By inches the curtain was twitched at,
\forcelinebreak And slowly undrew.


As we lay, she and I, in the night-time,
\forcelinebreak We heard the boy moaning:
\forcelinebreak “O misery mine! My false father
\forcelinebreak Has murdered my true!”


She gasped: yea, she heard; understood it.
\forcelinebreak Next day the child fled us;
\forcelinebreak And nevermore sighted was even
\forcelinebreak A print of his shoe.


Thenceforward she shunned me, and languished;
\forcelinebreak Till one day the park-pool
\forcelinebreak Embraced her fair form, and extinguished
\forcelinebreak Her eyes’ living blue.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
So; ask not what blast may account for
\forcelinebreak This aspect of pallor,
\forcelinebreak These bones that just prison within them
\forcelinebreak Life’s poor residue;




\end{itemize}

But pass by, and leave unregarded
\forcelinebreak A Cain to his suffering,
\forcelinebreak For vengeance too dark on the woman
\forcelinebreak Whose lover he slew.

\section{THE REJECTED MEMBER’S WIFE}


We shall see her no more
\forcelinebreak On the balcony,
\forcelinebreak Smiling, while hurt, at the roar
\forcelinebreak As of surging sea
\forcelinebreak From the stormy sturdy band
\forcelinebreak Who have doomed her lord’s cause,
\forcelinebreak Though she waves her little hand
\forcelinebreak As it were applause.


Here will be candidates yet,
\forcelinebreak And candidates’ wives,
\forcelinebreak Fervid with zeal to set
\forcelinebreak Their ideals on our lives:
\forcelinebreak Here will come market-men
\forcelinebreak On the market-days,
\forcelinebreak Here will clash now and then
\forcelinebreak More such party assays.


And the balcony will fill
\forcelinebreak When such times are renewed,
\forcelinebreak And the throng in the street will thrill
\forcelinebreak With to-day’s mettled mood;
\forcelinebreak But she will no more stand
\forcelinebreak In the sunshine there,
\forcelinebreak With that wave of her white-gloved hand,
\forcelinebreak And that chestnut hair.


January 1906.

\section{THE FARM-WOMAN’S WINTER}

\subsection{I}


If seasons all were summers,
\forcelinebreak And leaves would never fall,
\forcelinebreak And hopping casement-comers
\forcelinebreak Were foodless not at all,
\forcelinebreak And fragile folk might be here
\forcelinebreak That white winds bid depart;
\forcelinebreak Then one I used to see here
\forcelinebreak Would warm my wasted heart!

\subsection{II}


One frail, who, bravely tilling
\forcelinebreak Long hours in gripping gusts,
\forcelinebreak Was mastered by their chilling,
\forcelinebreak And now his ploughshare rusts.
\forcelinebreak So savage winter catches
\forcelinebreak The breath of limber things,
\forcelinebreak And what I love he snatches,
\forcelinebreak And what I love not, brings.

\section{AUTUMN IN KING’S HINTOCK PARK}


Here by the baring bough
\forcelinebreak Raking up leaves,
\forcelinebreak Often I ponder how
\forcelinebreak Springtime deceives, -
\forcelinebreak I, an old woman now,
\forcelinebreak Raking up leaves.


Here in the avenue
\forcelinebreak Raking up leaves,
\forcelinebreak Lords’ ladies pass in view,
\forcelinebreak Until one heaves
\forcelinebreak Sighs at life’s russet hue,
\forcelinebreak Raking up leaves!


Just as my shape you see
\forcelinebreak Raking up leaves,
\forcelinebreak I saw, when fresh and free,
\forcelinebreak Those memory weaves
\forcelinebreak Into grey ghosts by me,
\forcelinebreak Raking up leaves.


Yet, Dear, though one may sigh,
\forcelinebreak Raking up leaves,
\forcelinebreak New leaves will dance on high -
\forcelinebreak Earth never grieves! -
\forcelinebreak Will not, when missed am I
\forcelinebreak Raking up leaves.


1901

\section{SHUT OUT THAT MOON}


Close up the casement, draw the blind,
\forcelinebreak Shut out that stealing moon,
\forcelinebreak She wears too much the guise she wore
\forcelinebreak Before our lutes were strewn
\forcelinebreak With years-deep dust, and names we read
\forcelinebreak On a white stone were hewn.


Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn
\forcelinebreak To view the Lady’s Chair,
\forcelinebreak Immense Orion’s glittering form,
\forcelinebreak The Less and Greater Bear:
\forcelinebreak Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
\forcelinebreak When faded ones were fair.


Brush not the bough for midnight scents
\forcelinebreak That come forth lingeringly,
\forcelinebreak And wake the same sweet sentiments
\forcelinebreak They breathed to you and me
\forcelinebreak When living seemed a laugh, and love
\forcelinebreak All it was said to be.


Within the common lamp-lit room
\forcelinebreak Prison my eyes and thought;
\forcelinebreak Let dingy details crudely loom,
\forcelinebreak Mechanic speech be wrought:
\forcelinebreak Too fragrant was Life’s early bloom,
\forcelinebreak Too tart the fruit it brought!


1904

\section{REMINISCENCES OF A DANCING MAN}

\subsection{I}


Who now remembers Almack’s balls -
\forcelinebreak Willis’s sometime named -
\forcelinebreak In those two smooth-floored upper halls
\forcelinebreak For faded ones so famed?
\forcelinebreak Where as we trod to trilling sound
\forcelinebreak The fancied phantoms stood around,
\forcelinebreak Or joined us in the maze,
\forcelinebreak Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years,
\forcelinebreak Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers,
\forcelinebreak The fairest of former days.

\subsection{II}


Who now remembers gay Cremorne,
\forcelinebreak And all its jaunty jills,
\forcelinebreak And those wild whirling figures born
\forcelinebreak Of Jullien’s grand quadrilles?
\forcelinebreak With hats on head and morning coats
\forcelinebreak There footed to his prancing notes
\forcelinebreak Our partner-girls and we;
\forcelinebreak And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked,
\forcelinebreak And the platform throbbed as with arms enlinked
\forcelinebreak We moved to the minstrelsy.

\subsection{III}


Who now recalls those crowded rooms
\forcelinebreak Of old yclept “The Argyle,”
\forcelinebreak Where to the deep Drum-polka’s booms
\forcelinebreak We hopped in standard style?
\forcelinebreak Whither have danced those damsels now!
\forcelinebreak Is Death the partner who doth moue
\forcelinebreak Their wormy chaps and bare?
\forcelinebreak Do their spectres spin like sparks within
\forcelinebreak The smoky halls of the Prince of Sin
\forcelinebreak To a thunderous Jullien air?

\section{THE DEAD MAN WALKING}


They hail me as one living,
\forcelinebreak But don’t they know
\forcelinebreak That I have died of late years,
\forcelinebreak Untombed although?


I am but a shape that stands here,
\forcelinebreak A pulseless mould,
\forcelinebreak A pale past picture, screening
\forcelinebreak Ashes gone cold.


Not at a minute’s warning,
\forcelinebreak Not in a loud hour,
\forcelinebreak For me ceased Time’s enchantments
\forcelinebreak In hall and bower.


There was no tragic transit,
\forcelinebreak No catch of breath,
\forcelinebreak When silent seasons inched me
\forcelinebreak On to this death . . .


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
A Troubadour-youth I rambled
\forcelinebreak With Life for lyre,
\forcelinebreak The beats of being raging
\forcelinebreak In me like fire.




\end{itemize}

But when I practised eyeing
\forcelinebreak The goal of men,
\forcelinebreak It iced me, and I perished
\forcelinebreak A little then.


When passed my friend, my kinsfolk
\forcelinebreak Through the Last Door,
\forcelinebreak And left me standing bleakly,
\forcelinebreak I died yet more;


And when my Love’s heart kindled
\forcelinebreak In hate of me,
\forcelinebreak Wherefore I knew not, died I
\forcelinebreak One more degree.


And if when I died fully
\forcelinebreak I cannot say,
\forcelinebreak And changed into the corpse-thing
\forcelinebreak I am to-day;


Yet is it that, though whiling
\forcelinebreak The time somehow
\forcelinebreak In walking, talking, smiling,
\forcelinebreak I live not now.

\section{MORE LOVE LYRICS}


1967


In five-score summers! All new eyes,
\forcelinebreak New minds, new modes, new fools, new wise;
\forcelinebreak New woes to weep, new joys to prize;


With nothing left of me and you
\forcelinebreak In that live century’s vivid view
\forcelinebreak Beyond a pinch of dust or two;


A century which, if not sublime,
\forcelinebreak Will show, I doubt not, at its prime,
\forcelinebreak A scope above this blinkered time.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Yet what to me how far above?
\forcelinebreak For I would only ask thereof
\forcelinebreak That thy worm should be my worm, Love!




\end{itemize}

16 WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1867.

\section{HER DEFINITION}


I lingered through the night to break of day,
\forcelinebreak Nor once did sleep extend a wing to me,
\forcelinebreak Intently busied with a vast array
\forcelinebreak Of epithets that should outfigure thee.


Full-featured terms — all fitless — hastened by,
\forcelinebreak And this sole speech remained: “That maiden mine!” -
\forcelinebreak Debarred from due description then did I
\forcelinebreak Perceive the indefinite phrase could yet define.


As common chests encasing wares of price
\forcelinebreak Are borne with tenderness through halls of state,
\forcelinebreak For what they cover, so the poor device
\forcelinebreak Of homely wording I could tolerate,
\forcelinebreak Knowing its unadornment held as freight
\forcelinebreak The sweetest image outside Paradise.


W. P. V.,
\forcelinebreak Summer 1866.

\section{THE DIVISION}


Rain on the windows, creaking doors,
\forcelinebreak With blasts that besom the green,
\forcelinebreak And I am here, and you are there,
\forcelinebreak And a hundred miles between!


O were it but the weather, Dear,
\forcelinebreak O were it but the miles
\forcelinebreak That summed up all our severance,
\forcelinebreak There might be room for smiles.


But that thwart thing betwixt us twain,
\forcelinebreak Which nothing cleaves or clears,
\forcelinebreak Is more than distance, Dear, or rain,
\forcelinebreak And longer than the years!


1893

\section{ON THE DEPARTURE PLATFORM}


We kissed at the barrier; and passing through
\forcelinebreak She left me, and moment by moment got
\forcelinebreak Smaller and smaller, until to my view
\forcelinebreak She was but a spot;


A wee white spot of muslin fluff
\forcelinebreak That down the diminishing platform bore
\forcelinebreak Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough
\forcelinebreak To the carriage door.


Under the lamplight’s fitful glowers,
\forcelinebreak Behind dark groups from far and near,
\forcelinebreak Whose interests were apart from ours,
\forcelinebreak She would disappear,


Then show again, till I ceased to see
\forcelinebreak That flexible form, that nebulous white;
\forcelinebreak And she who was more than my life to me
\forcelinebreak Had vanished quite . . .


We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,
\forcelinebreak And in season she will appear again -
\forcelinebreak Perhaps in the same soft white array -
\forcelinebreak But never as then!


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
“And why, young man, must eternally fly
\forcelinebreak A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well?”
\forcelinebreak — O friend, nought happens twice thus; why,
\forcelinebreak I cannot tell!




\end{itemize}
\section{IN A CATHEDRAL CITY}


These people have not heard your name;
\forcelinebreak No loungers in this placid place
\forcelinebreak Have helped to bruit your beauty’s fame.


The grey Cathedral, towards whose face
\forcelinebreak Bend eyes untold, has met not yours;
\forcelinebreak Your shade has never swept its base,


Your form has never darked its doors,
\forcelinebreak Nor have your faultless feet once thrown
\forcelinebreak A pensive pit-pat on its floors.


Along the street to maids well known
\forcelinebreak Blithe lovers hum their tender airs,
\forcelinebreak But in your praise voice not a tone.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Since nought bespeaks you here, or bears,
\forcelinebreak As I, your imprint through and through,
\forcelinebreak Here might I rest, till my heart shares
\forcelinebreak The spot’s unconsciousness of you!




\end{itemize}

SALISBURY.

\section{I SAY I’LL SEEK HER}


I say, “I’ll seek her side
\forcelinebreak Ere hindrance interposes;”
\forcelinebreak But eve in midnight closes,
\forcelinebreak And here I still abide.


When darkness wears I see
\forcelinebreak Her sad eyes in a vision;
\forcelinebreak They ask, “What indecision
\forcelinebreak Detains you, Love, from me? -


“The creaking hinge is oiled,
\forcelinebreak I have unbarred the backway,
\forcelinebreak But you tread not the trackway;
\forcelinebreak And shall the thing be spoiled?


“Far cockcrows echo shrill,
\forcelinebreak The shadows are abating,
\forcelinebreak And I am waiting, waiting;
\forcelinebreak But O, you tarry still!”

\section{HER FATHER}


I met her, as we had privily planned,
\forcelinebreak Where passing feet beat busily:
\forcelinebreak She whispered: “Father is at hand!
\forcelinebreak He wished to walk with me.”


His presence as he joined us there
\forcelinebreak Banished our words of warmth away;
\forcelinebreak We felt, with cloudings of despair,
\forcelinebreak What Love must lose that day.


Her crimson lips remained unkissed,
\forcelinebreak Our fingers kept no tender hold,
\forcelinebreak His lack of feeling made the tryst
\forcelinebreak Embarrassed, stiff, and cold.


A cynic ghost then rose and said,
\forcelinebreak “But is his love for her so small
\forcelinebreak That, nigh to yours, it may be read
\forcelinebreak As of no worth at all?


“You love her for her pink and white;
\forcelinebreak But what when their fresh splendours close?
\forcelinebreak His love will last her in despite
\forcelinebreak Of Time, and wrack, and foes.”


WEYMOUTH.

\section{AT WAKING}


When night was lifting,
\forcelinebreak And dawn had crept under its shade,
\forcelinebreak Amid cold clouds drifting
\forcelinebreak Dead-white as a corpse outlaid,
\forcelinebreak With a sudden scare
\forcelinebreak I seemed to behold
\forcelinebreak My Love in bare
\forcelinebreak Hard lines unfold.


Yea, in a moment,
\forcelinebreak An insight that would not die
\forcelinebreak Killed her old endowment
\forcelinebreak Of charm that had capped all nigh,
\forcelinebreak Which vanished to none
\forcelinebreak Like the gilt of a cloud,
\forcelinebreak And showed her but one
\forcelinebreak Of the common crowd.


She seemed but a sample
\forcelinebreak Of earth’s poor average kind,
\forcelinebreak Lit up by no ample
\forcelinebreak Enrichments of mien or mind.
\forcelinebreak I covered my eyes
\forcelinebreak As to cover the thought,
\forcelinebreak And unrecognize
\forcelinebreak What the morn had taught.


O vision appalling
\forcelinebreak When the one believed-in thing
\forcelinebreak Is seen falling, falling,
\forcelinebreak With all to which hope can cling.
\forcelinebreak Off: it is not true;
\forcelinebreak For it cannot be
\forcelinebreak That the prize I drew
\forcelinebreak Is a blank to me!


WEYMOUTH, 1869.

\section{FOUR FOOTPRINTS}


Here are the tracks upon the sand
\forcelinebreak Where stood last evening she and I -
\forcelinebreak Pressed heart to heart and hand to hand;
\forcelinebreak The morning sun has baked them dry.


I kissed her wet face — wet with rain,
\forcelinebreak For arid grief had burnt up tears,
\forcelinebreak While reached us as in sleeping pain
\forcelinebreak The distant gurgling of the weirs.


“I have married him — yes; feel that ring;
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis a week ago that he put it on . . .
\forcelinebreak A dutiful daughter does this thing,
\forcelinebreak And resignation succeeds anon!


“But that I body and soul was yours
\forcelinebreak Ere he’d possession, he’ll never know.
\forcelinebreak He’s a confident man. ‘The husband scores,’
\forcelinebreak He says, ‘in the long run’ . . . Now, Dear, go!”


I went. And to-day I pass the spot;
\forcelinebreak It is only a smart the more to endure;
\forcelinebreak And she whom I held is as though she were not,
\forcelinebreak For they have resumed their honeymoon tour.

\section{IN THE VAULTED WAY}


In the vaulted way, where the passage turned
\forcelinebreak To the shadowy corner that none could see,
\forcelinebreak You paused for our parting, — plaintively;
\forcelinebreak Though overnight had come words that burned
\forcelinebreak My fond frail happiness out of me.


And then I kissed you, — despite my thought
\forcelinebreak That our spell must end when reflection came
\forcelinebreak On what you had deemed me, whose one long aim
\forcelinebreak Had been to serve you; that what I sought
\forcelinebreak Lay not in a heart that could breathe such blame.


But yet I kissed you; whereon you again
\forcelinebreak As of old kissed me. Why, why was it so?
\forcelinebreak Do you cleave to me after that light-tongued blow?
\forcelinebreak If you scorned me at eventide, how love then?
\forcelinebreak The thing is dark, Dear. I do not know.

\section{IN THE MIND’S EYE}


That was once her casement,
\forcelinebreak And the taper nigh,
\forcelinebreak Shining from within there,
\forcelinebreak Beckoned, “Here am I!”


Now, as then, I see her
\forcelinebreak Moving at the pane;
\forcelinebreak Ah; ‘tis but her phantom
\forcelinebreak Borne within my brain! -


Foremost in my vision
\forcelinebreak Everywhere goes she;
\forcelinebreak Change dissolves the landscapes,
\forcelinebreak She abides with me.


Shape so sweet and shy, Dear,
\forcelinebreak Who can say thee nay?
\forcelinebreak Never once do I, Dear,
\forcelinebreak Wish thy ghost away.

\section{THE END OF THE EPISODE}


Indulge no more may we
\forcelinebreak In this sweet-bitter pastime:
\forcelinebreak The love-light shines the last time
\forcelinebreak Between you, Dear, and me.


There shall remain no trace
\forcelinebreak Of what so closely tied us,
\forcelinebreak And blank as ere love eyed us
\forcelinebreak Will be our meeting-place.


The flowers and thymy air,
\forcelinebreak Will they now miss our coming?
\forcelinebreak The dumbles thin their humming
\forcelinebreak To find we haunt not there?


Though fervent was our vow,
\forcelinebreak Though ruddily ran our pleasure,
\forcelinebreak Bliss has fulfilled its measure,
\forcelinebreak And sees its sentence now.


Ache deep; but make no moans:
\forcelinebreak Smile out; but stilly suffer:
\forcelinebreak The paths of love are rougher
\forcelinebreak Than thoroughfares of stones.

\section{THE SIGH}


Little head against my shoulder,
\forcelinebreak Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,
\forcelinebreak And up-eyed;
\forcelinebreak Till she, with a timid quaver,
\forcelinebreak Yielded to the kiss I gave her;
\forcelinebreak But, she sighed.


That there mingled with her feeling
\forcelinebreak Some sad thought she was concealing
\forcelinebreak It implied.
\forcelinebreak  - Not that she had ceased to love me,
\forcelinebreak None on earth she set above me;
\forcelinebreak But she sighed.


She could not disguise a passion,
\forcelinebreak Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion
\forcelinebreak If she tried:
\forcelinebreak Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,
\forcelinebreak Hearts were victors; so I wondered
\forcelinebreak Why she sighed.


Afterwards I knew her throughly,
\forcelinebreak And she loved me staunchly, truly,
\forcelinebreak Till she died;
\forcelinebreak But she never made confession
\forcelinebreak Why, at that first sweet concession,
\forcelinebreak She had sighed.


It was in our May, remember;
\forcelinebreak And though now I near November,
\forcelinebreak And abide
\forcelinebreak Till my appointed change, unfretting,
\forcelinebreak Sometimes I sit half regretting
\forcelinebreak That she sighed.

\section{IN THE NIGHT SHE CAME}


I told her when I left one day
\forcelinebreak That whatsoever weight of care
\forcelinebreak Might strain our love, Time’s mere assault
\forcelinebreak Would work no changes there.
\forcelinebreak And in the night she came to me,
\forcelinebreak Toothless, and wan, and old,
\forcelinebreak With leaden concaves round her eyes,
\forcelinebreak And wrinkles manifold.


I tremblingly exclaimed to her,
\forcelinebreak “O wherefore do you ghost me thus!
\forcelinebreak I have said that dull defacing Time
\forcelinebreak Will bring no dreads to us.”
\forcelinebreak “And is that true of YOU?” she cried
\forcelinebreak In voice of troubled tune.
\forcelinebreak I faltered: “Well . . . I did not think
\forcelinebreak You would test me quite so soon!”


She vanished with a curious smile,
\forcelinebreak Which told me, plainlier than by word,
\forcelinebreak That my staunch pledge could scarce beguile
\forcelinebreak The fear she had averred.
\forcelinebreak Her doubts then wrought their shape in me,
\forcelinebreak And when next day I paid
\forcelinebreak My due caress, we seemed to be
\forcelinebreak Divided by some shade.

\section{THE CONFORMERS}


Yes; we’ll wed, my little fay,
\forcelinebreak And you shall write you mine,
\forcelinebreak And in a villa chastely gray
\forcelinebreak We’ll house, and sleep, and dine.
\forcelinebreak But those night-screened, divine,
\forcelinebreak Stolen trysts of heretofore,
\forcelinebreak We of choice ecstasies and fine
\forcelinebreak Shall know no more.


The formal faced cohue
\forcelinebreak Will then no more upbraid
\forcelinebreak With smiting smiles and whisperings two
\forcelinebreak Who have thrown less loves in shade.
\forcelinebreak We shall no more evade
\forcelinebreak The searching light of the sun,
\forcelinebreak Our game of passion will be played,
\forcelinebreak Our dreaming done.


We shall not go in stealth
\forcelinebreak To rendezvous unknown,
\forcelinebreak But friends will ask me of your health,
\forcelinebreak And you about my own.
\forcelinebreak When we abide alone,
\forcelinebreak No leapings each to each,
\forcelinebreak But syllables in frigid tone
\forcelinebreak Of household speech.


When down to dust we glide
\forcelinebreak Men will not say askance,
\forcelinebreak As now: “How all the country side
\forcelinebreak Rings with their mad romance!”
\forcelinebreak But as they graveward glance
\forcelinebreak Remark: “In them we lose
\forcelinebreak A worthy pair, who helped advance
\forcelinebreak Sound parish views.”

\section{THE DAWN AFTER THE DANCE}


Here is your parents’ dwelling with its curtained windows telling
\forcelinebreak Of no thought of us within it or of our arrival here;
\forcelinebreak Their slumbers have been normal after one day more of formal
\forcelinebreak Matrimonial commonplace and household life’s mechanic gear.


I would be candid willingly, but dawn draws on so chillingly
\forcelinebreak As to render further cheerlessness intolerable now,
\forcelinebreak So I will not stand endeavouring to declare a day for severing,
\forcelinebreak But will clasp you just as always — just the olden love avow.


Through serene and surly weather we have walked the ways together,
\forcelinebreak And this long night’s dance this year’s end eve now finishes the spell;
\forcelinebreak Yet we dreamt us but beginning a sweet sempiternal spinning
\forcelinebreak Of a cord we have spun to breaking — too intemperately, too well.


Yes; last night we danced I know, Dear, as we did that year ago, Dear,
\forcelinebreak When a new strange bond between our days was formed, and felt, and heard;
\forcelinebreak Would that dancing were the worst thing from the latest to the first thing
\forcelinebreak That the faded year can charge us with; but what avails a word!


That which makes man’s love the lighter and the woman’s burn no brighter
\forcelinebreak Came to pass with us inevitably while slipped the shortening year . . .
\forcelinebreak And there stands your father’s dwelling with its blind bleak windows telling
\forcelinebreak That the vows of man and maid are frail as filmy gossamere.


WEYMOUTH, 1869.

\section{THE SUN ON THE LETTER}


I drew the letter out, while gleamed
\forcelinebreak The sloping sun from under a roof
\forcelinebreak Of cloud whose verge rose visibly.


The burning ball flung rays that seemed
\forcelinebreak Stretched like a warp without a woof
\forcelinebreak Across the levels of the lea


To where I stood, and where they beamed
\forcelinebreak As brightly on the page of proof
\forcelinebreak That she had shown her false to me


As if it had shown her true — had teemed
\forcelinebreak With passionate thought for my behoof
\forcelinebreak Expressed with their own ardency!

\section{THE NIGHT OF THE DANCE}


The cold moon hangs to the sky by its horn,
\forcelinebreak And centres its gaze on me;
\forcelinebreak The stars, like eyes in reverie,
\forcelinebreak Their westering as for a while forborne,
\forcelinebreak Quiz downward curiously.


Old Robert draws the backbrand in,
\forcelinebreak The green logs steam and spit;
\forcelinebreak The half-awakened sparrows flit
\forcelinebreak From the riddled thatch; and owls begin
\forcelinebreak To whoo from the gable-slit.


Yes; far and nigh things seem to know
\forcelinebreak Sweet scenes are impending here;
\forcelinebreak That all is prepared; that the hour is near
\forcelinebreak For welcomes, fellowships, and flow
\forcelinebreak Of sally, song, and cheer;


That spigots are pulled and viols strung;
\forcelinebreak That soon will arise the sound
\forcelinebreak Of measures trod to tunes renowned;
\forcelinebreak That She will return in Love’s low tongue
\forcelinebreak My vows as we wheel around.

\section{MISCONCEPTION}


I busied myself to find a sure
\forcelinebreak Snug hermitage
\forcelinebreak That should preserve my Love secure
\forcelinebreak From the world’s rage;
\forcelinebreak Where no unseemly saturnals,
\forcelinebreak Or strident traffic-roars,
\forcelinebreak Or hum of intervolved cabals
\forcelinebreak Should echo at her doors.


I laboured that the diurnal spin
\forcelinebreak Of vanities
\forcelinebreak Should not contrive to suck her in
\forcelinebreak By dark degrees,
\forcelinebreak And cunningly operate to blur
\forcelinebreak Sweet teachings I had begun;
\forcelinebreak And then I went full-heart to her
\forcelinebreak To expound the glad deeds done.


She looked at me, and said thereto
\forcelinebreak With a pitying smile,
\forcelinebreak “And THIS is what has busied you
\forcelinebreak So long a while?
\forcelinebreak O poor exhausted one, I see
\forcelinebreak You have worn you old and thin
\forcelinebreak For naught! Those moils you fear for me
\forcelinebreak I find most pleasure in!”

\section{THE VOICE OF THE THORN}

\subsection{I}


When the thorn on the down
\forcelinebreak Quivers naked and cold,
\forcelinebreak And the mid-aged and old
\forcelinebreak Pace the path there to town,
\forcelinebreak In these words dry and drear
\forcelinebreak It seems to them sighing:
\forcelinebreak “O winter is trying
\forcelinebreak To sojourners here!”

\subsection{II}


When it stands fully tressed
\forcelinebreak On a hot summer day,
\forcelinebreak And the ewes there astray
\forcelinebreak Find its shade a sweet rest,
\forcelinebreak By the breath of the breeze
\forcelinebreak It inquires of each farer:
\forcelinebreak “Who would not be sharer
\forcelinebreak Of shadow with these?”

\subsection{III}


But by day or by night,
\forcelinebreak And in winter or summer,
\forcelinebreak Should I be the comer
\forcelinebreak Along that lone height,
\forcelinebreak In its voicing to me
\forcelinebreak Only one speech is spoken:
\forcelinebreak “Here once was nigh broken
\forcelinebreak A heart, and by thee.”

\section{FROM HER IN THE COUNTRY}


I thought and thought of thy crass clanging town
\forcelinebreak To folly, till convinced such dreams were ill,
\forcelinebreak I held my heart in bond, and tethered down
\forcelinebreak Fancy to where I was, by force of will.


I said: How beautiful are these flowers, this wood,
\forcelinebreak One little bud is far more sweet to me
\forcelinebreak Than all man’s urban shows; and then I stood
\forcelinebreak Urging new zest for bird, and bush, and tree;


And strove to feel my nature brought it forth
\forcelinebreak Of instinct, or no rural maid was I;
\forcelinebreak But it was vain; for I could not see worth
\forcelinebreak Enough around to charm a midge or fly,


And mused again on city din and sin,
\forcelinebreak Longing to madness I might move therein!


16 W. P. V., 1866.

\section{HER CONFESSION}


As some bland soul, to whom a debtor says
\forcelinebreak “I’ll now repay the amount I owe to you,”
\forcelinebreak In inward gladness feigns forgetfulness
\forcelinebreak That such a payment ever was his due


(His long thought notwithstanding), so did I
\forcelinebreak At our last meeting waive your proffered kiss
\forcelinebreak With quick divergent talk of scenery nigh,
\forcelinebreak By such suspension to enhance my bliss.


And as his looks in consternation fall
\forcelinebreak When, gathering that the debt is lightly deemed,
\forcelinebreak The debtor makes as not to pay at all,
\forcelinebreak So faltered I, when your intention seemed


Converted by my false uneagerness
\forcelinebreak To putting off for ever the caress.


W. P. V., 1865-67.

\section{TO AN IMPERSONATOR OF ROSALIND}


Did he who drew her in the years ago -
\forcelinebreak Till now conceived creator of her grace -
\forcelinebreak With telescopic sight high natures know,
\forcelinebreak Discern remote in Time’s untravelled space


Your soft sweet mien, your gestures, as do we,
\forcelinebreak And with a copyist’s hand but set them down,
\forcelinebreak Glowing yet more to dream our ecstasy
\forcelinebreak When his Original should be forthshown?


For, kindled by that animated eye,
\forcelinebreak Whereto all fairnesses about thee brim,
\forcelinebreak And by thy tender tones, what wight can fly
\forcelinebreak The wild conviction welling up in him


That he at length beholds woo, parley, plead,
\forcelinebreak The “very, very Rosalind” indeed!


8 ADELPHI TERRACE, 21st April 1867.

\section{TO AN ACTRESS}


I read your name when you were strange to me,
\forcelinebreak Where it stood blazoned bold with many more;
\forcelinebreak I passed it vacantly, and did not see
\forcelinebreak Any great glory in the shape it wore.


O cruelty, the insight barred me then!
\forcelinebreak Why did I not possess me with its sound,
\forcelinebreak And in its cadence catch and catch again
\forcelinebreak Your nature’s essence floating therearound?


Could THAT man be this I, unknowing you,
\forcelinebreak When now the knowing you is all of me,
\forcelinebreak And the old world of then is now a new,
\forcelinebreak And purpose no more what it used to be -
\forcelinebreak A thing of formal journeywork, but due
\forcelinebreak To springs that then were sealed up utterly?


1867

\section{THE MINUTE BEFORE MEETING}


The grey gaunt days dividing us in twain
\forcelinebreak Seemed hopeless hills my strength must faint to climb,
\forcelinebreak But they are gone; and now I would detain
\forcelinebreak The few clock-beats that part us; rein back Time,


And live in close expectance never closed
\forcelinebreak In change for far expectance closed at last,
\forcelinebreak So harshly has expectance been imposed
\forcelinebreak On my long need while these slow blank months passed.


And knowing that what is now about to be
\forcelinebreak Will all HAVE BEEN in O, so short a space!
\forcelinebreak I read beyond it my despondency
\forcelinebreak When more dividing months shall take its place,
\forcelinebreak Thereby denying to this hour of grace
\forcelinebreak A full-up measure of felicity.


1871

\section{HE ABJURES LOVE}


At last I put off love,
\forcelinebreak For twice ten years
\forcelinebreak The daysman of my thought,
\forcelinebreak And hope, and doing;
\forcelinebreak Being ashamed thereof,
\forcelinebreak And faint of fears
\forcelinebreak And desolations, wrought
\forcelinebreak In his pursuing,


Since first in youthtime those
\forcelinebreak Disquietings
\forcelinebreak That heart-enslavement brings
\forcelinebreak To hale and hoary,
\forcelinebreak Became my housefellows,
\forcelinebreak And, fool and blind,
\forcelinebreak I turned from kith and kind
\forcelinebreak To give him glory.


I was as children be
\forcelinebreak Who have no care;
\forcelinebreak I did not shrink or sigh,
\forcelinebreak I did not sicken;
\forcelinebreak But lo, Love beckoned me,
\forcelinebreak And I was bare,
\forcelinebreak And poor, and starved, and dry,
\forcelinebreak And fever-stricken.


Too many times ablaze
\forcelinebreak With fatuous fires,
\forcelinebreak Enkindled by his wiles
\forcelinebreak To new embraces,
\forcelinebreak Did I, by wilful ways
\forcelinebreak And baseless ires,
\forcelinebreak Return the anxious smiles
\forcelinebreak Of friendly faces.


No more will now rate I
\forcelinebreak The common rare,
\forcelinebreak The midnight drizzle dew,
\forcelinebreak The gray hour golden,
\forcelinebreak The wind a yearning cry,
\forcelinebreak The faulty fair,
\forcelinebreak Things dreamt, of comelier hue
\forcelinebreak Than things beholden! . . .


— I speak as one who plumbs
\forcelinebreak Life’s dim profound,
\forcelinebreak One who at length can sound
\forcelinebreak Clear views and certain.
\forcelinebreak But — after love what comes?
\forcelinebreak A scene that lours,
\forcelinebreak A few sad vacant hours,
\forcelinebreak And then, the Curtain.


1883

\section{A SET OF COUNTRY SONGS}

\section{LET ME ENJOY (MINOR KEY)}

\subsection{I}


Let me enjoy the earth no less
\forcelinebreak Because the all-enacting Might
\forcelinebreak That fashioned forth its loveliness
\forcelinebreak Had other aims than my delight.

\subsection{II}


About my path there flits a Fair,
\forcelinebreak Who throws me not a word or sign;
\forcelinebreak I’ll charm me with her ignoring air,
\forcelinebreak And laud the lips not meant for mine.

\subsection{III}


From manuscripts of moving song
\forcelinebreak Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown
\forcelinebreak I’ll pour out raptures that belong
\forcelinebreak To others, as they were my own.

\subsection{IV}


And some day hence, towards Paradise,
\forcelinebreak And all its blest — if such should be -
\forcelinebreak I will lift glad, afar-off eyes,
\forcelinebreak Though it contain no place for me.

\section{AT CASTERBRIDGE FAIR}

\subsection{I}


THE BALLAD-SINGER


Sing, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune;
\forcelinebreak Make me forget that there was ever a one
\forcelinebreak I walked with in the meek light of the moon
\forcelinebreak When the day’s work was done.


Rhyme, Ballad-rhymer, start a country song;
\forcelinebreak Make me forget that she whom I loved well
\forcelinebreak Swore she would love me dearly, love me long,
\forcelinebreak Then — what I cannot tell!


Sing, Ballad-singer, from your little book;
\forcelinebreak Make me forget those heart-breaks, achings, fears;
\forcelinebreak Make me forget her name, her sweet sweet look -
\forcelinebreak Make me forget her tears.

\subsection{II}


FORMER BEAUTIES


These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn,
\forcelinebreak And tissues sere,
\forcelinebreak Are they the ones we loved in years agone,
\forcelinebreak And courted here?


Are these the muslined pink young things to whom
\forcelinebreak We vowed and swore
\forcelinebreak In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom,
\forcelinebreak Or Budmouth shore?


Do they remember those gay tunes we trod
\forcelinebreak Clasped on the green;
\forcelinebreak Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod
\forcelinebreak A satin sheen?


They must forget, forget! They cannot know
\forcelinebreak What once they were,
\forcelinebreak Or memory would transfigure them, and show
\forcelinebreak Them always fair.

\subsection{III}


AFTER THE CLUB-DANCE


Black’on frowns east on Maidon,
\forcelinebreak And westward to the sea,
\forcelinebreak But on neither is his frown laden
\forcelinebreak With scorn, as his frown on me!


At dawn my heart grew heavy,
\forcelinebreak I could not sip the wine,
\forcelinebreak I left the jocund bevy
\forcelinebreak And that young man o’ mine.


The roadside elms pass by me, -
\forcelinebreak Why do I sink with shame
\forcelinebreak When the birds a-perch there eye me?
\forcelinebreak They, too, have done the same!

\subsection{IV}


THE MARKET-GIRL


Nobody took any notice of her as she stood on the causey kerb,
\forcelinebreak All eager to sell her honey and apples and bunches of garden herb;
\forcelinebreak And if she had offered to give her wares and herself with them too that day,
\forcelinebreak I doubt if a soul would have cared to take a bargain so choice away.


But chancing to trace her sunburnt grace that morning as I passed nigh,
\forcelinebreak I went and I said “Poor maidy dear! — and will none of the people buy?”
\forcelinebreak And so it began; and soon we knew what the end of it all must be,
\forcelinebreak And I found that though no others had bid, a prize had been won by me.

\subsection{V}


THE INQUIRY


And are ye one of Hermitage -
\forcelinebreak Of Hermitage, by Ivel Road,
\forcelinebreak And do ye know, in Hermitage
\forcelinebreak A thatch-roofed house where sengreens grow?
\forcelinebreak And does John Waywood live there still -
\forcelinebreak He of the name that there abode
\forcelinebreak When father hurdled on the hill
\forcelinebreak Some fifteen years ago?


Does he now speak o’ Patty Beech,
\forcelinebreak The Patty Beech he used to — see,
\forcelinebreak Or ask at all if Patty Beech
\forcelinebreak Is known or heard of out this way?
\forcelinebreak  - Ask ever if she’s living yet,
\forcelinebreak And where her present home may be,
\forcelinebreak And how she bears life’s fag and fret
\forcelinebreak After so long a day?


In years agone at Hermitage
\forcelinebreak This faded face was counted fair,
\forcelinebreak None fairer; and at Hermitage
\forcelinebreak We swore to wed when he should thrive.
\forcelinebreak But never a chance had he or I,
\forcelinebreak And waiting made his wish outwear,
\forcelinebreak And Time, that dooms man’s love to die,
\forcelinebreak Preserves a maid’s alive.


VI


A WIFE WAITS


Will’s at the dance in the Club-room below,
\forcelinebreak Where the tall liquor-cups foam;
\forcelinebreak I on the pavement up here by the Bow,
\forcelinebreak Wait, wait, to steady him home.


Will and his partner are treading a tune,
\forcelinebreak Loving companions they be;
\forcelinebreak Willy, before we were married in June,
\forcelinebreak Said he loved no one but me;


Said he would let his old pleasures all go
\forcelinebreak Ever to live with his Dear.
\forcelinebreak Will’s at the dance in the Club-room below,
\forcelinebreak Shivering I wait for him here.


NOTE. — ”The Bow” (line 3). The old name for the curved corner by the cross - streets in the middle of Casterbridge.


VII


AFTER THE FAIR


The singers are gone from the Cornmarket-place
\forcelinebreak With their broadsheets of rhymes,
\forcelinebreak The street rings no longer in treble and bass
\forcelinebreak With their skits on the times,
\forcelinebreak And the Cross, lately thronged, is a dim naked space
\forcelinebreak That but echoes the stammering chimes.


From Clock-corner steps, as each quarter ding-dongs,
\forcelinebreak Away the folk roam
\forcelinebreak By the “Hart” and Grey’s Bridge into byways and “drongs,”
\forcelinebreak Or across the ridged loam;
\forcelinebreak The younger ones shrilling the lately heard songs,
\forcelinebreak The old saying, “Would we were home.”


The shy-seeming maiden so mute in the fair
\forcelinebreak Now rattles and talks,
\forcelinebreak And that one who looked the most swaggering there
\forcelinebreak Grows sad as she walks,
\forcelinebreak And she who seemed eaten by cankering care
\forcelinebreak In statuesque sturdiness stalks.


And midnight clears High Street of all but the ghosts
\forcelinebreak Of its buried burghees,
\forcelinebreak From the latest far back to those old Roman hosts
\forcelinebreak Whose remains one yet sees,
\forcelinebreak Who loved, laughed, and fought, hailed their friends, drank their toasts
\forcelinebreak At their meeting-times here, just as these!


1902


NOTE. — ”The Chimes” (line 6) will be listened for in vain here at midnight now, having been abolished some years ago.

\section{THE DARK-EYED GENTLEMAN}

\subsection{I}


I pitched my day’s leazings in Crimmercrock Lane,
\forcelinebreak To tie up my garter and jog on again,
\forcelinebreak When a dear dark-eyed gentleman passed there and said,
\forcelinebreak In a way that made all o’ me colour rose-red,
\forcelinebreak ”What do I see -
\forcelinebreak O pretty knee!”
\forcelinebreak And he came and he tied up my garter for me.

\subsection{II}


‘Twixt sunset and moonrise it was, I can mind:
\forcelinebreak Ah, ‘tis easy to lose what we nevermore find! -
\forcelinebreak Of the dear stranger’s home, of his name, I knew nought,
\forcelinebreak But I soon knew his nature and all that it brought.
\forcelinebreak Then bitterly
\forcelinebreak Sobbed I that he
\forcelinebreak Should ever have tied up my garter for me!

\subsection{III}


Yet now I’ve beside me a fine lissom lad,
\forcelinebreak And my slip’s nigh forgot, and my days are not sad;
\forcelinebreak My own dearest joy is he, comrade, and friend,
\forcelinebreak He it is who safe-guards me, on him I depend;
\forcelinebreak No sorrow brings he,
\forcelinebreak And thankful I be
\forcelinebreak That his daddy once tied up my garter for me!


NOTE. — ”Leazings” (line 1). — Bundle of gleaned corn.

\section{TO CARREY CLAVEL}


You turn your back, you turn your back,
\forcelinebreak And never your face to me,
\forcelinebreak Alone you take your homeward track,
\forcelinebreak And scorn my company.


What will you do when Charley’s seen
\forcelinebreak Dewbeating down this way?
\forcelinebreak  - You’ll turn your back as now, you mean?
\forcelinebreak Nay, Carrey Clavel, nay!


You’ll see none’s looking; put your lip
\forcelinebreak Up like a tulip, so;
\forcelinebreak And he will coll you, bend, and sip:
\forcelinebreak Yes, Carrey, yes; I know!

\section{THE ORPHANED OLD MAID}


I wanted to marry, but father said, “No -
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis weakness in women to give themselves so;
\forcelinebreak If you care for your freedom you’ll listen to me,
\forcelinebreak Make a spouse in your pocket, and let the men be.”


I spake on’t again and again: father cried,
\forcelinebreak “Why — if you go husbanding, where shall I bide?
\forcelinebreak For never a home’s for me elsewhere than here!”
\forcelinebreak And I yielded; for father had ever been dear.


But now father’s gone, and I feel growing old,
\forcelinebreak And I’m lonely and poor in this house on the wold,
\forcelinebreak And my sweetheart that was found a partner elsewhere,
\forcelinebreak And nobody flings me a thought or a care.

\section{THE SPRING CALL}


Down Wessex way, when spring’s a-shine,
\forcelinebreak The blackbird’s “pret-ty de-urr!”
\forcelinebreak In Wessex accents marked as mine
\forcelinebreak Is heard afar and near.


He flutes it strong, as if in song
\forcelinebreak No R’s of feebler tone
\forcelinebreak Than his appear in “pretty dear,”
\forcelinebreak Have blackbirds ever known.


Yet they pipe “prattie deerh!” I glean,
\forcelinebreak Beneath a Scottish sky,
\forcelinebreak And “pehty de-aw!” amid the treen
\forcelinebreak Of Middlesex or nigh.


While some folk say — perhaps in play -
\forcelinebreak Who know the Irish isle,
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis “purrity dare!” in treeland there
\forcelinebreak When songsters would beguile.


Well: I’ll say what the listening birds
\forcelinebreak Say, hearing “pret-ty de-urr!” -
\forcelinebreak However strangers sound such words,
\forcelinebreak That’s how we sound them here.


Yes, in this clime at pairing time,
\forcelinebreak As soon as eyes can see her
\forcelinebreak At dawn of day, the proper way
\forcelinebreak To call is “pret-ty de-urr!”

\section{JULIE-JANE}


Sing; how ‘a would sing!
\forcelinebreak How ‘a would raise the tune
\forcelinebreak When we rode in the waggon from harvesting
\forcelinebreak By the light o’ the moon!


Dance; how ‘a would dance!
\forcelinebreak If a fiddlestring did but sound
\forcelinebreak She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance,
\forcelinebreak And go round and round.


Laugh; how ‘a would laugh!
\forcelinebreak Her peony lips would part
\forcelinebreak As if none such a place for a lover to quaff
\forcelinebreak At the deeps of a heart.


Julie, O girl of joy,
\forcelinebreak Soon, soon that lover he came.
\forcelinebreak Ah, yes; and gave thee a baby-boy,
\forcelinebreak But never his name . . .


— Tolling for her, as you guess;
\forcelinebreak And the baby too . . . ‘Tis well.
\forcelinebreak You knew her in maidhood likewise? — Yes,
\forcelinebreak That’s her burial bell.


”I suppose,” with a laugh, she said,
\forcelinebreak ”I should blush that I’m not a wife;
\forcelinebreak But how can it matter, so soon to be dead,
\forcelinebreak What one does in life!”


When we sat making the mourning
\forcelinebreak By her death-bed side, said she,
\forcelinebreak “Dears, how can you keep from your lovers, adorning
\forcelinebreak In honour of me!”


Bubbling and brightsome eyed!
\forcelinebreak But now — O never again.
\forcelinebreak She chose her bearers before she died
\forcelinebreak From her fancy-men.


NOTE. — It is, or was, a common custom in Wessex, and probably other country places, to prepare the mourning beside the death-bed, the dying person sometimes assisting, who also selects his or her bearers on such occasions.


“Coats” (line 7). — Old name for petticoats.

\section{NEWS FOR HER MOTHER}

\subsection{I}


One mile more is
\forcelinebreak Where your door is
\forcelinebreak Mother mine! -
\forcelinebreak Harvest’s coming,
\forcelinebreak Mills are strumming,
\forcelinebreak Apples fine,
\forcelinebreak And the cider made to-year will be as wine.

\subsection{II}


Yet, not viewing
\forcelinebreak What’s a-doing
\forcelinebreak Here around
\forcelinebreak Is it thrills me,
\forcelinebreak And so fills me
\forcelinebreak That I bound
\forcelinebreak Like a ball or leaf or lamb along the ground.

\subsection{III}


Tremble not now
\forcelinebreak At your lot now,
\forcelinebreak Silly soul!
\forcelinebreak Hosts have sped them
\forcelinebreak Quick to wed them,
\forcelinebreak Great and small,
\forcelinebreak Since the first two sighing half-hearts made a whole.

\subsection{IV}


Yet I wonder,
\forcelinebreak Will it sunder
\forcelinebreak Her from me?
\forcelinebreak Will she guess that
\forcelinebreak I said “Yes,” — that
\forcelinebreak His I’d be,
\forcelinebreak Ere I thought she might not see him as I see!

\subsection{V}


Old brown gable,
\forcelinebreak Granary, stable,
\forcelinebreak Here you are!
\forcelinebreak O my mother,
\forcelinebreak Can another
\forcelinebreak Ever bar
\forcelinebreak Mine from thy heart, make thy nearness seem afar?

\section{THE FIDDLER}


The fiddler knows what’s brewing
\forcelinebreak To the lilt of his lyric wiles:
\forcelinebreak The fiddler knows what rueing
\forcelinebreak Will come of this night’s smiles!


He sees couples join them for dancing,
\forcelinebreak And afterwards joining for life,
\forcelinebreak He sees them pay high for their prancing
\forcelinebreak By a welter of wedded strife.


He twangs: “Music hails from the devil,
\forcelinebreak Though vaunted to come from heaven,
\forcelinebreak For it makes people do at a revel
\forcelinebreak What multiplies sins by seven.


“There’s many a heart now mangled,
\forcelinebreak And waiting its time to go,
\forcelinebreak Whose tendrils were first entangled
\forcelinebreak By my sweet viol and bow!”

\section{THE HUSBAND’S VIEW}


“Can anything avail
\forcelinebreak Beldame, for my hid grief? -
\forcelinebreak Listen: I’ll tell the tale,
\forcelinebreak It may bring faint relief! -


“I came where I was not known,
\forcelinebreak In hope to flee my sin;
\forcelinebreak And walking forth alone
\forcelinebreak A young man said, ‘Good e’en.’


“In gentle voice and true
\forcelinebreak He asked to marry me;
\forcelinebreak ‘You only — only you
\forcelinebreak Fulfil my dream!’ said he.


“We married o’ Monday morn,
\forcelinebreak In the month of hay and flowers;
\forcelinebreak My cares were nigh forsworn,
\forcelinebreak And perfect love was ours.


“But ere the days are long
\forcelinebreak Untimely fruit will show;
\forcelinebreak My Love keeps up his song,
\forcelinebreak Undreaming it is so.


“And I awake in the night,
\forcelinebreak And think of months gone by,
\forcelinebreak And of that cause of flight
\forcelinebreak Hidden from my Love’s eye.


“Discovery borders near,
\forcelinebreak And then! . . . But something stirred? -
\forcelinebreak My husband — he is here!
\forcelinebreak Heaven — has he overheard?” -


“Yes; I have heard, sweet Nan;
\forcelinebreak I have known it all the time.
\forcelinebreak I am not a particular man;
\forcelinebreak Misfortunes are no crime:


“And what with our serious need
\forcelinebreak Of sons for soldiering,
\forcelinebreak That accident, indeed,
\forcelinebreak To maids, is a useful thing!”

\section{ROSE-ANN}


Why didn’t you say you was promised, Rose-Ann?
\forcelinebreak Why didn’t you name it to me,
\forcelinebreak Ere ever you tempted me hither, Rose-Ann,
\forcelinebreak So often, so wearifully?


O why did you let me be near ‘ee, Rose-Ann,
\forcelinebreak Talking things about wedlock so free,
\forcelinebreak And never by nod or by whisper, Rose-Ann,
\forcelinebreak Give a hint that it wasn’t to be?


Down home I was raising a flock of stock ewes,
\forcelinebreak Cocks and hens, and wee chickens by scores,
\forcelinebreak And lavendered linen all ready to use,
\forcelinebreak A-dreaming that they would be yours.


Mother said: “She’s a sport-making maiden, my son”;
\forcelinebreak And a pretty sharp quarrel had we;
\forcelinebreak O why do you prove by this wrong you have done
\forcelinebreak That I saw not what mother could see?


Never once did you say you was promised, Rose-Ann,
\forcelinebreak Never once did I dream it to be;
\forcelinebreak And it cuts to the heart to be treated, Rose-Ann,
\forcelinebreak As you in your scorning treat me!

\section{THE HOMECOMING}


Gruffly growled the wind on Toller downland broad and bare,
\forcelinebreak And lonesome was the house, and dark; and few came there.


“Now don’t ye rub your eyes so red; we’re home and have no cares;
\forcelinebreak Here’s a skimmer-cake for supper, peckled onions, and some pears;
\forcelinebreak I’ve got a little keg o’ summat strong, too, under stairs:
\forcelinebreak  - What, slight your husband’s victuals? Other brides can tackle theirs!”


The wind of winter mooed and mouthed their chimney like a horn,
\forcelinebreak And round the house and past the house ‘twas leafless and lorn.


“But my dear and tender poppet, then, how came ye to agree
\forcelinebreak In Ivel church this morning? Sure, there-right you married me!”
\forcelinebreak  - “Hoo-hoo! — I don’t know — I forgot how strange and far ‘twould be,
\forcelinebreak An’ I wish I was at home again with dear daddee!”


Gruffly growled the wind on Toller downland broad and bare,
\forcelinebreak And lonesome was the house and dark; and few came there.


“I didn’t think such furniture as this was all you’d own,
\forcelinebreak And great black beams for ceiling, and a floor o’ wretched stone,
\forcelinebreak And nasty pewter platters, horrid forks of steel and bone,
\forcelinebreak And a monstrous crock in chimney. ‘Twas to me quite unbeknown!”


Rattle rattle went the door; down flapped a cloud of smoke,
\forcelinebreak As shifting north the wicked wind assayed a smarter stroke.


“Now sit ye by the fire, poppet; put yourself at ease:
\forcelinebreak And keep your little thumb out of your mouth, dear, please!
\forcelinebreak And I’ll sing to ‘ee a pretty song of lovely flowers and bees,
\forcelinebreak And happy lovers taking walks within a grove o’ trees.”


Gruffly growled the wind on Toller Down, so bleak and bare,
\forcelinebreak And lonesome was the house, and dark; and few came there.


“Now, don’t ye gnaw your handkercher; ‘twill hurt your little tongue,
\forcelinebreak And if you do feel spitish, ‘tis because ye are over young;
\forcelinebreak But you’ll be getting older, like us all, ere very long,
\forcelinebreak And you’ll see me as I am — a man who never did ‘ee wrong.”


Straight from Whit’sheet Hill to Benvill Lane the blusters pass,
\forcelinebreak Hitting hedges, milestones, handposts, trees, and tufts of grass.


“Well, had I only known, my dear, that this was how you’d be,
\forcelinebreak I’d have married her of riper years that was so fond of me.
\forcelinebreak But since I can’t, I’ve half a mind to run away to sea,
\forcelinebreak And leave ‘ee to go barefoot to your d-d daddee!”


Up one wall and down the other — past each window-pane -
\forcelinebreak Prance the gusts, and then away down Crimmercrock’s long lane.


“I — I — don’t know what to say to’t, since your wife I’ve vowed to be;
\forcelinebreak And as ‘tis done, I s’pose here I must bide — poor me!
\forcelinebreak Aye — as you are ki-ki-kind, I’ll try to live along with ‘ee,
\forcelinebreak Although I’d fain have stayed at home with dear daddee!”


Gruffly growled the wind on Toller Down, so bleak and bare,
\forcelinebreak And lonesome was the house and dark; and few came there.


“That’s right, my Heart! And though on haunted Toller Down we be,
\forcelinebreak And the wind swears things in chimley, we’ll to supper merrily!
\forcelinebreak So don’t ye tap your shoe so pettish-like; but smile at me,
\forcelinebreak And ye’ll soon forget to sock and sigh for dear daddee!”


December 1901.

\section{PIECES OCCASIONAL AND VARIOUS}

\section{A CHURCH ROMANCE}


(MELLSTOCK circa 1835)


She turned in the high pew, until her sight
\forcelinebreak Swept the west gallery, and caught its row
\forcelinebreak Of music-men with viol, book, and bow
\forcelinebreak Against the sinking sad tower-window light.


She turned again; and in her pride’s despite
\forcelinebreak One strenuous viol’s inspirer seemed to throw
\forcelinebreak A message from his string to her below,
\forcelinebreak Which said: “I claim thee as my own forthright!”


Thus their hearts’ bond began, in due time signed.
\forcelinebreak And long years thence, when Age had scared Romance,
\forcelinebreak At some old attitude of his or glance
\forcelinebreak That gallery-scene would break upon her mind,
\forcelinebreak With him as minstrel, ardent, young, and trim,
\forcelinebreak Bowing “New Sabbath” or “Mount Ephraim.”

\section{THE RASH BRIDE AN EXPERIENCE OF THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE}

\subsection{I}


We Christmas-carolled down the Vale, and up the Vale, and round the Vale,
\forcelinebreak We played and sang that night as we were yearly wont to do -
\forcelinebreak A carol in a minor key, a carol in the major D,
\forcelinebreak Then at each house: “Good wishes: many Christmas joys to you!”

\subsection{II}


Next, to the widow’s John and I and all the rest drew on. And I
\forcelinebreak Discerned that John could hardly hold the tongue of him for joy.
\forcelinebreak The widow was a sweet young thing whom John was bent on marrying,
\forcelinebreak And quiring at her casement seemed romantic to the boy.

\subsection{III}


“She’ll make reply, I trust,” said he, “to our salute? She must!” said he,
\forcelinebreak “And then I will accost her gently — much to her surprise! -
\forcelinebreak For knowing not I am with you here, when I speak up and call her dear
\forcelinebreak A tenderness will fill her voice, a bashfulness her eyes.

\subsection{IV}


So, by her window-square we stood; ay, with our lanterns there we stood,
\forcelinebreak And he along with us, — not singing, waiting for a sign;
\forcelinebreak And when we’d quired her carols three a light was lit and out looked she,
\forcelinebreak A shawl about her bedgown, and her colour red as wine.

\subsection{V}


And sweetly then she bowed her thanks, and smiled, and spoke aloud her
\forcelinebreak thanks;
\forcelinebreak When lo, behind her back there, in the room, a man appeared.
\forcelinebreak I knew him — one from Woolcomb way — Giles Swetman — honest as the day,
\forcelinebreak But eager, hasty; and I felt that some strange trouble neared.


VI


“How comes he there? . . . Suppose,” said we, “she’s wed of late! Who
\forcelinebreak knows?” said we.
\forcelinebreak  - “She married yester-morning — only mother yet has known
\forcelinebreak The secret o’t!” shrilled one small boy. “But now I’ve told, let’s wish ‘em
\forcelinebreak joy!”
\forcelinebreak A heavy fall aroused us: John had gone down like a stone.


VII


We rushed to him and caught him round, and lifted him, and brought him
\forcelinebreak round,
\forcelinebreak When, hearing something wrong had happened, oped the window she:
\forcelinebreak “Has one of you fallen ill?” she asked, “by these night labours overtasked?”
\forcelinebreak None answered. That she’d done poor John a cruel turn felt we.


VIII


Till up spoke Michael: “Fie, young dame! You’ve broke your promise, sly
\forcelinebreak young dame,
\forcelinebreak By forming this new tie, young dame, and jilting John so true,
\forcelinebreak Who trudged to-night to sing to ‘ee because he thought he’d bring to ‘ee
\forcelinebreak Good wishes as your coming spouse. May ye such trifling rue!”

\subsection{IX}


Her man had said no word at all; but being behind had heard it all,
\forcelinebreak And now cried: “Neighbours, on my soul I knew not ‘twas like this!”
\forcelinebreak And then to her: “If I had known you’d had in tow not me alone,
\forcelinebreak No wife should you have been of mine. It is a dear bought bliss!”

\subsection{X}


She changed death-white, and heaved a cry: we’d never heard so grieved a
\forcelinebreak cry
\forcelinebreak As came from her at this from him: heart-broken quite seemed she;
\forcelinebreak And suddenly, as we looked on, she turned, and rushed; and she was gone,
\forcelinebreak Whither, her husband, following after, knew not; nor knew we.

\subsection{XI}


We searched till dawn about the house; within the house, without the house,
\forcelinebreak We searched among the laurel boughs that grew beneath the wall,
\forcelinebreak And then among the crocks and things, and stores for winter junketings,
\forcelinebreak In linhay, loft, and dairy; but we found her not at all.

\subsection{XII}


Then John rushed in: “O friends,” he said, “hear this, this, this!” and
\forcelinebreak bends his head:
\forcelinebreak “I’ve — searched round by the — WELL, and find the cover open wide!
\forcelinebreak I am fearful that — I can’t say what . . . Bring lanterns, and some cords to
\forcelinebreak knot.”
\forcelinebreak We did so, and we went and stood the deep dark hole beside.

\subsection{XIII}


And then they, ropes in hand, and I — ay, John, and all the band, and I
\forcelinebreak Let down a lantern to the depths — some hundred feet and more;
\forcelinebreak It glimmered like a fog-dimmed star; and there, beside its light, afar,
\forcelinebreak White drapery floated, and we knew the meaning that it bore.

\subsection{XIV}


The rest is naught . . . We buried her o’ Sunday. Neighbours carried her;
\forcelinebreak And Swetman — he who’d married her — now miserablest of men,
\forcelinebreak Walked mourning first; and then walked John; just quivering, but composed
\forcelinebreak anon;
\forcelinebreak And we the quire formed round the grave, as was the custom then.

\subsection{XV}


Our old bass player, as I recall — his white hair blown — but why recall! -
\forcelinebreak His viol upstrapped, bent figure — doomed to follow her full soon -
\forcelinebreak Stood bowing, pale and tremulous; and next to him the rest of us . . .
\forcelinebreak We sang the Ninetieth Psalm to her — set to Saint Stephen’s tune.

\section{THE DEAD QUIRE}

\subsection{I}


Beside the Mead of Memories,
\forcelinebreak Where Church-way mounts to Moaning Hill,
\forcelinebreak The sad man sighed his phantasies:
\forcelinebreak He seems to sigh them still.

\subsection{II}


“‘Twas the Birth-tide Eve, and the hamleteers
\forcelinebreak Made merry with ancient Mellstock zest,
\forcelinebreak But the Mellstock quire of former years
\forcelinebreak Had entered into rest.

\subsection{III}


“Old Dewy lay by the gaunt yew tree,
\forcelinebreak And Reuben and Michael a pace behind,
\forcelinebreak And Bowman with his family
\forcelinebreak By the wall that the ivies bind.

\subsection{IV}


“The singers had followed one by one,
\forcelinebreak Treble, and tenor, and thorough-bass;
\forcelinebreak And the worm that wasteth had begun
\forcelinebreak To mine their mouldering place.

\subsection{V}


“For two-score years, ere Christ-day light,
\forcelinebreak Mellstock had throbbed to strains from these;
\forcelinebreak But now there echoed on the night
\forcelinebreak No Christmas harmonies.


VI


“Three meadows off, at a dormered inn,
\forcelinebreak The youth had gathered in high carouse,
\forcelinebreak And, ranged on settles, some therein
\forcelinebreak Had drunk them to a drowse.


VII


“Loud, lively, reckless, some had grown,
\forcelinebreak Each dandling on his jigging knee
\forcelinebreak Eliza, Dolly, Nance, or Joan -
\forcelinebreak Livers in levity.


VIII


“The taper flames and hearthfire shine
\forcelinebreak Grew smoke-hazed to a lurid light,
\forcelinebreak And songs on subjects not divine
\forcelinebreak Were warbled forth that night.

\subsection{IX}


“Yet many were sons and grandsons here
\forcelinebreak Of those who, on such eves gone by,
\forcelinebreak At that still hour had throated clear
\forcelinebreak Their anthems to the sky.

\subsection{X}


“The clock belled midnight; and ere long
\forcelinebreak One shouted, ‘Now ‘tis Christmas morn;
\forcelinebreak Here’s to our women old and young,
\forcelinebreak And to John Barleycorn!’

\subsection{XI}


“They drink the toast and shout again:
\forcelinebreak The pewter-ware rings back the boom,
\forcelinebreak And for a breath-while follows then
\forcelinebreak A silence in the room.

\subsection{XII}


“When nigh without, as in old days,
\forcelinebreak The ancient quire of voice and string
\forcelinebreak Seemed singing words of prayer and praise
\forcelinebreak As they had used to sing:

\subsection{XIII}


“‘While shepherds watch’d their flocks by night,’ -
\forcelinebreak Thus swells the long familiar sound
\forcelinebreak In many a quaint symphonic flight -
\forcelinebreak To, ‘Glory shone around.’

\subsection{XIV}


“The sons defined their fathers’ tones,
\forcelinebreak The widow his whom she had wed,
\forcelinebreak And others in the minor moans
\forcelinebreak The viols of the dead.

\subsection{XV}


“Something supernal has the sound
\forcelinebreak As verse by verse the strain proceeds,
\forcelinebreak And stilly staring on the ground
\forcelinebreak Each roysterer holds and heeds.

\subsection{XVI}


“Towards its chorded closing bar
\forcelinebreak Plaintively, thinly, waned the hymn,
\forcelinebreak Yet lingered, like the notes afar
\forcelinebreak Of banded seraphim.

\subsection{XVII}


“With brows abashed, and reverent tread,
\forcelinebreak The hearkeners sought the tavern door:
\forcelinebreak But nothing, save wan moonlight, spread
\forcelinebreak The empty highway o’er.

\subsection{XVIII}


“While on their hearing fixed and tense
\forcelinebreak The aerial music seemed to sink,
\forcelinebreak As it were gently moving thence
\forcelinebreak Along the river brink.

\subsection{XIX}


“Then did the Quick pursue the Dead
\forcelinebreak By crystal Froom that crinkles there;
\forcelinebreak And still the viewless quire ahead
\forcelinebreak Voiced the old holy air.

\subsection{XX}


“By Bank-walk wicket, brightly bleached,
\forcelinebreak It passed, and ‘twixt the hedges twain,
\forcelinebreak Dogged by the living; till it reached
\forcelinebreak The bottom of Church Lane.

\subsection{XXI}


“There, at the turning, it was heard
\forcelinebreak Drawing to where the churchyard lay:
\forcelinebreak But when they followed thitherward
\forcelinebreak It smalled, and died away.

\subsection{XXII}


“Each headstone of the quire, each mound,
\forcelinebreak Confronted them beneath the moon;
\forcelinebreak But no more floated therearound
\forcelinebreak That ancient Birth-night tune.

\subsection{XXIII}


“There Dewy lay by the gaunt yew tree,
\forcelinebreak There Reuben and Michael, a pace behind,
\forcelinebreak And Bowman with his family
\forcelinebreak By the wall that the ivies bind . . .

\subsection{XXIV}


“As from a dream each sobered son
\forcelinebreak Awoke, and musing reached his door:
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas said that of them all, not one
\forcelinebreak Sat in a tavern more.”

\subsection{XXV}


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
The sad man ceased; and ceased to heed
\forcelinebreak His listener, and crossed the leaze
\forcelinebreak From Moaning Hill towards the mead -
\forcelinebreak The Mead of Memories.




\end{itemize}

1897

\section{THE CHRISTENING}


Whose child is this they bring
\forcelinebreak Into the aisle? -
\forcelinebreak At so superb a thing
\forcelinebreak The congregation smile
\forcelinebreak And turn their heads awhile.


Its eyes are blue and bright,
\forcelinebreak Its cheeks like rose;
\forcelinebreak Its simple robes unite
\forcelinebreak Whitest of calicoes
\forcelinebreak With lawn, and satin bows.


A pride in the human race
\forcelinebreak At this paragon
\forcelinebreak Of mortals, lights each face
\forcelinebreak While the old rite goes on;
\forcelinebreak But ah, they are shocked anon.


What girl is she who peeps
\forcelinebreak From the gallery stair,
\forcelinebreak Smiles palely, redly weeps,
\forcelinebreak With feverish furtive air
\forcelinebreak As though not fitly there?


“I am the baby’s mother;
\forcelinebreak This gem of the race
\forcelinebreak The decent fain would smother,
\forcelinebreak And for my deep disgrace
\forcelinebreak I am bidden to leave the place.”


“Where is the baby’s father?” -
\forcelinebreak ”In the woods afar.
\forcelinebreak He says there is none he’d rather
\forcelinebreak Meet under moon or star
\forcelinebreak Than me, of all that are.


“To clasp me in lovelike weather,
\forcelinebreak Wish fixing when,
\forcelinebreak He says: To be together
\forcelinebreak At will, just now and then,
\forcelinebreak Makes him the blest of men;


“But chained and doomed for life
\forcelinebreak To slovening
\forcelinebreak As vulgar man and wife,
\forcelinebreak He says, is another thing:
\forcelinebreak Yea: sweet Love’s sepulchring!”


1904

\section{A DREAM QUESTION}


“It shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine.”
\forcelinebreak Micah iii. 6.


I asked the Lord: “Sire, is this true
\forcelinebreak Which hosts of theologians hold,
\forcelinebreak That when we creatures censure you
\forcelinebreak For shaping griefs and ails untold
\forcelinebreak (Deeming them punishments undue)
\forcelinebreak You rage, as Moses wrote of old?


When we exclaim: ‘Beneficent
\forcelinebreak He is not, for he orders pain,
\forcelinebreak Or, if so, not omnipotent:
\forcelinebreak To a mere child the thing is plain!’
\forcelinebreak Those who profess to represent
\forcelinebreak You, cry out: ‘Impious and profane!’“


He: “Save me from my friends, who deem
\forcelinebreak That I care what my creatures say!
\forcelinebreak Mouth as you list: sneer, rail, blaspheme,
\forcelinebreak O manikin, the livelong day,
\forcelinebreak Not one grief-groan or pleasure-gleam
\forcelinebreak Will you increase or take away.


“Why things are thus, whoso derides,
\forcelinebreak May well remain my secret still . . .
\forcelinebreak A fourth dimension, say the guides,
\forcelinebreak To matter is conceivable.
\forcelinebreak Think some such mystery resides
\forcelinebreak Within the ethic of my will.”

\section{BY THE BARROWS}


Not far from Mellstock — so tradition saith -
\forcelinebreak Where barrows, bulging as they bosoms were
\forcelinebreak Of Multimammia stretched supinely there,
\forcelinebreak Catch night and noon the tempest’s wanton breath,


A battle, desperate doubtless unto death,
\forcelinebreak Was one time fought. The outlook, lone and bare,
\forcelinebreak The towering hawk and passing raven share,
\forcelinebreak And all the upland round is called “The He’th.”


Here once a woman, in our modern age,
\forcelinebreak Fought singlehandedly to shield a child -
\forcelinebreak One not her own — from a man’s senseless rage.
\forcelinebreak And to my mind no patriots’ bones there piled
\forcelinebreak So consecrate the silence as her deed
\forcelinebreak Of stoic and devoted self-unheed.

\section{A WIFE AND ANOTHER}


”War ends, and he’s returning
\forcelinebreak Early; yea,
\forcelinebreak The evening next to-morrow’s!” -
\forcelinebreak — This I say
\forcelinebreak To her, whom I suspiciously survey,


Holding my husband’s letter
\forcelinebreak To her view. -
\forcelinebreak She glanced at it but lightly,
\forcelinebreak And I knew
\forcelinebreak That one from him that day had reached her too.


There was no time for scruple;
\forcelinebreak Secretly
\forcelinebreak I filched her missive, conned it,
\forcelinebreak Learnt that he
\forcelinebreak Would lodge with her ere he came home to me.


To reach the port before her,
\forcelinebreak And, unscanned,
\forcelinebreak There wait to intercept them
\forcelinebreak Soon I planned:
\forcelinebreak That, in her stead, I might before him stand.


So purposed, so effected;
\forcelinebreak At the inn
\forcelinebreak Assigned, I found her hidden:-
\forcelinebreak O that sin
\forcelinebreak Should bear what she bore when I entered in!


Her heavy lids grew laden
\forcelinebreak With despairs,
\forcelinebreak Her lips made soundless movements
\forcelinebreak Unawares,
\forcelinebreak While I peered at the chamber hired as theirs.


And as beside its doorway,
\forcelinebreak Deadly hued,
\forcelinebreak One inside, one withoutside
\forcelinebreak We two stood,
\forcelinebreak He came — my husband — as she knew he would.


No pleasurable triumph
\forcelinebreak Was that sight!
\forcelinebreak The ghastly disappointment
\forcelinebreak Broke them quite.
\forcelinebreak What love was theirs, to move them with such might!


”Madam, forgive me!” said she,
\forcelinebreak Sorrow bent,
\forcelinebreak ”A child — I soon shall bear him . . .
\forcelinebreak Yes — I meant
\forcelinebreak To tell you — that he won me ere he went.”


Then, as it were, within me
\forcelinebreak Something snapped,
\forcelinebreak As if my soul had largened:
\forcelinebreak Conscience-capped,
\forcelinebreak I saw myself the snarer — them the trapped.


”My hate dies, and I promise,
\forcelinebreak Grace-beguiled,”
\forcelinebreak I said, “to care for you, be
\forcelinebreak Reconciled;
\forcelinebreak And cherish, and take interest in the child.”


Without more words I pressed him
\forcelinebreak Through the door
\forcelinebreak Within which she stood, powerless
\forcelinebreak To say more,
\forcelinebreak And closed it on them, and downstairward bore.


”He joins his wife — my sister,”
\forcelinebreak I, below,
\forcelinebreak Remarked in going — lightly -
\forcelinebreak Even as though
\forcelinebreak All had come right, and we had arranged it so . . .


As I, my road retracing,
\forcelinebreak Left them free,
\forcelinebreak The night alone embracing
\forcelinebreak Childless me,
\forcelinebreak I held I had not stirred God wrothfully.

\section{THE ROMAN ROAD}


The Roman Road runs straight and bare
\forcelinebreak As the pale parting-line in hair
\forcelinebreak Across the heath. And thoughtful men
\forcelinebreak Contrast its days of Now and Then,
\forcelinebreak And delve, and measure, and compare;


Visioning on the vacant air
\forcelinebreak Helmed legionaries, who proudly rear
\forcelinebreak The Eagle, as they pace again
\forcelinebreak The Roman Road.


But no tall brass-helmed legionnaire
\forcelinebreak Haunts it for me. Uprises there
\forcelinebreak A mother’s form upon my ken,
\forcelinebreak Guiding my infant steps, as when
\forcelinebreak We walked that ancient thoroughfare,
\forcelinebreak The Roman Road.

\section{THE VAMPIRINE FAIR}


Gilbert had sailed to India’s shore,
\forcelinebreak And I was all alone:
\forcelinebreak My lord came in at my open door
\forcelinebreak And said, “O fairest one!”


He leant upon the slant bureau,
\forcelinebreak And sighed, “I am sick for thee!”
\forcelinebreak “My lord,” said I, “pray speak not so,
\forcelinebreak Since wedded wife I be.”


Leaning upon the slant bureau,
\forcelinebreak Bitter his next words came:
\forcelinebreak “So much I know; and likewise know
\forcelinebreak My love burns on the same!


“But since you thrust my love away,
\forcelinebreak And since it knows no cure,
\forcelinebreak I must live out as best I may
\forcelinebreak The ache that I endure.”


When Michaelmas browned the nether Coomb,
\forcelinebreak And Wingreen Hill above,
\forcelinebreak And made the hollyhocks rags of bloom,
\forcelinebreak My lord grew ill of love.


My lord grew ill with love for me;
\forcelinebreak Gilbert was far from port;
\forcelinebreak And — so it was — that time did see
\forcelinebreak Me housed at Manor Court.


About the bowers of Manor Court
\forcelinebreak The primrose pushed its head
\forcelinebreak When, on a day at last, report
\forcelinebreak Arrived of him I had wed.


“Gilbert, my lord, is homeward bound,
\forcelinebreak His sloop is drawing near,
\forcelinebreak What shall I do when I am found
\forcelinebreak Not in his house but here?”


“O I will heal the injuries
\forcelinebreak I’ve done to him and thee.
\forcelinebreak I’ll give him means to live at ease
\forcelinebreak Afar from Shastonb’ry.”


When Gilbert came we both took thought:
\forcelinebreak ”Since comfort and good cheer,”
\forcelinebreak Said he, “So readily are bought,
\forcelinebreak He’s welcome to thee, Dear.”


So when my lord flung liberally
\forcelinebreak His gold in Gilbert’s hands,
\forcelinebreak I coaxed and got my brothers three
\forcelinebreak Made stewards of his lands.


And then I coaxed him to install
\forcelinebreak My other kith and kin,
\forcelinebreak With aim to benefit them all
\forcelinebreak Before his love ran thin.


And next I craved to be possessed
\forcelinebreak Of plate and jewels rare.
\forcelinebreak He groaned: “You give me, Love, no rest,
\forcelinebreak Take all the law will spare!”


And so in course of years my wealth
\forcelinebreak Became a goodly hoard,
\forcelinebreak My steward brethren, too, by stealth
\forcelinebreak Had each a fortune stored.


Thereafter in the gloom he’d walk,
\forcelinebreak And by and by began
\forcelinebreak To say aloud in absent talk,
\forcelinebreak ”I am a ruined man! -


“I hardly could have thought,” he said,
\forcelinebreak ”When first I looked on thee,
\forcelinebreak That one so soft, so rosy red,
\forcelinebreak Could thus have beggared me!”


Seeing his fair estates in pawn,
\forcelinebreak And him in such decline,
\forcelinebreak I knew that his domain had gone
\forcelinebreak To lift up me and mine.


Next month upon a Sunday morn
\forcelinebreak A gunshot sounded nigh:
\forcelinebreak By his own hand my lordly born
\forcelinebreak Had doomed himself to die.


“Live, my dear lord, and much of thine
\forcelinebreak Shall be restored to thee!”
\forcelinebreak He smiled, and said ‘twixt word and sign,
\forcelinebreak ”Alas — that cannot be!”


And while I searched his cabinet
\forcelinebreak For letters, keys, or will,
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas touching that his gaze was set
\forcelinebreak With love upon me still.


And when I burnt each document
\forcelinebreak Before his dying eyes,
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas sweet that he did not resent
\forcelinebreak My fear of compromise.


The steeple-cock gleamed golden when
\forcelinebreak I watched his spirit go:
\forcelinebreak And I became repentant then
\forcelinebreak That I had wrecked him so.


Three weeks at least had come and gone,
\forcelinebreak With many a saddened word,
\forcelinebreak Before I wrote to Gilbert on
\forcelinebreak The stroke that so had stirred.


And having worn a mournful gown,
\forcelinebreak I joined, in decent while,
\forcelinebreak My husband at a dashing town
\forcelinebreak To live in dashing style.


Yet though I now enjoy my fling,
\forcelinebreak And dine and dance and drive,
\forcelinebreak I’d give my prettiest emerald ring
\forcelinebreak To see my lord alive.


And when the meet on hunting-days
\forcelinebreak Is near his churchyard home,
\forcelinebreak I leave my bantering beaux to place
\forcelinebreak A flower upon his tomb;


And sometimes say: “Perhaps too late
\forcelinebreak The saints in Heaven deplore
\forcelinebreak That tender time when, moved by Fate,
\forcelinebreak He darked my cottage door.”

\section{THE REMINDER}

\subsection{I}


While I watch the Christmas blaze
\forcelinebreak Paint the room with ruddy rays,
\forcelinebreak Something makes my vision glide
\forcelinebreak To the frosty scene outside.


There, to reach a rotting berry,
\forcelinebreak Toils a thrush, — constrained to very
\forcelinebreak Dregs of food by sharp distress,
\forcelinebreak Taking such with thankfulness.


Why, O starving bird, when I
\forcelinebreak One day’s joy would justify,
\forcelinebreak And put misery out of view,
\forcelinebreak Do you make me notice you!

\section{THE RAMBLER}


I do not see the hills around,
\forcelinebreak Nor mark the tints the copses wear;
\forcelinebreak I do not note the grassy ground
\forcelinebreak And constellated daisies there.


I hear not the contralto note
\forcelinebreak Of cuckoos hid on either hand,
\forcelinebreak The whirr that shakes the nighthawk’s throat
\forcelinebreak When eve’s brown awning hoods the land.


Some say each songster, tree, and mead -
\forcelinebreak All eloquent of love divine -
\forcelinebreak Receives their constant careful heed:
\forcelinebreak Such keen appraisement is not mine.


The tones around me that I hear,
\forcelinebreak The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,
\forcelinebreak Are those far back ones missed when near,
\forcelinebreak And now perceived too late by me!

\section{NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME}


When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast,
\forcelinebreak And Life’s bare pathway looms like a desert track to me,
\forcelinebreak And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest,
\forcelinebreak My perished people who housed them here come back to me.


They come and seat them around in their mouldy places,
\forcelinebreak Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness,
\forcelinebreak A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces,
\forcelinebreak And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness.


“Do you uphold me, lingering and languishing here,
\forcelinebreak A pale late plant of your once strong stock?” I say to them;
\forcelinebreak “A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere,
\forcelinebreak And on That which consigns men to night after showing the day to them?”


“ — O let be the Wherefore! We fevered our years not thus:
\forcelinebreak Take of Life what it grants, without question!” they answer me seemingly.
\forcelinebreak “Enjoy, suffer, wait: spread the table here freely like us,
\forcelinebreak And, satisfied, placid, unfretting, watch Time away beamingly!”

\section{AFTER THE LAST BREATH (J. H. 1813-1904)}


There’s no more to be done, or feared, or hoped;
\forcelinebreak None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire;
\forcelinebreak No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped
\forcelinebreak Does she require.


Blankly we gaze. We are free to go or stay;
\forcelinebreak Our morrow’s anxious plans have missed their aim;
\forcelinebreak Whether we leave to-night or wait till day
\forcelinebreak Counts as the same.


The lettered vessels of medicaments
\forcelinebreak Seem asking wherefore we have set them here;
\forcelinebreak Each palliative its silly face presents
\forcelinebreak As useless gear.


And yet we feel that something savours well;
\forcelinebreak We note a numb relief withheld before;
\forcelinebreak Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell
\forcelinebreak Of Time no more.


We see by littles now the deft achievement
\forcelinebreak Whereby she has escaped the Wrongers all,
\forcelinebreak In view of which our momentary bereavement
\forcelinebreak Outshapes but small.


1904

\section{IN CHILDBED}


In the middle of the night
\forcelinebreak Mother’s spirit came and spoke to me,
\forcelinebreak Looking weariful and white -
\forcelinebreak As ‘twere untimely news she broke to me.


”O my daughter, joyed are you
\forcelinebreak To own the weetless child you mother there;
\forcelinebreak ’Men may search the wide world through,’
\forcelinebreak You think, ‘nor find so fair another there!’


”Dear, this midnight time unwombs
\forcelinebreak Thousands just as rare and beautiful;
\forcelinebreak Thousands whom High Heaven foredooms
\forcelinebreak To be as bright, as good, as dutiful.


”Source of ecstatic hopes and fears
\forcelinebreak And innocent maternal vanity,
\forcelinebreak Your fond exploit but shapes for tears
\forcelinebreak New thoroughfares in sad humanity.


”Yet as you dream, so dreamt I
\forcelinebreak When Life stretched forth its morning ray to me;
\forcelinebreak Other views for by and by!” . . .
\forcelinebreak Such strange things did mother say to me.

\section{THE PINE PLANTERS (MARTY SOUTH’S REVERIE)}

\subsection{I}


We work here together
\forcelinebreak In blast and breeze;
\forcelinebreak He fills the earth in,
\forcelinebreak I hold the trees.


He does not notice
\forcelinebreak That what I do
\forcelinebreak Keeps me from moving
\forcelinebreak And chills me through.


He has seen one fairer
\forcelinebreak I feel by his eye,
\forcelinebreak Which skims me as though
\forcelinebreak I were not by.


And since she passed here
\forcelinebreak He scarce has known
\forcelinebreak But that the woodland
\forcelinebreak Holds him alone.


I have worked here with him
\forcelinebreak Since morning shine,
\forcelinebreak He busy with his thoughts
\forcelinebreak And I with mine.


I have helped him so many,
\forcelinebreak So many days,
\forcelinebreak But never win any
\forcelinebreak Small word of praise!


Shall I not sigh to him
\forcelinebreak That I work on
\forcelinebreak Glad to be nigh to him
\forcelinebreak Though hope is gone?


Nay, though he never
\forcelinebreak Knew love like mine,
\forcelinebreak I’ll bear it ever
\forcelinebreak And make no sign!

\subsection{II}


From the bundle at hand here
\forcelinebreak I take each tree,
\forcelinebreak And set it to stand, here
\forcelinebreak Always to be;
\forcelinebreak When, in a second,
\forcelinebreak As if from fear
\forcelinebreak Of Life unreckoned
\forcelinebreak Beginning here,
\forcelinebreak It starts a sighing
\forcelinebreak Through day and night,
\forcelinebreak Though while there lying
\forcelinebreak ’Twas voiceless quite.


It will sigh in the morning,
\forcelinebreak Will sigh at noon,
\forcelinebreak At the winter’s warning,
\forcelinebreak In wafts of June;
\forcelinebreak Grieving that never
\forcelinebreak Kind Fate decreed
\forcelinebreak It should for ever
\forcelinebreak Remain a seed,
\forcelinebreak And shun the welter
\forcelinebreak Of things without,
\forcelinebreak Unneeding shelter
\forcelinebreak From storm and drought.


Thus, all unknowing
\forcelinebreak For whom or what
\forcelinebreak We set it growing
\forcelinebreak In this bleak spot,
\forcelinebreak It still will grieve here
\forcelinebreak Throughout its time,
\forcelinebreak Unable to leave here,
\forcelinebreak Or change its clime;
\forcelinebreak Or tell the story
\forcelinebreak Of us to-day
\forcelinebreak When, halt and hoary,
\forcelinebreak We pass away.

\section{THE DEAR}


I plodded to Fairmile Hill-top, where
\forcelinebreak A maiden one fain would guard
\forcelinebreak From every hazard and every care
\forcelinebreak Advanced on the roadside sward.


I wondered how succeeding suns
\forcelinebreak Would shape her wayfarings,
\forcelinebreak And wished some Power might take such ones
\forcelinebreak Under Its warding wings.


The busy breeze came up the hill
\forcelinebreak And smartened her cheek to red,
\forcelinebreak And frizzled her hair to a haze. With a will
\forcelinebreak ”Good-morning, my Dear!” I said.


She glanced from me to the far-off gray,
\forcelinebreak And, with proud severity,
\forcelinebreak “Good-morning to you — though I may say
\forcelinebreak I am not YOUR Dear,” quoth she:


“For I am the Dear of one not here -
\forcelinebreak One far from his native land!” -
\forcelinebreak And she passed me by; and I did not try
\forcelinebreak To make her understand.


1901

\section{ONE WE KNEW (M. H. 1772-1857)}


She told how they used to form for the country dances -
\forcelinebreak ”The Triumph,” “The New-rigged Ship” -
\forcelinebreak To the light of the guttering wax in the panelled manses,
\forcelinebreak And in cots to the blink of a dip.


She spoke of the wild “poussetting” and “allemanding”
\forcelinebreak On carpet, on oak, and on sod;
\forcelinebreak And the two long rows of ladies and gentlemen standing,
\forcelinebreak And the figures the couples trod.


She showed us the spot where the maypole was yearly planted,
\forcelinebreak And where the bandsmen stood
\forcelinebreak While breeched and kerchiefed partners whirled, and panted
\forcelinebreak To choose each other for good.


She told of that far-back day when they learnt astounded
\forcelinebreak Of the death of the King of France:
\forcelinebreak Of the Terror; and then of Bonaparte’s unbounded
\forcelinebreak Ambition and arrogance.


Of how his threats woke warlike preparations
\forcelinebreak Along the southern strand,
\forcelinebreak And how each night brought tremors and trepidations
\forcelinebreak Lest morning should see him land.


She said she had often heard the gibbet creaking
\forcelinebreak As it swayed in the lightning flash,
\forcelinebreak Had caught from the neighbouring town a small child’s shrieking
\forcelinebreak At the cart-tail under the lash . . .


With cap-framed face and long gaze into the embers -
\forcelinebreak We seated around her knees -
\forcelinebreak She would dwell on such dead themes, not as one who remembers,
\forcelinebreak But rather as one who sees.


She seemed one left behind of a band gone distant
\forcelinebreak So far that no tongue could hail:
\forcelinebreak Past things retold were to her as things existent,
\forcelinebreak Things present but as a tale.


May 20, 1902.

\section{SHE HEARS THE STORM}


There was a time in former years -
\forcelinebreak While my roof-tree was his -
\forcelinebreak When I should have been distressed by fears
\forcelinebreak At such a night as this!


I should have murmured anxiously,
\forcelinebreak ”The pricking rain strikes cold;
\forcelinebreak His road is bare of hedge or tree,
\forcelinebreak And he is getting old.”


But now the fitful chimney-roar,
\forcelinebreak The drone of Thorncombe trees,
\forcelinebreak The Froom in flood upon the moor,
\forcelinebreak The mud of Mellstock Leaze,


The candle slanting sooty wick’d,
\forcelinebreak The thuds upon the thatch,
\forcelinebreak The eaves-drops on the window flicked,
\forcelinebreak The clacking garden-hatch,


And what they mean to wayfarers,
\forcelinebreak I scarcely heed or mind;
\forcelinebreak He has won that storm-tight roof of hers
\forcelinebreak Which Earth grants all her kind.

\section{A WET NIGHT}


I pace along, the rain-shafts riddling me,
\forcelinebreak Mile after mile out by the moorland way,
\forcelinebreak And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray
\forcelinebreak Into the lane, and round the corner tree;


Where, as my clothing clams me, mire-bestarred,
\forcelinebreak And the enfeebled light dies out of day,
\forcelinebreak Leaving the liquid shades to reign, I say,
\forcelinebreak “This is a hardship to be calendared!”


Yet sires of mine now perished and forgot,
\forcelinebreak When worse beset, ere roads were shapen here,
\forcelinebreak And night and storm were foes indeed to fear,
\forcelinebreak Times numberless have trudged across this spot
\forcelinebreak In sturdy muteness on their strenuous lot,
\forcelinebreak And taking all such toils as trifles mere.

\section{BEFORE LIFE AND AFTER}


A time there was — as one may guess
\forcelinebreak And as, indeed, earth’s testimonies tell -
\forcelinebreak Before the birth of consciousness,
\forcelinebreak When all went well.


None suffered sickness, love, or loss,
\forcelinebreak None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;
\forcelinebreak None cared whatever crash or cross
\forcelinebreak Brought wrack to things.


If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,
\forcelinebreak If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;
\forcelinebreak If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,
\forcelinebreak No sense was stung.


But the disease of feeling germed,
\forcelinebreak And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;
\forcelinebreak Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed
\forcelinebreak How long, how long?

\section{NEW YEAR’S EVE}


“I have finished another year,” said God,
\forcelinebreak ”In grey, green, white, and brown;
\forcelinebreak I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,
\forcelinebreak Sealed up the worm within the clod,
\forcelinebreak And let the last sun down.”


“And what’s the good of it?” I said.
\forcelinebreak ”What reasons made you call
\forcelinebreak From formless void this earth we tread,
\forcelinebreak When nine-and-ninety can be read
\forcelinebreak Why nought should be at all?


“Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, ‘who in
\forcelinebreak This tabernacle groan’ -
\forcelinebreak If ever a joy be found herein,
\forcelinebreak Such joy no man had wished to win
\forcelinebreak If he had never known!”


Then he: “My labours — logicless -
\forcelinebreak You may explain; not I:
\forcelinebreak Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess
\forcelinebreak That I evolved a Consciousness
\forcelinebreak To ask for reasons why.


“Strange that ephemeral creatures who
\forcelinebreak By my own ordering are,
\forcelinebreak Should see the shortness of my view,
\forcelinebreak Use ethic tests I never knew,
\forcelinebreak Or made provision for!”


He sank to raptness as of yore,
\forcelinebreak And opening New Year’s Day
\forcelinebreak Wove it by rote as theretofore,
\forcelinebreak And went on working evermore
\forcelinebreak In his unweeting way.


1906

\section{GOD’S EDUCATION}


I saw him steal the light away
\forcelinebreak That haunted in her eye:
\forcelinebreak It went so gently none could say
\forcelinebreak More than that it was there one day
\forcelinebreak And missing by-and-by.


I watched her longer, and he stole
\forcelinebreak Her lily tincts and rose;
\forcelinebreak All her young sprightliness of soul
\forcelinebreak Next fell beneath his cold control,
\forcelinebreak And disappeared like those.


I asked: “Why do you serve her so?
\forcelinebreak Do you, for some glad day,
\forcelinebreak Hoard these her sweets — ?” He said, “O no,
\forcelinebreak They charm not me; I bid Time throw
\forcelinebreak Them carelessly away.”


Said I: “We call that cruelty -
\forcelinebreak We, your poor mortal kind.”
\forcelinebreak He mused. “The thought is new to me.
\forcelinebreak Forsooth, though I men’s master be,
\forcelinebreak Theirs is the teaching mind!”

\section{TO SINCERITY}


O sweet sincerity! -
\forcelinebreak Where modern methods be
\forcelinebreak What scope for thine and thee?


Life may be sad past saying,
\forcelinebreak Its greens for ever graying,
\forcelinebreak Its faiths to dust decaying;


And youth may have foreknown it,
\forcelinebreak And riper seasons shown it,
\forcelinebreak But custom cries: “Disown it:


“Say ye rejoice, though grieving,
\forcelinebreak Believe, while unbelieving,
\forcelinebreak Behold, without perceiving!”


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Yet, would men look at true things,
\forcelinebreak And unilluded view things,
\forcelinebreak And count to bear undue things,




\end{itemize}

The real might mend the seeming,
\forcelinebreak Facts better their foredeeming,
\forcelinebreak And Life its disesteeming.


February 1899.

\section{PANTHERA}


(For other forms of this legend — first met with in the second century — see Origen contra Celsum; the Talmud; Sepher Toldoth Jeschu; quoted fragments of lost Apocryphal gospels; Strauss, Haeckel; etc.)


Yea, as I sit here, crutched, and cricked, and bent,
\forcelinebreak I think of Panthera, who underwent
\forcelinebreak Much from insidious aches in his decline;
\forcelinebreak But his aches were not radical like mine;
\forcelinebreak They were the twinges of old wounds — the feel
\forcelinebreak Of the hand he had lost, shorn by barbarian steel,
\forcelinebreak Which came back, so he said, at a change in the air,
\forcelinebreak Fingers and all, as if it still were there.
\forcelinebreak My pains are otherwise: upclosing cramps
\forcelinebreak And stiffened tendons from this country’s damps,
\forcelinebreak Where Panthera was never commandant. -
\forcelinebreak The Fates sent him by way of the Levant.
\forcelinebreak He had been blithe in his young manhood’s time,
\forcelinebreak And as centurion carried well his prime.
\forcelinebreak In Ethiop, Araby, climes fair and fell,
\forcelinebreak He had seen service and had borne him well.
\forcelinebreak Nought shook him then: he was serene as brave;
\forcelinebreak Yet later knew some shocks, and would grow grave
\forcelinebreak When pondering them; shocks less of corporal kind
\forcelinebreak Than phantom-like, that disarranged his mind;
\forcelinebreak And it was in the way of warning me
\forcelinebreak (By much his junior) against levity
\forcelinebreak That he recounted them; and one in chief
\forcelinebreak Panthera loved to set in bold relief.


This was a tragedy of his Eastern days,
\forcelinebreak Personal in touch — though I have sometimes thought
\forcelinebreak That touch a possible delusion — wrought
\forcelinebreak Of half-conviction carried to a craze -
\forcelinebreak His mind at last being stressed by ails and age:-
\forcelinebreak Yet his good faith thereon I well could wage.


I had said it long had been a wish with me
\forcelinebreak That I might leave a scion — some small tree
\forcelinebreak As channel for my sap, if not my name -
\forcelinebreak Ay, offspring even of no legitimate claim,
\forcelinebreak In whose advance I secretly could joy.
\forcelinebreak Thereat he warned.
\forcelinebreak ”Cancel such wishes, boy!
\forcelinebreak A son may be a comfort or a curse,
\forcelinebreak A seer, a doer, a coward, a fool; yea, worse -
\forcelinebreak A criminal . . . That I could testify!”
\forcelinebreak “Panthera has no guilty son!” cried I
\forcelinebreak All unbelieving. “Friend, you do not know,”
\forcelinebreak He darkly dropt: “True, I’ve none now to show,
\forcelinebreak For THE LAW TOOK HIM. Ay, in sooth, Jove shaped it so!”


”This noon is not unlike,” he again began,
\forcelinebreak “The noon these pricking memories print on me -
\forcelinebreak Yea, that day, when the sun grew copper-red,
\forcelinebreak And I served in Judaea . . . ‘Twas a date
\forcelinebreak Of rest for arms. The Pax Romana ruled,
\forcelinebreak To the chagrin of frontier legionaries!
\forcelinebreak Palestine was annexed — though sullen yet, -
\forcelinebreak I, being in age some two-score years and ten
\forcelinebreak And having the garrison in Jerusalem
\forcelinebreak Part in my hands as acting officer
\forcelinebreak Under the Governor. A tedious time
\forcelinebreak I found it, of routine, amid a folk
\forcelinebreak Restless, contentless, and irascible. -
\forcelinebreak Quelling some riot, sentrying court and hall,
\forcelinebreak Sending men forth on public meeting-days
\forcelinebreak To maintain order, were my duties there.


”Then came a morn in spring, and the cheerful sun
\forcelinebreak Whitened the city and the hills around,
\forcelinebreak And every mountain-road that clambered them,
\forcelinebreak Tincturing the greyness of the olives warm,
\forcelinebreak And the rank cacti round the valley’s sides.
\forcelinebreak The day was one whereon death-penalties
\forcelinebreak Were put in force, and here and there were set
\forcelinebreak The soldiery for order, as I said,
\forcelinebreak Since one of the condemned had raised some heat,
\forcelinebreak And crowds surged passionately to see him slain.
\forcelinebreak I, mounted on a Cappadocian horse,
\forcelinebreak With some half-company of auxiliaries,
\forcelinebreak Had captained the procession through the streets
\forcelinebreak When it came streaming from the judgment-hall
\forcelinebreak After the verdicts of the Governor.
\forcelinebreak It drew to the great gate of the northern way
\forcelinebreak That bears towards Damascus; and to a knoll
\forcelinebreak Upon the common, just beyond the walls -
\forcelinebreak Whence could be swept a wide horizon round
\forcelinebreak Over the housetops to the remotest heights.
\forcelinebreak Here was the public execution-ground
\forcelinebreak For city crimes, called then and doubtless now
\forcelinebreak Golgotha, Kranion, or Calvaria.


”The usual dooms were duly meted out;
\forcelinebreak Some three or four were stript, transfixed, and nailed,
\forcelinebreak And no great stir occurred. A day of wont
\forcelinebreak It was to me, so far, and would have slid
\forcelinebreak Clean from my memory at its squalid close
\forcelinebreak But for an incident that followed these.


”Among the tag-rag rabble of either sex
\forcelinebreak That hung around the wretches as they writhed,
\forcelinebreak Till thrust back by our spears, one held my eye -
\forcelinebreak A weeping woman, whose strained countenance,
\forcelinebreak Sharpened against a looming livid cloud,
\forcelinebreak Was mocked by the crude rays of afternoon -
\forcelinebreak The mother of one of those who suffered there
\forcelinebreak I had heard her called when spoken roughly to
\forcelinebreak By my ranged men for pressing forward so.
\forcelinebreak It stole upon me hers was a face I knew;
\forcelinebreak Yet when, or how, I had known it, for a while
\forcelinebreak Eluded me. And then at once it came.


”Some thirty years or more before that noon
\forcelinebreak I was sub-captain of a company
\forcelinebreak Drawn from the legion of Calabria,
\forcelinebreak That marched up from Judaea north to Tyre.
\forcelinebreak We had pierced the old flat country of Jezreel,
\forcelinebreak The great Esdraelon Plain and fighting-floor
\forcelinebreak Of Jew with Canaanite, and with the host
\forcelinebreak Of Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, met
\forcelinebreak While crossing there to strike the Assyrian pride.
\forcelinebreak We left behind Gilboa; passed by Nain;
\forcelinebreak Till bulging Tabor rose, embossed to the top
\forcelinebreak With arbute, terabinth, and locust growths.


”Encumbering me were sundry sick, so fallen
\forcelinebreak Through drinking from a swamp beside the way;
\forcelinebreak But we pressed on, till, bearing over a ridge,
\forcelinebreak We dipt into a world of pleasantness -
\forcelinebreak A vale, the fairest I had gazed upon -
\forcelinebreak Which lapped a village on its furthest slopes
\forcelinebreak Called Nazareth, brimmed round by uplands nigh.
\forcelinebreak In the midst thereof a fountain bubbled, where,
\forcelinebreak Lime-dry from marching, our glad halt we made
\forcelinebreak To rest our sick ones, and refresh us all.


”Here a day onward, towards the eventide,
\forcelinebreak Our men were piping to a Pyrrhic dance
\forcelinebreak Trod by their comrades, when the young women came
\forcelinebreak To fill their pitchers, as their custom was.
\forcelinebreak I proffered help to one — a slim girl, coy
\forcelinebreak Even as a fawn, meek, and as innocent.
\forcelinebreak Her long blue gown, the string of silver coins
\forcelinebreak That hung down by her banded beautiful hair,
\forcelinebreak Symboled in full immaculate modesty.


”Well, I was young, and hot, and readily stirred
\forcelinebreak To quick desire. ‘Twas tedious timing out
\forcelinebreak The convalescence of the soldiery;
\forcelinebreak And I beguiled the long and empty days
\forcelinebreak By blissful yieldance to her sweet allure,
\forcelinebreak Who had no arts, but what out-arted all,
\forcelinebreak The tremulous tender charm of trustfulness.
\forcelinebreak We met, and met, and under the winking stars
\forcelinebreak That passed which peoples earth — true union, yea,
\forcelinebreak To the pure eye of her simplicity.


”Meanwhile the sick found health; and we pricked on.
\forcelinebreak I made her no rash promise of return,
\forcelinebreak As some do use; I was sincere in that;
\forcelinebreak I said we sundered never to meet again -
\forcelinebreak And yet I spoke untruth unknowingly! -
\forcelinebreak For meet again we did. Now, guess you aught?
\forcelinebreak The weeping mother on Calvaria
\forcelinebreak Was she I had known — albeit that time and tears
\forcelinebreak Had wasted rudely her once flowerlike form,
\forcelinebreak And her soft eyes, now swollen with sorrowing.


”Though I betrayed some qualms, she marked me not;
\forcelinebreak And I was scarce of mood to comrade her
\forcelinebreak And close the silence of so wide a time
\forcelinebreak To claim a malefactor as my son -
\forcelinebreak (For so I guessed him). And inquiry made
\forcelinebreak Brought rumour how at Nazareth long before
\forcelinebreak An old man wedded her for pity’s sake
\forcelinebreak On finding she had grown pregnant, none knew how,
\forcelinebreak Cared for her child, and loved her till he died.


”Well; there it ended; save that then I learnt
\forcelinebreak That he — the man whose ardent blood was mine -
\forcelinebreak Had waked sedition long among the Jews,
\forcelinebreak And hurled insulting parlance at their god,
\forcelinebreak Whose temple bulked upon the adjoining hill,
\forcelinebreak Vowing that he would raze it, that himself
\forcelinebreak Was god as great as he whom they adored,
\forcelinebreak And by descent, moreover, was their king;
\forcelinebreak With sundry other incitements to misrule.


”The impalements done, and done the soldiers’ game
\forcelinebreak Of raffling for the clothes, a legionary,
\forcelinebreak Longinus, pierced the young man with his lance
\forcelinebreak At signs from me, moved by his agonies
\forcelinebreak Through naysaying the drug they had offered him.
\forcelinebreak It brought the end. And when he had breathed his last
\forcelinebreak The woman went. I saw her never again . . .
\forcelinebreak Now glares my moody meaning on you, friend? -
\forcelinebreak That when you talk of offspring as sheer joy
\forcelinebreak So trustingly, you blink contingencies.
\forcelinebreak Fors Fortuna! He who goes fathering
\forcelinebreak Gives frightful hostages to hazardry!”


Thus Panthera’s tale. ‘Twas one he seldom told,
\forcelinebreak But yet it got abroad. He would unfold,
\forcelinebreak At other times, a story of less gloom,
\forcelinebreak Though his was not a heart where jests had room.
\forcelinebreak He would regret discovery of the truth
\forcelinebreak Was made too late to influence to ruth
\forcelinebreak The Procurator who had condemned his son —
\forcelinebreak Or rather him so deemed. For there was none
\forcelinebreak To prove that Panthera erred not: and indeed,
\forcelinebreak When vagueness of identity I would plead,
\forcelinebreak Panther himself would sometimes own as much -
\forcelinebreak Yet lothly. But, assuming fact was such,
\forcelinebreak That the said woman did not recognize
\forcelinebreak Her lover’s face, is matter for surprise.
\forcelinebreak However, there’s his tale, fantasy or otherwise.


Thereafter shone not men of Panthera’s kind:
\forcelinebreak The indolent heads at home were ill-inclined
\forcelinebreak To press campaigning that would hoist the star
\forcelinebreak Of their lieutenants valorous afar.
\forcelinebreak Jealousies kept him irked abroad, controlled
\forcelinebreak And stinted by an Empire no more bold.
\forcelinebreak Yet in some actions southward he had share -
\forcelinebreak In Mauretania and Numidia; there
\forcelinebreak With eagle eye, and sword and steed and spur,
\forcelinebreak Quelling uprisings promptly. Some small stir
\forcelinebreak In Parthia next engaged him, until maimed,
\forcelinebreak As I have said; and cynic Time proclaimed
\forcelinebreak His noble spirit broken. What a waste
\forcelinebreak Of such a Roman! — one in youth-time graced
\forcelinebreak With indescribable charm, so I have heard,
\forcelinebreak Yea, magnetism impossible to word
\forcelinebreak When faltering as I saw him. What a fame,
\forcelinebreak O Son of Saturn, had adorned his name,
\forcelinebreak Might the Three so have urged Thee! — Hour by hour
\forcelinebreak His own disorders hampered Panthera’s power
\forcelinebreak To brood upon the fate of those he had known,
\forcelinebreak Even of that one he always called his own -
\forcelinebreak Either in morbid dream or memory . . .
\forcelinebreak He died at no great age, untroublously,
\forcelinebreak An exit rare for ardent soldiers such as he.

\section{THE UNBORN}


I rose at night, and visited
\forcelinebreak The Cave of the Unborn:
\forcelinebreak And crowding shapes surrounded me
\forcelinebreak For tidings of the life to be,
\forcelinebreak Who long had prayed the silent Head
\forcelinebreak To haste its advent morn.


Their eyes were lit with artless trust,
\forcelinebreak Hope thrilled their every tone;
\forcelinebreak “A scene the loveliest, is it not?
\forcelinebreak A pure delight, a beauty-spot
\forcelinebreak Where all is gentle, true and just,
\forcelinebreak And darkness is unknown?”


My heart was anguished for their sake,
\forcelinebreak I could not frame a word;
\forcelinebreak And they descried my sunken face,
\forcelinebreak And seemed to read therein, and trace
\forcelinebreak The news that pity would not break,
\forcelinebreak Nor truth leave unaverred.


And as I silently retired
\forcelinebreak I turned and watched them still,
\forcelinebreak And they came helter-skelter out,
\forcelinebreak Driven forward like a rabble rout
\forcelinebreak Into the world they had so desired
\forcelinebreak By the all-immanent Will.


1905

\section{THE MAN HE KILLED}


”Had he and I but met
\forcelinebreak By some old ancient inn,
\forcelinebreak We should have sat us down to wet
\forcelinebreak Right many a nipperkin!


”But ranged as infantry,
\forcelinebreak And staring face to face,
\forcelinebreak I shot at him as he at me,
\forcelinebreak And killed him in his place.


”I shot him dead because -
\forcelinebreak Because he was my foe,
\forcelinebreak Just so: my foe of course he was;
\forcelinebreak That’s clear enough; although


”He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
\forcelinebreak Off-hand like — just as I -
\forcelinebreak Was out of work — had sold his traps -
\forcelinebreak No other reason why.


”Yes; quaint and curious war is!
\forcelinebreak You shoot a fellow down
\forcelinebreak You’d treat if met where any bar is,
\forcelinebreak Or help to half-a-crown.”


1902

\section{GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE (A MEMORY OF CHRISTIANA C-)}


Where Blackmoor was, the road that led
\forcelinebreak To Bath, she could not show,
\forcelinebreak Nor point the sky that overspread
\forcelinebreak Towns ten miles off or so.


But that Calcutta stood this way,
\forcelinebreak Cape Horn there figured fell,
\forcelinebreak That here was Boston, here Bombay,
\forcelinebreak She could declare full well.


Less known to her the track athwart
\forcelinebreak Froom Mead or Yell’ham Wood
\forcelinebreak Than how to make some Austral port
\forcelinebreak In seas of surly mood.


She saw the glint of Guinea’s shore
\forcelinebreak Behind the plum-tree nigh,
\forcelinebreak Heard old unruly Biscay’s roar
\forcelinebreak In the weir’s purl hard by . . .


“My son’s a sailor, and he knows
\forcelinebreak All seas and many lands,
\forcelinebreak And when he’s home he points and shows
\forcelinebreak Each country where it stands.


“He’s now just there — by Gib’s high rock -
\forcelinebreak And when he gets, you see,
\forcelinebreak To Portsmouth here, behind the clock,
\forcelinebreak Then he’ll come back to me!”

\section{ONE RALPH BLOSSOM SOLILOQUIZES}


(“It being deposed that vij women who were mayds before he knew them have been brought upon the towne [rates?] by the fornicacions of one Ralph Blossom, Mr Major inquired why he should not contribute xiv pence weekly toward their mayntenance. But it being shewn that the sayd R. B. was dying of a purple feaver, no order was made.” — Budmouth Borough Minutes: 16 — .)


When I am in hell or some such place,
\forcelinebreak A-groaning over my sorry case,
\forcelinebreak What will those seven women say to me
\forcelinebreak Who, when I coaxed them, answered “Aye” to me?


“I did not understand your sign!”
\forcelinebreak Will be the words of Caroline;
\forcelinebreak While Jane will cry, “If I’d had proof of you,
\forcelinebreak I should have learnt to hold aloof of you!”


“I won’t reproach: it was to be!”
\forcelinebreak Will dryly murmur Cicely;
\forcelinebreak And Rosa: “I feel no hostility,
\forcelinebreak For I must own I lent facility.”


Lizzy says: “Sharp was my regret,
\forcelinebreak And sometimes it is now! But yet
\forcelinebreak I joy that, though it brought notoriousness,
\forcelinebreak I knew Love once and all its gloriousness!”


Says Patience: “Why are we apart?
\forcelinebreak Small harm did you, my poor Sweet Heart!
\forcelinebreak A manchild born, now tall and beautiful,
\forcelinebreak Was worth the ache of days undutiful.”


And Anne cries: “O the time was fair,
\forcelinebreak So wherefore should you burn down there?
\forcelinebreak There is a deed under the sun, my Love,
\forcelinebreak And that was ours. What’s done is done, my Love.
\forcelinebreak These trumpets here in Heaven are dumb to me
\forcelinebreak With you away. Dear, come, O come to me!”

\section{THE NOBLE LADY’S TALE (circa 1790)}

\subsection{I}


”We moved with pensive paces,
\forcelinebreak I and he,
\forcelinebreak And bent our faded faces
\forcelinebreak Wistfully,
\forcelinebreak For something troubled him, and troubled me.


”The lanthorn feebly lightened
\forcelinebreak Our grey hall,
\forcelinebreak Where ancient brands had brightened
\forcelinebreak Hearth and wall,
\forcelinebreak And shapes long vanished whither vanish all.


”‘O why, Love, nightly, daily,’
\forcelinebreak I had said,
\forcelinebreak ’Dost sigh, and smile so palely,
\forcelinebreak As if shed
\forcelinebreak Were all Life’s blossoms, all its dear things dead?’


”‘Since silence sets thee grieving,’
\forcelinebreak He replied,
\forcelinebreak ’And I abhor deceiving
\forcelinebreak One so tried,
\forcelinebreak Why, Love, I’ll speak, ere time us twain divide.’


”He held me, I remember,
\forcelinebreak Just as when
\forcelinebreak Our life was June — (September
\forcelinebreak It was then);
\forcelinebreak And we walked on, until he spoke again.


”‘Susie, an Irish mummer,
\forcelinebreak Loud-acclaimed
\forcelinebreak Through the gay London summer,
\forcelinebreak Was I; named
\forcelinebreak A master in my art, who would be famed.


”‘But lo, there beamed before me
\forcelinebreak Lady Su;
\forcelinebreak God’s altar-vow she swore me
\forcelinebreak When none knew,
\forcelinebreak And for her sake I bade the sock adieu.


”‘My Lord your father’s pardon
\forcelinebreak Thus I won:
\forcelinebreak He let his heart unharden
\forcelinebreak Towards his son,
\forcelinebreak And honourably condoned what we had done;


”‘But said — recall you, dearest? -
\forcelinebreak As for Su,
\forcelinebreak I’d see her — ay, though nearest
\forcelinebreak Me unto -
\forcelinebreak Sooner entombed than in a stage purlieu!


”‘Just so. — And here he housed us,
\forcelinebreak In this nook,
\forcelinebreak Where Love like balm has drowsed us:
\forcelinebreak Robin, rook,
\forcelinebreak Our chief familiars, next to string and book.


”‘Our days here, peace-enshrouded,
\forcelinebreak Followed strange
\forcelinebreak The old stage-joyance, crowded,
\forcelinebreak Rich in range;
\forcelinebreak But never did my soul desire a change,


”‘Till now, when far uncertain
\forcelinebreak Lips of yore
\forcelinebreak Call, call me to the curtain,
\forcelinebreak There once more,
\forcelinebreak But ONCE, to tread the boards I trod before.


”‘A night — the last and single
\forcelinebreak Ere I die -
\forcelinebreak To face the lights, to mingle
\forcelinebreak As did I
\forcelinebreak Once in the game, and rivet every eye!’


”‘To something drear, distressing
\forcelinebreak As the knell
\forcelinebreak Of all hopes worth possessing!’ . . .
\forcelinebreak — What befell
\forcelinebreak Seemed linked with me, but how I could not tell.


”Hours passed; till I implored him,
\forcelinebreak As he knew
\forcelinebreak How faith and frankness toward him
\forcelinebreak Ruled me through,
\forcelinebreak To say what ill I had done, and could undo.


”‘FAITH — FRANKNESS. Ah! Heaven save such!’
\forcelinebreak Murmured he,
\forcelinebreak ’They are wedded wealth! I gave such
\forcelinebreak Liberally,
\forcelinebreak But you, Dear, not. For you suspected me.’


”I was about beseeching
\forcelinebreak In hurt haste
\forcelinebreak More meaning, when he, reaching
\forcelinebreak To my waist,
\forcelinebreak Led me to pace the hall as once we paced.


”‘I never meant to draw you
\forcelinebreak To own all,’
\forcelinebreak Declared he. ‘But — I SAW you -
\forcelinebreak By the wall,
\forcelinebreak Half-hid. And that was why I failed withal!’


”‘Where? when?’ said I — ’Why, nigh me,
\forcelinebreak At the play
\forcelinebreak That night. That you should spy me,
\forcelinebreak Doubt my fay,
\forcelinebreak And follow, furtive, took my heart away!’


”That I had never been there,
\forcelinebreak But had gone
\forcelinebreak To my locked room — unseen there,
\forcelinebreak Curtains drawn,
\forcelinebreak Long days abiding — told I, wonder-wan.


”‘Nay, ‘twas your form and vesture,
\forcelinebreak Cloak and gown,
\forcelinebreak Your hooded features — gesture
\forcelinebreak Half in frown,
\forcelinebreak That faced me, pale,’ he urged, ‘that night in town.


”‘And when, outside, I handed
\forcelinebreak To her chair
\forcelinebreak (As courtesy demanded
\forcelinebreak Of me there)
\forcelinebreak The leading lady, you peeped from the stair.


”Straight pleaded I: ‘Forsooth, Love,
\forcelinebreak Had I gone,
\forcelinebreak I must have been in truth, Love,
\forcelinebreak Mad to don
\forcelinebreak Such well-known raiment.’ But he still went on


”That he was not mistaken
\forcelinebreak Nor misled. -
\forcelinebreak I felt like one forsaken,
\forcelinebreak Wished me dead,
\forcelinebreak That he could think thus of the wife he had wed!


”His going seemed to waste him
\forcelinebreak Like a curse,
\forcelinebreak To wreck what once had graced him;
\forcelinebreak And, averse
\forcelinebreak To my approach, he mused, and moped, and worse.


”Till, what no words effected
\forcelinebreak Thought achieved:
\forcelinebreak IT WAS MY WRAITH — projected,
\forcelinebreak He conceived,
\forcelinebreak Thither, by my tense brain at home aggrieved.


”Thereon his credence centred
\forcelinebreak Till he died;
\forcelinebreak And, no more tempted, entered
\forcelinebreak Sanctified,
\forcelinebreak The little vault with room for one beside.”

\subsection{III}


Thus far the lady’s story. -
\forcelinebreak Now she, too,
\forcelinebreak Reclines within that hoary
\forcelinebreak Last dark mew
\forcelinebreak In Mellstock Quire with him she loved so true.


A yellowing marble, placed there
\forcelinebreak Tablet-wise,
\forcelinebreak And two joined hearts enchased there
\forcelinebreak Meet the eyes;
\forcelinebreak And reading their twin names we moralise:


Did she, we wonder, follow
\forcelinebreak Jealously?
\forcelinebreak And were those protests hollow? -
\forcelinebreak Or saw he
\forcelinebreak Some semblant dame? Or can wraiths really be?


Were it she went, her honour,
\forcelinebreak All may hold,
\forcelinebreak Pressed truth at last upon her
\forcelinebreak Till she told -
\forcelinebreak (Him only — others as these lines unfold.)


Riddle death-sealed for ever,
\forcelinebreak Let it rest! . . .
\forcelinebreak One’s heart could blame her never
\forcelinebreak If one guessed
\forcelinebreak That go she did. She knew her actor best.

\section{UNREALIZED}


Down comes the winter rain -
\forcelinebreak Spoils my hat and bow -
\forcelinebreak Runs into the poll of me;
\forcelinebreak But mother won’t know.


We’ve been out and caught a cold,
\forcelinebreak Knee-deep in snow;
\forcelinebreak Such a lucky thing it is
\forcelinebreak That mother won’t know!


Rosy lost herself last night -
\forcelinebreak Couldn’t tell where to go.
\forcelinebreak Yes — it rather frightened her,
\forcelinebreak But mother didn’t know.


Somebody made Willy drunk
\forcelinebreak At the Christmas show:
\forcelinebreak O ‘twas fun! It’s well for him
\forcelinebreak That mother won’t know!


Howsoever wild we are,
\forcelinebreak Late at school or slow,
\forcelinebreak Mother won’t be cross with us,
\forcelinebreak Mother won’t know.


How we cried the day she died!
\forcelinebreak Neighbours whispering low . . .
\forcelinebreak But we now do what we will -
\forcelinebreak Mother won’t know.

\section{WAGTAIL AND BABY}


A baby watched a ford, whereto
\forcelinebreak A wagtail came for drinking;
\forcelinebreak A blaring bull went wading through,
\forcelinebreak The wagtail showed no shrinking.


A stallion splashed his way across,
\forcelinebreak The birdie nearly sinking;
\forcelinebreak He gave his plumes a twitch and toss,
\forcelinebreak And held his own unblinking.


Next saw the baby round the spot
\forcelinebreak A mongrel slowly slinking;
\forcelinebreak The wagtail gazed, but faltered not
\forcelinebreak In dip and sip and prinking.


A perfect gentleman then neared;
\forcelinebreak The wagtail, in a winking,
\forcelinebreak With terror rose and disappeared;
\forcelinebreak The baby fell a-thinking.

\section{ABERDEEN}


(April: 1905)


“And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times.” — Isaiah xxxiii. 6.


I looked and thought, “All is too gray and cold
\forcelinebreak To wake my place-enthusiasms of old!”
\forcelinebreak Till a voice passed: “Behind that granite mien
\forcelinebreak Lurks the imposing beauty of a Queen.”
\forcelinebreak I looked anew; and saw the radiant form
\forcelinebreak Of Her who soothes in stress, who steers in storm,
\forcelinebreak On the grave influence of whose eyes sublime
\forcelinebreak Men count for the stability of the time.

\section{GEORGE MEREDITH 1828-1909}


Forty years back, when much had place
\forcelinebreak That since has perished out of mind,
\forcelinebreak I heard that voice and saw that face.


He spoke as one afoot will wind
\forcelinebreak A morning horn ere men awake;
\forcelinebreak His note was trenchant, turning kind.


He was of those whose wit can shake
\forcelinebreak And riddle to the very core
\forcelinebreak The counterfeits that Time will break . . .


Of late, when we two met once more,
\forcelinebreak The luminous countenance and rare
\forcelinebreak Shone just as forty years before.


So that, when now all tongues declare
\forcelinebreak His shape unseen by his green hill,
\forcelinebreak I scarce believe he sits not there.


No matter. Further and further still
\forcelinebreak Through the world’s vaporous vitiate air
\forcelinebreak His words wing on — as live words will.


May 1909.

\section{YELL’HAM-WOOD’S STORY}


Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan,
\forcelinebreak And Clyffe-hill Clump says “Yea!”
\forcelinebreak But Yell’ham says a thing of its own:
\forcelinebreak It’s not “Gray, gray
\forcelinebreak Is Life alway!”
\forcelinebreak That Yell’ham says,
\forcelinebreak Nor that Life is for ends unknown.


It says that Life would signify
\forcelinebreak A thwarted purposing:
\forcelinebreak That we come to live, and are called to die,
\forcelinebreak Yes, that’s the thing
\forcelinebreak In fall, in spring,
\forcelinebreak That Yell’ham says:-
\forcelinebreak ”Life offers — to deny!”


1902

\section{A YOUNG MAN’S EPIGRAM ON EXISTENCE}


A senseless school, where we must give
\forcelinebreak Our lives that we may learn to live!
\forcelinebreak A dolt is he who memorizes
\forcelinebreak Lessons that leave no time for prizes.


16 W. P. V., 1866.

\chapter{SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE
\forcelinebreak}


This collection of poems was published in 1914 and includes the 18 poem sequence ‘Poems of 1912-13’. Satires and Circumstances is widely regarded to be the greatest achievement of Hardy’s poetic career. With many poems being inspired by the tragic loss of his wife Emma, the collection includes some of the most powerful poems ever to portray the theme of bereavement.
\forcelinebreak 


The first edition

\subsection{CONTENTS}


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE



\item\relax 
CHANNEL FIRING



\item\relax 
THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN



\item\relax 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST



\item\relax 
AFTER THE VISIT



\item\relax 
TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE



\item\relax 
THE DIFFERENCE



\item\relax 
THE SUN ON THE BOOKCASE



\item\relax 
WHEN I SET OUT FOR LYONNESSE



\item\relax 
A THUNDERSTORM IN TOWN



\item\relax 
THE TORN LETTER



\item\relax 
BEYOND THE LAST LAMP



\item\relax 
THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT



\item\relax 
LOST LOVE



\item\relax 
MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND



\item\relax 
WESSEX HEIGHTS (1896)



\item\relax 
IN DEATH DIVIDED



\item\relax 
THE PLACE ON THE MAP



\item\relax 
WHERE THE PICNIC WAS



\item\relax 
A SINGER ASLEEP



\item\relax 
A PLAINT TO MAN



\item\relax 
GOD’S FUNERAL



\item\relax 
SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE



\item\relax 
AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?



\item\relax 
SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES



\item\relax 
SELF-UNCONSCIOUS



\item\relax 
THE DISCOVERY



\item\relax 
TOLERANCE



\item\relax 
BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER



\item\relax 
AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER



\item\relax 
THE YEAR’S AWAKENING



\item\relax 
UNDER THE WATERFALL



\item\relax 
THE SPELL OF THE ROSE



\item\relax 
ST. LAUNCE’S REVISITED



\item\relax 
THE GOING



\item\relax 
YOUR LAST DRIVE



\item\relax 
THE WALK



\item\relax 
RAIN ON A GRAVE



\item\relax 
I FOUND HER OUT THERE



\item\relax 
WITHOUT CEREMONY



\item\relax 
LAMENT



\item\relax 
THE HAUNTER



\item\relax 
THE VOICE



\item\relax 
HIS VISITOR



\item\relax 
A CIRCULAR



\item\relax 
A DREAM OR NO



\item\relax 
AFTER A JOURNEY



\item\relax 
A DEATH-DAY RECALLED



\item\relax 
BEENY CLIFF



\item\relax 
AT CASTLE BOTEREL



\item\relax 
PLACES



\item\relax 
THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN



\item\relax 
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES



\item\relax 
THE WISTFUL LADY



\item\relax 
THE WOMAN IN THE RYE



\item\relax 
THE CHEVAL-GLASS



\item\relax 
THE RE-ENACTMENT



\item\relax 
HER SECRET



\item\relax 
SHE CHARGED ME



\item\relax 
THE NEWCOMER’S WIFE



\item\relax 
A CONVERSATION AT DAWN



\item\relax 
A KING’S SOLILOQUY ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL



\item\relax 
THE CORONATION



\item\relax 
AQUAE SULIS



\item\relax 
SEVENTY-FOUR AND TWENTY



\item\relax 
THE ELOPEMENT



\item\relax 
I ROSE UP AS MY CUSTOM IS



\item\relax 
A WEEK



\item\relax 
HAD YOU WEPT



\item\relax 
BEREFT, SHE THINKS SHE DREAMS



\item\relax 
IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM



\item\relax 
IN THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS



\item\relax 
THE OBLITERATE TOMB



\item\relax 
REGRET NOT ME



\item\relax 
THE RECALCITRANTS



\item\relax 
STARLINGS ON THE ROOF



\item\relax 
THE MOON LOOKS IN



\item\relax 
THE SWEET HUSSY



\item\relax 
THE TELEGRAM



\item\relax 
THE MOTH-SIGNAL



\item\relax 
SEEN BY THE WAITS



\item\relax 
THE TWO SOLDIERS



\item\relax 
THE DEATH OF REGRET



\item\relax 
IN THE DAYS OF CRINOLINE



\item\relax 
THE ROMAN GRAVEMOUNDS



\item\relax 
THE WORKBOX



\item\relax 
THE SACRILEGE



\item\relax 
THE ABBEY MASON



\item\relax 
THE JUBILEE OF A MAGAZINE



\item\relax 
THE SATIN SHOES



\item\relax 
EXEUNT OMNES



\item\relax 
A POET



\item\relax 
POSTSCRIPT “MEN WHO MARCH AWAY” (SONG OF THE SOLDIERS)




\end{itemize}
\section{IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE}


Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions,
\forcelinebreak Dolorous and dear,
\forcelinebreak Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters
\forcelinebreak Stretching around,
\forcelinebreak Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape
\forcelinebreak Yonder and near,


Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland
\forcelinebreak Foliage-crowned,
\forcelinebreak Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flat
\forcelinebreak Stroked by the light,
\forcelinebreak Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial
\forcelinebreak Meadow or mound.


What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost
\forcelinebreak Under my sight,
\forcelinebreak Hindering me to discern my paced advancement
\forcelinebreak Lengthening to miles;
\forcelinebreak What were the re-creations killing the daytime
\forcelinebreak As by the night?


O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent,
\forcelinebreak Some as with smiles,
\forcelinebreak Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundled
\forcelinebreak Over the wrecked
\forcelinebreak Cheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with anguish,
\forcelinebreak Harrowed by wiles.


Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them -
\forcelinebreak Halo-bedecked -
\forcelinebreak And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason,
\forcelinebreak Rigid in hate,
\forcelinebreak Smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision,
\forcelinebreak Dreaded, suspect.


Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasons
\forcelinebreak Further in date;
\forcelinebreak Instruments of strings with the tenderest passion
\forcelinebreak Vibrant, beside
\forcelinebreak Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth’s crust
\forcelinebreak Now corporate.


Also there rose a headland of hoary aspect
\forcelinebreak Gnawed by the tide,
\forcelinebreak Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there
\forcelinebreak Guilelessly glad -
\forcelinebreak Wherefore they knew not — touched by the fringe of an ecstasy
\forcelinebreak Scantly descried.


Later images too did the day unfurl me,
\forcelinebreak Shadowed and sad,
\forcelinebreak Clay cadavers of those who had shared in the dramas,
\forcelinebreak Laid now at ease,
\forcelinebreak Passions all spent, chiefest the one of the broad brow
\forcelinebreak Sepulture-clad.


So did beset me scenes miscalled of the bygone,
\forcelinebreak Over the leaze,
\forcelinebreak Past the clump, and down to where lay the beheld ones;
\forcelinebreak — Yea, as the rhyme
\forcelinebreak Sung by the sea-swell, so in their pleading dumbness
\forcelinebreak Captured me these.


For, their lost revisiting manifestations
\forcelinebreak In their own time
\forcelinebreak Much had I slighted, caring not for their purport,
\forcelinebreak Seeing behind
\forcelinebreak Things more coveted, reckoned the better worth calling
\forcelinebreak Sweet, sad, sublime.


Thus do they now show hourly before the intenser
\forcelinebreak Stare of the mind
\forcelinebreak As they were ghosts avenging their slights by my bypast
\forcelinebreak Body-borne eyes,
\forcelinebreak Show, too, with fuller translation than rested upon them
\forcelinebreak As living kind.


Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, saying
\forcelinebreak In their surmise,
\forcelinebreak “Ah — whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing nought
\forcelinebreak Round him that looms
\forcelinebreak Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings,
\forcelinebreak Save a few tombs?”

\section{CHANNEL FIRING}


That night your great guns, unawares,
\forcelinebreak Shook all our coffins as we lay,
\forcelinebreak And broke the chancel window-squares,
\forcelinebreak We thought it was the Judgment-day


And sat upright. While drearisome
\forcelinebreak Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
\forcelinebreak The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
\forcelinebreak The worms drew back into the mounds,


The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;
\forcelinebreak It’s gunnery practice out at sea
\forcelinebreak Just as before you went below;
\forcelinebreak The world is as it used to be:


“All nations striving strong to make
\forcelinebreak Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
\forcelinebreak They do no more for Christes sake
\forcelinebreak Than you who are helpless in such matters.


“That this is not the judgment-hour
\forcelinebreak For some of them’s a blessed thing,
\forcelinebreak For if it were they’d have to scour
\forcelinebreak Hell’s floor for so much threatening . . .


“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
\forcelinebreak I blow the trumpet (if indeed
\forcelinebreak I ever do; for you are men,
\forcelinebreak And rest eternal sorely need).”


So down we lay again. “I wonder,
\forcelinebreak Will the world ever saner be,”
\forcelinebreak Said one, “than when He sent us under
\forcelinebreak In our indifferent century!”


And many a skeleton shook his head.
\forcelinebreak “Instead of preaching forty year,”
\forcelinebreak My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
\forcelinebreak “I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”


Again the guns disturbed the hour,
\forcelinebreak Roaring their readiness to avenge,
\forcelinebreak As far inland as Stourton Tower,
\forcelinebreak And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.


April 1914.

\section{THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN}


(Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”)

\subsection{I}


In a solitude of the sea
\forcelinebreak Deep from human vanity,
\forcelinebreak And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

\subsection{II}


Steel chambers, late the pyres
\forcelinebreak Of her salamandrine fires,
\forcelinebreak Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

\subsection{III}


Over the mirrors meant
\forcelinebreak To glass the opulent
\forcelinebreak The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

\subsection{IV}


Jewels in joy designed
\forcelinebreak To ravish the sensuous mind
\forcelinebreak Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

\subsection{V}


Dim moon-eyed fishes near
\forcelinebreak Gaze at the gilded gear
\forcelinebreak And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” . . .


VI


Well: while was fashioning
\forcelinebreak This creature of cleaving wing,
\forcelinebreak The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything


VII


Prepared a sinister mate
\forcelinebreak For her — so gaily great -
\forcelinebreak A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.


VIII


And as the smart ship grew
\forcelinebreak In stature, grace, and hue,
\forcelinebreak In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

\subsection{IX}


Alien they seemed to be:
\forcelinebreak No mortal eye could see
\forcelinebreak The intimate welding of their later history,

\subsection{X}


Or sign that they were bent
\forcelinebreak By paths coincident
\forcelinebreak On being anon twin halves of one august event,

\subsection{XI}


Till the Spinner of the Years
\forcelinebreak Said “Now!” And each one hears,
\forcelinebreak And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

\section{THE GHOST OF THE PAST}


We two kept house, the Past and I,
\forcelinebreak The Past and I;
\forcelinebreak I tended while it hovered nigh,
\forcelinebreak Leaving me never alone.
\forcelinebreak It was a spectral housekeeping
\forcelinebreak Where fell no jarring tone,
\forcelinebreak As strange, as still a housekeeping
\forcelinebreak As ever has been known.


As daily I went up the stair
\forcelinebreak And down the stair,
\forcelinebreak I did not mind the Bygone there -
\forcelinebreak The Present once to me;
\forcelinebreak Its moving meek companionship
\forcelinebreak I wished might ever be,
\forcelinebreak There was in that companionship
\forcelinebreak Something of ecstasy.


It dwelt with me just as it was,
\forcelinebreak Just as it was
\forcelinebreak When first its prospects gave me pause
\forcelinebreak In wayward wanderings,
\forcelinebreak Before the years had torn old troths
\forcelinebreak As they tear all sweet things,
\forcelinebreak Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths
\forcelinebreak And dulled old rapturings.


And then its form began to fade,
\forcelinebreak Began to fade,
\forcelinebreak Its gentle echoes faintlier played
\forcelinebreak At eves upon my ear
\forcelinebreak Than when the autumn’s look embrowned
\forcelinebreak The lonely chambers here,
\forcelinebreak The autumn’s settling shades embrowned
\forcelinebreak Nooks that it haunted near.


And so with time my vision less,
\forcelinebreak Yea, less and less
\forcelinebreak Makes of that Past my housemistress,
\forcelinebreak It dwindles in my eye;
\forcelinebreak It looms a far-off skeleton
\forcelinebreak And not a comrade nigh,
\forcelinebreak A fitful far-off skeleton
\forcelinebreak Dimming as days draw by.

\section{AFTER THE VISIT}


(To F. E. D.)


Come again to the place
\forcelinebreak Where your presence was as a leaf that skims
\forcelinebreak Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims
\forcelinebreak The bloom on the farer’s face.


Come again, with the feet
\forcelinebreak That were light on the green as a thistledown ball,
\forcelinebreak And those mute ministrations to one and to all
\forcelinebreak Beyond a man’s saying sweet.


Until then the faint scent
\forcelinebreak Of the bordering flowers swam unheeded away,
\forcelinebreak And I marked not the charm in the changes of day
\forcelinebreak As the cloud-colours came and went.


Through the dark corridors
\forcelinebreak Your walk was so soundless I did not know
\forcelinebreak Your form from a phantom’s of long ago
\forcelinebreak Said to pass on the ancient floors,


Till you drew from the shade,
\forcelinebreak And I saw the large luminous living eyes
\forcelinebreak Regard me in fixed inquiring-wise
\forcelinebreak As those of a soul that weighed,


Scarce consciously,
\forcelinebreak The eternal question of what Life was,
\forcelinebreak And why we were there, and by whose strange laws
\forcelinebreak That which mattered most could not be.

\section{TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE}


Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,
\forcelinebreak Or whether to stay
\forcelinebreak And see thee not! How vast the difference seems
\forcelinebreak Of Yea from Nay
\forcelinebreak Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams
\forcelinebreak At no far day
\forcelinebreak On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh!


Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make
\forcelinebreak The most I can
\forcelinebreak Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian
\forcelinebreak Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache,
\forcelinebreak While still we scan
\forcelinebreak Round our frail faltering progress for some path or plan.


By briefest meeting something sure is won;
\forcelinebreak It will have been:
\forcelinebreak Nor God nor Daemon can undo the done,
\forcelinebreak Unsight the seen,
\forcelinebreak Make muted music be as unbegun,
\forcelinebreak Though things terrene
\forcelinebreak Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.


So, to the one long-sweeping symphony
\forcelinebreak From times remote
\forcelinebreak Till now, of human tenderness, shall we
\forcelinebreak Supply one note,
\forcelinebreak Small and untraced, yet that will ever be
\forcelinebreak Somewhere afloat
\forcelinebreak Amid the spheres, as part of sick Life’s antidote.

\section{THE DIFFERENCE}

\subsection{I}


Sinking down by the gate I discern the thin moon,
\forcelinebreak And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine,
\forcelinebreak But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird’s tune,
\forcelinebreak For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine.

\subsection{II}


Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such as now,
\forcelinebreak The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon;
\forcelinebreak But she will see never this gate, path, or bough,
\forcelinebreak Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune.

\section{THE SUN ON THE BOOKCASE}


(Student’s Love-song)


Once more the cauldron of the sun
\forcelinebreak Smears the bookcase with winy red,
\forcelinebreak And here my page is, and there my bed,
\forcelinebreak And the apple-tree shadows travel along.
\forcelinebreak Soon their intangible track will be run,
\forcelinebreak And dusk grow strong
\forcelinebreak And they be fled.


Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,
\forcelinebreak And I have wasted another day . . .
\forcelinebreak But wasted — WASTED, do I say?
\forcelinebreak Is it a waste to have imaged one
\forcelinebreak Beyond the hills there, who, anon,
\forcelinebreak My great deeds done
\forcelinebreak Will be mine alway?

\section{WHEN I SET OUT FOR LYONNESSE}


When I set out for Lyonnesse,
\forcelinebreak A hundred miles away,
\forcelinebreak The rime was on the spray,
\forcelinebreak And starlight lit my lonesomeness
\forcelinebreak When I set out for Lyonnesse
\forcelinebreak A hundred miles away.


What would bechance at Lyonnesse
\forcelinebreak While I should sojourn there
\forcelinebreak No prophet durst declare,
\forcelinebreak Nor did the wisest wizard guess
\forcelinebreak What would bechance at Lyonnesse
\forcelinebreak While I should sojourn there.


When I came back from Lyonnesse
\forcelinebreak With magic in my eyes,
\forcelinebreak None managed to surmise
\forcelinebreak What meant my godlike gloriousness,
\forcelinebreak When I came back from Lyonnesse
\forcelinebreak With magic in my eyes.

\section{A THUNDERSTORM IN TOWN}


(A Reminiscence)


She wore a new “terra-cotta” dress,
\forcelinebreak And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
\forcelinebreak Within the hansom’s dry recess,
\forcelinebreak Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
\forcelinebreak We sat on, snug and warm.


Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
\forcelinebreak And the glass that had screened our forms before
\forcelinebreak Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
\forcelinebreak I should have kissed her if the rain
\forcelinebreak Had lasted a minute more.

\section{THE TORN LETTER}

\subsection{I}


I tore your letter into strips
\forcelinebreak No bigger than the airy feathers
\forcelinebreak That ducks preen out in changing weathers
\forcelinebreak Upon the shifting ripple-tips.

\subsection{II}


In darkness on my bed alone
\forcelinebreak I seemed to see you in a vision,
\forcelinebreak And hear you say: “Why this derision
\forcelinebreak Of one drawn to you, though unknown?”

\subsection{III}


Yes, eve’s quick mood had run its course,
\forcelinebreak The night had cooled my hasty madness;
\forcelinebreak I suffered a regretful sadness
\forcelinebreak Which deepened into real remorse.

\subsection{IV}


I thought what pensive patient days
\forcelinebreak A soul must know of grain so tender,
\forcelinebreak How much of good must grace the sender
\forcelinebreak Of such sweet words in such bright phrase.

\subsection{V}


Uprising then, as things unpriced
\forcelinebreak I sought each fragment, patched and mended;
\forcelinebreak The midnight whitened ere I had ended
\forcelinebreak And gathered words I had sacrificed.


VI


But some, alas, of those I threw
\forcelinebreak Were past my search, destroyed for ever:
\forcelinebreak They were your name and place; and never
\forcelinebreak Did I regain those clues to you.


VII


I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,
\forcelinebreak My track; that, so the Will decided,
\forcelinebreak In life, death, we should be divided,
\forcelinebreak And at the sense I ached indeed.


VIII


That ache for you, born long ago,
\forcelinebreak Throbs on; I never could outgrow it.
\forcelinebreak What a revenge, did you but know it!
\forcelinebreak But that, thank God, you do not know.

\section{BEYOND THE LAST LAMP}


(Near Tooting Common)

\subsection{I}


While rain, with eve in partnership,
\forcelinebreak Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip,
\forcelinebreak Beyond the last lone lamp I passed
\forcelinebreak Walking slowly, whispering sadly,
\forcelinebreak Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast:
\forcelinebreak Some heavy thought constrained each face,
\forcelinebreak And blinded them to time and place.

\subsection{II}


The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed
\forcelinebreak In mental scenes no longer orbed
\forcelinebreak By love’s young rays. Each countenance
\forcelinebreak As it slowly, as it sadly
\forcelinebreak Caught the lamplight’s yellow glance
\forcelinebreak Held in suspense a misery
\forcelinebreak At things which had been or might be.

\subsection{III}


When I retrod that watery way
\forcelinebreak Some hours beyond the droop of day,
\forcelinebreak Still I found pacing there the twain
\forcelinebreak Just as slowly, just as sadly,
\forcelinebreak Heedless of the night and rain.
\forcelinebreak One could but wonder who they were
\forcelinebreak And what wild woe detained them there.

\subsection{IV}


Though thirty years of blur and blot
\forcelinebreak Have slid since I beheld that spot,
\forcelinebreak And saw in curious converse there
\forcelinebreak Moving slowly, moving sadly
\forcelinebreak That mysterious tragic pair,
\forcelinebreak Its olden look may linger on -
\forcelinebreak All but the couple; they have gone.

\subsection{V}


Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And yet
\forcelinebreak To me, when nights are weird and wet,
\forcelinebreak Without those comrades there at tryst
\forcelinebreak Creeping slowly, creeping sadly,
\forcelinebreak That lone lane does not exist.
\forcelinebreak There they seem brooding on their pain,
\forcelinebreak And will, while such a lane remain.

\section{THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT}


If ever joy leave
\forcelinebreak An abiding sting of sorrow,
\forcelinebreak So befell it on the morrow
\forcelinebreak Of that May eve . . .


The travelled sun dropped
\forcelinebreak To the north-west, low and lower,
\forcelinebreak The pony’s trot grew slower,
\forcelinebreak And then we stopped.


”This cosy house just by
\forcelinebreak I must call at for a minute,
\forcelinebreak A sick man lies within it
\forcelinebreak Who soon will die.


”He wished to marry me,
\forcelinebreak So I am bound, when I drive near him,
\forcelinebreak To inquire, if but to cheer him,
\forcelinebreak How he may be.”


A message was sent in,
\forcelinebreak And wordlessly we waited,
\forcelinebreak Till some one came and stated
\forcelinebreak The bulletin.


And that the sufferer said,
\forcelinebreak For her call no words could thank her;
\forcelinebreak As his angel he must rank her
\forcelinebreak Till life’s spark fled.


Slowly we drove away,
\forcelinebreak When I turned my head, although not
\forcelinebreak Called; why so I turned I know not
\forcelinebreak Even to this day.


And lo, there in my view
\forcelinebreak Pressed against an upper lattice
\forcelinebreak Was a white face, gazing at us
\forcelinebreak As we withdrew.


And well did I divine
\forcelinebreak It to be the man’s there dying,
\forcelinebreak Who but lately had been sighing
\forcelinebreak For her pledged mine.


Then I deigned a deed of hell;
\forcelinebreak It was done before I knew it;
\forcelinebreak What devil made me do it
\forcelinebreak I cannot tell!


Yes, while he gazed above,
\forcelinebreak I put my arm about her
\forcelinebreak That he might see, nor doubt her
\forcelinebreak My plighted Love.


The pale face vanished quick,
\forcelinebreak As if blasted, from the casement,
\forcelinebreak And my shame and self-abasement
\forcelinebreak Began their prick.


And they prick on, ceaselessly,
\forcelinebreak For that stab in Love’s fierce fashion
\forcelinebreak Which, unfired by lover’s passion,
\forcelinebreak Was foreign to me.


She smiled at my caress,
\forcelinebreak But why came the soft embowment
\forcelinebreak Of her shoulder at that moment
\forcelinebreak She did not guess.


Long long years has he lain
\forcelinebreak In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather:
\forcelinebreak What tears there, bared to weather,
\forcelinebreak Will cleanse that stain!


Love is long-suffering, brave,
\forcelinebreak Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel;
\forcelinebreak But O, too, Love is cruel,
\forcelinebreak Cruel as the grave.

\section{LOST LOVE}


I play my sweet old airs -
\forcelinebreak The airs he knew
\forcelinebreak When our love was true -
\forcelinebreak But he does not balk
\forcelinebreak His determined walk,
\forcelinebreak And passes up the stairs.


I sing my songs once more,
\forcelinebreak And presently hear
\forcelinebreak His footstep near
\forcelinebreak As if it would stay;
\forcelinebreak But he goes his way,
\forcelinebreak And shuts a distant door.


So I wait for another morn
\forcelinebreak And another night
\forcelinebreak In this soul-sick blight;
\forcelinebreak And I wonder much
\forcelinebreak As I sit, why such
\forcelinebreak A woman as I was born!

\section{MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND}


My spirit will not haunt the mound
\forcelinebreak Above my breast,
\forcelinebreak But travel, memory-possessed,
\forcelinebreak To where my tremulous being found
\forcelinebreak Life largest, best.


My phantom-footed shape will go
\forcelinebreak When nightfall grays
\forcelinebreak Hither and thither along the ways
\forcelinebreak I and another used to know
\forcelinebreak In backward days.


And there you’ll find me, if a jot
\forcelinebreak You still should care
\forcelinebreak For me, and for my curious air;
\forcelinebreak If otherwise, then I shall not,
\forcelinebreak For you, be there.

\section{WESSEX HEIGHTS (1896)}


There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand
\forcelinebreak For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,
\forcelinebreak Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,
\forcelinebreak 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 -
\forcelinebreak Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to
\forcelinebreak mend:
\forcelinebreak Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I,
\forcelinebreak 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 -
\forcelinebreak Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days:
\forcelinebreak They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things -
\forcelinebreak Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings.


Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was,
\forcelinebreak And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause
\forcelinebreak Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this,
\forcelinebreak Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.


I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there’s a figure against the
\forcelinebreak moon,
\forcelinebreak Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;
\forcelinebreak I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now
\forcelinebreak passed
\forcelinebreak 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
\forcelinebreak night,
\forcelinebreak There’s a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a
\forcelinebreak shroud of white,
\forcelinebreak There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near,
\forcelinebreak 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,
\forcelinebreak I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers;
\forcelinebreak Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know;
\forcelinebreak 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,
\forcelinebreak Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest,
\forcelinebreak Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me,
\forcelinebreak And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.

\section{IN DEATH DIVIDED}

\subsection{I}


I shall rot here, with those whom in their day
\forcelinebreak You never knew,
\forcelinebreak And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,
\forcelinebreak Met not my view,
\forcelinebreak Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you.

\subsection{II}


No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower,
\forcelinebreak While earth endures,
\forcelinebreak Will fall on my mound and within the hour
\forcelinebreak Steal on to yours;
\forcelinebreak One robin never haunt our two green covertures.

\subsection{III}


Some organ may resound on Sunday noons
\forcelinebreak By where you lie,
\forcelinebreak Some other thrill the panes with other tunes
\forcelinebreak Where moulder I;
\forcelinebreak No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby.

\subsection{IV}


The simply-cut memorial at my head
\forcelinebreak Perhaps may take
\forcelinebreak A Gothic form, and that above your bed
\forcelinebreak Be Greek in make;
\forcelinebreak No linking symbol show thereon for our tale’s sake.

\subsection{V}


And in the monotonous moils of strained, hard-run
\forcelinebreak Humanity,
\forcelinebreak The eternal tie which binds us twain in one
\forcelinebreak No eye will see
\forcelinebreak Stretching across the miles that sever you from me.

\section{THE PLACE ON THE MAP}

\subsection{I}


I look upon the map that hangs by me -
\forcelinebreak Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry -
\forcelinebreak And I mark a jutting height
\forcelinebreak Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea.

\subsection{II}


— ’Twas a day of latter summer, hot and dry;
\forcelinebreak Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked on, she and I,
\forcelinebreak By this spot where, calmly quite,
\forcelinebreak She informed me what would happen by and by.

\subsection{III}


This hanging map depicts the coast and place,
\forcelinebreak And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case
\forcelinebreak All distinctly to my sight,
\forcelinebreak And her tension, and the aspect of her face.

\subsection{IV}


Weeks and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue,
\forcelinebreak Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too,
\forcelinebreak While she told what, as by sleight,
\forcelinebreak Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue.

\subsection{V}


For the wonder and the wormwood of the whole
\forcelinebreak Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soul
\forcelinebreak Wore a torrid tragic light
\forcelinebreak Under order-keeping’s rigorous control.


VI


So, the map revives her words, the spot, the time,
\forcelinebreak And the thing we found we had to face before the next year’s prime;
\forcelinebreak The charted coast stares bright,
\forcelinebreak And its episode comes back in pantomime.

\section{WHERE THE PICNIC WAS}


Where we made the fire,
\forcelinebreak In the summer time,
\forcelinebreak Of branch and briar
\forcelinebreak On the hill to the sea
\forcelinebreak I slowly climb
\forcelinebreak Through winter mire,
\forcelinebreak And scan and trace
\forcelinebreak The forsaken place
\forcelinebreak Quite readily.


Now a cold wind blows,
\forcelinebreak And the grass is gray,
\forcelinebreak But the spot still shows
\forcelinebreak As a burnt circle — aye,
\forcelinebreak And stick-ends, charred,
\forcelinebreak Still strew the sward
\forcelinebreak Whereon I stand,
\forcelinebreak Last relic of the band
\forcelinebreak Who came that day!


Yes, I am here
\forcelinebreak Just as last year,
\forcelinebreak And the sea breathes brine
\forcelinebreak From its strange straight line
\forcelinebreak Up hither, the same
\forcelinebreak As when we four came.
\forcelinebreak  - But two have wandered far
\forcelinebreak From this grassy rise
\forcelinebreak Into urban roar
\forcelinebreak Where no picnics are,
\forcelinebreak And one — has shut her eyes
\forcelinebreak For evermore.


THE SCHRECKHORN
\forcelinebreak (With thoughts of Leslie Stephen)
\forcelinebreak (June 1897)


Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim;
\forcelinebreak Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams
\forcelinebreak Upon my nearing vision, less it seems
\forcelinebreak A looming Alp-height than a guise of him
\forcelinebreak Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb,
\forcelinebreak Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe,
\forcelinebreak Of semblance to his personality
\forcelinebreak In its quaint glooms, keen lights, and rugged trim.


At his last change, when Life’s dull coils unwind,
\forcelinebreak Will he, in old love, hitherward escape,
\forcelinebreak And the eternal essence of his mind
\forcelinebreak Enter this silent adamantine shape,
\forcelinebreak And his low voicing haunt its slipping snows
\forcelinebreak When dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose?

\section{A SINGER ASLEEP}


(Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909)

\subsection{I}


In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,
\forcelinebreak That sentrys up and down all night, all day,
\forcelinebreak From cove to promontory, from ness to bay,
\forcelinebreak The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally.

\subsection{II}


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
It was as though a garland of red roses
\forcelinebreak Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun
\forcelinebreak When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun,
\forcelinebreak In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes,
\forcelinebreak Upon Victoria’s formal middle time
\forcelinebreak His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.




\end{itemize}
\subsection{III}


O that far morning of a summer day
\forcelinebreak When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay
\forcelinebreak Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes,
\forcelinebreak I walked and read with a quick glad surprise
\forcelinebreak New words, in classic guise, -

\subsection{IV}


The passionate pages of his earlier years,
\forcelinebreak Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears;
\forcelinebreak Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who
\forcelinebreak Blew them not naively, but as one who knew
\forcelinebreak Full well why thus he blew.

\subsection{V}


I still can hear the brabble and the roar
\forcelinebreak At those thy tunes, O still one, now passed through
\forcelinebreak That fitful fire of tongues then entered new!
\forcelinebreak Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore;
\forcelinebreak Thine swells yet more and more.


VI


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
His singing-mistress verily was no other
\forcelinebreak Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother
\forcelinebreak Of all the tribe that feel in melodies;
\forcelinebreak Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep
\forcelinebreak Into the rambling world-encircling deep
\forcelinebreak Which hides her where none sees.




\end{itemize}

VII


And one can hold in thought that nightly here
\forcelinebreak His phantom may draw down to the water’s brim,
\forcelinebreak And hers come up to meet it, as a dim
\forcelinebreak Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere,
\forcelinebreak And mariners wonder as they traverse near,
\forcelinebreak Unknowing of her and him.


VIII


One dreams him sighing to her spectral form:
\forcelinebreak “O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line;
\forcelinebreak Where are those songs, O poetess divine
\forcelinebreak Whose very arts are love incarnadine?”
\forcelinebreak And her smile back: “Disciple true and warm,
\forcelinebreak Sufficient now are thine.” . . .

\subsection{IX}


So here, beneath the waking constellations,
\forcelinebreak Where the waves peal their everlasting strains,
\forcelinebreak And their dull subterrene reverberations
\forcelinebreak Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains -
\forcelinebreak Him once their peer in sad improvisations,
\forcelinebreak And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes -
\forcelinebreak I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines
\forcelinebreak Upon the capes and chines.


BONCHURCH, 1910.

\section{A PLAINT TO MAN}


When you slowly emerged from the den of Time,
\forcelinebreak And gained percipience as you grew,
\forcelinebreak And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,


Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you
\forcelinebreak The unhappy need of creating me -
\forcelinebreak A form like your own — for praying to?


My virtue, power, utility,
\forcelinebreak Within my maker must all abide,
\forcelinebreak Since none in myself can ever be,


One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide
\forcelinebreak Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet,
\forcelinebreak And by none but its showman vivified.


“Such a forced device,” you may say, “is meet
\forcelinebreak For easing a loaded heart at whiles:
\forcelinebreak Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat


Somewhere above the gloomy aisles
\forcelinebreak Of this wailful world, or he could not bear
\forcelinebreak The irk no local hope beguiles.”


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
But since I was framed in your first despair
\forcelinebreak The doing without me has had no play
\forcelinebreak In the minds of men when shadows scare;




\end{itemize}

And now that I dwindle day by day
\forcelinebreak Beneath the deicide eyes of seers
\forcelinebreak In a light that will not let me stay,


And to-morrow the whole of me disappears,
\forcelinebreak The truth should be told, and the fact be faced
\forcelinebreak That had best been faced in earlier years:


The fact of life with dependence placed
\forcelinebreak On the human heart’s resource alone,
\forcelinebreak In brotherhood bonded close and graced


With loving-kindness fully blown,
\forcelinebreak And visioned help unsought, unknown.


1909-10.

\section{GOD’S FUNERAL}

\subsection{I}


I saw a slowly-stepping train -
\forcelinebreak Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar -
\forcelinebreak Following in files across a twilit plain
\forcelinebreak A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

\subsection{II}


And by contagious throbs of thought
\forcelinebreak Or latent knowledge that within me lay
\forcelinebreak And had already stirred me, I was wrought
\forcelinebreak To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

\subsection{III}


The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
\forcelinebreak At first seemed man-like, and anon to change
\forcelinebreak To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,
\forcelinebreak At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

\subsection{IV}


And this phantasmal variousness
\forcelinebreak Ever possessed it as they drew along:
\forcelinebreak Yet throughout all it symboled none the less
\forcelinebreak Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

\subsection{V}


Almost before I knew I bent
\forcelinebreak Towards the moving columns without a word;
\forcelinebreak They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,
\forcelinebreak Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:-


VI


”O man-projected Figure, of late
\forcelinebreak Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?
\forcelinebreak Whence came it we were tempted to create
\forcelinebreak One whom we can no longer keep alive?


VII


”Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,
\forcelinebreak We gave him justice as the ages rolled,
\forcelinebreak Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,
\forcelinebreak And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.


VIII


”And, tricked by our own early dream
\forcelinebreak And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
\forcelinebreak Our making soon our maker did we deem,
\forcelinebreak And what we had imagined we believed.

\subsection{IX}


”Till, in Time’s stayless stealthy swing,
\forcelinebreak Uncompromising rude reality
\forcelinebreak Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
\forcelinebreak Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

\subsection{X}


”So, toward our myth’s oblivion,
\forcelinebreak Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope
\forcelinebreak Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,
\forcelinebreak Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

\subsection{XI}


”How sweet it was in years far hied
\forcelinebreak To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,
\forcelinebreak To lie down liegely at the eventide
\forcelinebreak And feel a blest assurance he was there!

\subsection{XII}


”And who or what shall fill his place?
\forcelinebreak Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes
\forcelinebreak For some fixed star to stimulate their pace
\forcelinebreak Towards the goal of their enterprise?” . . .

\subsection{XIII}


Some in the background then I saw,
\forcelinebreak Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,
\forcelinebreak Who chimed as one: “This figure is of straw,
\forcelinebreak This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!”

\subsection{XIV}


I could not prop their faith: and yet
\forcelinebreak Many I had known: with all I sympathized;
\forcelinebreak And though struck speechless, I did not forget
\forcelinebreak That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

\subsection{XV}


Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
\forcelinebreak The insistent question for each animate mind,
\forcelinebreak And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
\forcelinebreak A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

\subsection{XVI}


Whereof to lift the general night,
\forcelinebreak A certain few who stood aloof had said,
\forcelinebreak “See you upon the horizon that small light -
\forcelinebreak Swelling somewhat?” Each mourner shook his head.

\subsection{XVII}


And they composed a crowd of whom
\forcelinebreak Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . .
\forcelinebreak Thus dazed and puzzled ‘twixt the gleam and gloom
\forcelinebreak Mechanically I followed with the rest.


1908-10.

\section{SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE}


“It is not death that harrows us,” they lipped,
\forcelinebreak “The soundless cell is in itself relief,
\forcelinebreak For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped
\forcelinebreak At unawares, and at its best but brief.”


The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,
\forcelinebreak Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,
\forcelinebreak As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone
\forcelinebreak From the sward near me, as from a nether sky.


And much surprised was I that, spent and dead,
\forcelinebreak They should not, like the many, be at rest,
\forcelinebreak But stray as apparitions; hence I said,
\forcelinebreak “Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?


“We are among the few death sets not free,
\forcelinebreak The hurt, misrepresented names, who come
\forcelinebreak At each year’s brink, and cry to History
\forcelinebreak To do them justice, or go past them dumb.


“We are stript of rights; our shames lie unredressed,
\forcelinebreak Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown,
\forcelinebreak Our words in morsels merely are expressed
\forcelinebreak On the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown.”


Then all these shaken slighted visitants sped
\forcelinebreak Into the vague, and left me musing there
\forcelinebreak On fames that well might instance what they had said,
\forcelinebreak Until the New-Year’s dawn strode up the air.

\section{AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?}


“Ah, are you digging on my grave
\forcelinebreak My loved one? — planting rue?”
\forcelinebreak  - “No: yesterday he went to wed
\forcelinebreak One of the brightest wealth has bred.
\forcelinebreak ‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,
\forcelinebreak ’That I should not be true.’“


“Then who is digging on my grave?
\forcelinebreak My nearest dearest kin?”
\forcelinebreak  - “Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use!
\forcelinebreak What good will planting flowers produce?
\forcelinebreak No tendance of her mound can loose
\forcelinebreak Her spirit from Death’s gin.’“


“But some one digs upon my grave?
\forcelinebreak My enemy? — prodding sly?”
\forcelinebreak  - “Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
\forcelinebreak That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
\forcelinebreak She thought you no more worth her hate,
\forcelinebreak And cares not where you lie.”


“Then, who is digging on my grave?
\forcelinebreak Say — since I have not guessed!”
\forcelinebreak  - “O it is I, my mistress dear,
\forcelinebreak Your little dog, who still lives near,
\forcelinebreak And much I hope my movements here
\forcelinebreak Have not disturbed your rest?”


“Ah, yes! YOU dig upon my grave . . .
\forcelinebreak Why flashed it not on me
\forcelinebreak That one true heart was left behind!
\forcelinebreak What feeling do we ever find
\forcelinebreak To equal among human kind
\forcelinebreak A dog’s fidelity!”


“Mistress, I dug upon your grave
\forcelinebreak To bury a bone, in case
\forcelinebreak I should be hungry near this spot
\forcelinebreak When passing on my daily trot.
\forcelinebreak I am sorry, but I quite forgot
\forcelinebreak It was your resting-place.”

\section{SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES}

\subsection{I — AT TEA}


The kettle descants in a cozy drone,
\forcelinebreak And the young wife looks in her husband’s face,
\forcelinebreak And then at her guest’s, and shows in her own
\forcelinebreak Her sense that she fills an envied place;
\forcelinebreak And the visiting lady is all abloom,
\forcelinebreak And says there was never so sweet a room.


And the happy young housewife does not know
\forcelinebreak That the woman beside her was first his choice,
\forcelinebreak Till the fates ordained it could not be so . . .
\forcelinebreak Betraying nothing in look or voice
\forcelinebreak The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,
\forcelinebreak And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

\subsection{II — IN CHURCH}


“And now to God the Father,” he ends,
\forcelinebreak And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
\forcelinebreak Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
\forcelinebreak And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
\forcelinebreak Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,
\forcelinebreak And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.


The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,
\forcelinebreak And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
\forcelinebreak Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
\forcelinebreak Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
\forcelinebreak And re-enact at the vestry-glass
\forcelinebreak Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
\forcelinebreak That had moved the congregation so.

\subsection{III — BY HER AUNT’S GRAVE}


“Sixpence a week,” says the girl to her lover,
\forcelinebreak “Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide
\forcelinebreak In me alone, she vowed. ‘Twas to cover
\forcelinebreak The cost of her headstone when she died.
\forcelinebreak And that was a year ago last June;
\forcelinebreak I’ve not yet fixed it. But I must soon.”


“And where is the money now, my dear?”
\forcelinebreak “O, snug in my purse . . . Aunt was SO slow
\forcelinebreak In saving it — eighty weeks, or near.” . . .
\forcelinebreak “Let’s spend it,” he hints. “For she won’t know.
\forcelinebreak There’s a dance to-night at the Load of Hay.”
\forcelinebreak She passively nods. And they go that way.

\subsection{IV — IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT}


“Would it had been the man of our wish!”
\forcelinebreak Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she
\forcelinebreak In the wedding-dress — the wife to be -
\forcelinebreak “Then why were you so mollyish
\forcelinebreak As not to insist on him for me!”
\forcelinebreak The mother, amazed: “Why, dearest one,
\forcelinebreak Because you pleaded for this or none!”


“But Father and you should have stood out strong!
\forcelinebreak Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find
\forcelinebreak That you were right and that I was wrong;
\forcelinebreak This man is a dolt to the one declined . . .
\forcelinebreak Ah! — here he comes with his button-hole rose.
\forcelinebreak Good God — I must marry him I suppose!”

\subsection{V — AT A WATERING-PLACE}


They sit and smoke on the esplanade,
\forcelinebreak The man and his friend, and regard the bay
\forcelinebreak Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,
\forcelinebreak Smile sallowly in the decline of day.
\forcelinebreak And saunterers pass with laugh and jest -
\forcelinebreak A handsome couple among the rest.


“That smart proud pair,” says the man to his friend,
\forcelinebreak “Are to marry next week . . . How little he thinks
\forcelinebreak That dozens of days and nights on end
\forcelinebreak I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links
\forcelinebreak Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm . . .
\forcelinebreak Well, bliss is in ignorance: what’s the harm!”


VI — IN THE CEMETERY


“You see those mothers squabbling there?”
\forcelinebreak Remarks the man of the cemetery.
\forcelinebreak One says in tears, ‘‘Tis mine lies here!’
\forcelinebreak Another, ‘Nay, mine, you Pharisee!’
\forcelinebreak Another, ‘How dare you move my flowers
\forcelinebreak And put your own on this grave of ours!’
\forcelinebreak But all their children were laid therein
\forcelinebreak At different times, like sprats in a tin.


“And then the main drain had to cross,
\forcelinebreak And we moved the lot some nights ago,
\forcelinebreak And packed them away in the general foss
\forcelinebreak With hundreds more. But their folks don’t know,
\forcelinebreak And as well cry over a new-laid drain
\forcelinebreak As anything else, to ease your pain!”


VII — OUTSIDE THE WINDOW


“My stick!” he says, and turns in the lane
\forcelinebreak To the house just left, whence a vixen voice
\forcelinebreak Comes out with the firelight through the pane,
\forcelinebreak And he sees within that the girl of his choice
\forcelinebreak Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare
\forcelinebreak For something said while he was there.


“At last I behold her soul undraped!”
\forcelinebreak Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;
\forcelinebreak “My God — ’tis but narrowly I have escaped. -
\forcelinebreak My precious porcelain proves it delf.”
\forcelinebreak His face has reddened like one ashamed,
\forcelinebreak And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.


VIII — IN THE STUDY


He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair
\forcelinebreak Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,
\forcelinebreak A type of decayed gentility;
\forcelinebreak And by some small signs he well can guess
\forcelinebreak That she comes to him almost breakfastless.


“I have called — I hope I do not err -
\forcelinebreak I am looking for a purchaser
\forcelinebreak Of some score volumes of the works
\forcelinebreak Of eminent divines I own, -
\forcelinebreak Left by my father — though it irks
\forcelinebreak My patience to offer them.” And she smiles
\forcelinebreak As if necessity were unknown;
\forcelinebreak “But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles
\forcelinebreak I have wished, as I am fond of art,
\forcelinebreak To make my rooms a little smart.”
\forcelinebreak And lightly still she laughs to him,
\forcelinebreak As if to sell were a mere gay whim,
\forcelinebreak And that, to be frank, Life were indeed
\forcelinebreak To her not vinegar and gall,
\forcelinebreak But fresh and honey-like; and Need
\forcelinebreak No household skeleton at all.

\subsection{IX — AT THE ALTAR-RAIL}


“My bride is not coming, alas!” says the groom,
\forcelinebreak And the telegram shakes in his hand. “I own
\forcelinebreak It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room
\forcelinebreak When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,
\forcelinebreak And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,
\forcelinebreak And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.


“Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife -
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas foolish perhaps! — to forsake the ways
\forcelinebreak Of the flaring town for a farmer’s life.
\forcelinebreak She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:
\forcelinebreak ‘It’s sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,
\forcelinebreak But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.
\forcelinebreak What I really am you have never gleaned;
\forcelinebreak I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned.’“

\subsection{X — IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER}


“O that mastering tune?” And up in the bed
\forcelinebreak Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;
\forcelinebreak “And why?” asks the man she had that day wed,
\forcelinebreak With a start, as the band plays on outside.
\forcelinebreak “It’s the townsfolks’ cheery compliment
\forcelinebreak Because of our marriage, my Innocent.”


“O but you don’t know! ‘Tis the passionate air
\forcelinebreak To which my old Love waltzed with me,
\forcelinebreak And I swore as we spun that none should share
\forcelinebreak My home, my kisses, till death, save he!
\forcelinebreak And he dominates me and thrills me through,
\forcelinebreak And it’s he I embrace while embracing you!”

\subsection{XI — IN THE RESTAURANT}


“But hear. If you stay, and the child be born,
\forcelinebreak It will pass as your husband’s with the rest,
\forcelinebreak While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn
\forcelinebreak Will be gleaming at us from east to west;
\forcelinebreak And the child will come as a life despised;
\forcelinebreak I feel an elopement is ill-advised!”


“O you realise not what it is, my dear,
\forcelinebreak To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms
\forcelinebreak Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here,
\forcelinebreak And nightly take him into my arms!
\forcelinebreak Come to the child no name or fame,
\forcelinebreak Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.”

\subsection{XII — AT THE DRAPER’S}


“I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,
\forcelinebreak But you did not perceive me.
\forcelinebreak Well, when they deliver what you were shown
\forcelinebreak I shall know nothing of it, believe me!”


And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,
\forcelinebreak ”O, I didn’t see you come in there -
\forcelinebreak Why couldn’t you speak?” — ”Well, I didn’t. I left
\forcelinebreak That you should not notice I’d been there.


“You were viewing some lovely things. ‘Soon required
\forcelinebreak For a widow, of latest fashion’;
\forcelinebreak And I knew ‘twould upset you to meet the man
\forcelinebreak Who had to be cold and ashen


“And screwed in a box before they could dress you
\forcelinebreak ’In the last new note in mourning,’
\forcelinebreak As they defined it. So, not to distress you,
\forcelinebreak I left you to your adorning.”

\subsection{XIII — ON THE DEATH-BED}


“I’ll tell — being past all praying for -
\forcelinebreak Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war,
\forcelinebreak And got some scent of the intimacy
\forcelinebreak That was under way between her and me;
\forcelinebreak And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost
\forcelinebreak One night, at the very time almost
\forcelinebreak That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,
\forcelinebreak And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.


“The news of the battle came next day;
\forcelinebreak He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,
\forcelinebreak Got out there, visited the field,
\forcelinebreak And sent home word that a search revealed
\forcelinebreak He was one of the slain; though, lying alone
\forcelinebreak And stript, his body had not been known.


“But she suspected. I lost her love,
\forcelinebreak Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;
\forcelinebreak And my time’s now come, and I’ll pay the score,
\forcelinebreak Though it be burning for evermore.”

\subsection{XIV — OVER THE COFFIN}


They stand confronting, the coffin between,
\forcelinebreak His wife of old, and his wife of late,
\forcelinebreak And the dead man whose they both had been
\forcelinebreak Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.
\forcelinebreak — ”I have called,” says the first. “Do you marvel or not?”
\forcelinebreak “In truth,” says the second, “I do — somewhat.”


“Well, there was a word to be said by me! . . .
\forcelinebreak I divorced that man because of you -
\forcelinebreak It seemed I must do it, boundenly;
\forcelinebreak But now I am older, and tell you true,
\forcelinebreak For life is little, and dead lies he;
\forcelinebreak I would I had let alone you two!
\forcelinebreak And both of us, scorning parochial ways,
\forcelinebreak Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs’ days.”

\subsection{XV — IN THE MOONLIGHT}


“O lonely workman, standing there
\forcelinebreak In a dream, why do you stare and stare
\forcelinebreak At her grave, as no other grave there were?


“If your great gaunt eyes so importune
\forcelinebreak Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,
\forcelinebreak Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”


“Why, fool, it is what I would rather see
\forcelinebreak Than all the living folk there be;
\forcelinebreak But alas, there is no such joy for me!”


“Ah — she was one you loved, no doubt,
\forcelinebreak Through good and evil, through rain and drought,
\forcelinebreak And when she passed, all your sun went out?”


“Nay: she was the woman I did not love,
\forcelinebreak Whom all the others were ranked above,
\forcelinebreak Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”

\subsection{LYRICS AND REVERIES (continued)}

\section{SELF-UNCONSCIOUS}


Along the way
\forcelinebreak He walked that day,
\forcelinebreak Watching shapes that reveries limn,
\forcelinebreak And seldom he
\forcelinebreak Had eyes to see
\forcelinebreak The moment that encompassed him.


Bright yellowhammers
\forcelinebreak Made mirthful clamours,
\forcelinebreak And billed long straws with a bustling air,
\forcelinebreak And bearing their load
\forcelinebreak Flew up the road
\forcelinebreak That he followed, alone, without interest there.


From bank to ground
\forcelinebreak And over and round
\forcelinebreak They sidled along the adjoining hedge;
\forcelinebreak Sometimes to the gutter
\forcelinebreak Their yellow flutter
\forcelinebreak Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge.


The smooth sea-line
\forcelinebreak With a metal shine,
\forcelinebreak And flashes of white, and a sail thereon,
\forcelinebreak He would also descry
\forcelinebreak With a half-wrapt eye
\forcelinebreak Between the projects he mused upon.


Yes, round him were these
\forcelinebreak Earth’s artistries,
\forcelinebreak But specious plans that came to his call
\forcelinebreak Did most engage
\forcelinebreak His pilgrimage,
\forcelinebreak While himself he did not see at all.


Dead now as sherds
\forcelinebreak Are the yellow birds,
\forcelinebreak And all that mattered has passed away;
\forcelinebreak Yet God, the Elf,
\forcelinebreak Now shows him that self
\forcelinebreak As he was, and should have been shown, that day.


O it would have been good
\forcelinebreak Could he then have stood
\forcelinebreak At a focussed distance, and conned the whole,
\forcelinebreak But now such vision
\forcelinebreak Is mere derision,
\forcelinebreak Nor soothes his body nor saves his soul.


Not much, some may
\forcelinebreak Incline to say,
\forcelinebreak To see therein, had it all been seen.
\forcelinebreak Nay! he is aware
\forcelinebreak A thing was there
\forcelinebreak That loomed with an immortal mien.

\section{THE DISCOVERY}


I wandered to a crude coast
\forcelinebreak Like a ghost;
\forcelinebreak Upon the hills I saw fires -
\forcelinebreak Funeral pyres
\forcelinebreak Seemingly — and heard breaking
\forcelinebreak Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking.


And so I never once guessed
\forcelinebreak A Love-nest,
\forcelinebreak Bowered and candle-lit, lay
\forcelinebreak In my way,
\forcelinebreak Till I found a hid hollow,
\forcelinebreak Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow.

\section{TOLERANCE}


“It is a foolish thing,” said I,
\forcelinebreak “To bear with such, and pass it by;
\forcelinebreak Yet so I do, I know not why!”


And at each clash I would surmise
\forcelinebreak That if I had acted otherwise
\forcelinebreak I might have saved me many sighs.


But now the only happiness
\forcelinebreak In looking back that I possess -
\forcelinebreak Whose lack would leave me comfortless -


Is to remember I refrained
\forcelinebreak From masteries I might have gained,
\forcelinebreak And for my tolerance was disdained;


For see, a tomb. And if it were
\forcelinebreak I had bent and broke, I should not dare
\forcelinebreak To linger in the shadows there.

\section{BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER}

\subsection{I}


Looking forward to the spring
\forcelinebreak One puts up with anything.
\forcelinebreak On this February day,
\forcelinebreak Though the winds leap down the street,
\forcelinebreak Wintry scourgings seem but play,
\forcelinebreak And these later shafts of sleet
\forcelinebreak — Sharper pointed than the first -
\forcelinebreak And these later snows — the worst -
\forcelinebreak Are as a half-transparent blind
\forcelinebreak Riddled by rays from sun behind.

\subsection{II}


Shadows of the October pine
\forcelinebreak Reach into this room of mine:
\forcelinebreak On the pine there stands a bird;
\forcelinebreak He is shadowed with the tree.
\forcelinebreak Mutely perched he bills no word;
\forcelinebreak Blank as I am even is he.
\forcelinebreak For those happy suns are past,
\forcelinebreak Fore-discerned in winter last.
\forcelinebreak When went by their pleasure, then?
\forcelinebreak I, alas, perceived not when.

\section{AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER}


The ten hours’ light is abating,
\forcelinebreak And a late bird flies across,
\forcelinebreak Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
\forcelinebreak Give their black heads a toss.


Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,
\forcelinebreak Float past like specks in the eye;
\forcelinebreak I set every tree in my June time,
\forcelinebreak And now they obscure the sky.


And the children who ramble through here
\forcelinebreak Conceive that there never has been
\forcelinebreak A time when no tall trees grew here,
\forcelinebreak A time when none will be seen.

\section{THE YEAR’S AWAKENING}


How do you know that the pilgrim track
\forcelinebreak Along the belting zodiac
\forcelinebreak Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds
\forcelinebreak Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds
\forcelinebreak And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud
\forcelinebreak Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,
\forcelinebreak And never as yet a tinct of spring
\forcelinebreak Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling;
\forcelinebreak O vespering bird, how do you know,
\forcelinebreak How do you know?


How do you know, deep underground,
\forcelinebreak Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
\forcelinebreak Without a turn in temperature,
\forcelinebreak With weather life can scarce endure,
\forcelinebreak That light has won a fraction’s strength,
\forcelinebreak And day put on some moments’ length,
\forcelinebreak Whereof in merest rote will come,
\forcelinebreak Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
\forcelinebreak O crocus root, how do you know,
\forcelinebreak How do you know?


February 1910.

\section{UNDER THE WATERFALL}


“Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
\forcelinebreak In a basin of water, I never miss
\forcelinebreak The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
\forcelinebreak Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.
\forcelinebreak Hence the only prime
\forcelinebreak And real love-rhyme
\forcelinebreak That I know by heart,
\forcelinebreak And that leaves no smart,
\forcelinebreak Is the purl of a little valley fall
\forcelinebreak About three spans wide and two spans tall
\forcelinebreak Over a table of solid rock,
\forcelinebreak And into a scoop of the self-same block;
\forcelinebreak The purl of a runlet that never ceases
\forcelinebreak In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
\forcelinebreak With a hollow boiling voice it speaks
\forcelinebreak And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.”


“And why gives this the only prime
\forcelinebreak Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?
\forcelinebreak And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
\forcelinebreak Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?
\forcelinebreak Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
\forcelinebreak Though where precisely none ever has known,
\forcelinebreak Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
\forcelinebreak And by now with its smoothness opalised,
\forcelinebreak Is a drinking-glass:
\forcelinebreak For, down that pass
\forcelinebreak My lover and I
\forcelinebreak Walked under a sky
\forcelinebreak Of blue with a leaf-woven awning of green,
\forcelinebreak In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
\forcelinebreak And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
\forcelinebreak By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;
\forcelinebreak And when we had drunk from the glass together,
\forcelinebreak Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
\forcelinebreak I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
\forcelinebreak Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall,
\forcelinebreak Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
\forcelinebreak With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
\forcelinebreak And, as said, if I thrust my arm below
\forcelinebreak Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe
\forcelinebreak From the past awakens a sense of that time,
\forcelinebreak And the glass both used, and the cascade’s rhyme.
\forcelinebreak The basin seems the pool, and its edge
\forcelinebreak The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
\forcelinebreak And the leafy pattern of china-ware
\forcelinebreak The hanging plants that were bathing there.
\forcelinebreak By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
\forcelinebreak There lies intact that chalice of ours,
\forcelinebreak And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
\forcelinebreak Persistently sung by the fall above.
\forcelinebreak No lip has touched it since his and mine
\forcelinebreak In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.”

\section{THE SPELL OF THE ROSE}


”I mean to build a hall anon,
\forcelinebreak And shape two turrets there,
\forcelinebreak And a broad newelled stair,
\forcelinebreak And a cool well for crystal water;
\forcelinebreak Yes; I will build a hall anon,
\forcelinebreak Plant roses love shall feed upon,
\forcelinebreak And apple trees and pear.”


He set to build the manor-hall,
\forcelinebreak And shaped the turrets there,
\forcelinebreak And the broad newelled stair,
\forcelinebreak And the cool well for crystal water;
\forcelinebreak He built for me that manor-hall,
\forcelinebreak And planted many trees withal,
\forcelinebreak But no rose anywhere.


And as he planted never a rose
\forcelinebreak That bears the flower of love,
\forcelinebreak Though other flowers throve
\forcelinebreak A frost-wind moved our souls to sever
\forcelinebreak Since he had planted never a rose;
\forcelinebreak And misconceits raised horrid shows,
\forcelinebreak And agonies came thereof.


”I’ll mend these miseries,” then said I,
\forcelinebreak And so, at dead of night,
\forcelinebreak I went and, screened from sight,
\forcelinebreak That nought should keep our souls in severance,
\forcelinebreak I set a rose-bush. “This,” said I,
\forcelinebreak ”May end divisions dire and wry,
\forcelinebreak And long-drawn days of blight.”


But I was called from earth — yea, called
\forcelinebreak Before my rose-bush grew;
\forcelinebreak And would that now I knew
\forcelinebreak What feels he of the tree I planted,
\forcelinebreak And whether, after I was called
\forcelinebreak To be a ghost, he, as of old,
\forcelinebreak Gave me his heart anew!


Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees
\forcelinebreak I set but saw not grow,
\forcelinebreak And he, beside its glow -
\forcelinebreak Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me -
\forcelinebreak Ay, there beside that queen of trees
\forcelinebreak He sees me as I was, though sees
\forcelinebreak Too late to tell me so!

\section{ST. LAUNCE’S REVISITED}


Slip back, Time!
\forcelinebreak Yet again I am nearing
\forcelinebreak Castle and keep, uprearing
\forcelinebreak Gray, as in my prime.


At the inn
\forcelinebreak Smiling close, why is it
\forcelinebreak Not as on my visit
\forcelinebreak When hope and I were twin?


Groom and jade
\forcelinebreak Whom I found here, moulder;
\forcelinebreak Strange the tavern-holder,
\forcelinebreak Strange the tap-maid.


Here I hired
\forcelinebreak Horse and man for bearing
\forcelinebreak Me on my wayfaring
\forcelinebreak To the door desired.


Evening gloomed
\forcelinebreak As I journeyed forward
\forcelinebreak To the faces shoreward,
\forcelinebreak Till their dwelling loomed.


If again
\forcelinebreak Towards the Atlantic sea there
\forcelinebreak I should speed, they’d be there
\forcelinebreak Surely now as then? . . .


Why waste thought,
\forcelinebreak When I know them vanished
\forcelinebreak Under earth; yea, banished
\forcelinebreak Ever into nought.


POEMS OF 1912-13
\forcelinebreak Veteris vestigia flammae

\section{THE GOING}


Why did you give no hint that night
\forcelinebreak That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,
\forcelinebreak And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
\forcelinebreak You would close your term here, up and be gone
\forcelinebreak Where I could not follow
\forcelinebreak With wing of swallow
\forcelinebreak To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!


Never to bid good-bye,
\forcelinebreak Or give me the softest call,
\forcelinebreak Or utter a wish for a word, while I
\forcelinebreak Saw morning harden upon the wall,
\forcelinebreak Unmoved, unknowing
\forcelinebreak That your great going
\forcelinebreak Had place that moment, and altered all.


Why do you make me leave the house
\forcelinebreak And think for a breath it is you I see
\forcelinebreak At the end of the alley of bending boughs
\forcelinebreak Where so often at dusk you used to be;
\forcelinebreak Till in darkening dankness
\forcelinebreak The yawning blankness
\forcelinebreak Of the perspective sickens me!


You were she who abode
\forcelinebreak By those red-veined rocks far West,
\forcelinebreak You were the swan-necked one who rode
\forcelinebreak Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
\forcelinebreak And, reining nigh me,
\forcelinebreak Would muse and eye me,
\forcelinebreak While Life unrolled us its very best.


Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
\forcelinebreak Did we not think of those days long dead,
\forcelinebreak And ere your vanishing strive to seek
\forcelinebreak That time’s renewal? We might have said,
\forcelinebreak ”In this bright spring weather
\forcelinebreak We’ll visit together
\forcelinebreak Those places that once we visited.”


Well, well! All’s past amend,
\forcelinebreak Unchangeable. It must go.
\forcelinebreak I seem but a dead man held on end
\forcelinebreak To sink down soon . . . O you could not know
\forcelinebreak That such swift fleeing
\forcelinebreak No soul foreseeing -
\forcelinebreak Not even I — would undo me so!


December 1912.

\section{YOUR LAST DRIVE}


Here by the moorway you returned,
\forcelinebreak And saw the borough lights ahead
\forcelinebreak That lit your face — all undiscerned
\forcelinebreak To be in a week the face of the dead,
\forcelinebreak And you told of the charm of that haloed view
\forcelinebreak That never again would beam on you.


And on your left you passed the spot
\forcelinebreak Where eight days later you were to lie,
\forcelinebreak And be spoken of as one who was not;
\forcelinebreak Beholding it with a cursory eye
\forcelinebreak As alien from you, though under its tree
\forcelinebreak You soon would halt everlastingly.


I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat
\forcelinebreak At your side that eve I should not have seen
\forcelinebreak That the countenance I was glancing at
\forcelinebreak Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen,
\forcelinebreak Nor have read the writing upon your face,
\forcelinebreak “I go hence soon to my resting-place;


“You may miss me then. But I shall not know
\forcelinebreak How many times you visit me there,
\forcelinebreak Or what your thoughts are, or if you go
\forcelinebreak There never at all. And I shall not care.
\forcelinebreak Should you censure me I shall take no heed
\forcelinebreak And even your praises I shall not need.”


True: never you’ll know. And you will not mind.
\forcelinebreak But shall I then slight you because of such?
\forcelinebreak Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find
\forcelinebreak The thought “What profit?” move me much
\forcelinebreak Yet the fact indeed remains the same,
\forcelinebreak You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.


December 1912.

\section{THE WALK}


You did not walk with me
\forcelinebreak Of late to the hill-top tree
\forcelinebreak By the gated ways,
\forcelinebreak As in earlier days;
\forcelinebreak You were weak and lame,
\forcelinebreak So you never came,
\forcelinebreak And I went alone, and I did not mind,
\forcelinebreak Not thinking of you as left behind.


I walked up there to-day
\forcelinebreak Just in the former way:
\forcelinebreak Surveyed around
\forcelinebreak The familiar ground
\forcelinebreak By myself again:
\forcelinebreak What difference, then?
\forcelinebreak Only that underlying sense
\forcelinebreak Of the look of a room on returning thence.

\section{RAIN ON A GRAVE}


Clouds spout upon her
\forcelinebreak Their waters amain
\forcelinebreak In ruthless disdain, -
\forcelinebreak Her who but lately
\forcelinebreak Had shivered with pain
\forcelinebreak As at touch of dishonour
\forcelinebreak If there had lit on her
\forcelinebreak So coldly, so straightly
\forcelinebreak Such arrows of rain.


She who to shelter
\forcelinebreak Her delicate head
\forcelinebreak Would quicken and quicken
\forcelinebreak Each tentative tread
\forcelinebreak If drops chanced to pelt her
\forcelinebreak That summertime spills
\forcelinebreak In dust-paven rills
\forcelinebreak When thunder-clouds thicken
\forcelinebreak And birds close their bills.


Would that I lay there
\forcelinebreak And she were housed here!
\forcelinebreak Or better, together
\forcelinebreak Were folded away there
\forcelinebreak Exposed to one weather
\forcelinebreak We both, — who would stray there
\forcelinebreak When sunny the day there,
\forcelinebreak Or evening was clear
\forcelinebreak At the prime of the year.


Soon will be growing
\forcelinebreak Green blades from her mound,
\forcelinebreak And daises be showing
\forcelinebreak Like stars on the ground,
\forcelinebreak Till she form part of them -
\forcelinebreak Ay — the sweet heart of them,
\forcelinebreak Loved beyond measure
\forcelinebreak With a child’s pleasure
\forcelinebreak All her life’s round.


Jan. 31, 1913.

\section{I FOUND HER OUT THERE}


I found her out there
\forcelinebreak On a slope few see,
\forcelinebreak That falls westwardly
\forcelinebreak To the salt-edged air,
\forcelinebreak Where the ocean breaks
\forcelinebreak On the purple strand,
\forcelinebreak And the hurricane shakes
\forcelinebreak The solid land.


I brought her here,
\forcelinebreak And have laid her to rest
\forcelinebreak In a noiseless nest
\forcelinebreak No sea beats near.
\forcelinebreak She will never be stirred
\forcelinebreak In her loamy cell
\forcelinebreak By the waves long heard
\forcelinebreak And loved so well.


So she does not sleep
\forcelinebreak By those haunted heights
\forcelinebreak The Atlantic smites
\forcelinebreak And the blind gales sweep,
\forcelinebreak Whence she often would gaze
\forcelinebreak At Dundagel’s far head,
\forcelinebreak While the dipping blaze
\forcelinebreak Dyed her face fire-red;


And would sigh at the tale
\forcelinebreak Of sunk Lyonnesse,
\forcelinebreak As a wind-tugged tress
\forcelinebreak Flapped her cheek like a flail;
\forcelinebreak Or listen at whiles
\forcelinebreak With a thought-bound brow
\forcelinebreak To the murmuring miles
\forcelinebreak She is far from now.


Yet her shade, maybe,
\forcelinebreak Will creep underground
\forcelinebreak Till it catch the sound
\forcelinebreak Of that western sea
\forcelinebreak As it swells and sobs
\forcelinebreak Where she once domiciled,
\forcelinebreak And joy in its throbs
\forcelinebreak With the heart of a child.

\section{WITHOUT CEREMONY}


It was your way, my dear,
\forcelinebreak To be gone without a word
\forcelinebreak When callers, friends, or kin
\forcelinebreak Had left, and I hastened in
\forcelinebreak To rejoin you, as I inferred.


And when you’d a mind to career
\forcelinebreak Off anywhere — say to town -
\forcelinebreak You were all on a sudden gone
\forcelinebreak Before I had thought thereon,
\forcelinebreak Or noticed your trunks were down.


So, now that you disappear
\forcelinebreak For ever in that swift style,
\forcelinebreak Your meaning seems to me
\forcelinebreak Just as it used to be:
\forcelinebreak “Good-bye is not worth while!”

\section{LAMENT}


How she would have loved
\forcelinebreak A party to-day! -
\forcelinebreak Bright-hatted and gloved,
\forcelinebreak With table and tray
\forcelinebreak And chairs on the lawn
\forcelinebreak Her smiles would have shone
\forcelinebreak With welcomings . . . But
\forcelinebreak She is shut, she is shut
\forcelinebreak From friendship’s spell
\forcelinebreak In the jailing shell
\forcelinebreak Of her tiny cell.


Or she would have reigned
\forcelinebreak At a dinner to-night
\forcelinebreak With ardours unfeigned,
\forcelinebreak And a generous delight;
\forcelinebreak All in her abode
\forcelinebreak She’d have freely bestowed
\forcelinebreak On her guests . . . But alas,
\forcelinebreak She is shut under grass
\forcelinebreak Where no cups flow,
\forcelinebreak Powerless to know
\forcelinebreak That it might be so.


And she would have sought
\forcelinebreak With a child’s eager glance
\forcelinebreak The shy snowdrops brought
\forcelinebreak By the new year’s advance,
\forcelinebreak And peered in the rime
\forcelinebreak Of Candlemas-time
\forcelinebreak For crocuses . . . chanced
\forcelinebreak It that she were not tranced
\forcelinebreak From sights she loved best;
\forcelinebreak Wholly possessed
\forcelinebreak By an infinite rest!


And we are here staying
\forcelinebreak Amid these stale things
\forcelinebreak Who care not for gaying,
\forcelinebreak And those junketings
\forcelinebreak That used so to joy her,
\forcelinebreak And never to cloy her
\forcelinebreak As us they cloy! . . . But
\forcelinebreak She is shut, she is shut
\forcelinebreak From the cheer of them, dead
\forcelinebreak To all done and said
\forcelinebreak In a yew-arched bed.

\section{THE HAUNTER}


He does not think that I haunt here nightly:
\forcelinebreak How shall I let him know
\forcelinebreak That whither his fancy sets him wandering
\forcelinebreak I, too, alertly go? -
\forcelinebreak Hover and hover a few feet from him
\forcelinebreak Just as I used to do,
\forcelinebreak But cannot answer his words addressed me -
\forcelinebreak Only listen thereto!


When I could answer he did not say them:
\forcelinebreak When I could let him know
\forcelinebreak How I would like to join in his journeys
\forcelinebreak Seldom he wished to go.
\forcelinebreak Now that he goes and wants me with him
\forcelinebreak More than he used to do,
\forcelinebreak Never he sees my faithful phantom
\forcelinebreak Though he speaks thereto.


Yes, I accompany him to places
\forcelinebreak Only dreamers know,
\forcelinebreak Where the shy hares limp long paces,
\forcelinebreak Where the night rooks go;
\forcelinebreak Into old aisles where the past is all to him,
\forcelinebreak Close as his shade can do,
\forcelinebreak Always lacking the power to call to him,
\forcelinebreak Near as I reach thereto!


What a good haunter I am, O tell him,
\forcelinebreak Quickly make him know
\forcelinebreak If he but sigh since my loss befell him
\forcelinebreak Straight to his side I go.
\forcelinebreak Tell him a faithful one is doing
\forcelinebreak All that love can do
\forcelinebreak Still that his path may be worth pursuing,
\forcelinebreak And to bring peace thereto.

\section{THE VOICE}


Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
\forcelinebreak Saying that now you are not as you were
\forcelinebreak When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
\forcelinebreak But as at first, when our day was fair.


Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
\forcelinebreak Standing as when I drew near to the town
\forcelinebreak Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
\forcelinebreak Even to the original air-blue gown!


Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
\forcelinebreak Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
\forcelinebreak You being ever consigned to existlessness,
\forcelinebreak Heard no more again far or near?


Thus I; faltering forward,
\forcelinebreak Leaves around me falling,
\forcelinebreak Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward
\forcelinebreak And the woman calling.


December 1912.

\section{HIS VISITOR}


I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker
\forcelinebreak To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more:
\forcelinebreak I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train,
\forcelinebreak And need no setting open of the long familiar door
\forcelinebreak As before.


The change I notice in my once own quarters!
\forcelinebreak A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be,
\forcelinebreak The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered,
\forcelinebreak And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea
\forcelinebreak As with me.


I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt servants;
\forcelinebreak They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and strong,
\forcelinebreak But strangers quite, who never knew my rule here,
\forcelinebreak Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song
\forcelinebreak Float along.


So I don’t want to linger in this re-decked dwelling,
\forcelinebreak I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold,
\forcelinebreak And I make again for Mellstock to return here never,
\forcelinebreak And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold
\forcelinebreak Souls of old.


1913

\section{A CIRCULAR}


As “legal representative”
\forcelinebreak I read a missive not my own,
\forcelinebreak On new designs the senders give
\forcelinebreak For clothes, in tints as shown.


Here figure blouses, gowns for tea,
\forcelinebreak And presentation-trains of state,
\forcelinebreak Charming ball-dresses, millinery,
\forcelinebreak Warranted up to date.


And this gay-pictured, spring-time shout
\forcelinebreak Of Fashion, hails what lady proud?
\forcelinebreak Her who before last year was out
\forcelinebreak Was costumed in a shroud.

\section{A DREAM OR NO}


Why go to Saint-Juliot? What’s Juliot to me?
\forcelinebreak I was but made fancy
\forcelinebreak By some necromancy
\forcelinebreak That much of my life claims the spot as its key.


Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West,
\forcelinebreak And a maiden abiding
\forcelinebreak Thereat as in hiding;
\forcelinebreak Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed.


And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago,
\forcelinebreak There lonely I found her,
\forcelinebreak The sea-birds around her,
\forcelinebreak And other than nigh things uncaring to know.


So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed)
\forcelinebreak That quickly she drew me
\forcelinebreak To take her unto me,
\forcelinebreak And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed.


But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see;
\forcelinebreak Can she ever have been here,
\forcelinebreak And shed her life’s sheen here,
\forcelinebreak The woman I thought a long housemate with me?


Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist?
\forcelinebreak Or a Vallency Valley
\forcelinebreak With stream and leafed alley,
\forcelinebreak Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist?


February 1913.

\section{AFTER A JOURNEY}


Hereto I come to interview a ghost;
\forcelinebreak Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?
\forcelinebreak Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost,
\forcelinebreak And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me.
\forcelinebreak Where you will next be there’s no knowing,
\forcelinebreak Facing round about me everywhere,
\forcelinebreak With your nut-coloured hair,
\forcelinebreak And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.


Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;
\forcelinebreak Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;
\forcelinebreak What have you now found to say of our past -
\forcelinebreak Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?
\forcelinebreak Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?
\forcelinebreak Things were not lastly as firstly well
\forcelinebreak With us twain, you tell?
\forcelinebreak But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision.


I see what you are doing: you are leading me on
\forcelinebreak To the spots we knew when we haunted here together,
\forcelinebreak The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone
\forcelinebreak At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,
\forcelinebreak And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow
\forcelinebreak That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,
\forcelinebreak When you were all aglow,
\forcelinebreak And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!


Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see,
\forcelinebreak The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily,
\forcelinebreak Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me,
\forcelinebreak For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily.
\forcelinebreak Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours,
\forcelinebreak The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again!
\forcelinebreak I am just the same as when
\forcelinebreak Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.


PENTARGAN BAY.

\section{A DEATH-DAY RECALLED}


Beeny did not quiver,
\forcelinebreak Juliot grew not gray,
\forcelinebreak Thin Valency’s river
\forcelinebreak Held its wonted way.
\forcelinebreak Bos seemed not to utter
\forcelinebreak Dimmest note of dirge,
\forcelinebreak Targan mouth a mutter
\forcelinebreak To its creamy surge.


Yet though these, unheeding,
\forcelinebreak Listless, passed the hour
\forcelinebreak Of her spirit’s speeding,
\forcelinebreak She had, in her flower,
\forcelinebreak Sought and loved the places -
\forcelinebreak Much and often pined
\forcelinebreak For their lonely faces
\forcelinebreak When in towns confined.


Why did not Valency
\forcelinebreak In his purl deplore
\forcelinebreak One whose haunts were whence he
\forcelinebreak Drew his limpid store?
\forcelinebreak Why did Bos not thunder,
\forcelinebreak Targan apprehend
\forcelinebreak Body and breath were sunder
\forcelinebreak Of their former friend?

\section{BEENY CLIFF}


March 1870 — March 1913

\subsection{I}


O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
\forcelinebreak And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free -
\forcelinebreak The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

\subsection{II}


The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away
\forcelinebreak In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,
\forcelinebreak As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.

\subsection{III}


A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain,
\forcelinebreak And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,
\forcelinebreak And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.

\subsection{IV}


— Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,
\forcelinebreak And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,
\forcelinebreak And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?

\subsection{V}


What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,
\forcelinebreak The woman now is — elsewhere — whom the ambling pony bore,
\forcelinebreak And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will see it nevermore.

\section{AT CASTLE BOTEREL}


As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
\forcelinebreak And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
\forcelinebreak I look behind at the fading byway,
\forcelinebreak And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
\forcelinebreak Distinctly yet


Myself and a girlish form benighted
\forcelinebreak In dry March weather. We climb the road
\forcelinebreak Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
\forcelinebreak To ease the sturdy pony’s load
\forcelinebreak When he sighed and slowed.


What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
\forcelinebreak Matters not much, nor to what it led, -
\forcelinebreak Something that life will not be balked of
\forcelinebreak Without rude reason till hope is dead,
\forcelinebreak And feeling fled.


It filled but a minute. But was there ever
\forcelinebreak A time of such quality, since or before,
\forcelinebreak In that hill’s story? To one mind never,
\forcelinebreak Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
\forcelinebreak By thousands more.


Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
\forcelinebreak And much have they faced there, first and last,
\forcelinebreak Of the transitory in Earth’s long order;
\forcelinebreak But what they record in colour and cast
\forcelinebreak Is — that we two passed.


And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
\forcelinebreak In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
\forcelinebreak The substance now, one phantom figure
\forcelinebreak Remains on the slope, as when that night
\forcelinebreak Saw us alight.


I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
\forcelinebreak I look back at it amid the rain
\forcelinebreak For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
\forcelinebreak And I shall traverse old love’s domain
\forcelinebreak Never again.


March 1913.

\section{PLACES}


Nobody says: Ah, that is the place
\forcelinebreak Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago,
\forcelinebreak What none of the Three Towns cared to know —
\forcelinebreak The birth of a little girl of grace -
\forcelinebreak The sweetest the house saw, first or last;
\forcelinebreak Yet it was so
\forcelinebreak On that day long past.


Nobody thinks: There, there she lay
\forcelinebreak In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,
\forcelinebreak And listened, just after the bedtime hour,
\forcelinebreak To the stammering chimes that used to play
\forcelinebreak The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune
\forcelinebreak In Saint Andrew’s tower
\forcelinebreak Night, morn, and noon.


Nobody calls to mind that here
\forcelinebreak Upon Boterel Hill, where the carters skid,
\forcelinebreak With cheeks whose airy flush outbid
\forcelinebreak Fresh fruit in bloom, and free of fear,
\forcelinebreak She cantered down, as if she must fall
\forcelinebreak (Though she never did),
\forcelinebreak To the charm of all.


Nay: one there is to whom these things,
\forcelinebreak That nobody else’s mind calls back,
\forcelinebreak Have a savour that scenes in being lack,
\forcelinebreak And a presence more than the actual brings;
\forcelinebreak To whom to-day is beneaped and stale,
\forcelinebreak And its urgent clack
\forcelinebreak But a vapid tale.


PLYMOUTH, March 1913.

\section{THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN}

\subsection{I}


Queer are the ways of a man I know:
\forcelinebreak He comes and stands
\forcelinebreak In a careworn craze,
\forcelinebreak And looks at the sands
\forcelinebreak And the seaward haze,
\forcelinebreak With moveless hands
\forcelinebreak And face and gaze,
\forcelinebreak Then turns to go . . .
\forcelinebreak And what does he see when he gazes so?

\subsection{II}


They say he sees as an instant thing
\forcelinebreak More clear than to-day,
\forcelinebreak A sweet soft scene
\forcelinebreak That once was in play
\forcelinebreak By that briny green;
\forcelinebreak Yes, notes alway
\forcelinebreak Warm, real, and keen,
\forcelinebreak What his back years bring -
\forcelinebreak A phantom of his own figuring.

\subsection{III}


Of this vision of his they might say more:
\forcelinebreak Not only there
\forcelinebreak Does he see this sight,
\forcelinebreak But everywhere
\forcelinebreak In his brain — day, night,
\forcelinebreak As if on the air
\forcelinebreak It were drawn rose bright -
\forcelinebreak Yea, far from that shore
\forcelinebreak Does he carry this vision of heretofore:

\subsection{IV}


A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried,
\forcelinebreak He withers daily,
\forcelinebreak Time touches her not,
\forcelinebreak But she still rides gaily
\forcelinebreak In his rapt thought
\forcelinebreak On that shagged and shaly
\forcelinebreak Atlantic spot,
\forcelinebreak And as when first eyed
\forcelinebreak Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.

\section{MISCELLANEOUS PIECES}

\section{THE WISTFUL LADY}


‘Love, while you were away there came to me -
\forcelinebreak From whence I cannot tell -
\forcelinebreak A plaintive lady pale and passionless,
\forcelinebreak Who bent her eyes upon me critically,
\forcelinebreak And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness,
\forcelinebreak As if she knew me well.”


“I saw no lady of that wistful sort
\forcelinebreak As I came riding home.
\forcelinebreak Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrain
\forcelinebreak By memories sadder than she can support,
\forcelinebreak Or by unhappy vacancy of brain,
\forcelinebreak To leave her roof and roam?”


“Ah, but she knew me. And before this time
\forcelinebreak I have seen her, lending ear
\forcelinebreak To my light outdoor words, and pondering each,
\forcelinebreak Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime,
\forcelinebreak As if she fain would close with me in speech,
\forcelinebreak And yet would not come near.


“And once I saw her beckoning with her hand
\forcelinebreak As I came into sight
\forcelinebreak At an upper window. And I at last went out;
\forcelinebreak But when I reached where she had seemed to stand,
\forcelinebreak And wandered up and down and searched about,
\forcelinebreak I found she had vanished quite.”


Then thought I how my dead Love used to say,
\forcelinebreak With a small smile, when she
\forcelinebreak Was waning wan, that she would hover round
\forcelinebreak And show herself after her passing day
\forcelinebreak To any newer Love I might have found,
\forcelinebreak But show her not to me.

\section{THE WOMAN IN THE RYE}


“Why do you stand in the dripping rye,
\forcelinebreak Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,
\forcelinebreak When there are firesides near?” said I.
\forcelinebreak “I told him I wished him dead,” said she.


“Yea, cried it in my haste to one
\forcelinebreak Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still;
\forcelinebreak And die he did. And I hate the sun,
\forcelinebreak And stand here lonely, aching, chill;


“Stand waiting, waiting under skies
\forcelinebreak That blow reproach, the while I see
\forcelinebreak The rooks sheer off to where he lies
\forcelinebreak Wrapt in a peace withheld from me.”

\section{THE CHEVAL-GLASS}


Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass
\forcelinebreak Filling up your narrow room?
\forcelinebreak You never preen or plume,
\forcelinebreak Or look in a week at your full-length figure -
\forcelinebreak Picture of bachelor gloom!


“Well, when I dwelt in ancient England,
\forcelinebreak Renting the valley farm,
\forcelinebreak Thoughtless of all heart-harm,
\forcelinebreak I used to gaze at the parson’s daughter,
\forcelinebreak A creature of nameless charm.


“Thither there came a lover and won her,
\forcelinebreak Carried her off from my view.
\forcelinebreak O it was then I knew
\forcelinebreak Misery of a cast undreamt of -
\forcelinebreak More than, indeed, my due!


“Then far rumours of her ill-usage
\forcelinebreak Came, like a chilling breath
\forcelinebreak When a man languisheth;
\forcelinebreak Followed by news that her mind lost balance,
\forcelinebreak And, in a space, of her death.


“Soon sank her father; and next was the auction -
\forcelinebreak Everything to be sold:
\forcelinebreak Mid things new and old
\forcelinebreak Stood this glass in her former chamber,
\forcelinebreak Long in her use, I was told.


“Well, I awaited the sale and bought it . . .
\forcelinebreak There by my bed it stands,
\forcelinebreak And as the dawn expands
\forcelinebreak Often I see her pale-faced form there
\forcelinebreak Brushing her hair’s bright bands.


“There, too, at pallid midnight moments
\forcelinebreak Quick she will come to my call,
\forcelinebreak Smile from the frame withal
\forcelinebreak Ponderingly, as she used to regard me
\forcelinebreak Passing her father’s wall.


“So that it was for its revelations
\forcelinebreak I brought it oversea,
\forcelinebreak And drag it about with me . . .
\forcelinebreak Anon I shall break it and bury its fragments
\forcelinebreak Where my grave is to be.”

\section{THE RE-ENACTMENT}


Between the folding sea-downs,
\forcelinebreak In the gloom
\forcelinebreak Of a wailful wintry nightfall,
\forcelinebreak When the boom
\forcelinebreak Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,


Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley
\forcelinebreak From the shore
\forcelinebreak To the chamber where I darkled,
\forcelinebreak Sunk and sore
\forcelinebreak With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before


To salute me in the dwelling
\forcelinebreak That of late
\forcelinebreak I had hired to waste a while in -
\forcelinebreak Vague of date,
\forcelinebreak Quaint, and remote — wherein I now expectant sate;


On the solitude, unsignalled,
\forcelinebreak Broke a man
\forcelinebreak Who, in air as if at home there,
\forcelinebreak Seemed to scan
\forcelinebreak Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.


A stranger’s and no lover’s
\forcelinebreak Eyes were these,
\forcelinebreak Eyes of a man who measures
\forcelinebreak What he sees
\forcelinebreak But vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies.


Yea, his bearing was so absent
\forcelinebreak As he stood,
\forcelinebreak It bespoke a chord so plaintive
\forcelinebreak In his mood,
\forcelinebreak That soon I judged he would not wrong my quietude.


”Ah — the supper is just ready,”
\forcelinebreak Then he said,
\forcelinebreak ”And the years’-long binned Madeira
\forcelinebreak Flashes red!”
\forcelinebreak (There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.)


”You will forgive my coming,
\forcelinebreak Lady fair?
\forcelinebreak I see you as at that time
\forcelinebreak Rising there,
\forcelinebreak The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air.


”Yet no. How so? You wear not
\forcelinebreak The same gown,
\forcelinebreak Your locks show woful difference,
\forcelinebreak Are not brown:
\forcelinebreak What, is it not as when I hither came from town?


”And the place . . . But you seem other -
\forcelinebreak Can it be?
\forcelinebreak What’s this that Time is doing
\forcelinebreak Unto me?
\forcelinebreak YOU dwell here, unknown woman? . . . Whereabouts, then, is she?


”And the house — things are much shifted. -
\forcelinebreak Put them where
\forcelinebreak They stood on this night’s fellow;
\forcelinebreak Shift her chair:
\forcelinebreak Here was the couch: and the piano should be there.”


I indulged him, verily nerve-strained
\forcelinebreak Being alone,
\forcelinebreak And I moved the things as bidden,
\forcelinebreak One by one,
\forcelinebreak And feigned to push the old piano where he had shown.


”Aha — now I can see her!
\forcelinebreak Stand aside:
\forcelinebreak Don’t thrust her from the table
\forcelinebreak Where, meek-eyed,
\forcelinebreak She makes attempt with matron-manners to preside.


”She serves me: now she rises,
\forcelinebreak Goes to play . . .
\forcelinebreak But you obstruct her, fill her
\forcelinebreak With dismay,
\forcelinebreak And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!”


And, as ‘twere useless longer
\forcelinebreak To persist,
\forcelinebreak He sighed, and sought the entry
\forcelinebreak Ere I wist,
\forcelinebreak And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist.


That here some mighty passion
\forcelinebreak Once had burned,
\forcelinebreak Which still the walls enghosted,
\forcelinebreak I discerned,
\forcelinebreak And that by its strong spell mine might be overturned.


I sat depressed; till, later,
\forcelinebreak My Love came;
\forcelinebreak But something in the chamber
\forcelinebreak Dimmed our flame, -
\forcelinebreak An emanation, making our due words fall tame,


As if the intenser drama
\forcelinebreak Shown me there
\forcelinebreak Of what the walls had witnessed
\forcelinebreak Filled the air,
\forcelinebreak And left no room for later passion anywhere.


So came it that our fervours
\forcelinebreak Did quite fail
\forcelinebreak Of future consummation -
\forcelinebreak Being made quail
\forcelinebreak By the weird witchery of the parlour’s hidden tale,


Which I, as years passed, faintly
\forcelinebreak Learnt to trace, -
\forcelinebreak One of sad love, born full-winged
\forcelinebreak In that place
\forcelinebreak Where the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face.


And as that month of winter
\forcelinebreak Circles round,
\forcelinebreak And the evening of the date-day
\forcelinebreak Grows embrowned,
\forcelinebreak I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound.


There, often — lone, forsaken -
\forcelinebreak Queries breed
\forcelinebreak Within me; whether a phantom
\forcelinebreak Had my heed
\forcelinebreak On that strange night, or was it some wrecked heart indeed?

\section{HER SECRET}


That love’s dull smart distressed my heart
\forcelinebreak He shrewdly learnt to see,
\forcelinebreak But that I was in love with a dead man
\forcelinebreak Never suspected he.


He searched for the trace of a pictured face,
\forcelinebreak He watched each missive come,
\forcelinebreak And a note that seemed like a love-line
\forcelinebreak Made him look frozen and glum.


He dogged my feet to the city street,
\forcelinebreak He followed me to the sea,
\forcelinebreak But not to the neighbouring churchyard
\forcelinebreak Did he dream of following me.

\section{SHE CHARGED ME}


She charged me with having said this and that
\forcelinebreak To another woman long years before,
\forcelinebreak In the very parlour where we sat, -


Sat on a night when the endless pour
\forcelinebreak Of rain on the roof and the road below
\forcelinebreak Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . .


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
So charged she me; and the Cupid’s bow
\forcelinebreak Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face,
\forcelinebreak And her white forefinger lifted slow.




\end{itemize}

Had she done it gently, or shown a trace
\forcelinebreak That not too curiously would she view
\forcelinebreak A folly passed ere her reign had place,


A kiss might have ended it. But I knew
\forcelinebreak From the fall of each word, and the pause between,
\forcelinebreak That the curtain would drop upon us two
\forcelinebreak Ere long, in our play of slave and queen.

\section{THE NEWCOMER’S WIFE}


He paused on the sill of a door ajar
\forcelinebreak That screened a lively liquor-bar,
\forcelinebreak For the name had reached him through the door
\forcelinebreak Of her he had married the week before.


“We called her the Hack of the Parade;
\forcelinebreak But she was discreet in the games she played;
\forcelinebreak If slightly worn, she’s pretty yet,
\forcelinebreak And gossips, after all, forget.


“And he knows nothing of her past;
\forcelinebreak I am glad the girl’s in luck at last;
\forcelinebreak Such ones, though stale to native eyes,
\forcelinebreak Newcomers snatch at as a prize.”


“Yes, being a stranger he sees her blent
\forcelinebreak Of all that’s fresh and innocent,
\forcelinebreak Nor dreams how many a love-campaign
\forcelinebreak She had enjoyed before his reign!”


That night there was the splash of a fall
\forcelinebreak Over the slimy harbour-wall:
\forcelinebreak They searched, and at the deepest place
\forcelinebreak Found him with crabs upon his face.

\section{A CONVERSATION AT DAWN}


He lay awake, with a harassed air,
\forcelinebreak And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair,
\forcelinebreak Seemed trouble-tried
\forcelinebreak As the dawn drew in on their faces there.


The chamber looked far over the sea
\forcelinebreak From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay,
\forcelinebreak And stepping a stride
\forcelinebreak He parted the window-drapery.


Above the level horizon spread
\forcelinebreak The sunrise, firing them foot to head
\forcelinebreak From its smouldering lair,
\forcelinebreak And painting their pillows with dyes of red.


“What strange disquiets have stirred you, dear,
\forcelinebreak This dragging night, with starts in fear
\forcelinebreak Of me, as it were,
\forcelinebreak Or of something evil hovering near?”


“My husband, can I have fear of you?
\forcelinebreak What should one fear from a man whom few,
\forcelinebreak Or none, had matched
\forcelinebreak In that late long spell of delays undue!”


He watched her eyes in the heaving sun:
\forcelinebreak “Then what has kept, O reticent one,
\forcelinebreak Those lids unlatched -
\forcelinebreak Anything promised I’ve not yet done?”


“O it’s not a broken promise of yours
\forcelinebreak (For what quite lightly your lip assures
\forcelinebreak The due time brings)
\forcelinebreak That has troubled my sleep, and no waking cures!” . . .


“I have shaped my will; ‘tis at hand,” said he;
\forcelinebreak “I subscribe it to-day, that no risk there be
\forcelinebreak In the hap of things
\forcelinebreak Of my leaving you menaced by poverty.”


“That a boon provision I’m safe to get,
\forcelinebreak Signed, sealed by my lord as it were a debt,
\forcelinebreak I cannot doubt,
\forcelinebreak Or ever this peering sun be set.”


“But you flung my arms away from your side,
\forcelinebreak And faced the wall. No month-old bride
\forcelinebreak Ere the tour be out
\forcelinebreak In an air so loth can be justified?


“Ah — had you a male friend once loved well,
\forcelinebreak Upon whose suit disaster fell
\forcelinebreak And frustrance swift?
\forcelinebreak Honest you are, and may care to tell.”


She lay impassive, and nothing broke
\forcelinebreak The stillness other than, stroke by stroke,
\forcelinebreak The lazy lift
\forcelinebreak Of the tide below them; till she spoke:


“I once had a friend — a Love, if you will -
\forcelinebreak Whose wife forsook him, and sank until
\forcelinebreak She was made a thrall
\forcelinebreak In a prison-cell for a deed of ill . . .


“He remained alone; and we met — to love,
\forcelinebreak But barring legitimate joy thereof
\forcelinebreak Stood a doorless wall,
\forcelinebreak Though we prized each other all else above.


“And this was why, though I’d touched my prime,
\forcelinebreak I put off suitors from time to time -
\forcelinebreak Yourself with the rest -
\forcelinebreak Till friends, who approved you, called it crime,


“And when misgivings weighed on me
\forcelinebreak In my lover’s absence, hurriedly,
\forcelinebreak And much distrest,
\forcelinebreak I took you . . . Ah, that such could be! . . .


“Now, saw you when crossing from yonder shore
\forcelinebreak At yesternoon, that the packet bore
\forcelinebreak On a white-wreathed bier
\forcelinebreak A coffined body towards the fore?


“Well, while you stood at the other end,
\forcelinebreak The loungers talked, and I could but lend
\forcelinebreak A listening ear,
\forcelinebreak For they named the dead. ‘Twas the wife of my friend.


“He was there, but did not note me, veiled,
\forcelinebreak Yet I saw that a joy, as of one unjailed,
\forcelinebreak Now shone in his gaze;
\forcelinebreak He knew not his hope of me just had failed!


“They had brought her home: she was born in this isle;
\forcelinebreak And he will return to his domicile,
\forcelinebreak And pass his days
\forcelinebreak Alone, and not as he dreamt erstwhile!”


“ — So you’ve lost a sprucer spouse than I!”
\forcelinebreak She held her peace, as if fain deny
\forcelinebreak She would indeed
\forcelinebreak For his pleasure’s sake, but could lip no lie.


“One far less formal and plain and slow!”
\forcelinebreak She let the laconic assertion go
\forcelinebreak As if of need
\forcelinebreak She held the conviction that it was so.


“Regard me as his he always should,
\forcelinebreak He had said, and wed me he vowed he would
\forcelinebreak In his prime or sere
\forcelinebreak Most verily do, if ever he could.


“And this fulfilment is now his aim,
\forcelinebreak For a letter, addressed in my maiden name,
\forcelinebreak Has dogged me here,
\forcelinebreak Reminding me faithfully of his claim.


“And it started a hope like a lightning-streak
\forcelinebreak That I might go to him — say for a week -
\forcelinebreak And afford you right
\forcelinebreak To put me away, and your vows unspeak.


“To be sure you have said, as of dim intent,
\forcelinebreak That marriage is a plain event
\forcelinebreak Of black and white,
\forcelinebreak Without any ghost of sentiment,


“And my heart has quailed. — But deny it true
\forcelinebreak That you will never this lock undo!
\forcelinebreak No God intends
\forcelinebreak To thwart the yearning He’s father to!”


The husband hemmed, then blandly bowed
\forcelinebreak In the light of the angry morning cloud.
\forcelinebreak ”So my idyll ends,
\forcelinebreak And a drama opens!” he mused aloud;


And his features froze. “You may take it as true
\forcelinebreak That I will never this lock undo
\forcelinebreak For so depraved
\forcelinebreak A passion as that which kindles you.”


Said she: “I am sorry you see it so;
\forcelinebreak I had hoped you might have let me go,
\forcelinebreak And thus been saved
\forcelinebreak The pain of learning there’s more to know.”


“More? What may that be? Gad, I think
\forcelinebreak You have told me enough to make me blink!
\forcelinebreak Yet if more remain
\forcelinebreak Then own it to me. I will not shrink!”


“Well, it is this. As we could not see
\forcelinebreak That a legal marriage could ever be,
\forcelinebreak To end our pain
\forcelinebreak We united ourselves informally;


“And vowed at a chancel-altar nigh,
\forcelinebreak With book and ring, a lifelong tie;
\forcelinebreak A contract vain
\forcelinebreak To the world, but real to Him on High.”


“And you became as his wife?” — ”I did.” -
\forcelinebreak He stood as stiff as a caryatid,
\forcelinebreak And said, “Indeed! . . .
\forcelinebreak No matter. You’re mine, whatever you ye hid!”


“But is it right! When I only gave
\forcelinebreak My hand to you in a sweat to save,
\forcelinebreak Through desperate need
\forcelinebreak (As I thought), my fame, for I was not brave!”


“To save your fame? Your meaning is dim,
\forcelinebreak For nobody knew of your altar-whim?”
\forcelinebreak ”I mean — I feared
\forcelinebreak There might be fruit of my tie with him;


“And to cloak it by marriage I’m not the first,
\forcelinebreak Though, maybe, morally most accurst
\forcelinebreak Through your unpeered
\forcelinebreak And strict uprightness. That’s the worst!


“While yesterday his worn contours
\forcelinebreak Convinced me that love like his endures,
\forcelinebreak And that my troth-plight
\forcelinebreak Had been his, in fact, and not truly yours.”


“So, my lady, you raise the veil by degrees . . .
\forcelinebreak I own this last is enough to freeze
\forcelinebreak The warmest wight!
\forcelinebreak Now hear the other side, if you please:


“I did say once, though without intent,
\forcelinebreak That marriage is a plain event
\forcelinebreak Of black and white,
\forcelinebreak Whatever may be its sentiment.


“I’ll act accordingly, none the less
\forcelinebreak That you soiled the contract in time of stress,
\forcelinebreak Thereto induced
\forcelinebreak By the feared results of your wantonness.


“But the thing is over, and no one knows,
\forcelinebreak And it’s nought to the future what you disclose.
\forcelinebreak That you’ll be loosed
\forcelinebreak For such an episode, don’t suppose!


“No: I’ll not free you. And if it appear
\forcelinebreak There was too good ground for your first fear
\forcelinebreak From your amorous tricks,
\forcelinebreak I’ll father the child. Yes, by God, my dear.


“Even should you fly to his arms, I’ll damn
\forcelinebreak Opinion, and fetch you; treat as sham
\forcelinebreak Your mutinous kicks,
\forcelinebreak And whip you home. That’s the sort I am!”


She whitened. “Enough . . . Since you disapprove
\forcelinebreak I’ll yield in silence, and never move
\forcelinebreak Till my last pulse ticks
\forcelinebreak A footstep from the domestic groove.”


“Then swear it,” he said, “and your king uncrown.”
\forcelinebreak He drew her forth in her long white gown,
\forcelinebreak And she knelt and swore.
\forcelinebreak “Good. Now you may go and again lie down


“Since you’ve played these pranks and given no sign,
\forcelinebreak You shall crave this man of yours; pine and pine
\forcelinebreak With sighings sore,
\forcelinebreak ‘Till I’ve starved your love for him; nailed you mine.


“I’m a practical man, and want no tears;
\forcelinebreak You’ve made a fool of me, it appears;
\forcelinebreak That you don’t again
\forcelinebreak Is a lesson I’ll teach you in future years.”


She answered not, but lay listlessly
\forcelinebreak With her dark dry eyes on the coppery sea,
\forcelinebreak That now and then
\forcelinebreak Flung its lazy flounce at the neighbouring quay.


1910

\section{A KING’S SOLILOQUY ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL}


From the slow march and muffled drum
\forcelinebreak And crowds distrest,
\forcelinebreak And book and bell, at length I have come
\forcelinebreak To my full rest.


A ten years’ rule beneath the sun
\forcelinebreak Is wound up here,
\forcelinebreak And what I have done, what left undone,
\forcelinebreak Figures out clear.


Yet in the estimate of such
\forcelinebreak It grieves me more
\forcelinebreak That I by some was loved so much
\forcelinebreak Than that I bore,


From others, judgment of that hue
\forcelinebreak Which over-hope
\forcelinebreak Breeds from a theoretic view
\forcelinebreak Of regal scope.


For kingly opportunities
\forcelinebreak Right many have sighed;
\forcelinebreak How best to bear its devilries
\forcelinebreak Those learn who have tried!


I have eaten the fat and drunk the sweet,
\forcelinebreak Lived the life out
\forcelinebreak From the first greeting glad drum-beat
\forcelinebreak To the last shout.


What pleasure earth affords to kings
\forcelinebreak I have enjoyed
\forcelinebreak Through its long vivid pulse-stirrings
\forcelinebreak Even till it cloyed.


What days of drudgery, nights of stress
\forcelinebreak Can cark a throne,
\forcelinebreak Even one maintained in peacefulness,
\forcelinebreak I too have known.


And so, I think, could I step back
\forcelinebreak To life again,
\forcelinebreak I should prefer the average track
\forcelinebreak Of average men,


Since, as with them, what kingship would
\forcelinebreak It cannot do,
\forcelinebreak Nor to first thoughts however good
\forcelinebreak Hold itself true.


Something binds hard the royal hand,
\forcelinebreak As all that be,
\forcelinebreak And it is That has shaped, has planned
\forcelinebreak My acts and me.


May 1910.

\section{THE CORONATION}


At Westminster, hid from the light of day,
\forcelinebreak Many who once had shone as monarchs lay.


Edward the Pious, and two Edwards more,
\forcelinebreak The second Richard, Henrys three or four;


That is to say, those who were called the Third,
\forcelinebreak Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth (the much self-widowered),


And James the Scot, and near him Charles the Second,
\forcelinebreak And, too, the second George could there be reckoned.


Of women, Mary and Queen Elizabeth,
\forcelinebreak And Anne, all silent in a musing death;


And William’s Mary, and Mary, Queen of Scots,
\forcelinebreak And consort-queens whose names oblivion blots;


And several more whose chronicle one sees
\forcelinebreak Adorning ancient royal pedigrees.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Now, as they drowsed on, freed from Life’s old thrall,
\forcelinebreak And heedless, save of things exceptional,




\end{itemize}

Said one: “What means this throbbing thudding sound
\forcelinebreak That reaches to us here from overground;


“A sound of chisels, augers, planes, and saws,
\forcelinebreak Infringing all ecclesiastic laws?


“And these tons-weight of timber on us pressed,
\forcelinebreak Unfelt here since we entered into rest?


“Surely, at least to us, being corpses royal,
\forcelinebreak A meet repose is owing by the loyal?”


“ — Perhaps a scaffold!” Mary Stuart sighed,
\forcelinebreak “If such still be. It was that way I died.”


“ — Ods! Far more like,” said he the many-wived,
\forcelinebreak “That for a wedding ‘tis this work’s contrived.


“Ha-ha! I never would bow down to Rimmon,
\forcelinebreak But I had a rare time with those six women!”


“Not all at once?” gasped he who loved confession.
\forcelinebreak “Nay, nay!” said Hal. “That would have been transgression.”


“ — They build a catafalque here, black and tall,
\forcelinebreak Perhaps,” mused Richard, “for some funeral?”


And Anne chimed in: “Ah, yes: it maybe so!”
\forcelinebreak “Nay!” squeaked Eliza. “Little you seem to know -


“Clearly ‘tis for some crowning here in state,
\forcelinebreak As they crowned us at our long bygone date;


“Though we’d no such a power of carpentry,
\forcelinebreak But let the ancient architecture be;


“If I were up there where the parsons sit,
\forcelinebreak In one of my gold robes, I’d see to it!”


“But you are not,” Charles chuckled. “You are here,
\forcelinebreak And never will know the sun again, my dear!”


“Yea,” whispered those whom no one had addressed;
\forcelinebreak “With slow, sad march, amid a folk distressed,
\forcelinebreak We were brought here, to take our dusty rest.


“And here, alas, in darkness laid below,
\forcelinebreak We’ll wait and listen, and endure the show . . .
\forcelinebreak Clamour dogs kingship; afterwards not so!”


1911

\section{AQUAE SULIS}


The chimes called midnight, just at interlune,
\forcelinebreak And the daytime talk of the Roman investigations
\forcelinebreak Was checked by silence, save for the husky tune
\forcelinebreak The bubbling waters played near the excavations.


And a warm air came up from underground,
\forcelinebreak And a flutter, as of a filmy shape unsepulchred,
\forcelinebreak That collected itself, and waited, and looked around:
\forcelinebreak Nothing was seen, but utterances could be heard:


Those of the goddess whose shrine was beneath the pile
\forcelinebreak Of the God with the baldachined altar overhead:
\forcelinebreak “And what did you get by raising this nave and aisle
\forcelinebreak Close on the site of the temple I tenanted?


“The notes of your organ have thrilled down out of view
\forcelinebreak To the earth-clogged wrecks of my edifice many a year,
\forcelinebreak Though stately and shining once — ay, long ere you
\forcelinebreak Had set up crucifix and candle here.


“Your priests have trampled the dust of mine without rueing,
\forcelinebreak Despising the joys of man whom I so much loved,
\forcelinebreak Though my springs boil on by your Gothic arcades and pewing,
\forcelinebreak And sculptures crude . . . Would Jove they could be removed!”


“ — Repress, O lady proud, your traditional ires;
\forcelinebreak You know not by what a frail thread we equally hang;
\forcelinebreak It is said we are images both — twitched by people’s desires;
\forcelinebreak And that I, like you, fail as a song men yesterday sang!”

\part{* *}


And the olden dark hid the cavities late laid bare,
\forcelinebreak And all was suspended and soundless as before,
\forcelinebreak Except for a gossamery noise fading off in the air,
\forcelinebreak And the boiling voice of the waters’ medicinal pour.


BATH.

\section{SEVENTY-FOUR AND TWENTY}


Here goes a man of seventy-four,
\forcelinebreak Who sees not what life means for him,
\forcelinebreak And here another in years a score
\forcelinebreak Who reads its very figure and trim.


The one who shall walk to-day with me
\forcelinebreak Is not the youth who gazes far,
\forcelinebreak But the breezy wight who cannot see
\forcelinebreak What Earth’s ingrained conditions are.

\section{THE ELOPEMENT}


“A woman never agreed to it!” said my knowing friend to me.
\forcelinebreak “That one thing she’d refuse to do for Solomon’s mines in fee:
\forcelinebreak No woman ever will make herself look older than she is.”
\forcelinebreak 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 -
\forcelinebreak As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair.
\forcelinebreak And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate
\forcelinebreak case,
\forcelinebreak Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young face.


I have told no one about it, should perhaps make few believe,
\forcelinebreak But I think it over now that life looms dull and years bereave,
\forcelinebreak How blank we stood at our bright wits’ end, two frail barks in
\forcelinebreak distress,
\forcelinebreak How self-regard in her was slain by her large tenderness.


I said: “The only chance for us in a crisis of this kind
\forcelinebreak Is going it thorough!” — ”Yes,” she calmly breathed. “Well, I don’t
\forcelinebreak mind.”
\forcelinebreak And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her
\forcelinebreak brow;
\forcelinebreak 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.
\forcelinebreak “A gent with an elderly wife, sir,” was returned from the bureau.
\forcelinebreak And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken
\forcelinebreak We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth again.


How many years ago it was! Some fifty can it be
\forcelinebreak Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me?
\forcelinebreak But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last,
\forcelinebreak And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the past.

\section{I ROSE UP AS MY CUSTOM IS}


I rose up as my custom is
\forcelinebreak On the eve of All-Souls’ day,
\forcelinebreak And left my grave for an hour or so
\forcelinebreak To call on those I used to know
\forcelinebreak Before I passed away.


I visited my former Love
\forcelinebreak As she lay by her husband’s side;
\forcelinebreak I asked her if life pleased her, now
\forcelinebreak She was rid of a poet wrung in brow,
\forcelinebreak And crazed with the ills he eyed;


Who used to drag her here and there
\forcelinebreak Wherever his fancies led,
\forcelinebreak And point out pale phantasmal things,
\forcelinebreak And talk of vain vague purposings
\forcelinebreak That she discredited.


She was quite civil, and replied,
\forcelinebreak ”Old comrade, is that you?
\forcelinebreak Well, on the whole, I like my life. -
\forcelinebreak I know I swore I’d be no wife,
\forcelinebreak But what was I to do?


“You see, of all men for my sex
\forcelinebreak A poet is the worst;
\forcelinebreak Women are practical, and they
\forcelinebreak Crave the wherewith to pay their way,
\forcelinebreak And slake their social thirst.


“You were a poet — quite the ideal
\forcelinebreak That we all love awhile:
\forcelinebreak But look at this man snoring here -
\forcelinebreak He’s no romantic chanticleer,
\forcelinebreak Yet keeps me in good style.


“He makes no quest into my thoughts,
\forcelinebreak But a poet wants to know
\forcelinebreak What one has felt from earliest days,
\forcelinebreak Why one thought not in other ways,
\forcelinebreak And one’s Loves of long ago.”


Her words benumbed my fond frail ghost;
\forcelinebreak The nightmares neighed from their stalls
\forcelinebreak The vampires screeched, the harpies flew,
\forcelinebreak And under the dim dawn I withdrew
\forcelinebreak To Death’s inviolate halls.

\section{A WEEK}


On Monday night I closed my door,
\forcelinebreak And thought you were not as heretofore,
\forcelinebreak And little cared if we met no more.


I seemed on Tuesday night to trace
\forcelinebreak Something beyond mere commonplace
\forcelinebreak In your ideas, and heart, and face.


On Wednesday I did not opine
\forcelinebreak Your life would ever be one with mine,
\forcelinebreak Though if it were we should well combine.


On Thursday noon I liked you well,
\forcelinebreak And fondly felt that we must dwell
\forcelinebreak Not far apart, whatever befell.


On Friday it was with a thrill
\forcelinebreak In gazing towards your distant vill
\forcelinebreak I owned you were my dear one still.


I saw you wholly to my mind
\forcelinebreak On Saturday — even one who shrined
\forcelinebreak All that was best of womankind.


As wing-clipt sea-gull for the sea
\forcelinebreak On Sunday night I longed for thee,
\forcelinebreak Without whom life were waste to me!

\section{HAD YOU WEPT}


Had you wept; had you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray,
\forcelinebreak Dewy as the face of the dawn, in your large and luminous eye,
\forcelinebreak Then would have come back all the joys the tidings had slain that
\forcelinebreak day,
\forcelinebreak And a new beginning, a fresh fair heaven, have smoothed the things
\forcelinebreak awry.
\forcelinebreak But you were less feebly human, and no passionate need for clinging
\forcelinebreak Possessed your soul to overthrow reserve when I came near;
\forcelinebreak Ay, though you suffer as much as I from storms the hours are
\forcelinebreak bringing
\forcelinebreak Upon your heart and mine, I never see you shed a tear.


The deep strong woman is weakest, the weak one is the strong;
\forcelinebreak The weapon of all weapons best for winning, you have not used;
\forcelinebreak Have you never been able, or would you not, through the evil times
\forcelinebreak and long?
\forcelinebreak Has not the gift been given you, or such gift have you refused?
\forcelinebreak When I bade me not absolve you on that evening or the morrow,
\forcelinebreak Why did you not make war on me with those who weep like rain?
\forcelinebreak You felt too much, so gained no balm for all your torrid sorrow,
\forcelinebreak And hence our deep division, and our dark undying pain.

\section{BEREFT, SHE THINKS SHE DREAMS}


I dream that the dearest I ever knew
\forcelinebreak Has died and been entombed.
\forcelinebreak I am sure it’s a dream that cannot be true,
\forcelinebreak But I am so overgloomed
\forcelinebreak By its persistence, that I would gladly
\forcelinebreak Have quick death take me,
\forcelinebreak Rather than longer think thus sadly;
\forcelinebreak So wake me, wake me!


It has lasted days, but minute and hour
\forcelinebreak I expect to get aroused
\forcelinebreak And find him as usual in the bower
\forcelinebreak Where we so happily housed.
\forcelinebreak Yet stays this nightmare too appalling,
\forcelinebreak And like a web shakes me,
\forcelinebreak And piteously I keep on calling,
\forcelinebreak And no one wakes me!

\section{IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM}


“What do you see in that time-touched stone,
\forcelinebreak When nothing is there
\forcelinebreak But ashen blankness, although you give it
\forcelinebreak A rigid stare?


“You look not quite as if you saw,
\forcelinebreak But as if you heard,
\forcelinebreak Parting your lips, and treading softly
\forcelinebreak As mouse or bird.


“It is only the base of a pillar, they’ll tell you,
\forcelinebreak That came to us
\forcelinebreak From a far old hill men used to name
\forcelinebreak Areopagus.”


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
“I know no art, and I only view
\forcelinebreak A stone from a wall,
\forcelinebreak But I am thinking that stone has echoed
\forcelinebreak The voice of Paul,




\end{itemize}

“Paul as he stood and preached beside it
\forcelinebreak Facing the crowd,
\forcelinebreak A small gaunt figure with wasted features,
\forcelinebreak Calling out loud


“Words that in all their intimate accents
\forcelinebreak Pattered upon
\forcelinebreak That marble front, and were far reflected,
\forcelinebreak And then were gone.


“I’m a labouring man, and know but little,
\forcelinebreak Or nothing at all;
\forcelinebreak But I can’t help thinking that stone once echoed
\forcelinebreak The voice of Paul.”

\section{IN THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS}


“Man, you too, aren’t you, one of these rough followers of the
\forcelinebreak criminal?
\forcelinebreak All hanging hereabout to gather how he’s going to bear
\forcelinebreak Examination in the hall.” She flung disdainful glances on
\forcelinebreak The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there,
\forcelinebreak Who warmed them by its flare.


“No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know nothing of the trial here,
\forcelinebreak Or criminal, if so he be. — I chanced to come this way,
\forcelinebreak And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold now;
\forcelinebreak I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play,
\forcelinebreak That I see not every day.”


“Ha, ha!” then laughed the constables who also stood to warm
\forcelinebreak themselves,
\forcelinebreak The while another maiden scrutinized his features hard,
\forcelinebreak As the blaze threw into contrast every line and knot that wrinkled
\forcelinebreak them,
\forcelinebreak Exclaiming, “Why, last night when he was brought in by the guard,
\forcelinebreak You were with him in the yard!”


“Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I say! You know you speak mistakenly.
\forcelinebreak Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar
\forcelinebreak Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble marketings,
\forcelinebreak Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are
\forcelinebreak Afoot by morning star?”


“O, come, come!” laughed the constables. “Why, man, you speak the
\forcelinebreak dialect
\forcelinebreak He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs.
\forcelinebreak So own it. We sha’n’t hurt ye. There he’s speaking now! His
\forcelinebreak syllables
\forcelinebreak Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares,
\forcelinebreak As this pretty girl declares.”


“And you shudder when his chain clinks!” she rejoined. “O yes, I
\forcelinebreak noticed it.
\forcelinebreak And you winced, too, when those cuffs they gave him echoed to us
\forcelinebreak here.
\forcelinebreak They’ll soon be coming down, and you may then have to defend
\forcelinebreak yourself
\forcelinebreak Unless you hold your tongue, or go away and keep you clear
\forcelinebreak When he’s led to judgment near!”


“No! I’ll be damned in hell if I know anything about the man!
\forcelinebreak No single thing about him more than everybody knows!
\forcelinebreak Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with blasphemies?” .
\forcelinebreak . .
\forcelinebreak  - His face convulses as the morning cock that moment crows,
\forcelinebreak And he stops, and turns, and goes.

\section{THE OBLITERATE TOMB}


”More than half my life long
\forcelinebreak Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong,
\forcelinebreak But they all have shrunk away into the silence
\forcelinebreak Like a lost song.


”And the day has dawned and come
\forcelinebreak For forgiveness, when the past may hold it dumb
\forcelinebreak On the once reverberate words of hatred uttered
\forcelinebreak Half in delirium . . .


”With folded lips and hands
\forcelinebreak They lie and wait what next the Will commands,
\forcelinebreak And doubtless think, if think they can: ‘Let discord
\forcelinebreak Sink with Life’s sands!’


”By these late years their names,
\forcelinebreak Their virtues, their hereditary claims,
\forcelinebreak May be as near defacement at their grave-place
\forcelinebreak As are their fames.”


— Such thoughts bechanced to seize
\forcelinebreak A traveller’s mind — a man of memories -
\forcelinebreak As he set foot within the western city
\forcelinebreak Where had died these


Who in their lifetime deemed
\forcelinebreak Him their chief enemy — one whose brain had schemed
\forcelinebreak To get their dingy greatness deeplier dingied
\forcelinebreak And disesteemed.


So, sojourning in their town,
\forcelinebreak He mused on them and on their once renown,
\forcelinebreak And said, “I’ll seek their resting-place to-morrow
\forcelinebreak Ere I lie down,


”And end, lest I forget,
\forcelinebreak Those ires of many years that I regret,
\forcelinebreak Renew their names, that men may see some liegeness
\forcelinebreak Is left them yet.”


Duly next day he went
\forcelinebreak And sought the church he had known them to frequent,
\forcelinebreak And wandered in the precincts, set on eyeing
\forcelinebreak Where they lay pent,


Till by remembrance led
\forcelinebreak He stood at length beside their slighted bed,
\forcelinebreak Above which, truly, scarce a line or letter
\forcelinebreak Could now be read.


”Thus years obliterate
\forcelinebreak Their graven worth, their chronicle, their date!
\forcelinebreak At once I’ll garnish and revive the record
\forcelinebreak Of their past state,


”That still the sage may say
\forcelinebreak In pensive progress here where they decay,
\forcelinebreak ‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents
\forcelinebreak Told in their day.’“


While speaking thus he turned,
\forcelinebreak For a form shadowed where they lay inurned,
\forcelinebreak And he beheld a stranger in foreign vesture,
\forcelinebreak And tropic-burned.


”Sir, I am right pleased to view
\forcelinebreak That ancestors of mine should interest you,
\forcelinebreak For I have come of purpose here to trace them . . .
\forcelinebreak They are time-worn, true,


”But that’s a fault, at most,
\forcelinebreak Sculptors can cure. On the Pacific coast
\forcelinebreak I have vowed for long that relics of my forbears
\forcelinebreak I’d trace ere lost,


”And hitherward I come,
\forcelinebreak Before this same old Time shall strike me numb,
\forcelinebreak To carry it out.” — ”Strange, this is!” said the other;
\forcelinebreak ”What mind shall plumb


”Coincident design!
\forcelinebreak Though these my father’s enemies were and mine,
\forcelinebreak I nourished a like purpose — to restore them
\forcelinebreak Each letter and line.”


”Such magnanimity
\forcelinebreak Is now not needed, sir; for you will see
\forcelinebreak That since I am here, a thing like this is, plainly,
\forcelinebreak Best done by me.”


The other bowed, and left,
\forcelinebreak Crestfallen in sentiment, as one bereft
\forcelinebreak Of some fair object he had been moved to cherish,
\forcelinebreak By hands more deft.


And as he slept that night
\forcelinebreak The phantoms of the ensepulchred stood up-right
\forcelinebreak Before him, trembling that he had set him seeking
\forcelinebreak Their charnel-site.


And, as unknowing his ruth,
\forcelinebreak Asked as with terrors founded not on truth
\forcelinebreak Why he should want them. “Ha,” they hollowly hackered,
\forcelinebreak ”You come, forsooth,


”By stealth to obliterate
\forcelinebreak Our graven worth, our chronicle, our date,
\forcelinebreak That our descendant may not gild the record
\forcelinebreak Of our past state,


”And that no sage may say
\forcelinebreak In pensive progress near where we decay:
\forcelinebreak ‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents
\forcelinebreak Told in their day.’“


Upon the morrow he went
\forcelinebreak And to that town and churchyard never bent
\forcelinebreak His ageing footsteps till, some twelvemonths onward,
\forcelinebreak An accident


Once more detained him there;
\forcelinebreak And, stirred by hauntings, he must needs repair
\forcelinebreak To where the tomb was. Lo, it stood still wasting
\forcelinebreak In no man’s care.


”The travelled man you met
\forcelinebreak The last time,” said the sexton, “has not yet
\forcelinebreak Appeared again, though wealth he had in plenty.
\forcelinebreak — Can he forget?


”The architect was hired
\forcelinebreak And came here on smart summons as desired,
\forcelinebreak But never the descendant came to tell him
\forcelinebreak What he required.”


And so the tomb remained
\forcelinebreak Untouched, untended, crumbling, weather-stained,
\forcelinebreak And though the one-time foe was fain to right it
\forcelinebreak He still refrained.


”I’ll set about it when
\forcelinebreak I am sure he’ll come no more. Best wait till then.”
\forcelinebreak But so it was that never the stranger entered
\forcelinebreak That city again.


And the well-meaner died
\forcelinebreak While waiting tremulously unsatisfied
\forcelinebreak That no return of the family’s foreign scion
\forcelinebreak Would still betide.


And many years slid by,
\forcelinebreak And active church-restorers cast their eye
\forcelinebreak Upon the ancient garth and hoary building
\forcelinebreak The tomb stood nigh.


And when they had scraped each wall,
\forcelinebreak Pulled out the stately pews, and smartened all,
\forcelinebreak “It will be well,” declared the spruce church-warden,
\forcelinebreak ”To overhaul


”And broaden this path where shown;
\forcelinebreak Nothing prevents it but an old tombstone
\forcelinebreak Pertaining to a family forgotten,
\forcelinebreak Of deeds unknown.


”Their names can scarce be read,
\forcelinebreak Depend on’t, all who care for them are dead.”
\forcelinebreak So went the tomb, whose shards were as path-paving
\forcelinebreak Distributed.


Over it and about
\forcelinebreak Men’s footsteps beat, and wind and water-spout,
\forcelinebreak Until the names, aforetime gnawed by weathers,
\forcelinebreak Were quite worn out.


So that no sage can say
\forcelinebreak In pensive progress near where they decay,
\forcelinebreak “This stone records a luminous line whose talents
\forcelinebreak Told in their day.”

\section{REGRET NOT ME}


Regret not me;
\forcelinebreak Beneath the sunny tree
\forcelinebreak I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.


Swift as the light
\forcelinebreak I flew my faery flight;
\forcelinebreak Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.


I did not know
\forcelinebreak That heydays fade and go,
\forcelinebreak But deemed that what was would be always so.


I skipped at morn
\forcelinebreak Between the yellowing corn,
\forcelinebreak Thinking it good and glorious to be born.


I ran at eves
\forcelinebreak Among the piled-up sheaves,
\forcelinebreak Dreaming, “I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves.”


Now soon will come
\forcelinebreak The apple, pear, and plum
\forcelinebreak And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum.


Again you will fare
\forcelinebreak To cider-makings rare,
\forcelinebreak And junketings; but I shall not be there.


Yet gaily sing
\forcelinebreak Until the pewter ring
\forcelinebreak Those songs we sang when we went gipsying.


And lightly dance
\forcelinebreak Some triple-timed romance
\forcelinebreak In coupled figures, and forget mischance;


And mourn not me
\forcelinebreak Beneath the yellowing tree;
\forcelinebreak For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully.

\section{THE RECALCITRANTS}


Let us off and search, and find a place
\forcelinebreak Where yours and mine can be natural lives,
\forcelinebreak Where no one comes who dissects and dives
\forcelinebreak And proclaims that ours is a curious case,
\forcelinebreak That its touch of romance can scarcely grace.


You would think it strange at first, but then
\forcelinebreak Everything has been strange in its time.
\forcelinebreak When some one said on a day of the prime
\forcelinebreak He would bow to no brazen god again
\forcelinebreak He doubtless dazed the mass of men.


None will recognize us as a pair whose claims
\forcelinebreak To righteous judgment we care not making;
\forcelinebreak Who have doubted if breath be worth the taking,
\forcelinebreak And have no respect for the current fames
\forcelinebreak Whence the savour has flown while abide the names.


We have found us already shunned, disdained,
\forcelinebreak And for re-acceptance have not once striven;
\forcelinebreak Whatever offence our course has given
\forcelinebreak The brunt thereof we have long sustained.
\forcelinebreak Well, let us away, scorned unexplained.

\section{STARLINGS ON THE ROOF}


“No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot,
\forcelinebreak The people who lived here have left the spot,
\forcelinebreak And others are coming who knew them not.


If you listen anon, with an ear intent,
\forcelinebreak The voices, you’ll find, will be different
\forcelinebreak From the well-known ones of those who went.”


“Why did they go? Their tones so bland
\forcelinebreak Were quite familiar to our band;
\forcelinebreak The comers we shall not understand.”


“They look for a new life, rich and strange;
\forcelinebreak They do not know that, let them range
\forcelinebreak Wherever they may, they will get no change.


“They will drag their house-gear ever so far
\forcelinebreak In their search for a home no miseries mar;
\forcelinebreak They will find that as they were they are,


“That every hearth has a ghost, alack,
\forcelinebreak And can be but the scene of a bivouac
\forcelinebreak Till they move perforce — no time to pack!”

\section{THE MOON LOOKS IN}

\subsection{I}


I have risen again,
\forcelinebreak And awhile survey
\forcelinebreak By my chilly ray
\forcelinebreak Through your window-pane
\forcelinebreak Your upturned face,
\forcelinebreak As you think, “Ah-she
\forcelinebreak Now dreams of me
\forcelinebreak In her distant place!”

\subsection{II}


I pierce her blind
\forcelinebreak In her far-off home:
\forcelinebreak She fixes a comb,
\forcelinebreak And says in her mind,
\forcelinebreak “I start in an hour;
\forcelinebreak Whom shall I meet?
\forcelinebreak Won’t the men be sweet,
\forcelinebreak And the women sour!”

\section{THE SWEET HUSSY}


In his early days he was quite surprised
\forcelinebreak When she told him she was compromised
\forcelinebreak By meetings and lingerings at his whim,
\forcelinebreak And thinking not of herself but him;
\forcelinebreak While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round
\forcelinebreak That scandal should so soon abound,
\forcelinebreak (As she had raised them to nine or ten
\forcelinebreak Of antecedent nice young men)
\forcelinebreak And in remorse he thought with a sigh,
\forcelinebreak How good she is, and how bad am I! -
\forcelinebreak It was years before he understood
\forcelinebreak That she was the wicked one — he the good.

\section{THE TELEGRAM}


“O he’s suffering — maybe dying — and I not there to aid,
\forcelinebreak And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go?
\forcelinebreak Only the nurse’s brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed,
\forcelinebreak As by stealth, to let me know.


“He was the best and brightest! — candour shone upon his brow,
\forcelinebreak And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he,
\forcelinebreak And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he’s sinking now,
\forcelinebreak Far, far removed from me!”


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair,
\forcelinebreak And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade,
\forcelinebreak And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware
\forcelinebreak That she lives no more a maid,




\end{itemize}

But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she
\forcelinebreak trod
\forcelinebreak To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history known
\forcelinebreak In its last particular to him — aye, almost as to God,
\forcelinebreak And believed her quite his own.


So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon,
\forcelinebreak And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace,
\forcelinebreak And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon
\forcelinebreak At this idle watering-place . . .


What now I see before me is a long lane overhung
\forcelinebreak With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave.
\forcelinebreak And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young,
\forcelinebreak Ere a woman held me slave.

\section{THE MOTH-SIGNAL}


(On Egdon Heath)


“What are you still, still thinking,”
\forcelinebreak He asked in vague surmise,
\forcelinebreak “That stare at the wick unblinking
\forcelinebreak With those great lost luminous eyes?”


“O, I see a poor moth burning
\forcelinebreak In the candle-flame,” said she,
\forcelinebreak Its wings and legs are turning
\forcelinebreak To a cinder rapidly.”


“Moths fly in from the heather,”
\forcelinebreak He said, “now the days decline.”
\forcelinebreak “I know,” said she. “The weather,
\forcelinebreak I hope, will at last be fine.


“I think,” she added lightly,
\forcelinebreak ”I’ll look out at the door.
\forcelinebreak The ring the moon wears nightly
\forcelinebreak May be visible now no more.”


She rose, and, little heeding,
\forcelinebreak Her husband then went on
\forcelinebreak With his attentive reading
\forcelinebreak In the annals of ages gone.


Outside the house a figure
\forcelinebreak Came from the tumulus near,
\forcelinebreak And speedily waxed bigger,
\forcelinebreak And clasped and called her Dear.


“I saw the pale-winged token
\forcelinebreak You sent through the crack,” sighed she.
\forcelinebreak “That moth is burnt and broken
\forcelinebreak With which you lured out me.


“And were I as the moth is
\forcelinebreak It might be better far
\forcelinebreak For one whose marriage troth is
\forcelinebreak Shattered as potsherds are!”


Then grinned the Ancient Briton
\forcelinebreak From the tumulus treed with pine:
\forcelinebreak “So, hearts are thwartly smitten
\forcelinebreak In these days as in mine!”

\section{SEEN BY THE WAITS}


Through snowy woods and shady
\forcelinebreak We went to play a tune
\forcelinebreak To the lonely manor-lady
\forcelinebreak By the light of the Christmas moon.


We violed till, upward glancing
\forcelinebreak To where a mirror leaned,
\forcelinebreak We saw her airily dancing,
\forcelinebreak Deeming her movements screened;


Dancing alone in the room there,
\forcelinebreak Thin-draped in her robe of night;
\forcelinebreak Her postures, glassed in the gloom there,
\forcelinebreak Were a strange phantasmal sight.


She had learnt (we heard when homing)
\forcelinebreak That her roving spouse was dead;
\forcelinebreak Why she had danced in the gloaming
\forcelinebreak We thought, but never said.

\section{THE TWO SOLDIERS}


Just at the corner of the wall
\forcelinebreak We met — yes, he and I -
\forcelinebreak Who had not faced in camp or hall
\forcelinebreak Since we bade home good-bye,
\forcelinebreak And what once happened came back — all -
\forcelinebreak Out of those years gone by.


And that strange woman whom we knew
\forcelinebreak And loved — long dead and gone,
\forcelinebreak Whose poor half-perished residue,
\forcelinebreak Tombless and trod, lay yon!
\forcelinebreak But at this moment to our view
\forcelinebreak Rose like a phantom wan.


And in his fixed face I could see,
\forcelinebreak Lit by a lurid shine,
\forcelinebreak The drama re-enact which she
\forcelinebreak Had dyed incarnadine
\forcelinebreak For us, and more. And doubtless he
\forcelinebreak Beheld it too in mine.


A start, as at one slightly known,
\forcelinebreak And with an indifferent air
\forcelinebreak We passed, without a sign being shown
\forcelinebreak That, as it real were,
\forcelinebreak A memory-acted scene had thrown
\forcelinebreak Its tragic shadow there.

\section{THE DEATH OF REGRET}


I opened my shutter at sunrise,
\forcelinebreak And looked at the hill hard by,
\forcelinebreak And I heartily grieved for the comrade
\forcelinebreak Who wandered up there to die.


I let in the morn on the morrow,
\forcelinebreak And failed not to think of him then,
\forcelinebreak As he trod up that rise in the twilight,
\forcelinebreak And never came down again.


I undid the shutter a week thence,
\forcelinebreak But not until after I’d turned
\forcelinebreak Did I call back his last departure
\forcelinebreak By the upland there discerned.


Uncovering the casement long later,
\forcelinebreak I bent to my toil till the gray,
\forcelinebreak When I said to myself, “Ah — what ails me,
\forcelinebreak To forget him all the day!”


As daily I flung back the shutter
\forcelinebreak In the same blank bald routine,
\forcelinebreak He scarcely once rose to remembrance
\forcelinebreak Through a month of my facing the scene.


And ah, seldom now do I ponder
\forcelinebreak At the window as heretofore
\forcelinebreak On the long valued one who died yonder,
\forcelinebreak And wastes by the sycamore.

\section{IN THE DAYS OF CRINOLINE}


A plain tilt-bonnet on her head
\forcelinebreak She took the path across the leaze.
\forcelinebreak  - Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said,
\forcelinebreak “Too dowdy that, for coquetries,
\forcelinebreak So I can hoe at ease.


But when she had passed into the heath,
\forcelinebreak And gained the wood beyond the flat,
\forcelinebreak She raised her skirts, and from beneath
\forcelinebreak Unpinned and drew as from a sheath
\forcelinebreak An ostrich-feathered hat.


And where the hat had hung she now
\forcelinebreak Concealed and pinned the dowdy hood,
\forcelinebreak And set the hat upon her brow,
\forcelinebreak And thus emerging from the wood
\forcelinebreak Tripped on in jaunty mood.


The sun was low and crimson-faced
\forcelinebreak As two came that way from the town,
\forcelinebreak And plunged into the wood untraced . . .
\forcelinebreak When separately therefrom they paced
\forcelinebreak The sun had quite gone down.


The hat and feather disappeared,
\forcelinebreak The dowdy hood again was donned,
\forcelinebreak And in the gloom the fair one neared
\forcelinebreak Her home and husband dour, who conned
\forcelinebreak Calmly his blue-eyed blonde.


“To-day,” he said, “you have shown good sense,
\forcelinebreak A dress so modest and so meek
\forcelinebreak Should always deck your goings hence
\forcelinebreak Alone.” And as a recompense
\forcelinebreak He kissed her on the cheek.

\section{THE ROMAN GRAVEMOUNDS}


By Rome’s dim relics there walks a man,
\forcelinebreak Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade;
\forcelinebreak I guess what impels him to scrape and scan;
\forcelinebreak Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed.


“Vast was Rome,” he must muse, “in the world’s regard,
\forcelinebreak Vast it looms there still, vast it ever will be;”
\forcelinebreak And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard
\forcelinebreak Left by those who are held in such memory.


But no; in his basket, see, he has brought
\forcelinebreak A little white furred thing, stiff of limb,
\forcelinebreak Whose life never won from the world a thought;
\forcelinebreak It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him.


And to make it a grave he has come to the spot,
\forcelinebreak And he delves in the ancient dead’s long home;
\forcelinebreak Their fames, their achievements, the man knows not;
\forcelinebreak The furred thing is all to him — nothing Rome!


“Here say you that Caesar’s warriors lie? -
\forcelinebreak But my little white cat was my only friend!
\forcelinebreak Could she but live, might the record die
\forcelinebreak Of Caesar, his legions, his aims, his end!”


Well, Rome’s long rule here is oft and again
\forcelinebreak A theme for the sages of history,
\forcelinebreak And the small furred life was worth no one’s pen;
\forcelinebreak Yet its mourner’s mood has a charm for me.


November 1910.

\section{THE WORKBOX}


“See, here’s the workbox, little wife,
\forcelinebreak That I made of polished oak.”
\forcelinebreak He was a joiner, of village life;
\forcelinebreak She came of borough folk.


He holds the present up to her
\forcelinebreak As with a smile she nears
\forcelinebreak And answers to the profferer,
\forcelinebreak “‘Twill last all my sewing years!”


“I warrant it will. And longer too.
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis a scantling that I got
\forcelinebreak Off poor John Wayward’s coffin, who
\forcelinebreak Died of they knew not what.


“The shingled pattern that seems to cease
\forcelinebreak Against your box’s rim
\forcelinebreak Continues right on in the piece
\forcelinebreak That’s underground with him.


“And while I worked it made me think
\forcelinebreak Of timber’s varied doom;
\forcelinebreak One inch where people eat and drink,
\forcelinebreak The next inch in a tomb.


“But why do you look so white, my dear,
\forcelinebreak And turn aside your face?
\forcelinebreak You knew not that good lad, I fear,
\forcelinebreak Though he came from your native place?”


“How could I know that good young man,
\forcelinebreak Though he came from my native town,
\forcelinebreak When he must have left there earlier than
\forcelinebreak I was a woman grown?”


“Ah no. I should have understood!
\forcelinebreak It shocked you that I gave
\forcelinebreak To you one end of a piece of wood
\forcelinebreak Whose other is in a grave?”


“Don’t, dear, despise my intellect,
\forcelinebreak Mere accidental things
\forcelinebreak Of that sort never have effect
\forcelinebreak On my imaginings.”


Yet still her lips were limp and wan,
\forcelinebreak Her face still held aside,
\forcelinebreak As if she had known not only John,
\forcelinebreak But known of what he died.

\section{THE SACRILEGE}


A BALLAD-TRAGEDY
\forcelinebreak (Circa 182-)


PART I


“I have a Love I love too well
\forcelinebreak Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor;
\forcelinebreak I have a Love I love too well,
\forcelinebreak To whom, ere she was mine,
\forcelinebreak ‘Such is my love for you,’ I said,
\forcelinebreak ‘That you shall have to hood your head
\forcelinebreak A silken kerchief crimson-red,
\forcelinebreak Wove finest of the fine.’


“And since this Love, for one mad moon,
\forcelinebreak On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor,
\forcelinebreak Since this my Love for one mad moon
\forcelinebreak Did clasp me as her king,
\forcelinebreak I snatched a silk-piece red and rare
\forcelinebreak From off a stall at Priddy Fair,
\forcelinebreak For handkerchief to hood her hair
\forcelinebreak When we went gallanting.


“Full soon the four weeks neared their end
\forcelinebreak Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor;
\forcelinebreak And when the four weeks neared their end,
\forcelinebreak And their swift sweets outwore,
\forcelinebreak I said, ‘What shall I do to own
\forcelinebreak Those beauties bright as tulips blown,
\forcelinebreak And keep you here with me alone
\forcelinebreak As mine for evermore?’


“And as she drowsed within my van
\forcelinebreak On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor -
\forcelinebreak And as she drowsed within my van,
\forcelinebreak And dawning turned to day,
\forcelinebreak She heavily raised her sloe-black eyes
\forcelinebreak And murmured back in softest wise,
\forcelinebreak ‘One more thing, and the charms you prize
\forcelinebreak Are yours henceforth for aye.


“‘And swear I will I’ll never go
\forcelinebreak While Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor
\forcelinebreak To meet the Cornish Wrestler Joe
\forcelinebreak For dance and dallyings.
\forcelinebreak If you’ll to yon cathedral shrine,
\forcelinebreak And finger from the chest divine
\forcelinebreak Treasure to buy me ear-drops fine,
\forcelinebreak And richly jewelled rings.’


“I said: ‘I am one who has gathered gear
\forcelinebreak From Marlbury Downs to Dunkery Tor,
\forcelinebreak Who has gathered gear for many a year
\forcelinebreak From mansion, mart and fair;
\forcelinebreak But at God’s house I’ve stayed my hand,
\forcelinebreak Hearing within me some command -
\forcelinebreak Curbed by a law not of the land
\forcelinebreak From doing damage there.’


“Whereat she pouts, this Love of mine,
\forcelinebreak As Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor,
\forcelinebreak And still she pouts, this Love of mine,
\forcelinebreak So cityward I go.
\forcelinebreak But ere I start to do the thing,
\forcelinebreak And speed my soul’s imperilling
\forcelinebreak For one who is my ravishing
\forcelinebreak And all the joy I know,


“I come to lay this charge on thee -
\forcelinebreak On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor -
\forcelinebreak I come to lay this charge on thee
\forcelinebreak With solemn speech and sign:
\forcelinebreak Should things go ill, and my life pay
\forcelinebreak For botchery in this rash assay,
\forcelinebreak You are to take hers likewise — yea,
\forcelinebreak The month the law takes mine.


“For should my rival, Wrestler Joe,
\forcelinebreak Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor -
\forcelinebreak My reckless rival, Wrestler Joe,
\forcelinebreak My Love’s possessor be,
\forcelinebreak My tortured spirit would not rest,
\forcelinebreak But wander weary and distrest
\forcelinebreak Throughout the world in wild protest:
\forcelinebreak The thought nigh maddens me!”


PART II


Thus did he speak — this brother of mine -
\forcelinebreak On Exon Wild by Dunkery Tor,
\forcelinebreak Born at my birth of mother of mine,
\forcelinebreak And forthwith went his way
\forcelinebreak To dare the deed some coming night . . .
\forcelinebreak I kept the watch with shaking sight,
\forcelinebreak The moon at moments breaking bright,
\forcelinebreak At others glooming gray.


For three full days I heard no sound
\forcelinebreak Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor,
\forcelinebreak I heard no sound at all around
\forcelinebreak Whether his fay prevailed,
\forcelinebreak Or one malign the master were,
\forcelinebreak Till some afoot did tidings bear
\forcelinebreak How that, for all his practised care,
\forcelinebreak He had been caught and jailed.


They had heard a crash when twelve had chimed
\forcelinebreak By Mendip east of Dunkery Tor,
\forcelinebreak When twelve had chimed and moonlight climbed;
\forcelinebreak They watched, and he was tracked
\forcelinebreak By arch and aisle and saint and knight
\forcelinebreak Of sculptured stonework sheeted white
\forcelinebreak In the cathedral’s ghostly light,
\forcelinebreak And captured in the act.


Yes; for this Love he loved too well
\forcelinebreak Where Dunkery sights the Severn shore,
\forcelinebreak All for this Love he loved too well
\forcelinebreak He burst the holy bars,
\forcelinebreak Seized golden vessels from the chest
\forcelinebreak To buy her ornaments of the best,
\forcelinebreak At her ill-witchery’s request
\forcelinebreak And lure of eyes like stars . . .


When blustering March confused the sky
\forcelinebreak In Toneborough Town by Exon Moor,
\forcelinebreak When blustering March confused the sky
\forcelinebreak They stretched him; and he died.
\forcelinebreak Down in the crowd where I, to see
\forcelinebreak The end of him, stood silently,
\forcelinebreak With a set face he lipped to me -
\forcelinebreak ”Remember.” “Ay!” I cried.


By night and day I shadowed her
\forcelinebreak From Toneborough Deane to Dunkery Tor,
\forcelinebreak I shadowed her asleep, astir,
\forcelinebreak And yet I could not bear -
\forcelinebreak Till Wrestler Joe anon began
\forcelinebreak To figure as her chosen man,
\forcelinebreak And took her to his shining van -
\forcelinebreak To doom a form so fair!


He made it handsome for her sake -
\forcelinebreak And Dunkery smiled to Exon Moor -
\forcelinebreak He made it handsome for her sake,
\forcelinebreak Painting it out and in;
\forcelinebreak And on the door of apple-green
\forcelinebreak A bright brass knocker soon was seen,
\forcelinebreak And window-curtains white and clean
\forcelinebreak For her to sit within.


And all could see she clave to him
\forcelinebreak As cleaves a cloud to Dunkery Tor,
\forcelinebreak Yea, all could see she clave to him,
\forcelinebreak And every day I said,
\forcelinebreak “A pity it seems to part those two
\forcelinebreak That hourly grow to love more true:
\forcelinebreak Yet she’s the wanton woman who
\forcelinebreak Sent one to swing till dead!”


That blew to blazing all my hate,
\forcelinebreak While Dunkery frowned on Exon Moor,
\forcelinebreak And when the river swelled, her fate
\forcelinebreak Came to her pitilessly . . .
\forcelinebreak I dogged her, crying: “Across that plank
\forcelinebreak They use as bridge to reach yon bank
\forcelinebreak A coat and hat lie limp and dank;
\forcelinebreak Your goodman’s, can they be?”


She paled, and went, I close behind -
\forcelinebreak And Exon frowned to Dunkery Tor,
\forcelinebreak She went, and I came up behind
\forcelinebreak And tipped the plank that bore
\forcelinebreak Her, fleetly flitting across to eye
\forcelinebreak What such might bode. She slid awry;
\forcelinebreak And from the current came a cry,
\forcelinebreak A gurgle; and no more.


How that befell no mortal knew
\forcelinebreak From Marlbury Downs to Exon Moor;
\forcelinebreak No mortal knew that deed undue
\forcelinebreak But he who schemed the crime,
\forcelinebreak Which night still covers . . . But in dream
\forcelinebreak Those ropes of hair upon the stream
\forcelinebreak He sees, and he will hear that scream
\forcelinebreak Until his judgment-time.

\section{THE ABBEY MASON}


(Inventor of the “Perpendicular” Style of Gothic Architecture)


The new-vamped Abbey shaped apace
\forcelinebreak In the fourteenth century of grace;


(The church which, at an after date,
\forcelinebreak Acquired cathedral rank and state.)


Panel and circumscribing wall
\forcelinebreak Of latest feature, trim and tall,


Rose roundabout the Norman core
\forcelinebreak In prouder pose than theretofore,


Encasing magically the old
\forcelinebreak With parpend ashlars manifold.


The trowels rang out, and tracery
\forcelinebreak Appeared where blanks had used to be.


Men toiled for pleasure more than pay,
\forcelinebreak And all went smoothly day by day,


Till, in due course, the transept part
\forcelinebreak Engrossed the master-mason’s art.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Home-coming thence he tossed and turned
\forcelinebreak Throughout the night till the new sun burned.




\end{itemize}

“What fearful visions have inspired
\forcelinebreak These gaingivings?” his wife inquired;


“As if your tools were in your hand
\forcelinebreak You have hammered, fitted, muttered, planned;


“You have thumped as you were working hard:
\forcelinebreak I might have found me bruised and scarred.


“What then’s amiss. What eating care
\forcelinebreak Looms nigh, whereof I am unaware?”


He answered not, but churchward went,
\forcelinebreak Viewing his draughts with discontent;


And fumbled there the livelong day
\forcelinebreak Till, hollow-eyed, he came away.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
‘Twas said, “The master-mason’s ill!”
\forcelinebreak And all the abbey works stood still.




\end{itemize}

Quoth Abbot Wygmore: “Why, O why
\forcelinebreak Distress yourself? You’ll surely die!”


The mason answered, trouble-torn,
\forcelinebreak “This long-vogued style is quite outworn!


“The upper archmould nohow serves
\forcelinebreak To meet the lower tracery curves:


“The ogees bend too far away
\forcelinebreak To give the flexures interplay.


“This it is causes my distress . . .
\forcelinebreak So it will ever be unless


“New forms be found to supersede
\forcelinebreak The circle when occasions need.


“To carry it out I have tried and toiled,
\forcelinebreak And now perforce must own me foiled!


“Jeerers will say: ‘Here was a man
\forcelinebreak Who could not end what he began!’“


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
So passed that day, the next, the next;
\forcelinebreak The abbot scanned the task, perplexed;




\end{itemize}

The townsmen mustered all their wit
\forcelinebreak To fathom how to compass it,


But no raw artistries availed
\forcelinebreak Where practice in the craft had failed . . .


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
One night he tossed, all open-eyed,
\forcelinebreak And early left his helpmeet’s side.




\end{itemize}

Scattering the rushes of the floor
\forcelinebreak He wandered from the chamber door


And sought the sizing pile, whereon
\forcelinebreak Struck dimly a cadaverous dawn


Through freezing rain, that drenched the board
\forcelinebreak Of diagram-lines he last had scored -


Chalked phantasies in vain begot
\forcelinebreak To knife the architectural knot -


In front of which he dully stood,
\forcelinebreak Regarding them in hopeless mood.


He closelier looked; then looked again:
\forcelinebreak The chalk-scratched draught-board faced the rain,


Whose icicled drops deformed the lines
\forcelinebreak Innumerous of his lame designs,


So that they streamed in small white threads
\forcelinebreak From the upper segments to the heads


Of arcs below, uniting them
\forcelinebreak Each by a stalactitic stem.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
At once, with eyes that struck out sparks,
\forcelinebreak He adds accessory cusping-marks,




\end{itemize}

Then laughs aloud. The thing was done
\forcelinebreak So long assayed from sun to sun . . .


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Now in his joy he grew aware
\forcelinebreak Of one behind him standing there,




\end{itemize}

And, turning, saw the abbot, who
\forcelinebreak The weather’s whim was watching too.


Onward to Prime the abbot went,
\forcelinebreak Tacit upon the incident.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Men now discerned as days revolved
\forcelinebreak The ogive riddle had been solved;




\end{itemize}

Templates were cut, fresh lines were chalked
\forcelinebreak Where lines had been defaced and balked,


And the work swelled and mounted higher,
\forcelinebreak Achievement distancing desire;


Here jambs with transoms fixed between,
\forcelinebreak Where never the like before had been -


There little mullions thinly sawn
\forcelinebreak Where meeting circles once were drawn.


“We knew,” men said, “the thing would go
\forcelinebreak After his craft-wit got aglow,


“And, once fulfilled what he has designed,
\forcelinebreak We’ll honour him and his great mind!”


When matters stood thus poised awhile,
\forcelinebreak And all surroundings shed a smile,


The master-mason on an eve
\forcelinebreak Homed to his wife and seemed to grieve . . .


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
“The abbot spoke to me to-day:
\forcelinebreak He hangs about the works alway.




\end{itemize}

“He knows the source as well as I
\forcelinebreak Of the new style men magnify.


“He said: ‘You pride yourself too much
\forcelinebreak On your creation. Is it such?


“‘Surely the hand of God it is
\forcelinebreak That conjured so, and only His! -


“‘Disclosing by the frost and rain
\forcelinebreak Forms your invention chased in vain;


“‘Hence the devices deemed so great
\forcelinebreak You copied, and did not create.’


“I feel the abbot’s words are just,
\forcelinebreak And that all thanks renounce I must.


“Can a man welcome praise and pelf
\forcelinebreak For hatching art that hatched itself? . . .


“So, I shall own the deft design
\forcelinebreak Is Heaven’s outshaping, and not mine.”


“What!” said she. “Praise your works ensure
\forcelinebreak To throw away, and quite obscure


“Your beaming and beneficent star?
\forcelinebreak Better you leave things as they are!


“Why, think awhile. Had not your zest
\forcelinebreak In your loved craft curtailed your rest -


“Had you not gone there ere the day
\forcelinebreak The sun had melted all away!”


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
But, though his good wife argued so,
\forcelinebreak The mason let the people know




\end{itemize}

That not unaided sprang the thought
\forcelinebreak Whereby the glorious fane was wrought,


But that by frost when dawn was dim
\forcelinebreak The method was disclosed to him.


“Yet,” said the townspeople thereat,
\forcelinebreak “‘Tis your own doing, even with that!”


But he — chafed, childlike, in extremes -
\forcelinebreak The temperament of men of dreams -


Aloofly scrupled to admit
\forcelinebreak That he did aught but borrow it,


And diffidently made request
\forcelinebreak That with the abbot all should rest.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
As none could doubt the abbot’s word,
\forcelinebreak Or question what the church averred,




\end{itemize}

The mason was at length believed
\forcelinebreak Of no more count than he conceived,


And soon began to lose the fame
\forcelinebreak That late had gathered round his name . . .


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Time passed, and like a living thing
\forcelinebreak The pile went on embodying,




\end{itemize}

And workmen died, and young ones grew,
\forcelinebreak And the old mason sank from view


And Abbots Wygmore and Staunton went
\forcelinebreak And Horton sped the embellishment.


But not till years had far progressed
\forcelinebreak Chanced it that, one day, much impressed,


Standing within the well-graced aisle,
\forcelinebreak He asked who first conceived the style;


And some decrepit sage detailed
\forcelinebreak How, when invention nought availed,


The cloud-cast waters in their whim
\forcelinebreak Came down, and gave the hint to him


Who struck each arc, and made each mould;
\forcelinebreak And how the abbot would not hold


As sole begetter him who applied
\forcelinebreak Forms the Almighty sent as guide;


And how the master lost renown,
\forcelinebreak And wore in death no artist’s crown.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Then Horton, who in inner thought
\forcelinebreak Had more perceptions than he taught,




\end{itemize}

Replied: “Nay; art can but transmute;
\forcelinebreak Invention is not absolute;


“Things fail to spring from nought at call,
\forcelinebreak And art-beginnings most of all.


“He did but what all artists do,
\forcelinebreak Wait upon Nature for his cue.”


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
“Had you been here to tell them so
\forcelinebreak Lord Abbot, sixty years ago,




\end{itemize}

“The mason, now long underground,
\forcelinebreak Doubtless a different fate had found.


“He passed into oblivion dim,
\forcelinebreak And none knew what became of him!


“His name? ‘Twas of some common kind
\forcelinebreak And now has faded out of mind.”


The Abbot: “It shall not be hid!
\forcelinebreak I’ll trace it.” . . . But he never did.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
When longer yet dank death had wormed
\forcelinebreak The brain wherein the style had germed




\end{itemize}

From Gloucester church it flew afar -
\forcelinebreak The style called Perpendicular. -


To Winton and to Westminster
\forcelinebreak It ranged, and grew still beautifuller:


From Solway Frith to Dover Strand
\forcelinebreak Its fascinations starred the land,


Not only on cathedral walls
\forcelinebreak But upon courts and castle halls,


Till every edifice in the isle
\forcelinebreak Was patterned to no other style,


And till, long having played its part,
\forcelinebreak The curtain fell on Gothic art.


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Well: when in Wessex on your rounds,
\forcelinebreak Take a brief step beyond its bounds,




\end{itemize}

And enter Gloucester: seek the quoin
\forcelinebreak Where choir and transept interjoin,


And, gazing at the forms there flung
\forcelinebreak Against the sky by one unsung -


The ogee arches transom-topped,
\forcelinebreak The tracery-stalks by spandrels stopped,


Petrified lacework — lightly lined
\forcelinebreak On ancient massiveness behind -


Muse that some minds so modest be
\forcelinebreak As to renounce fame’s fairest fee,


(Like him who crystallized on this spot
\forcelinebreak His visionings, but lies forgot,


And many a mediaeval one
\forcelinebreak Whose symmetries salute the sun)


While others boom a baseless claim,
\forcelinebreak And upon nothing rear a name.

\section{THE JUBILEE OF A MAGAZINE}


(To the Editor)


Yes; your up-dated modern page -
\forcelinebreak All flower-fresh, as it appears -
\forcelinebreak Can claim a time-tried lineage,


That reaches backward fifty years
\forcelinebreak (Which, if but short for sleepy squires,
\forcelinebreak Is much in magazines’ careers).


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Here, on your cover, never tires
\forcelinebreak The sower, reaper, thresher, while
\forcelinebreak As through the seasons of our sires




\end{itemize}

Each wills to work in ancient style
\forcelinebreak With seedlip, sickle, share and flail,
\forcelinebreak Though modes have since moved many a mile!


The steel-roped plough now rips the vale,
\forcelinebreak With cog and tooth the sheaves are won,
\forcelinebreak Wired wheels drum out the wheat like hail;


But if we ask, what has been done
\forcelinebreak To unify the mortal lot
\forcelinebreak Since your bright leaves first saw the sun,


Beyond mechanic furtherance — what
\forcelinebreak Advance can rightness, candour, claim?
\forcelinebreak Truth bends abashed, and answers not.


Despite your volumes’ gentle aim
\forcelinebreak To straighten visions wry and wrong,
\forcelinebreak Events jar onward much the same!


\begin{itemize}
\item\relax 
Had custom tended to prolong,
\forcelinebreak As on your golden page engrained,
\forcelinebreak Old processes of blade and prong,




\end{itemize}

And best invention been retained
\forcelinebreak For high crusades to lessen tears
\forcelinebreak Throughout the race, the world had gained! . . .
\forcelinebreak But too much, this, for fifty years.

\section{THE SATIN SHOES}


“If ever I walk to church to wed,
\forcelinebreak As other maidens use,
\forcelinebreak And face the gathered eyes,” she said,
\forcelinebreak ”I’ll go in satin shoes!”


She was as fair as early day
\forcelinebreak Shining on meads unmown,
\forcelinebreak And her sweet syllables seemed to play
\forcelinebreak Like flute-notes softly blown.


The time arrived when it was meet
\forcelinebreak That she should be a bride;
\forcelinebreak The satin shoes were on her feet,
\forcelinebreak Her father was at her side.


They stood within the dairy door,
\forcelinebreak And gazed across the green;
\forcelinebreak The church loomed on the distant moor,
\forcelinebreak But rain was thick between.


“The grass-path hardly can be stepped,
\forcelinebreak The lane is like a pool!” -
\forcelinebreak Her dream is shown to be inept,
\forcelinebreak Her wish they overrule.


“To go forth shod in satin soft
\forcelinebreak A coach would be required!”
\forcelinebreak For thickest boots the shoes were doffed -
\forcelinebreak Those shoes her soul desired . . .


All day the bride, as overborne,
\forcelinebreak Was seen to brood apart,
\forcelinebreak And that the shoes had not been worn
\forcelinebreak Sat heavy on her heart.


From her wrecked dream, as months flew on,
\forcelinebreak Her thought seemed not to range.
\forcelinebreak What ails the wife?” they said anon,
\forcelinebreak ”That she should be so strange?” . . .


Ah — what coach comes with furtive glide -
\forcelinebreak A coach of closed-up kind?
\forcelinebreak It comes to fetch the last year’s bride,
\forcelinebreak Who wanders in her mind.


She strove with them, and fearfully ran
\forcelinebreak Stairward with one low scream:
\forcelinebreak “Nay — coax her,” said the madhouse man,
\forcelinebreak ”With some old household theme.”


“If you will go, dear, you must fain
\forcelinebreak Put on those shoes — the pair
\forcelinebreak Meant for your marriage, which the rain
\forcelinebreak Forbade you then to wear.”


She clapped her hands, flushed joyous hues;
\forcelinebreak ”O yes — I’ll up and ride
\forcelinebreak If I am to wear my satin shoes
\forcelinebreak And be a proper bride!”


Out then her little foot held she,
\forcelinebreak As to depart with speed;
\forcelinebreak The madhouse man smiled pleasantly
\forcelinebreak To see the wile succeed.


She turned to him when all was done,
\forcelinebreak And gave him her thin hand,
\forcelinebreak Exclaiming like an enraptured one,
\forcelinebreak ”This time it will be grand!”


She mounted with a face elate,
\forcelinebreak Shut was the carriage door;
\forcelinebreak They drove her to the madhouse gate,
\forcelinebreak And she was seen no more . . .


Yet she was fair as early day
\forcelinebreak Shining on meads unmown,
\forcelinebreak And her sweet syllables seemed to play
\forcelinebreak Like flute-notes softly blown.

\section{EXEUNT OMNES}

\subsection{I}


Everybody else, then, going,
\forcelinebreak And I still left where the fair was? . . .
\forcelinebreak Much have I seen of neighbour loungers
\forcelinebreak Making a lusty showing,
\forcelinebreak Each now past all knowing.

\subsection{II}


There is an air of blankness
\forcelinebreak In the street and the littered spaces;
\forcelinebreak Thoroughfare, steeple, bridge and highway
\forcelinebreak Wizen themselves to lankness;
\forcelinebreak Kennels dribble dankness.

\subsection{III}


Folk all fade. And whither,
\forcelinebreak As I wait alone where the fair was?
\forcelinebreak Into the clammy and numbing night-fog
\forcelinebreak Whence they entered hither.
\forcelinebreak Soon do I follow thither!


June 2, 1913.

\section{A POET}


Attentive eyes, fantastic heed,
\forcelinebreak Assessing minds, he does not need,
\forcelinebreak Nor urgent writs to sup or dine,
\forcelinebreak Nor pledges in the roseate wine.


For loud acclaim he does not care
\forcelinebreak By the august or rich or fair,
\forcelinebreak Nor for smart pilgrims from afar,
\forcelinebreak Curious on where his hauntings are.


But soon or later, when you hear
\forcelinebreak That he has doffed this wrinkled gear,
\forcelinebreak Some evening, at the first star-ray,
\forcelinebreak Come to his graveside, pause and say:


“Whatever the message his to tell,
\forcelinebreak Two bright-souled women loved him well.”
\forcelinebreak Stand and say that amid the dim:
\forcelinebreak It will be praise enough for him.


July 1914.

\section{POSTSCRIPT “MEN WHO MARCH AWAY” (SONG OF THE SOLDIERS)}


What of the faith and fire within us
\forcelinebreak Men who march away
\forcelinebreak Ere the barn-cocks say
\forcelinebreak Night is growing gray,
\forcelinebreak To hazards whence no tears can win us;
\forcelinebreak What of the faith and fire within us
\forcelinebreak Men who march away?


Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
\forcelinebreak Friend with the musing eye,
\forcelinebreak Who watch us stepping by
\forcelinebreak With doubt and dolorous sigh?
\forcelinebreak Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
\forcelinebreak Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
\forcelinebreak Friend with the musing eye?


Nay. We well see what we are doing,
\forcelinebreak Though some may not see -
\forcelinebreak Dalliers as they be -
\forcelinebreak England’s need are we;
\forcelinebreak Her distress would leave us rueing:
\forcelinebreak Nay. We well see what we are doing,
\forcelinebreak Though some may not see!


In our heart of hearts believing
\forcelinebreak Victory crowns the just,
\forcelinebreak And that braggarts must
\forcelinebreak Surely bite the dust,
\forcelinebreak Press we to the field ungrieving,
\forcelinebreak In our heart of hearts believing
\forcelinebreak Victory crowns the just.


Hence the faith and fire within us
\forcelinebreak Men who march away
\forcelinebreak Ere the barn-cocks say
\forcelinebreak Night is growing gray,
\forcelinebreak To hazards whence no tears can win us:
\forcelinebreak Hence the faith and fire within us
\forcelinebreak Men who march away.


September 5, 1914.









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Thomas Hardy

The Poetry Collection of Thomas Hardy - Volume 2






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