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\title{The Poetry Collection of Thomas Hardy - Volume 4}
\date{}
\author{Thomas Hardy}
\subtitle{}
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\begin{document}
\begin{titlepage}
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{\usekomafont{title}{\huge The Poetry Collection of Thomas Hardy - Volume 4\par}}%
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\vskip 2em
{\usekomafont{author}{Thomas Hardy\par}}%
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\cleardoublepage
\tableofcontents
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\chapter{HUMAN SHOWS FAR PHANTASIES SONGS, AND TRIFLES}
\subsection{CONTENTS}
\begin{itemize}
\item\relax
WAITING BOTH
\item\relax
A BIRD-SCENE AT A RURAL DWELLING
\item\relax
ANY LITTLE OLD SONG
\item\relax
IN A FORMER RESORT AFTER MANY YEARS
\item\relax
A CATHEDRAL FAÇADE AT MIDNIGHT
\item\relax
THE TURNIP-HOER
\item\relax
THE CARRIER
\item\relax
LOVER TO MISTRESS
\item\relax
THE MONUMENT-MAKER
\item\relax
CIRCUS-RIDER TO RINGMASTER
\item\relax
LAST WEEK IN OCTOBER
\item\relax
COME NOT; YET COME!
\item\relax
THE LATER AUTUMN
\item\relax
LET ME BELIEVE
\item\relax
AT A FASHIONABLE DINNER
\item\relax
GREEN SLATES
\item\relax
AN EAST-END CURATE
\item\relax
AT RUSHY-POND
\item\relax
FOUR IN THE MORNING
\item\relax
ON THE ESPLANADE
\item\relax
IN ST. PAUL’S A WHILE AGO
\item\relax
COMING UP OXFORD STREET: EVENING
\item\relax
A LAST JOURNEY
\item\relax
SINGING LOVERS
\item\relax
THE MONTH’S CALENDAR
\item\relax
A SPELLBOUND PALACE
\item\relax
WHEN DEAD
\item\relax
SINE PROLE
\item\relax
TEN YEARS SINCE
\item\relax
EVERY ARTEMISIA
\item\relax
THE BEST SHE COULD
\item\relax
THE GRAVEYARD OF DEAD CREEDS
\item\relax
THERE SEEMED A STRANGENESS
\item\relax
A NIGHT OF QUESTIONINGS
\item\relax
XENOPHANES, THE MONIST OF COLOPHON
\item\relax
LIFE AND DEATH AT SUNRISE
\item\relax
NIGHT-TIME IN MID-FALL
\item\relax
A SHEEP FAIR
\item\relax
POSTSCRIPT
\item\relax
SNOW IN THE SUBURBS
\item\relax
A LIGHT SNOW-FALL AFTER FROST
\item\relax
WINTER NIGHT IN WOODLAND
\item\relax
ICE ON THE HIGHWAY
\item\relax
MUSIC IN A SNOWY STREET
\item\relax
THE FROZEN GREENHOUSE
\item\relax
TWO LIPS
\item\relax
NO BUYERS
\item\relax
ONE WHO MARRIED ABOVE HIM
\item\relax
THE NEW TOY
\item\relax
QUEEN CAROLINE TO HER GUESTS
\item\relax
PLENA TIMORIS
\item\relax
THE WEARY WALKER
\item\relax
LAST LOVE-WORD
\item\relax
NOBODY COMES
\item\relax
IN THE STREET
\item\relax
THE LAST LEAF
\item\relax
AT WYNYARD’S GAP
\item\relax
AT SHAG’S HEATH
\item\relax
A SECOND ATTEMPT
\item\relax
FREED THE FRET OF THINKING
\item\relax
THE ABSOLUTE EXPLAINS
\item\relax
SO, TIME
\item\relax
AN INQUIRY
\item\relax
THE FAITHFUL SWALLOW
\item\relax
IN SHERBORNE ABBEY
\item\relax
THE PAIR HE SAW PASS
\item\relax
THE MOCK WIFE
\item\relax
THE FIGHT ON DURNOVER MOOR
\item\relax
LAST LOOK ROUND ST. MARTIN’S FAIR
\item\relax
THE CARICATURE
\item\relax
A LEADER OF FASHION
\item\relax
MIDNIGHT ON BEECHEN, 187*
\item\relax
THE AËROLITE
\item\relax
THE PROSPECT
\item\relax
GENITRIX LAESA
\item\relax
THE FADING ROSE
\item\relax
WHEN OATS WERE REAPED
\item\relax
LOUIE
\item\relax
SHE OPENED THE DOOR
\item\relax
WHAT’S THERE TO TELL?
\item\relax
THE HARBOUR BRIDGE
\item\relax
VAGRANT’S SONG
\item\relax
FARMER DUNMAN’S FUNERAL
\item\relax
THE SEXTON AT LONGPUDDLE
\item\relax
THE HARVEST-SUPPER
\item\relax
AT A PAUSE IN A COUNTRY DANCE
\item\relax
ON THE PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN ABOUT TO BE HANGED
\item\relax
THE CHURCH AND THE WEDDING
\item\relax
THE SHIVER
\item\relax
NOT ONLY I
\item\relax
SHE SAW HIM, SHE SAID
\item\relax
ONCE AT SWANAGE
\item\relax
THE FLOWER’S TRAGEDY
\item\relax
AT THE AQUATIC SPORTS
\item\relax
A WATCHER’S REGRET
\item\relax
HORSES ABOARD
\item\relax
THE HISTORY OF AN HOUR
\item\relax
THE MISSED TRAIN
\item\relax
UNDER HIGH-STOY HILL
\item\relax
AT THE MILL
\item\relax
ALIKE AND UNLIKE
\item\relax
THE THING UNPLANNED
\item\relax
THE SHEEP-BOY
\item\relax
RETTY’S PHASES
\item\relax
A POOR MAN AND A LADY
\item\relax
AN EXPOSTULATION
\item\relax
TO A SEA-CLIFF
\item\relax
THE ECHO-ELF ANSWERS
\item\relax
CYNIC’S EPITAPH
\item\relax
A BEAUTY’S SOLILOQUY DURING HER HONEYMOON
\item\relax
DONAGHADEE
\item\relax
HE INADVERTENTLY CURES HIS LOVE-PAINS
\item\relax
THE PEACE PEAL
\item\relax
LADY VI
\item\relax
A POPULAR PERSONAGE AT HOME
\item\relax
INSCRIPTIONS FOR A PEAL OF EIGHT BELLS
\item\relax
A REFUSAL
\item\relax
EPITAPH ON A PESSIMIST
\item\relax
THE PROTEAN MAIDEN
\item\relax
A WATERING-PLACE LADY INVENTORIED
\item\relax
THE SEA FIGHT
\item\relax
PARADOX
\item\relax
THE ROVER COME HOME
\item\relax
KNOWN HAD I
\item\relax
THE PAT OF BUTTER
\item\relax
BAGS OF MEAT
\item\relax
THE SUNDIAL ON A WET DAY
\item\relax
HER HAUNTING-GROUND
\item\relax
A PARTING-SCENE
\item\relax
SHORTENING DAYS AT THE HOMESTEAD
\item\relax
DAYS TO RECOLLECT
\item\relax
TO C. F. H.
\item\relax
THE HIGH-SCHOOL LAWN
\item\relax
THE FORBIDDEN BANNS
\item\relax
THE PAPHIAN BALL
\item\relax
ON MARTOCK MOOR
\item\relax
THAT MOMENT
\item\relax
PREMONITIONS
\item\relax
THIS SUMMER AND LAST
\item\relax
NOTHING MATTERS MUCH
\item\relax
IN THE EVENING
\item\relax
THE SIX BOARDS
\item\relax
BEFORE MY FRIEND ARRIVED
\item\relax
COMPASSION
\item\relax
WHY SHE MOVED HOUSE
\item\relax
TRAGEDIAN TO TRAGEDIENNE
\item\relax
THE LADY OF FOREBODINGS
\item\relax
THE BIRD-CATCHER’S BOY
\item\relax
A HURRIED MEETING
\item\relax
DISCOURAGEMENT
\item\relax
A LEAVING
\item\relax
SONG TO AN OLD BURDEN
\item\relax
WHY DO I?
\end{itemize}
[image not archived]
\forcelinebreak
Hardy with his beloved bicycle, c. 1890
\section{WAITING BOTH}
A star looks down at me,
\forcelinebreak And says: “Here I and you
\forcelinebreak Stand, each in our degree:
\forcelinebreak What do you mean to do, —
\forcelinebreak Mean to do?”
I say: “For all I know,
\forcelinebreak Wait, and let Time go by,
\forcelinebreak Till my change come.” — ”Just so,”
\forcelinebreak The star says: “So mean I: —
\forcelinebreak So mean I.”
\section{A BIRD-SCENE AT A RURAL DWELLING}
When the inmate stirs, the birds retire discreetly
\forcelinebreak From the window-ledge, whereon they whistled sweetly
\forcelinebreak And on the step of the door,
\forcelinebreak In the misty morning hoar;
\forcelinebreak But now the dweller is up they flee
\forcelinebreak To the crooked neighbouring codlin-tree;
\forcelinebreak And when he comes fully forth they seek the garden,
\forcelinebreak And call from the lofty costard, as pleading pardon
\forcelinebreak For shouting so near before
\forcelinebreak In their joy at being alive: —
\forcelinebreak Meanwhile the hammering clock within goes five.
I know a domicile of brown and green,
\forcelinebreak Where for a hundred summers there have been
\forcelinebreak Just such enactments, just such daybreaks seen.
\section{ANY LITTLE OLD SONG}
Any little old song
\forcelinebreak Will do for me,
\forcelinebreak Tell it of joys gone long,
\forcelinebreak Or joys to be,
\forcelinebreak Or friendly faces best
\forcelinebreak Loved to see.
Newest themes I want not
\forcelinebreak On subtle strings,
\forcelinebreak And for thrillings pant not
\forcelinebreak That new song brings:
\forcelinebreak I only need the homeliest
\forcelinebreak Of heartstirrings.
\section{IN A FORMER RESORT AFTER MANY YEARS}
Do I know these, slack-shaped and wan,
\forcelinebreak Whose substance, one time fresh and furrowless,
\forcelinebreak Is now a rag drawn over a skeleton,
\forcelinebreak As in El Greco’s canvases? —
\forcelinebreak Whose cheeks have slipped down, lips become indrawn,
\forcelinebreak And statures shrunk to dwarfishness?
Do they know me, whose former mind
\forcelinebreak Was like an open plain where no foot falls,
\forcelinebreak But now is as a gallery portrait-lined,
\forcelinebreak And scored with necrologic scrawls,
\forcelinebreak Where feeble voices rise, once full-defined,
\forcelinebreak From underground in curious calls?
\section{A CATHEDRAL FAÇADE AT MIDNIGHT}
Along the sculptures of the western wall
\forcelinebreak I watched the moonlight creeping:
\forcelinebreak It moved as if it hardly moved at all
\forcelinebreak Inch by inch thinly peeping
Round on the pious figures of freestone, brought
\forcelinebreak And poised there when the Universe was wrought
\forcelinebreak To serve its centre, Earth, in mankind’s thought.
The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm,
\forcelinebreak Then edged on slowly, slightly,
\forcelinebreak To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere form
\forcelinebreak Was blanched its whole length brightly
\forcelinebreak Of prophet, king, queen, cardinal in state,
\forcelinebreak That dead men’s tools had striven to simulate;
\forcelinebreak And the stiff images stood irradiate.
A frail moan from the martyred saints there set
\forcelinebreak Mid others of the erection
\forcelinebreak Against the breeze, seemed sighings of regret
\forcelinebreak At the ancient faith’s rejection
\forcelinebreak Under the sure, unhasting, steady stress
\forcelinebreak Of Reason’s movement, making meaningless
\forcelinebreak The coded creeds of old-time godliness.
\section{THE TURNIP-HOER}
Of tides that toss the souls of men
\forcelinebreak Some are foreseen, and weathered warefully;
\forcelinebreak More burst at flood, none witting why or when,
\forcelinebreak And are called Destiny.
— Years past there was a turnip-hoer,
\forcelinebreak Who loved his wife and child, and worked amain
\forcelinebreak In the turnip-time from dawn till day out-wore
\forcelinebreak And night bedimmed the plain.
The thronging plants of blueish green
\forcelinebreak Would fall in lanes before his skilful blade,
\forcelinebreak Which, as by sleight, would deftly slip between
\forcelinebreak Those spared and those low-laid.
‘Twas afternoon: he hoed his best,
\forcelinebreak Unlifting head or eye, when, through the fence,
\forcelinebreak He heard a gallop dropping from the crest
\forcelinebreak Of the hill above him, whence,
Descending at a crashing pace,
\forcelinebreak An open carriage came, horsed by a pair:
\forcelinebreak A lady sat therein, with lilywhite face
\forcelinebreak And wildly windblown hair.
The man sprang over, and horse and horse
\forcelinebreak Faced in the highway as the pair ondrew;
\forcelinebreak Like Terminus stood he there, and barred their course,
\forcelinebreak And almost ere he knew
The lady was limp within his arms,
\forcelinebreak And, half-unconscious, clutched his hair and beard;
\forcelinebreak And so he held her, till from neighbouring farms
\forcelinebreak Came hinds, and soon appeared
Footman and coachman on the way: —
\forcelinebreak The steeds were guided back, now breath-bespent,
\forcelinebreak And the hoer was rewarded with good pay: —
\forcelinebreak So passed the accident.
“She was the Duchess of Southernshire,
\forcelinebreak They tell me,” said the second hoe, next day:
\forcelinebreak “She’s come a-visiting not far from here;
\forcelinebreak This week will end her stay.”
The hoer’s wife that evening set
\forcelinebreak Her hand to a crusted stew in the three-legged pot,
\forcelinebreak And he sat looking on in silence; yet
\forcelinebreak The cooking saw he not,
But a woman, with her arms around him,
\forcelinebreak Glove-handed, clasping his neck and clutching his blouse,
\forcelinebreak And ere he went to bed that night he found him
\forcelinebreak Outside a manor-house.
A page there smoking answered him:
\forcelinebreak “Her Grace’s room is where you see that light;
\forcelinebreak By now she’s up there slipping off her trim:
\forcelinebreak The Dook’s is on the right.”
She was, indeed, just saying through the door,
\forcelinebreak “That dauntless fellow saved me from collapse:
I’d not much with me, or ‘d have given him more:
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas not enough, perhaps!”
Up till she left, before he slept,
\forcelinebreak He walked, though tired, to where her window shined,
\forcelinebreak And mused till it went dark; but close he kept
\forcelinebreak All that was in his mind.
“What is it, Ike?” inquired his wife;
\forcelinebreak “You are not so nice now as you used to be.
\forcelinebreak What have I done? You seem quite tired of life!”
\forcelinebreak “Nothing at all,” said he.
In the next shire this lady of rank,
\forcelinebreak So ‘twas made known, would open a bazaar:
\forcelinebreak He took his money from the savings-bank
\forcelinebreak To go there, for ‘twas far.
And reached her stall, and sighted, clad
\forcelinebreak In her ripe beauty and the goodliest guise,
\forcelinebreak His Vision of late. He straight spent all he had,
\forcelinebreak But not once caught her eyes.
Next week he heard, with heart of clay,
\forcelinebreak That London held her for three months or so:
\forcelinebreak Fearing to tell his wife he went for a day,
\forcelinebreak Pawning his watch to go;
And scanned the Square of her abode,
\forcelinebreak And timed her moves, as well as he could guess,
\forcelinebreak That he might glimpse her; till afoot by road
\forcelinebreak He came home penniless. . . .
— The Duke in Wessex once again,
\forcelinebreak Glanced at the Wessex paper, where he read
\forcelinebreak Of a man, late taken to drink, killed by a train
\forcelinebreak At a crossing, so it said.
“Why — he who saved your life, I think?”
\forcelinebreak — ”O no,” said she. “It cannot be the same:
\forcelinebreak He was sweet-breath’d, without a taint of drink;
\forcelinebreak Yet it is like his name.”
\section{THE CARRIER}
There’s a seat, I see, still empty?”
\forcelinebreak Cried the hailer from the road;
\forcelinebreak “No, there is not!” said the carrier,
\forcelinebreak Quickening his horse and load.
“ — They say you are in the grave, Jane;
\forcelinebreak But still you ride with me!”
\forcelinebreak And he looked towards the vacant space
\forcelinebreak He had kept beside his knee.
And the passengers murmured: “‘Tis where his wife
\forcelinebreak In journeys to and fro
\forcelinebreak Used always to sit; but nobody does
\forcelinebreak Since those long years ago.”
Rumble-mumble went the van
\forcelinebreak Past Sidwell Church and wall,
\forcelinebreak Till Exon Towers were out of scan,
\forcelinebreak And night lay over all.
\section{LOVER TO MISTRESS}
(SONG)
Beckon to me to come
\forcelinebreak With handkerchief or hand,
\forcelinebreak Or finger mere or thumb;
\forcelinebreak Let forecasts be but rough,
\forcelinebreak Parents more bleak than bland,
\forcelinebreak ‘Twill be enough,
\forcelinebreak Maid mine,
\forcelinebreak ‘Twill be enough!
Two fields, a wood, a tree,
\forcelinebreak Nothing now more malign
\forcelinebreak Lies between you and me;
\forcelinebreak But were they bysm, or bluff,
\forcelinebreak Or snarling sea, one sign
\forcelinebreak Would be enough,
\forcelinebreak Maid mine,
\forcelinebreak Would be enough!
From an old copy.
\section{THE MONUMENT-MAKER}
I chiselled her monument
\forcelinebreak To my mind’s content,
\forcelinebreak Took it to the church by night,
\forcelinebreak When her planet was at its height,
\forcelinebreak And set it where I had figured the place in the daytime.
\forcelinebreak Having niched it there
\forcelinebreak I stepped back, cheered, and thought its outlines fair,
\forcelinebreak And its marbles rare.
Then laughed she over my shoulder as in our Maytime:
\forcelinebreak “It spells not me!” she said:
\forcelinebreak “Tells nothing about my beauty, wit, or gay time
\forcelinebreak With all those, quick and dead,
\forcelinebreak Of high or lowlihead,
\forcelinebreak That hovered near,
\forcelinebreak Including you, who carve there your devotion;
\forcelinebreak But you felt none, my dear!”
And then she vanished. Checkless sprang my emotion
\forcelinebreak And forced a tear
\forcelinebreak At seeing I’d not been truly known by her,
\forcelinebreak And never prized! — that my memorial here,
\forcelinebreak To consecrate her sepulchre,
\forcelinebreak Was scorned, almost,
\forcelinebreak By her sweet ghost:
\forcelinebreak Yet I hoped not quite, in her very innermost!
1916
\section{CIRCUS-RIDER TO RINGMASTER}
When I am riding round the ring no longer,
\forcelinebreak Tell a tale of me;
\forcelinebreak Say, no steed-borne woman’s nerve was stronger
\forcelinebreak Than used mine to be.
\forcelinebreak Let your whole soul say it; do:
\forcelinebreak O it will be true!
Should I soon no more be mistress found in
\forcelinebreak Feats I’ve made my own,
Trace the tan-laid track you’d whip me round in
\forcelinebreak On the cantering roan:
\forcelinebreak There may cross your eyes again
\forcelinebreak My lithe look as then.
Show how I, when clay becomes my cover,
\forcelinebreak Took the high-hoop leap
\forcelinebreak Into your arms, who coaxed and grew my lover, —
\forcelinebreak Ah, to make me weep
\forcelinebreak Since those claspings cared for so
\forcelinebreak Ever so long ago!
Though not now as when you freshly knew me,
\forcelinebreak But a fading form,
\forcelinebreak Shape the kiss you’d briskly blow up to me
\forcelinebreak While our love was warm,
\forcelinebreak And my cheek unstained by tears,
\forcelinebreak As in these last years!
\section{LAST WEEK IN OCTOBER}
The trees are undressing, and fling in many places —
\forcelinebreak On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill —
\forcelinebreak Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;
\forcelinebreak A leaf each second so is flung at will,
\forcelinebreak Here, there, another and another, still and still.
A spider’s web has caught one while downcoming,
\forcelinebreak That stays there dangling when the rest pass on;
\forcelinebreak Like a suspended criminal hangs he, mumming
\forcelinebreak In golden garb, while one yet green, high yon,
\forcelinebreak Trembles, as fearing such a fate for himself anon.
\section{COME NOT; YET COME!}
(SONG)
In my sage moments I can say,
\forcelinebreak Come not near,
\forcelinebreak But far in foreign regions stay,
\forcelinebreak So that here
\forcelinebreak A mind may grow again serene and clear.
But the thought withers. Why should I
\forcelinebreak Have fear to earn me
\forcelinebreak Fame from your nearness, though thereby
\forcelinebreak Old fires new burn me,
\forcelinebreak And lastly, maybe, tear and overturn me!
So I say, Come: deign again shine
\forcelinebreak Upon this place,
\forcelinebreak Even if unslackened smart be mine
\forcelinebreak From that sweet face,
\forcelinebreak And I faint to a phantom past all trace.
\section{THE LATER AUTUMN}
Gone are the lovers, under the bush
\forcelinebreak Stretched at their ease;
\forcelinebreak Gone the bees,
\forcelinebreak Tangling themselves in your hair as they rush
\forcelinebreak On the line of your track,
\forcelinebreak Leg-laden, back
\forcelinebreak With a dip to their hive
\forcelinebreak In a prepossessed dive.
Toadsmeat is mangy, frosted, and sere;
\forcelinebreak Apples in grass
\forcelinebreak Crunch as we pass,
\forcelinebreak And rot ere the men who make cyder appear.
\forcelinebreak Couch-fires abound
\forcelinebreak On fallows around,
\forcelinebreak And shades far extend
\forcelinebreak Like lives soon to end.
Spinning leaves join the remains shrunk and brown
\forcelinebreak Of last year’s display
\forcelinebreak That lie wasting away,
\forcelinebreak On whose corpses they earlier as scorners gazed down
\forcelinebreak From their aery green height:
\forcelinebreak Now in the same plight
\forcelinebreak They huddle; while yon
\forcelinebreak A robin looks on.
\section{LET ME BELIEVE}
(SONG)
Let me believe it, dearest,
\forcelinebreak Let it be
\forcelinebreak As just a dream — the merest —
\forcelinebreak Haunting me,
\forcelinebreak That a frank full-souled sweetness
\forcelinebreak Warmed your smile
\forcelinebreak And voice, to indiscreetness
\forcelinebreak Once, awhile!
And I will fondly ponder
\forcelinebreak Till I lie
\forcelinebreak Earthed up with others yonder
\forcelinebreak Past a sigh,
\forcelinebreak That you may name at stray times
\forcelinebreak With regret
\forcelinebreak One whom through green and gray times
\forcelinebreak You forget!
\section{AT A FASHIONABLE DINNER}
We sat with the banqueting-party
\forcelinebreak By the table-end —
\forcelinebreak Unmarked, — no diners out
\forcelinebreak Were we: scarce a friend
\forcelinebreak Of our own mind’s trend
\forcelinebreak Was there, though the welcome was hearty.
\forcelinebreak Then we noticed a shade extend
\forcelinebreak By a distant screen,
\forcelinebreak And I said: “What to you does it seem to mean,
\forcelinebreak Lavine?”
“ — It is like my own body lying
\forcelinebreak Beyond the door
\forcelinebreak Where the servants glide in and about
\forcelinebreak The carpeted floor;
\forcelinebreak And it means my death hour! — ”
“ — What a fancy! Who feels like dying
\forcelinebreak While these smart sallies pour,
\forcelinebreak With laughter between!
\forcelinebreak To me it is more like satin sheen,
\forcelinebreak Lavine.”
“ — That means your new bride, when you win her:
\forcelinebreak Yes, so it must be!
\forcelinebreak It’s her satin dress, no doubt —
\forcelinebreak That shine you see —
\forcelinebreak My own corpse to me!”
\forcelinebreak And a gloom came over the dinner,
\forcelinebreak Where almost strangers were we,
\forcelinebreak As the spirit of the scene
\forcelinebreak Forsook her — the fairest of the whole thirteen —
\forcelinebreak Lavine!
\section{GREEN SLATES}
(PENPETHY
)
It happened once, before the duller
\forcelinebreak Loomings of life defined them,
\forcelinebreak I searched for slates of greenish colour
\forcelinebreak A quarry where men mined them;
And saw, the while I peered around there,
\forcelinebreak In the quarry standing
\forcelinebreak A form against the slate background there,
\forcelinebreak Of fairness eye-commanding.
And now, though fifty years have flown me,
\forcelinebreak With all their dreams and duties,
\forcelinebreak And strange-pipped dice my hand has thrown me,
\forcelinebreak And dust are all her beauties,
Green slates — seen high on roofs, or lower
\forcelinebreak In waggon, truck, or lorry —
\forcelinebreak Cry out: “Our home was where you saw her
\forcelinebreak Standing in the quarry!”
\section{AN EAST-END CURATE}
A small blind street off East Commercial Road;
\forcelinebreak Window, door; window, door;
\forcelinebreak Every house like the one before,
\forcelinebreak Is where the curate, Mr. Dowle, has found a pinched abode.
\forcelinebreak Spectacled, pale, moustache straw-coloured, and with a long thin face,
\forcelinebreak Day or dark his lodgings’ narrow doorstep does he pace.
A bleached pianoforte, with its drawn silk plaitings faded,
\forcelinebreak Stands in his room, its keys much yellowed, cyphering, and abraded,
\forcelinebreak “Novello’s Anthems” lie at hand, and also a few glees,
\forcelinebreak And “Laws of Heaven for Earth” in a frame upon the wall one sees.
He goes through his neighbours’ houses as his own, and none regards,
\forcelinebreak And opens their back-doors off-hand, to look for them in their yards:
\forcelinebreak A man is threatening his wife on the other side of the wall,
\forcelinebreak But the curate lets it pass as knowing the history of it all.
Freely within his hearing the children skip and laugh and say:
\forcelinebreak “There’s Mister Dow-well! There’s Mister Dow-well!” in their play;
\forcelinebreak And the long, pallid, devoted face notes not,
\forcelinebreak But stoops along abstractedly, for good, or in vain, God wot!
\section{AT RUSHY-POND}
On the frigid face of the heath-hemmed pond
\forcelinebreak There shaped the half-grown moon:
\forcelinebreak Winged whiffs from the north with a husky croon
\forcelinebreak Blew over and beyond.
And the wind flapped the moon in its float on the pool,
\forcelinebreak And stretched it to oval form;
\forcelinebreak Then corkscrewed it like a wriggling worm;
\forcelinebreak Then wanned it weariful.
And I cared not for conning the sky above
\forcelinebreak Where hung the substant thing,
\forcelinebreak For my thought was earthward sojourning
\forcelinebreak On the scene I had vision of.
Since there it was once, in a secret year,
\forcelinebreak I had called a woman to me
\forcelinebreak From across this water, ardently —
\forcelinebreak And practised to keep her near;
Till the last weak love-words had been said,
\forcelinebreak And ended was her time,
\forcelinebreak And blurred the bloomage of her prime,
\forcelinebreak And white the earlier red.
And the troubled orb in the pond’s sad shine
\forcelinebreak Was her very wraith, as scanned
\forcelinebreak When she withdrew thence, mirrored, and
\forcelinebreak Her days dropped out of mine.
\section{FOUR IN THE MORNING}
At four this day of June I rise:
\forcelinebreak The dawn-light strengthens steadily;
\forcelinebreak Earth is a cerule mystery,
\forcelinebreak As if not far from Paradise
\forcelinebreak At four o’clock,
Or else near the Great Nebula,
\forcelinebreak Or where the Pleiads blink and smile:
\forcelinebreak (For though we see with eyes of guile
\forcelinebreak The grisly grin of things by day,
\forcelinebreak At four o’clock
They show their best.) . . . In this vale’s space
\forcelinebreak I am up the first, I think. Yet, no,
\forcelinebreak A whistling? and the to-and-fro
\forcelinebreak Wheezed whettings of a scythe apace
\forcelinebreak At four o’clock? . . .
— Though pleasure spurred, I rose with irk:
\forcelinebreak Here is one at compulsion’s whip
\forcelinebreak Taking his life’s stern stewardship
\forcelinebreak With blithe uncare, and hard at work
\forcelinebreak At four o’clock!
Bockhampton.
\section{ON THE ESPLANADE}
MIDSUMMER: 10 P.M.
The broad bald moon edged up where the sea was wide,
\forcelinebreak Mild, mellow-faced;
\forcelinebreak Beneath, a tumbling twinkle of shines, like dyed,
\forcelinebreak A trackway traced
\forcelinebreak To the shore, as of petals fallen from a rose to waste,
\forcelinebreak In its overblow,
\forcelinebreak And fluttering afloat on inward heaves of the tide: —
\forcelinebreak All this, so plain; yet the rest I did not know.
The horizon gets lost in a mist new-wrought by the night:
\forcelinebreak The lamps of the Bay
\forcelinebreak That reach from behind me round to the left and right
\forcelinebreak On the sea-wall way
\forcelinebreak For a constant mile of curve, make a long display
\forcelinebreak As a pearl-strung row,
\forcelinebreak Under which in the waves they bore their gimlets of light: —
\forcelinebreak All this was plain; but there was a thing not so.
Inside a window, open, with undrawn blind,
\forcelinebreak There plays and sings
\forcelinebreak A lady unseen a melody undefined:
\forcelinebreak And where the moon flings
\forcelinebreak Its shimmer a vessel crosses, whereon to the strings
\forcelinebreak Plucked sweetly and low
\forcelinebreak Of a harp, they dance. Yea, such did I mark. That, behind,
\forcelinebreak My Fate’s masked face crept near me I did not know!
\section{IN ST. PAUL’S A WHILE AGO}
Summer and winter close commune
\forcelinebreak On this July afternoon
\forcelinebreak As I enter chilly Paul’s,
\forcelinebreak With its chasmal classic walls.
\forcelinebreak — Drifts of gray illumination
\forcelinebreak From the lofty fenestration
\forcelinebreak Slant them down in bristling spines that spread
\forcelinebreak Fan-like upon the vast dust-moted shade.
Moveless here, no whit allied
\forcelinebreak To the daemonian din outside,
\forcelinebreak Statues stand, cadaverous, wan,
\forcelinebreak Round the loiterers looking on
\forcelinebreak Under the yawning dome and nave,
\forcelinebreak Pondering whatnot, giddy or grave.
\forcelinebreak Here a verger moves a chair,
\forcelinebreak Or a red rope fixes there: —
\forcelinebreak A brimming Hebe, rapt in her adorning,
\forcelinebreak Brushes an Artemisia craped in mourning;
\forcelinebreak Beatrice Benedick piques, coquetting;
\forcelinebreak All unknowing or forgetting
\forcelinebreak That strange Jew, Damascus-bound,
\forcelinebreak Whose name, thereafter travelling round
\forcelinebreak To this precinct of the world,
\forcelinebreak Spread here like a flag unfurled:
\forcelinebreak Anon inspiring architectural sages
\forcelinebreak To frame this pile, writ his throughout the ages:
\forcelinebreak Whence also the encircling mart
\forcelinebreak Assumed his name, of him no part,
\forcelinebreak And to his vision-seeing mind
\forcelinebreak Charmless, blank in every kind;
\forcelinebreak And whose displays, even had they called his eye,
\forcelinebreak No gold or silver had been his to buy;
\forcelinebreak Whose haunters, had they seen him stand
\forcelinebreak On his own steps here, lift his hand
\forcelinebreak In stress of eager, stammering speech,
\forcelinebreak And his meaning chanced to reach,
\forcelinebreak Would have proclaimed him as they passed
\forcelinebreak An epilept enthusiast.
\section{COMING UP OXFORD STREET: EVENING}
The sun from the west glares back,
\forcelinebreak And the sun from the watered track,
\forcelinebreak And the sun from the sheets of glass,
\forcelinebreak And the sun from each window-brass;
\forcelinebreak Sun-mirrorings, too, brighten
\forcelinebreak From show-cases beneath
\forcelinebreak The laughing eyes and teeth
\forcelinebreak Of ladies who rouge and whiten.
\forcelinebreak And the same warm god explores
\forcelinebreak Panels and chinks of doors;
\forcelinebreak Problems with chymists’ bottles
\forcelinebreak Profound as Aristotle’s
\forcelinebreak He solves, and with good cause,
\forcelinebreak Having been ere man was.
Also he dazzles the pupils of one who walks west,
\forcelinebreak A city-clerk, with eyesight not of the best,
\forcelinebreak Who sees no escape to the very verge of his days
\forcelinebreak From the rut of Oxford Street into open ways;
\forcelinebreak And he goes along with head and eyes flagging forlorn,
\forcelinebreak Empty of interest in things, and wondering why he was born,
As seen July 4, 1872.
\section{A LAST JOURNEY}
“Father, you seem to have been sleeping fair?”
\forcelinebreak The child uncovered the dimity-curtained window-square
\forcelinebreak And looked out at the dawn,
\forcelinebreak And back at the dying man nigh gone,
\forcelinebreak And propped up in his chair,
\forcelinebreak Whose breathing a robin’s “chink” took up in antiphon.
The open fireplace spread
\forcelinebreak Like a vast weary yawn above his head,
\forcelinebreak Its thin blue blower waved against his whitening crown,
\forcelinebreak For he could not lie down:
\forcelinebreak He raised him on his arms so emaciated: —
“Yes; I’ve slept long, my child. But as for rest,
\forcelinebreak Well, that I cannot say.
\forcelinebreak The whole night have I footed field and turnpike way —
\forcelinebreak A regular pilgrimage — as at my best
\forcelinebreak And very briskest day!
“‘Twas first to Weatherb’ry, to see them there,
\forcelinebreak And thence to King’s-Stag, where
\forcelinebreak I joined in a jolly trip to Weydon-Priors Fair:
\forcelinebreak I shot for nuts, bought gingerbreads, cream-cheese;
\forcelinebreak And, not content with these,
\forcelinebreak I went to London: heard the watchmen cry the hours.
“I soon was off again, and found me in the bowers
\forcelinebreak Of father’s apple-trees,
\forcelinebreak And he shook the apples down: they fell in showers,
\forcelinebreak Whereon he turned, smiled strange at me, as ill at ease;
\forcelinebreak And then you pulled the curtain; and, ah me,
\forcelinebreak I found me back where I wished not to be!”
‘Twas told the child next day: “Your father’s dead.”
\forcelinebreak And, struck, she questioned, “O,
\forcelinebreak That journey, then, did father really go? —
\forcelinebreak Buy nuts, and cakes, and travel at night till dawn was red,
\forcelinebreak And tire himself with journeying, as he said,
\forcelinebreak To see those old friends that he cared for so?”
\section{SINGING LOVERS}
I rowed: the dimpled tide was at the turn,
\forcelinebreak And mirth and moonlight spread upon the bay:
\forcelinebreak There were two singing lovers in the stern;
\forcelinebreak But mine had gone away, —
\forcelinebreak Whither, I shunned to say!
The houses stood confronting us afar,
\forcelinebreak A livid line against the evening glare;
\forcelinebreak The small lamps livened; then out-stole a star;
\forcelinebreak But my Love was not there, —
\forcelinebreak Vanished. I sorrowed where!
His arm was round her, both full facing me
\forcelinebreak With no reserve. Theirs was not love to hide;
\forcelinebreak He held one tiller-rope, the other she;
\forcelinebreak I pulled — the merest glide, —
\forcelinebreak Looked on at them, and sighed.
The moon’s glassed glory heaved as we lay swinging
\forcelinebreak Upon the undulations. Shoreward, slow,
\forcelinebreak The plash of pebbles joined the lovers’ singing,
\forcelinebreak But she of a bygone vow
\forcelinebreak Joined in the song not now!
Weymouth.
\section{THE MONTH’S CALENDAR}
Tear off the calendar
\forcelinebreak Of this month past,
\forcelinebreak And all its weeks, that are
\forcelinebreak Flown, to be cast
\forcelinebreak To oblivion fast!
Darken that day
\forcelinebreak On which we met,
\forcelinebreak With its words of gay
\forcelinebreak Half-felt regret
\forcelinebreak That you’ll forget!
The second day, too;
\forcelinebreak The noon I nursed
\forcelinebreak Well — thoughts; yes, through
\forcelinebreak To the thirty-first;
\forcelinebreak That was the worst.
For then it was
\forcelinebreak You let me see
\forcelinebreak There was good cause
\forcelinebreak Why you could not be
\forcelinebreak Aught ever to me!
\section{A SPELLBOUND PALACE}
(HAMPTON COURT)
On this kindly yellow day of mild low-travelling winter sun
\forcelinebreak The stirless depths of the yews
\forcelinebreak Are vague with misty blues:
\forcelinebreak Across the spacious pathways stretching spires of shadow run,
\forcelinebreak And the wind-gnawed walls of ancient brick are fired vermilion
Two or three early sanguine finches tune
\forcelinebreak Some tentative strains, to be enlarged by May or June:
\forcelinebreak From a thrush or blackbird
\forcelinebreak Comes now and then a word,
\forcelinebreak While an enfeebled fountain somewhere within is heard.
Our footsteps wait awhile,
\forcelinebreak Then draw beneath the pile,
\forcelinebreak When an inner court outspreads
\forcelinebreak As ‘twere History’s own asile,
\forcelinebreak Where the now-visioned fountain its attenuate crystal sheds
\forcelinebreak In passive lapse that seems to ignore the yon world’s clamorous clutch,
\forcelinebreak And lays an insistent numbness on the place, like a cold hand’s touch.
And there swaggers the Shade of a straddling King, plumed, sworded, with sensual face,
\forcelinebreak And lo, too, that of his Minister, at a bold self-centred pace:
\forcelinebreak Sheer in the sun they pass; and thereupon all is still,
\forcelinebreak Save the mindless fountain tinkling on with thin enfeebled will.
\section{WHEN DEAD}
TO — — —
It will be much better when
\forcelinebreak I am under the bough;
\forcelinebreak I shall be more myself, Dear, then,
\forcelinebreak Than I am now.
No sign of querulousness
\forcelinebreak To wear you out
\forcelinebreak Shall I show there: strivings and stress
\forcelinebreak Be quite without.
This fleeting life-brief blight
\forcelinebreak Will have gone past
\forcelinebreak When I resume my old and right
\forcelinebreak Place in the Vast.
And when you come to me
\forcelinebreak To show you true,
\forcelinebreak Doubt not I shall infallibly
\forcelinebreak Be waiting you.
\section{SINE PROLE}
(MEDIAEVAL LATIN SEQUENCE-METRE)
Forth from ages thick in mystery,
\forcelinebreak Through the morn and noon of history,
\forcelinebreak To the moment where I stand
\forcelinebreak Has my line wound: I the last one —
\forcelinebreak Outcome of each spectral past one
\forcelinebreak Of that file, so many-manned!
Nothing in its time-trail marred it:
\forcelinebreak As one long life I regard it
\forcelinebreak Throughout all the years till now,
\forcelinebreak When it fain — the close seen coming —
\forcelinebreak After annals past all plumbing —
\forcelinebreak Makes to Being its parting bow.
Unlike Jahveh’s ancient nation,
\forcelinebreak Little in their line’s cessation
\forcelinebreak Moderns see for surge of sighs:
\forcelinebreak They have been schooled by lengthier vision,
\forcelinebreak View Life’s lottery with misprision,
\forcelinebreak And its dice that fling no prize!
\section{TEN YEARS SINCE}
‘Tis ten years since
\forcelinebreak I saw her on the stairs,
\forcelinebreak Heard her in house-affairs,
\forcelinebreak And listened to her cares;
\forcelinebreak And the trees are ten feet taller,
\forcelinebreak And the sunny spaces smaller
\forcelinebreak Whose bloomage would enthrall her;
\forcelinebreak And the piano wires are rustier,
\forcelinebreak The smell of bindings mustier,
\forcelinebreak And lofts and lumber dustier
\forcelinebreak Than when, with casual look
\forcelinebreak And ear, light note I took
\forcelinebreak Of what shut like a book
\forcelinebreak Those ten years since!
Nov. 1922.
\section{EVERY ARTEMISIA}
“Your eye-light wanes with an ail of care,
\forcelinebreak Frets freeze gray your face and hair.”
“I was the woman who met him,
\forcelinebreak Then cool and keen,
\forcelinebreak Whiling away
\forcelinebreak Time, with its restless scene on scene
\forcelinebreak Every day.”
“Your features fashion as in a dream
\forcelinebreak Of things that were, or used to seem.”
“I was the woman who won him:
\forcelinebreak Steadfast and fond
\forcelinebreak Was he, while I
\forcelinebreak Tepidly took what he gave, nor conned
\forcelinebreak Wherefore or why.”
“Your house looks blistered by a curse,
\forcelinebreak As if a wraith ruled there, or worse.”
“I was the woman who slighted him:
\forcelinebreak Far from my town
\forcelinebreak Into the night
\forcelinebreak He went. . . . My hair, then auburn-brown,
\forcelinebreak Pangs have wanned white.”
“Your ways reflect a monstrous gloom;
\forcelinebreak Your voice speaks from within a tomb.”
“I was the woman who buried him:
\forcelinebreak My misery
\forcelinebreak God laughed to scorn:
\forcelinebreak The people said: ‘‘Twere well if she
\forcelinebreak Had not been born!’”
“You plod to pile a monument
\forcelinebreak So madly that your breath is spent.”
“I am the woman who god him:
\forcelinebreak I build, to ease
\forcelinebreak My scalding fires,
\forcelinebreak A temple topping the Deities’
\forcelinebreak Fanes of my sires.”
\section{THE BEST SHE COULD}
Nine leaves a minute
\forcelinebreak Swim down shakily;
\forcelinebreak Each one fain would spin it
\forcelinebreak Straight to earth; but, see,
\forcelinebreak How the sharp airs win it
\forcelinebreak Slantwise away! — Hear it say,
\forcelinebreak “Now we have finished our summer show
\forcelinebreak Of what we knew the way to do:
\forcelinebreak Alas, not much! But, as things go,
\forcelinebreak As fair as any. And night-time calls,
\forcelinebreak And the curtain falls!”
Sunlight goes on shining
\forcelinebreak As if no frost were here,
Blackbirds seem designing
\forcelinebreak Where to build next year;
\forcelinebreak Yet is warmth declining:
\forcelinebreak And still the day seems to say,
\forcelinebreak “Saw you how Dame Summer drest?
\forcelinebreak Of all God taught her she bethought her!
\forcelinebreak Alas, not much! And yet the best
\forcelinebreak She could, within the too short time
\forcelinebreak Granted her prime.”
Nov. 8, 1923.
\section{THE GRAVEYARD OF DEAD CREEDS}
I lit upon the graveyard of dead creeds
\forcelinebreak In wistful wanderings through old wastes of thought,
\forcelinebreak Where bristled fennish fungi, fruiting nought,
\forcelinebreak Amid the sepulchres begirt with weeds,
Which stone by stone recorded sanct, deceased
\forcelinebreak Catholicons that had, in centuries flown,
\forcelinebreak Physicked created man through his long groan,
\forcelinebreak Ere they went under, all their potence ceased.
When in a breath-while, lo, their spectres rose
\forcelinebreak Like wakened winds that autumn summons up: —
\forcelinebreak “Out of us cometh an heir, that shall disclose
\forcelinebreak New promise!” cried they. “And the caustic cup
“We ignorantly upheld to men, be filled
\forcelinebreak With draughts more pure than those we ever distilled,
\forcelinebreak That shall make tolerable to sentient seers
\forcelinebreak The melancholy marching of the years.”
\section{THERE SEEMED A STRANGENESS}
A PHANTASY
There seemed a strangeness in the air,
\forcelinebreak Vermilion light on the land’s lean face;
\forcelinebreak I heard a Voice from I knew not where: —
\forcelinebreak “The Great Adjustment is taking place!
“I set thick darkness over you,
\forcelinebreak And fogged you all your years therein;
\forcelinebreak At last I uncloud your view,
\forcelinebreak Which I am weary of holding in.
“Men have not heard, men have not seen
\forcelinebreak Since the beginning of the world
\forcelinebreak What earth and heaven mean;
\forcelinebreak But now their curtains shall be furled,
“And they shall see what is, ere long,
\forcelinebreak Not through a glass, but face to face;
\forcelinebreak And Right shall disestablish Wrong:
\forcelinebreak The Great Adjustment is taking place.”
\section{A NIGHT OF QUESTIONINGS}
On the eve of All-Souls’ Day
\forcelinebreak I heard the dead men say
\forcelinebreak Who lie by the tottering tower,
\forcelinebreak To the dark and doubling wind
\forcelinebreak At the midnight’s turning hour,
\forcelinebreak When other speech had thinned:
\forcelinebreak “What of the world now?”
\forcelinebreak The wind whiffed back: “Men still
\forcelinebreak Who are born, do good, do ill
\forcelinebreak Here, just as in your time:
\forcelinebreak Till their years the locust hath eaten,
\forcelinebreak Leaving them bare, downbeaten;
\forcelinebreak Somewhiles in springtide rime,
\forcelinebreak Somewhiles in summer glow,
\forcelinebreak Somewhiles in winter snow: —
\forcelinebreak No more I know.”
The same eve I caught cry
\forcelinebreak To the selfsame wind, those dry
\forcelinebreak As dust beneath the aisles
\forcelinebreak Of old cathedral piles,
\forcelinebreak Walled up in vaulted biers
\forcelinebreak Through many Christian years:
\forcelinebreak “What of the world now?”
Sighed back the circuiteer:
\forcelinebreak “Men since your time, shrined here
\forcelinebreak By deserved ordinance,
\forcelinebreak Their own craft, or by chance,
\forcelinebreak Which follows men from birth
\forcelinebreak Even until under earth,
\forcelinebreak But little difference show
\forcelinebreak When ranged in sculptured row,
\forcelinebreak Different as dyes although: —
\forcelinebreak No more I know.”
On the selfsame eve, too, said
\forcelinebreak Those swayed in the sunk sea-bed
\forcelinebreak To the selfsame wind as it played
\forcelinebreak With the tide in the starless shade
\forcelinebreak From Comorin to Horn,
\forcelinebreak And round by Wrath forlorn:
\forcelinebreak “What of the world now?”
\forcelinebreak And the wind for a second ceased,
\forcelinebreak Then whirred: “Men west and east,
\forcelinebreak As each sun soars and dips,
\forcelinebreak Go down to the sea in ships
\forcelinebreak As you went — hither and thither;
\forcelinebreak See the wonders of the deep,
\forcelinebreak As you did, ere they sleep;
\forcelinebreak But few at home care whither
\forcelinebreak They wander to and fro;
\forcelinebreak Themselves care little also! —
\forcelinebreak No more I know.”
Said, too, on the selfsame eve
\forcelinebreak The troubled skulls that heave
\forcelinebreak And fust in the flats of France,
\forcelinebreak To the wind wayfaring over
\forcelinebreak Listlessly as in trance
\forcelinebreak From the Ardennes to Dover,
\forcelinebreak “What of the world now?”
\forcelinebreak And the farer moaned: “As when
\forcelinebreak You mauled these fields, do men
\forcelinebreak Set them with dark-drawn breaths
\forcelinebreak To knave their neighbours’ deaths
In periodic spasms!
\forcelinebreak Yea, fooled by foul phantasms,
\forcelinebreak In a strange cyclic throe
\forcelinebreak Backward to type they go: —
\forcelinebreak No more I know.”
That night, too, men whose crimes
\forcelinebreak Had cut them off betimes,
\forcelinebreak Who lay within the pales
\forcelinebreak Of town and county jails
\forcelinebreak With the rope-groove on them yet,
\forcelinebreak Said to the same wind’s fret,
\forcelinebreak “What of the world now?”
\forcelinebreak And the blast in its brooding tone
\forcelinebreak Returned: “Men have not shown,
\forcelinebreak Since you were stretched that morning,
\forcelinebreak A white cap your adorning,
\forcelinebreak More lovely deeds or true
\forcelinebreak Through thus neck-knotting you;
\forcelinebreak Or that they purer grow,
\forcelinebreak Or ever will, I trow! —
\forcelinebreak No more I know.”
\section{XENOPHANES, THE MONIST OF COLOPHON}
Ann: aet: suae XCII. — A: C: CCCCLXXX.
“Are You groping Your way?
\forcelinebreak Do You do it unknowing? —
\forcelinebreak Or mark Your wind blowing?
\forcelinebreak Night tell You from day,
\forcelinebreak O Mover? Come, say!”
\forcelinebreak Cried Xenophanes.
“I mean, querying so,
\forcelinebreak Do You do it aware,
\forcelinebreak Or by rote, like a player,
\forcelinebreak Or in ignorance, nor care
\forcelinebreak Whether doing or no?”
\forcelinebreak Pressed Xenophanes
“Thus strive I to plumb
\forcelinebreak Your depths, O Great Dumb! —
\forcelinebreak Not a god, but the All
\forcelinebreak (As I read); yet a thrall
\forcelinebreak To a blind ritual,”
\forcelinebreak Sighed Xenophanes.
“If I only could bring
\forcelinebreak You to own it, close Thing,
\forcelinebreak I would write it again
\forcelinebreak With a still stronger pen
\forcelinebreak To my once neighbour-men!”
\forcelinebreak Said Xenophanes.
— Quoth the listening Years:
\forcelinebreak “You ask It in vain;
\forcelinebreak You waste sighs and tears
\forcelinebreak On these callings inane,
\forcelinebreak Which It grasps not nor hears,
\forcelinebreak O Xenophanes!
“When you penned what you thought
\forcelinebreak You were cast out, and sought
\forcelinebreak A retreat over sea
\forcelinebreak From aroused enmity:
\forcelinebreak So it always will be,
\forcelinebreak Yea, Xenophanes!
“In the lone of the nights
\forcelinebreak At Elea unseen,
\forcelinebreak Where the swinging wave smites
\forcelinebreak Of the restless Tyrrhene,
\forcelinebreak You may muse thus, serene,
\forcelinebreak Safe, Xenophanes.
“But write it not back
\forcelinebreak To your dear Colophon;
\forcelinebreak Brows still will be black
\forcelinebreak At your words, ‘All is One,’
\forcelinebreak From disputers thereon,
\forcelinebreak Know, Xenophanes.
“Three thousand years hence,
\forcelinebreak Men who hazard a clue
\forcelinebreak To this riddle immense,
\forcelinebreak And still treat it as new,
\forcelinebreak Will be scowled at, like you,
\forcelinebreak O Xenophanes!
“‘Some day I may tell,
\forcelinebreak When I’ve broken My spell,’
\forcelinebreak It snores in Its sleep
\forcelinebreak If you listen long, deep
\forcelinebreak At Its closely-sealed cell,
\forcelinebreak Wronged Xenophanes!
“Yea, on, near the end,
\forcelinebreak Its doings may mend;
\forcelinebreak Aye, when you’re forgotten,
\forcelinebreak And old cults are rotten,
\forcelinebreak And bulky codes shotten,
\forcelinebreak Xenophanes!”
1921
\section{LIFE AND DEATH AT SUNRISE}
(NEAR DOGBURY GATE, 1867)
The hills uncap their tops
\forcelinebreak Of woodland, pasture, copse,
\forcelinebreak And look on the layers of mist
\forcelinebreak At their foot that still persist:
\forcelinebreak They are like awakened sleepers on one elbow lifted,
\forcelinebreak Who gaze around to learn if things during night have shifted.
A waggon creaks up from the fog
\forcelinebreak With a laboured leisurely jog;
\forcelinebreak Then a horseman from off the hill-tip
\forcelinebreak Comes clapping down into the dip;
\forcelinebreak While woodlarks, finches, sparrows, try to entune at one time,
\forcelinebreak And cocks and hens and cows and bulls take up the chime.
With a shouldered basket and flagon
\forcelinebreak A man meets the one with the waggon,
And both the men halt of long use.
\forcelinebreak “Well,” the waggoner says, “what’s the news?”
\forcelinebreak “ — ’Tis a boy this time. You’ve just met the doctor trotting back.
\forcelinebreak She’s doing very well. And we think we shall call him ‘Jack.’
“And what have you got covered there?”
\forcelinebreak He nods to the waggon and mare.
\forcelinebreak “Oh, a coffin for old John Thinn:
\forcelinebreak We are just going to put him in.”
\forcelinebreak “ — So he’s gone at last. He always had a good constitution.”
\forcelinebreak “ — He was ninety-odd. He could call up the French Revolution.”
\section{NIGHT-TIME IN MID-FALL}
It is a storm-strid night, winds footing swift
\forcelinebreak Through the blind profound;
\forcelinebreak I know the happenings from their sound;
\forcelinebreak Leaves totter down still green, and spin and drift;
\forcelinebreak The tree-trunks rock to their roots, which wrench and lift
\forcelinebreak The loam where they run onward underground.
The streams are muddy and swollen; eels migrate
\forcelinebreak To a new abode;
\forcelinebreak Even cross, ‘tis said, the turnpike-road;
\forcelinebreak (Men’s feet have felt their crawl, home-coming late):
\forcelinebreak The westward fronts of towers are saturate,
\forcelinebreak Church-timbers crack, and witches ride abroad.
\section{A SHEEP FAIR}
The day arrives of the autumn fair,
\forcelinebreak And torrents fall,
\forcelinebreak Though sheep in throngs are gathered there,
\forcelinebreak Ten thousand all,
\forcelinebreak Sodden, with hurdles round them reared:
\forcelinebreak And, lot by lot, the pens are cleared,
\forcelinebreak And the auctioneer wrings out his beard,
\forcelinebreak And wipes his book, bedrenched and smeared,
\forcelinebreak And rakes the rain from his face with the edge of his hand,
\forcelinebreak As torrents fall.
The wool of the ewes is like a sponge
\forcelinebreak With the daylong rain:
\forcelinebreak Jammed tight, to turn, or lie, or lunge,
\forcelinebreak They strive in vain.
\forcelinebreak Their horns are soft as finger-nails,
\forcelinebreak Their shepherds reek against the rails,
\forcelinebreak The tied dogs soak with tucked-in tails,
\forcelinebreak The buyers’ hat-brims fill like pails,
\forcelinebreak Which spill small cascades when they shift their stand
\forcelinebreak In the daylong rain.
\section{POSTSCRIPT}
Time has trailed lengthily since met
\forcelinebreak At Pummery Fair
\forcelinebreak Those panting thousands in their wet
\forcelinebreak And woolly wear:
\forcelinebreak And every flock long since has bled,
\forcelinebreak And all the dripping buyers have sped,
\forcelinebreak And the hoarse auctioneer is dead,
\forcelinebreak Who “Going — going!” so often said,
\forcelinebreak As he consigned to doom each meek, mewed band
\forcelinebreak At Pummery Fair.
\section{SNOW IN THE SUBURBS}
Every branch big with it,
\forcelinebreak Bent every twig with it;
\forcelinebreak Every fork like a white web-foot;
\forcelinebreak Every street and pavement mute:
\forcelinebreak Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
\forcelinebreak Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
\forcelinebreak The palings are glued together like a wall,
\forcelinebreak And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.
A sparrow enters the tree,
\forcelinebreak Whereon immediately
\forcelinebreak A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
\forcelinebreak Descends on him and showers his head and eyes.
And overturns him,
\forcelinebreak And near inurns him,
\forcelinebreak And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
\forcelinebreak Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
The steps are a blanched slope,
\forcelinebreak Up which, with feeble hope,
\forcelinebreak A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
\forcelinebreak And we take him in.
\section{A LIGHT SNOW-FALL AFTER FROST}
On the flat road a man at last appears:
\forcelinebreak How much his whitening hairs
\forcelinebreak Owe to the settling snow’s mute anchorage,
\forcelinebreak And how much to a life’s rough pilgrimage,
\forcelinebreak One cannot certify.
The frost is on the wane,
\forcelinebreak And cobwebs hanging close outside the pane
\forcelinebreak Pose as festoons of thick white worsted there,
\forcelinebreak Of their pale presence no eye being aware
\forcelinebreak Till the rime made them plain.
A second man comes by;
\forcelinebreak His ruddy beard brings fire to the pallid scene:
\forcelinebreak His coat is faded green;
\forcelinebreak Hence seems it that his mien
\forcelinebreak Wears something of the dye
\forcelinebreak Of the berried holm-trees that he passes nigh.
The snow-feathers so gently swoop that though
\forcelinebreak But half an hour ago
\forcelinebreak The road was brown, and now is starkly white,
\forcelinebreak A watcher would have failed defining quite
\forcelinebreak When it transformed it so.
Near Surbiton.
\section{WINTER NIGHT IN WOODLAND}
(OLD TIME)
The bark of a fox rings, sonorous and long: —
\forcelinebreak Three barks, and then silentness; “wong, wong, wong!”
\forcelinebreak In quality horn-like, yet melancholy,
\forcelinebreak As from teachings of years; for an old one is he.
\forcelinebreak The hand of all men is against him, he knows; and yet, why?
\forcelinebreak That he knows not, — will never know, down to his death-halloo cry.
With clap-nets and lanterns off start the bird-baiters,
\forcelinebreak In trim to make raids on the roosts in the copse,
\forcelinebreak Where they beat the boughs artfully, while their awaiters
\forcelinebreak Grow heavy at home over divers warm drops.
\forcelinebreak The poachers, with swingels, and matches of brimstone, outcreep
\forcelinebreak To steal upon pheasants and drowse them a-perch and asleep.
Out there, on the verge, where a path wavers through,
\forcelinebreak Dark figures, filed singly, thrid quickly the view,
\forcelinebreak Yet heavily laden: land-carriers are they
\forcelinebreak In the hire of the smugglers from some nearest bay.
\forcelinebreak Each bears his two “tubs,” slung across, one in front, one behind,
\forcelinebreak To a further snug hiding, which none but themselves are to find.
And then, when the night has turned twelve the air brings
\forcelinebreak From dim distance, a rhythm of voices and strings:
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis the quire, just afoot on their long yearly rounds,
\forcelinebreak To rouse by worn carols each house in their bounds;
\forcelinebreak Robert Penny, the Dewys, Mail, Voss, and the rest; till anon
\forcelinebreak Tired and thirsty, but cheerful, they home to their beds in the dawn.
\section{ICE ON THE HIGHWAY}
Seven buxom women abreast, and arm in arm,
\forcelinebreak Trudge down the hill, tip-toed,
\forcelinebreak And breathing warm;
\forcelinebreak They must perforce trudge thus, to keep upright
\forcelinebreak On the glassy ice-bound road,
And they must get to market whether or no,
\forcelinebreak Provisions running low
\forcelinebreak With the nearing Saturday night,
\forcelinebreak While the lumbering van wherein they mostly ride
\forcelinebreak Can nowise go:
\forcelinebreak Yet loud their laughter as they stagger and slide!
Yell’ham Hill.
\section{MUSIC IN A SNOWY STREET}
The weather is sharp,
\forcelinebreak But the girls are unmoved:
\forcelinebreak One wakes from a harp,
\forcelinebreak The next from a viol,
\forcelinebreak A strain that I loved
\forcelinebreak When life was no trial.
The tripletime beat
\forcelinebreak Bounds forth on the snow,
\forcelinebreak But the spry springing feet
\forcelinebreak Of a century ago,
\forcelinebreak And the arms that enlaced
\forcelinebreak As the couples embraced,
\forcelinebreak Are silent old bones
\forcelinebreak Under graying gravestones.
The snow-feathers sail
\forcelinebreak Across the harp-strings,
\forcelinebreak Whose throbbing threads wail
\forcelinebreak Like love-satiate things.
\forcelinebreak Each lyre’s grimy mien,
\forcelinebreak With its rout-raising tune,
\forcelinebreak Against the new white
\forcelinebreak Of the flake-laden noon,
\forcelinebreak Is incongruous to sight,
\forcelinebreak Hinting years they have seen
\forcelinebreak Of revel at night
\forcelinebreak Ere these damsels became
\forcelinebreak Possessed of their frame.
O bygone whirls, heys,
\forcelinebreak Crotchets, quavers, the same
\forcelinebreak That were danced in the days
\forcelinebreak Of grim Bonaparte’s fame,
\forcelinebreak Or even by the toes
\forcelinebreak Of the fair Antoinette, —
\forcelinebreak Yea, old notes like those
\forcelinebreak Here are living on yet! —
\forcelinebreak But of their fame and fashion
\forcelinebreak How little these know
\forcelinebreak Who strum without passion
\forcelinebreak For pence, in the snow!
\section{THE FROZEN GREENHOUSE}
(ST. JULIOT)
“There was a frost
\forcelinebreak Last night!” she said,
\forcelinebreak “And the stove was forgot
\forcelinebreak When we went to bed,
\forcelinebreak And the greenhouse plants
\forcelinebreak Are frozen dead!”
By the breakfast blaze
\forcelinebreak Blank-faced spoke she,
\forcelinebreak Her scared young look
\forcelinebreak Seeming to be
\forcelinebreak The very symbol
\forcelinebreak Of tragedy.
The frost is fiercer
\forcelinebreak Than then to-day,
\forcelinebreak As I pass the place
\forcelinebreak Of her once dismay,
\forcelinebreak But the greenhouse stands
\forcelinebreak Warm, tight, and gay,
While she who grieved
\forcelinebreak At the sad lot
\forcelinebreak Of her pretty plants —
\forcelinebreak Cold, iced, forgot —
\forcelinebreak Herself is colder,
\forcelinebreak And knows it not.
\section{TWO LIPS}
I kissed them in fancy as I came
\forcelinebreak Away in the morning glow:
\forcelinebreak I kissed them through the glass of her picture-frame:
\forcelinebreak She did not know.
I kissed them in love, in troth, in laughter,
\forcelinebreak When she knew all; long so!
\forcelinebreak That I should kiss them in a shroud thereafter
\forcelinebreak She did not know.
\section{NO BUYERS}
A STREET SCENE
A load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
\forcelinebreak Labours along the street in the rain:
\forcelinebreak With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown hairs. —
\forcelinebreak The man foots in front of the horse with a shambling sway
\forcelinebreak At a slower tread than a funeral train,
\forcelinebreak While to a dirge-like tune he chants his wares,
\forcelinebreak Swinging a Turk’s-head brush (in a drum-major’s way
\forcelinebreak When the bandsmen march and play).
A yard from the back of the man is the whiteybrown pony’s nose:
\forcelinebreak He mirrors his master in every item of pace and pose:
\forcelinebreak He stops when the man stops, without being told,
\forcelinebreak And seems to be eased by a pause; too plainly he’s old,
\forcelinebreak Indeed, not strength enough shows
\forcelinebreak To steer the disjointed waggon straight,
\forcelinebreak Which wriggles left and right in a rambling line,
\forcelinebreak Deflected thus by its own warp and weight,
\forcelinebreak And pushing the pony with it in each incline.
The woman walks on the pavement verge,
\forcelinebreak Parallel to the man:
\forcelinebreak She wears an apron white and wide in span,
\forcelinebreak And carries a like Turk’s-head, but more in nursing-wise:
Now and then she joins in his dirge,
\forcelinebreak But as if her thoughts were on distant things.
\forcelinebreak The rain clams her apron till it clings. —
\forcelinebreak So, step by step, they move with their merchandize,
\forcelinebreak And nobody buys.
\section{ONE WHO MARRIED ABOVE HIM}
“‘Tis you, I think? Back from your week’s work, Steve?”
\forcelinebreak “It is I. Back from work this Christmas Eve.”
\forcelinebreak “But you seem off again? — in this night-rime?”
\forcelinebreak “I am off again, and thoroughly off this time.”
\forcelinebreak “What does that mean?”
\forcelinebreak “More than may first be seen. . . .
Half an hour ago I footed homeward here,
\forcelinebreak No wife found I, nor child, nor maid, indoors or near.
\forcelinebreak She has, as always, gone with them to her mother’s at the farm,
\forcelinebreak Where they fare better far than here, and, maybe, meet less harm.
\forcelinebreak She’s left no fire, no light, has cooked me nothing to eat,
\forcelinebreak Though she had fuel, and money to get some Christmas meat.
\forcelinebreak Christmas with them is grand, she knows, and brings good victual,
\forcelinebreak Other than how it is here, where it’s but lean and little.
\forcelinebreak But though not much, and rough,
\forcelinebreak If managed neat there’s enough.
\forcelinebreak She and hers are too highmade for me;
\forcelinebreak But she’s whimmed her once too often, she’ll see!
\forcelinebreak Farmer Bollen’s daughter should never have married a man that’s poor;
\forcelinebreak And I can stand it no longer; I’m leaving; you’ll see me no more, be sure.”
“But nonsense: you’ll be back again ere bedtime, and lighting a fire,
\forcelinebreak And sizzling your supper, and vexing not that her views of supper are higher.”
\forcelinebreak “Never for me.”
\forcelinebreak “Well, we shall see.”
The sceptical neighbour and Stephen then followed their fore-designed ways,
\forcelinebreak And their steps dimmed into white silence upon the slippery glaze;
\forcelinebreak And the trees went on with their spitting amid the icicled haze.
The evening whiled, and the wife with the babies came home,
\forcelinebreak But he was not there, nor all Christmas Day did he come.
\forcelinebreak Christmastide went, and likewise went the New Year,
\forcelinebreak But no husband’s footfall revived,
\forcelinebreak And month after month lapsed, graytime to green and to sere,
\forcelinebreak And other new years arrived,
\forcelinebreak And the children grew up: one husbanded and one wived. —
\forcelinebreak She wept and repented,
\forcelinebreak But Stephen never relented.
\forcelinebreak And there stands the house, and the sycamore-tree and all.
\forcelinebreak With its roots forming steps for the passers who care to call,
\forcelinebreak And there are the mullioned windows, and Ham-Hill door,
\forcelinebreak Through which Steve’s wife was brought out, but which Steve re-entered no more.
\section{THE NEW TOY}
She cannot leave it alone,
\forcelinebreak The new toy;
\forcelinebreak She pats it, smooths it, rights it, to show it’s her own,
\forcelinebreak As the other train-passengers muse on its temper and tone
\forcelinebreak Till she draws from it cries of annoy: —
\forcelinebreak She feigns to appear as if thinking it nothing so rare
\forcelinebreak Or worthy of pride, to achieve
\forcelinebreak This wonder a child, though with reason the rest of them there
\forcelinebreak May so be inclined to believe.
\section{QUEEN CAROLINE TO HER GUESTS}
Dear friends, stay!
\forcelinebreak Lamplit wafts of wit keep sorrow
\forcelinebreak In the purlieus of to-morrow:
\forcelinebreak Dear friends, stay!
Haste not away!
\forcelinebreak Even now may Time be weaving
\forcelinebreak Tricks of ravage, wrack, bereaving:
\forcelinebreak Haste not away!
Through the pane,
\forcelinebreak Lurking along the street, there may be
\forcelinebreak Heartwrings, keeping hid till day be,
\forcelinebreak Through the pane.
Check their reign:
\forcelinebreak Since while here we are the masters,
\forcelinebreak And can barricade dim disasters:
\forcelinebreak Check their reign!
Give no ear
\forcelinebreak To those ghosts withoutside mumming,
\forcelinebreak Mouthing, threatening, “We are coming!”
\forcelinebreak Give no ear!
Sheltered here
\forcelinebreak Care we not that next day bring us
\forcelinebreak Pains, perversions! No racks wring us
\forcelinebreak Sheltered here.
Homeward gone,
\forcelinebreak Sleep will slay this merrymaking;
\forcelinebreak No resuming it at waking,
\forcelinebreak Homeward gone.
After dawn
\forcelinebreak Something sad may be befalling;
\forcelinebreak Mood like ours there’s no recalling
\forcelinebreak After dawn!
Morrow-day
\forcelinebreak Present joy that moments strengthen
\forcelinebreak May be past our power to lengthen,
\forcelinebreak Morrow-day!
Dear friends, stay!
\forcelinebreak Lamplit wafts of wit keep sorrow
\forcelinebreak In the limbo of to-morrow:
\forcelinebreak Dear friends, stay!
\section{PLENA TIMORIS}
The lovers looked over the parapet-stone:
\forcelinebreak The moon in its southing directly blent
\forcelinebreak Its silver with their environment.
\forcelinebreak Her ear-rings twinkled; her teeth, too, shone
\forcelinebreak As, his arm around her, they laughed and leant.
A man came up to them; then one more.
\forcelinebreak “There’s a woman in the canal below,”
\forcelinebreak They said; climbed over; slid down; let go,
\forcelinebreak And a splashing was heard, till an arm upbore,
\forcelinebreak And a dripping body began to show.
“Drowned herself for love of a man,
\forcelinebreak Who at one time used to meet her here,
\forcelinebreak Until he grew tired. But she’d wait him near,
\forcelinebreak And hope, till hopeless despair began.
\forcelinebreak So much for love in this mortal sphere!”
The girl’s heart shuddered; it seemed as to freeze her
\forcelinebreak That here, at their tryst for so many a day,
\forcelinebreak Another woman’s tragedy lay.
\forcelinebreak Dim dreads of the future grew slowly to seize her,
\forcelinebreak And her arm dropt from his as they wandered away.
\section{THE WEARY WALKER}
A plain in front of me,
\forcelinebreak And there’s the road
\forcelinebreak Upon it. Wide country,
\forcelinebreak And, too, the road!
Past the first ridge another,
\forcelinebreak And still the road
\forcelinebreak Creeps on. Perhaps no other
\forcelinebreak Ridge for the road?
Ah! Past that ridge a third,
\forcelinebreak Which still the road
\forcelinebreak Has to climb furtherward —
\forcelinebreak The thin white road!
Sky seems to end its track;
\forcelinebreak But no. The road
\forcelinebreak Trails down the hill at the back.
\forcelinebreak Ever the road!
\section{LAST LOVE-WORD}
(SONG)
This is the last; the very, very last!
\forcelinebreak Anon, and all is dead and dumb,
\forcelinebreak Only a pale shroud over the past,
\forcelinebreak That cannot be
\forcelinebreak Of value small or vast,
\forcelinebreak Love, then to me!
I can say no more: I have even said too much.
\forcelinebreak I did not mean that this should come:
\forcelinebreak I did not know ‘twould swell to such —
\forcelinebreak Nor, perhaps, you —
\forcelinebreak When that first look and touch,
\forcelinebreak Love, doomed us two!
189*.
\section{NOBODY COMES}
Tree-leaves labour up and down,
\forcelinebreak And through them the fainting light
\forcelinebreak Succumbs to the crawl of night.
\forcelinebreak Outside in the road the telegraph wire
\forcelinebreak To the town from the darkening land
\forcelinebreak Intones to travellers like a spectral lyre
\forcelinebreak Swept by a spectral hand.
A car comes up, with lamps full-glare,
\forcelinebreak That flash upon a tree:
\forcelinebreak It has nothing to do with me,
\forcelinebreak And whangs along in a world of its own,
\forcelinebreak Leaving a blacker air;
\forcelinebreak And mute by the gate I stand again alone,
\forcelinebreak And nobody pulls up there.
October 9, 1924.
\section{IN THE STREET}
(SONG)
Only acquaintances
\forcelinebreak Seem do we,
\forcelinebreak Each of whom, meeting, says
\forcelinebreak Civilly
\forcelinebreak “Good morning.” — Yes: thus we appear to be!
But far, near, left and right,
\forcelinebreak Here or there,
\forcelinebreak By day or dingiest night,
\forcelinebreak Everywhere
\forcelinebreak I see you: one incomparably fair!
So do we wend our ways,
\forcelinebreak Beautiful girl,
\forcelinebreak Along our parallel days;
\forcelinebreak While unfurl
\forcelinebreak Our futures, and what there may whelm and whirl.
\section{THE LAST LEAF}
“The leaves throng thick above: —
\forcelinebreak Well, I’ll come back, dear Love,
\forcelinebreak When they all are down!”
She watched that August tree,
\forcelinebreak (None now scorned summer as she),
\forcelinebreak Till it broidered it brown.
And then October came blowing,
\forcelinebreak And the leaves showed signs they were going,
\forcelinebreak And she saw up through them.
O how she counted them then!
\forcelinebreak — November left her but ten,
\forcelinebreak And started to strew them.
“Ah, when they all are gone,
\forcelinebreak And the skeleton-time comes on,
\forcelinebreak Whom shall I see!”
— When the fifteenth spread its sky
\forcelinebreak That month, her upturned eye
\forcelinebreak Could count but three.
And at the close of the week
\forcelinebreak A flush flapped over her cheek:
\forcelinebreak The last one fell.
But — he did not come. And, at length,
\forcelinebreak Her hope of him lost all strength,
\forcelinebreak And it was as a knell. . . .
When he did come again,
\forcelinebreak Years later, a husband then,
\forcelinebreak Heavy somewhat,
With a smile she reminded him:
\forcelinebreak And he cried: “Ah, that vow of our whim! —
\forcelinebreak Which I forgot,
“As one does! — And was that the tree?
\forcelinebreak So it was! — Dear me, dear me:
\forcelinebreak Yes: I forgot.”
\section{AT WYNYARD’S GAP}
She
\forcelinebreak (on horseback)
\forcelinebreak The hounds pass here?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak (on horseback)
\forcelinebreak They did an hour ago,
\forcelinebreak Just in full cry, and went down-wind, I saw,
\forcelinebreak Towards Pen Wood, where they may kill, and draw
\forcelinebreak A second time, and bear towards the Yeo.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak How vexing! And I’ve crept along unthinking.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Ah! — lost in dreams. Fancy to fancy linking!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak (more softly)
\forcelinebreak Not that, quite. . . . Now, to settle what I’ll do.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Go home again. But have you seen the view
\forcelinebreak From the top there? Not? It’s really worth your while. —
\forcelinebreak You must dismount, because there is a stile. They dismount, hitch their horses, and climb a few-score yards from the road.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak There you see half South Wessex, — combe, and glen,
\forcelinebreak And down, to Lewsdon Hill and Pilsdon Pen.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak Yes. It is fine. And I, though living out there
\forcelinebreak By Crewkerne, never knew it. (She turns her head)
\forcelinebreak Well, I declare,
\forcelinebreak Look at the horses! — How shall I catch my mare? The horses have got loose and scampered off.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Now that’s your fault, through leading me up here!
\forcelinebreak You must have known ‘twould happen —
He
\forcelinebreak No, my dear!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak I’m not your dear.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak (blandly)
\forcelinebreak But you can’t help being so,
\forcelinebreak If it comes to that. The fairest girl I’ve seen
\forcelinebreak Is of course dear — by her own fault, I mean.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak (quickly)
\forcelinebreak What house is that we see just down below?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Oh — that’s the inn called “Wynyard’s Gap.” — I’ll go
\forcelinebreak While you wait here, and catch those brutes. Don’t stir.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He goes. She waits.
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak What a handsome man. Not local, I’ll aver.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He comes back.
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak I met a farmer’s labourer some way on;
\forcelinebreak He says he’ll bring them to us here anon,
\forcelinebreak If possible before the day is dim.
\forcelinebreak Come down to the inn: there we can wait for him.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak They descend slowly in that direction.
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak What a lonely inn. Why is there such a one?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak For us to wait at. Thus ‘tis things are done.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak Thus things are done? Well — what things do you mean?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Romantic things. Meetings unknown, unseen.
She
\forcelinebreak But ours is accident, and needn’t have been,
\forcelinebreak And isn’t what I’d plan with a stranger, quite,
\forcelinebreak Particularly at this time — nearly night.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Nor I. But still, the tavern’s loneliness
\forcelinebreak Is favourable for lovers in distress,
\forcelinebreak When they’ve eloped, for instance, and are in fear
\forcelinebreak Of being pursued. No one would find them here. He goes to speak to the labourer approaching; and returns.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He says the horses long have passed the combe,
\forcelinebreak And cannot be overtaken. They’ll go home.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak And what’s to be done? And it’s beginning to rain.
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis always so. One trouble brings a train!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak It seems to me that here we’d better stay
\forcelinebreak And rest us till some vehicle comes this way:
\forcelinebreak In fact, we might put up here till the morning:
\forcelinebreak The floods are high, and night-farers have warning.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak Put up? Do you think so!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak I incline to such,
\forcelinebreak My dear (do you mind?)
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak Yes. — Well (more softly)
\forcelinebreak , I don’t much,
\forcelinebreak If I seem like it. But I ought to tell you
\forcelinebreak One thing. I’m married. Being so, it’s well you —
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Oh, so am I. (A silence, he regarding her)
\forcelinebreak I note a charming thing —
\forcelinebreak You stand so stock-still that your ear-ring shakes
\forcelinebreak At each pulsation which the vein there makes.
She
\forcelinebreak Does it? Perhaps because it’s flustering
\forcelinebreak To be caught thus! (In a murmur)
\forcelinebreak Why did we chance to meet here!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak God knows! Perhaps to taste a bitter-sweet here. —
\forcelinebreak Still, let us enter. Shelter we must get:
\forcelinebreak The night is darkening and is growing wet.
\forcelinebreak So, anyhow, you can treat me as a lover
\forcelinebreak Just for this once. To-morrow ‘twill be over!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak They reach the inn. The door is locked, and they discern a board marked “To Let.” While they stand stultified a van is seen drawing near, with passengers.
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak Ah, here’s an end of it! The Crewkerne carrier.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak So cynic circumstance erects its barrier!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak (mischievously)
\forcelinebreak To your love-making, which would have grown stronger,
\forcelinebreak No doubt, if we had stayed on here much longer?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak The carrier comes up. Her companion reluctantly hails him.
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Yes. . . . And in which you might have shown some ruth,
\forcelinebreak Had but the inn been open! — Well, forsooth,
\forcelinebreak I’m sorry it’s not. Are you? Now, dear, the truth!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak (with gentle evasiveness)
\forcelinebreak I am — almost. But best ‘tis thus to be.
\forcelinebreak For — dear one — there I’ve said it! — you can see
\forcelinebreak That both at one inn (though roomed separately,
\forcelinebreak Of course) — so lone, too — might have been unfit,
\forcelinebreak Perfect as ‘tis for lovers, I admit.
He
\forcelinebreak (after a sigh)
\forcelinebreak Carrier! A lift for my wife, please.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak (in quick undertones)
\forcelinebreak Wife? But nay —
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak (continuing)
\forcelinebreak Her horse has thrown her and has gone astray:
\forcelinebreak See she gets safe to Crewkerne. I’ve to stay.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Carrier
\forcelinebreak I will, sir! I’m for Crookhorn straight away.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak (to her, aloud)
\forcelinebreak Right now, dear. I shall soon be home. Adieu!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak (Kisses her.)
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak (whispering confusedly)
\forcelinebreak You shouldn’t! Pretending you are my husband, too!
\forcelinebreak I now must act the part of wife to you!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak (whispering)
\forcelinebreak Yes, since I’ve kissed you, dear. You see it’s done
\forcelinebreak To silence tongues as we’re found here alone
\forcelinebreak At night, by gossipers, and seem as shown
\forcelinebreak Staying together!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak (whispering)
\forcelinebreak Then must I, too, kiss?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Yes: a mere matter of form, you know,
\forcelinebreak To check all scandal. People will talk so!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak I’d no idea it would reach to this! (Kisses him.)
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak What makes it worse is, I’m ashamed to say,
\forcelinebreak I’ve a young baby waiting me at home!
He
\forcelinebreak Ah — there you beat me! — But, my dearest, play
\forcelinebreak The wife to the end, and don’t give me away,
\forcelinebreak Despite the baby, since we’ve got so far,
\forcelinebreak And what we’ve acted feel we almost are!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak She
\forcelinebreak (sighing)
\forcelinebreak Yes. ‘Tis so! And my conscience has gone dumb! (Aloud)
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak ‘Bye, dear, awhile! I’ll sit up till you come. (In a whisper)
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Which means Good-bye for ever, truly heard!
\forcelinebreak Upon to-night be silent!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He
\forcelinebreak Never a word,
\forcelinebreak Till Pilsdon Pen by Marshwood wind is stirred!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He hands her up. Exeunt omnes.
\section{AT SHAG’S HEATH}
1(TRADITIONAL)
I grieve and grieve for what I have done,
\forcelinebreak And nothing now is left to me
\forcelinebreak But straight to drown; yea, I have slain
\forcelinebreak The rarest soul the world shall see!
\forcelinebreak — My husband said: “Now thou art wed
\forcelinebreak Thou must beware! And should a man
\forcelinebreak Cajole, mind, he means ill to thee,
\forcelinebreak Depend on’t: fool him if ye can!”
\forcelinebreak But ‘twas King Monmouth, he!
As truth I took what was not true:
\forcelinebreak Till darked my door just such a one.
\forcelinebreak He asked me but the way to go,
\forcelinebreak Though looking all so down and done.
And as he stood he said, unsued,
\forcelinebreak “The prettiest wife I’ve eyed to-day!”
\forcelinebreak And then he kissed me tenderly
\forcelinebreak Before he footed fast away
\forcelinebreak Did dear King Monmouth, he!
Builded was he so beautiful! —
\forcelinebreak Why did I pout a pettish word
\forcelinebreak For what he’d done? — Then whisking off —
\forcelinebreak For his pursuers’ feet were heard —
\forcelinebreak “Dear one, keep faith!” he turns and saith.
\forcelinebreak And next he vanished in the copse
\forcelinebreak Before I knew what such might be,
\forcelinebreak And how great fears and how great hopes
\forcelinebreak Had rare King Monmouth — he!
Up rode the soldiers. “Where’s this man? —
\forcelinebreak He is the rebel Duke,” say they.
\forcelinebreak “And calls himself King Monmouth, sure!”
\forcelinebreak Then I believed my husband; aye,
\forcelinebreak Though he’d spoke lies in jealous-wise!
\forcelinebreak — To Shag’s nigh copse beyond the road
\forcelinebreak I moved my finger mercilessly;
\forcelinebreak And there lay hidden where I showed:
\forcelinebreak My dear King Monmouth, he!
The soldiers brought him by my door,
\forcelinebreak His elbows bound behind him, fast;
\forcelinebreak Passing, he me-ward cast his eyes —
\forcelinebreak What eyes of beauty did he cast!
\forcelinebreak Grieved was his glance at me askance:
\forcelinebreak “I wished all weal might thee attend,
\forcelinebreak But this is what th’st done to me,
\forcelinebreak O heartless woman, held my friend!”
\forcelinebreak Said sweet King Monmouth, he!
O then I saw he was no hind,
\forcelinebreak But a great lord of loftihood,
\forcelinebreak Come here to claim his rule and rights,
\forcelinebreak Who’d wished me, as he’d said, but good. —
\forcelinebreak With tug and jolt, then, out to Holt,
To Justice Ettricke, he was led,
\forcelinebreak And thence to London speedily,
\forcelinebreak Where under yester’s headsman bled
\forcelinebreak The rare King Monmouth, he!
Last night, the while my husband slept,
\forcelinebreak He rose up at the window there,
\forcelinebreak All blood and blear, and hacked about,
\forcelinebreak With heavy eyes, and rumpled hair;
\forcelinebreak And said: “My Love, ‘twas cruel of
\forcelinebreak A Fair like thee to use me so!
\forcelinebreak But now it’s nought: from foes I’m free!
\forcelinebreak Sooner or later all must go,”
\forcelinebreak Said dear King Monmouth, he!
“Yes, lovely cruel one!” he said
\forcelinebreak In through the mullioned pane, shroud-pale,
\forcelinebreak “I love you still, would kiss you now,
\forcelinebreak But blood would stain your nighty-rail!”
\forcelinebreak — That’s all. And so to drown I go:
\forcelinebreak O wear no weeds, my friends, for me . . .
\forcelinebreak When comes the waterman, he’ll say,
\forcelinebreak “Who’s done her thuswise?” — ’Twill be, yea,
\forcelinebreak Sweet, slain King Monmouth — he!
\section{A SECOND ATTEMPT}
Thirty years after
\forcelinebreak I began again
\forcelinebreak An old-time passion:
\forcelinebreak And it seemed as fresh as when
\forcelinebreak The first day ventured on:
\forcelinebreak When mutely I would waft her
\forcelinebreak In Love’s past fashion
\forcelinebreak Dreams much dwelt upon,
\forcelinebreak Dreams I wished she knew.
I went the course through,
\forcelinebreak From Love’s fresh-found sensation —
\forcelinebreak Remembered still so well —
\forcelinebreak To worn words charged anew,
\forcelinebreak That left no more to tell:
Thence to hot hopes and fears,
\forcelinebreak And thence to consummation,
\forcelinebreak And thence to sober years,
\forcelinebreak Markless, and mellow-hued.
Firm the whole fabric stood,
\forcelinebreak Or seemed to stand, and sound
\forcelinebreak As it had stood before.
\forcelinebreak But nothing backward climbs,
\forcelinebreak And when I looked around
\forcelinebreak As at the former times,
\forcelinebreak There was Life — pale and hoar;
\forcelinebreak And slow it said to me,
\forcelinebreak “Twice-over cannot be!”
\section{FREED THE FRET OF THINKING}
Freed the fret of thinking,
\forcelinebreak Light of lot were we,
\forcelinebreak Song with service linking
\forcelinebreak Like to bird or bee:
\forcelinebreak Chancing bale unblinking,
\forcelinebreak Freed the fret of thinking
\forcelinebreak On mortality!
Had not thought-endowment
\forcelinebreak Beings ever known,
\forcelinebreak What Life once or now meant
\forcelinebreak None had wanted shown —
\forcelinebreak Measuring but the moment —
\forcelinebreak Had not thought-endowment
\forcelinebreak Caught Creation’s groan!
Loosed from wrings of reason,
\forcelinebreak We might blow like flowers,
\forcelinebreak Sense of Time-wrought treason
\forcelinebreak Would not then be ours
\forcelinebreak In and out of season;
\forcelinebreak Loosed from wrings of reason
\forcelinebreak We should laud the Powers!
\section{THE ABSOLUTE EXPLAINS}
\subsection{I}
“O no,” said It: her lifedoings
\forcelinebreak Time’s touch hath not destroyed:
\forcelinebreak They lie their length, with the throbbing things
\forcelinebreak Akin them, down the Void,
\forcelinebreak Live, unalloyed.
\subsection{II}
“Know, Time is toothless, seen all through;
\forcelinebreak The Present, that men but see,
\forcelinebreak Is phasmal: since in a sane purview
\forcelinebreak All things are shaped to be
\forcelinebreak Eternally.
\subsection{III}
“Your ‘Now’ is just a gleam, a glide
\forcelinebreak Across your gazing sense:
\forcelinebreak With me, ‘Past,’ ‘Future,’ ever abide:
\forcelinebreak They come not, go not, whence
\forcelinebreak They are never hence.
\subsection{IV}
“As one upon a dark highway,
\forcelinebreak Plodding by lantern-light,
\forcelinebreak Finds but the reach of its frail ray
\forcelinebreak Uncovered to his sight,
\forcelinebreak Though mid the night
\subsection{V}
“The road lies all its length the same,
\forcelinebreak Forwardly as at rear,
\forcelinebreak So, outside what you ‘Present’ name,
\forcelinebreak Future and Past stand sheer,
\forcelinebreak Cognate and clear.”
VI
— Thus It: who straightway opened then
\forcelinebreak The vista called the Past,
\forcelinebreak Wherein were seen, as fair as when
\forcelinebreak They seemed they could not last,
\forcelinebreak Small things and vast.
VII
There were those songs, a score times sung,
\forcelinebreak With all their tripping tunes,
\forcelinebreak There were the laughters once that rung,
\forcelinebreak There those unmatched full moons,
\forcelinebreak Those idle noons!
VIII
There fadeless, fixed, were dust-dead flowers
\forcelinebreak Remaining still in blow;
\forcelinebreak Elsewhere, wild love-makings in bowers;
\forcelinebreak Hard by, that irised bow
\forcelinebreak Of years ago.
\subsection{IX}
There were my ever memorable
\forcelinebreak Glad days of pilgrimage,
\forcelinebreak Coiled like a precious parchment fell,
\forcelinebreak Illumined page by page,
\forcelinebreak Unhurt by age.
\subsection{X}
“ — Here you see spread those mortal ails
\forcelinebreak So powerless to restrain
\forcelinebreak Your young life’s eager hot assails,
\forcelinebreak With hazards then not plain
\forcelinebreak Till past their pain.
\subsection{XI}
“Here you see her who, by these laws
\forcelinebreak You learn of, still shines on,
\forcelinebreak As pleasing-pure as erst she was,
\forcelinebreak Though you think she lies yon,
\forcelinebreak Graved, glow all gone.
\subsection{XII}
“Here are those others you used to prize. —
\forcelinebreak But why go further we?
\forcelinebreak The Future? — Well, I would advise
\forcelinebreak You let the future be,
\forcelinebreak Unshown by me!
\subsection{XIII}
“‘Twould harrow you to see undraped
\forcelinebreak The scenes in ripe array
\forcelinebreak That wait your globe — all worked and shaped;
\forcelinebreak And I’ll not, as I say,
\forcelinebreak Bare them to-day.
\subsection{XIV}
“In fine, Time is a mock, — yea, such! —
\forcelinebreak As he might well confess:
\forcelinebreak Yet hath he been believed in much,
\forcelinebreak Though lately, under stress
\forcelinebreak Of science, less.
\subsection{XV}
“And hence, of her you asked about
\forcelinebreak At your first speaking: she
\forcelinebreak Hath, I assure you, not passed out
\forcelinebreak Of continuity,
\forcelinebreak But is in me.
\subsection{XVI}
“So thus doth Being’s length transcend
\forcelinebreak Time’s ancient regal claim
\forcelinebreak To see all lengths begin and end.
\forcelinebreak ‘The Fourth Dimension’ fame
\forcelinebreak Bruits as its name.”
New Year’s Eve, 1922.
\section{SO, TIME}
(THE SAME THOUGHT RESUMED)
So, Time,
\forcelinebreak Royal, sublime;
\forcelinebreak Heretofore held to be
\forcelinebreak Master and enemy,
\forcelinebreak Thief of my Love’s adornings,
\forcelinebreak Despoiling her to scornings: —
\forcelinebreak The sound philosopher
\forcelinebreak Now sets him to aver
\forcelinebreak You are nought
\forcelinebreak But a thought
\forcelinebreak Without reality.
Young, old,
\forcelinebreak Passioned, cold,
\forcelinebreak All the loved-lost thus
\forcelinebreak Are beings continuous,
\forcelinebreak In dateless dure abiding,
\forcelinebreak Over the present striding
\forcelinebreak With placid permanence
\forcelinebreak That knows not transience:
\forcelinebreak Firm in the Vast,
\forcelinebreak First, last;
\forcelinebreak Afar, yet close to us.
\section{AN INQUIRY}
A PHANTASY
Circumdederunt me dolores mortis. — Ps. xviii.
I said to It: “We grasp not what you meant,
\forcelinebreak (Dwelling down here, so narrowly pinched and pent)
\forcelinebreak By crowning Death the King of the Firmament:
\forcelinebreak — The query I admit to be
\forcelinebreak One of unwonted size,
\forcelinebreak But it is put you sorrowingly,
\forcelinebreak And not in idle-wise.”
“Sooth, since you ask me gravely,” It replied,
\forcelinebreak “Though too incisive questions I have decried,
\forcelinebreak This shows some thought, and may be justified.
\forcelinebreak I’ll gauge its value as I go
\forcelinebreak Across the Universe,
\forcelinebreak And bear me back in a moment or so
\forcelinebreak And say, for better or worse.”
Many years later, when It came again,
\forcelinebreak “That matter an instant back which brought you pain,”
\forcelinebreak It said, “and you besought me to explain:
\forcelinebreak Well, my forethoughtless modes to you
\forcelinebreak May seem a shameful thing,
\forcelinebreak But — I’d no meaning, that I knew,
\forcelinebreak In crowning Death as King!”
\section{THE FAITHFUL SWALLOW}
When summer shone
\forcelinebreak Its sweetest on
\forcelinebreak An August day,
\forcelinebreak “Here evermore,”
\forcelinebreak I said, “I’ll stay;
\forcelinebreak Not go away
\forcelinebreak To another shore
\forcelinebreak As fickle they!”
December came:
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas not the same!
\forcelinebreak I did not know
\forcelinebreak Fidelity
\forcelinebreak Would serve me so.
\forcelinebreak Frost, hunger, snow;
\forcelinebreak And now, ah me,
\forcelinebreak Too late to go!
\section{IN SHERBORNE ABBEY}
(17**)
The moon has passed to the panes of the south-aisle wall,
\forcelinebreak And brought the mullioned shades and shines to fall
\forcelinebreak On the cheeks of a woman and man in a pew there, pressed
\forcelinebreak Together as they pant, and recline for rest.
Forms round them loom, recumbent like their own,
\forcelinebreak Yet differing; for they are chiselled in frigid stone;
\forcelinebreak In doublets are some; some mailed, as whilom ahorse they leapt:
\forcelinebreak And stately husbands and wives, side by side as they anciently slept.
“We are not like those,” she murmurs. “For ever here set!”
\forcelinebreak “True, Love,” he replies. “We two are not marble yet.”
\forcelinebreak “And, worse,” said she; “not husband and wife!”
\forcelinebreak “But we soon shall be” (from him) “if we’ve life!”
\forcelinebreak A silence. A trotting of horses is heard without.
\forcelinebreak The lovers scarce breathe till its echo has quite died out.
“It was they! They have passed, anyhow!”
\forcelinebreak “Our horse, slily hid by the conduit,
\forcelinebreak They’ve missed, or they’d rushed to impound it!”
\forcelinebreak “And they’ll not discover us now.”
\forcelinebreak “Will not, until ‘tis too late,
\forcelinebreak And we can outface them straight!”
“Why did you make me ride in your front?” says she.
\forcelinebreak “To outwit the law. That was my strategy.
As I was borne off on the pillion behind you,
\forcelinebreak Th’abductor was you, Dearest, let me remind you;
\forcelinebreak And seizure of me by an heiress is no felony,
\forcelinebreak Whatever to do it with me as the seizer may be.”
Another silence sinks. And a cloud comes over the moon:
\forcelinebreak The print of the panes upon them enfeebles, as fallen in a swoon,
\forcelinebreak Until they are left in darkness unbroke and profound,
\forcelinebreak As likewise are left their chill and chiselled neighbours around.
A Family tradition.
\section{THE PAIR HE SAW PASS}
O sad man, now a long dead man,
\forcelinebreak To whom it was so real,
\forcelinebreak I picture, as ‘twere yesterday,
\forcelinebreak How you would tell the tale!
Just wived were you, you sad dead man,
\forcelinebreak And “settling down,” you’d say,
\forcelinebreak And had rigged the house you had reared for yourself
\forcelinebreak And the mate now yours alway.
You had eyed and tried each door and lock,
\forcelinebreak And cupboard, and bell, and glass,
\forcelinebreak When you glanced across to the road without,
\forcelinebreak And saw a carriage pass.
It bowled along from the old town-gate;
\forcelinebreak Two forms its freight, and those
\forcelinebreak Were a just-joined pair, as you discerned
\forcelinebreak By the favours and the bows.
And one of the pair you saw was a Fair
\forcelinebreak Whom you had wooed awhile,
\forcelinebreak And the other you saw, with a creeping awe,
\forcelinebreak Was yourself, in bridegroom style.
“And there we rode as man and wife
\forcelinebreak In the broad blaze of the sun,”
\forcelinebreak Would you aver; yea, you with her
\forcelinebreak You had left for another one.
“The morning,” you said, my friend long dead,
\forcelinebreak “Was ordinary and fine;
\forcelinebreak And yet there gleamed, it somehow seemed,
\forcelinebreak At moments, a strange shine.”
You hailed a boy from your garden-plot,
\forcelinebreak And sent him along the way
\forcelinebreak To the parish church; whence word was brought
\forcelinebreak No marriage had been that day.
You mused, you said; till you heard anon
\forcelinebreak That at that hour she died
\forcelinebreak Whom once, instead of your living wife,
\forcelinebreak You had meant to make your bride. . . .
You, dead man, dwelt in your new-built house
\forcelinebreak With no great spirit or will,
\forcelinebreak And after your soon decease your spouse
\forcelinebreak Re-mated: she lives there still.
Which should be blamed, if either can,
\forcelinebreak The teller does not know
\forcelinebreak For your mismatch, O weird-wed man,
\forcelinebreak Or what you thought was so.
From an old draft.
\section{THE MOCK WIFE}
It’s a dark drama, this; and yet I know the house, and date;
\forcelinebreak That is to say, the where and when John Channing met his fate.
\forcelinebreak The house was one in High Street, seen of burghers still alive,
\forcelinebreak The year was some two centuries bygone; seventeen-hundred and five
And dying was Channing the grocer. All the clocks had struck eleven,
\forcelinebreak And the watchers saw that ere the dawn his soul would be in Heaven;
\forcelinebreak When he said on a sudden: “I should like to kiss her before I go, —
\forcelinebreak For one last time!” They looked at each other and murmured, “Even so.”
She’d just been haled to prison, his wife; yea, charged with shaping his death:
\forcelinebreak By poison, ‘twas told; and now he was nearing the moment of his last breath:
\forcelinebreak He, witless that his young housemate was suspect of such a crime,
\forcelinebreak Lay thinking that his pangs were but a malady of the time.
Outside the room they pondered gloomily, wondering what to do,
\forcelinebreak As still he craved her kiss — the dying man who nothing knew:
\forcelinebreak “Guilty she may not be,” they said; “so why should we torture him
\forcelinebreak In these his last few minutes of life? Yet how indulge his whim?”
And as he begged there piteously for what could not be done,
\forcelinebreak And the murder-charge had flown about the town to every one,
\forcelinebreak The friends around him in their trouble thought of a hasty plan,
\forcelinebreak And straightway set about it. Let denounce them all who can.
“O will you do a kindly deed — it may be a soul to save;
\forcelinebreak At least, great misery to a man with one foot in the grave?”
\forcelinebreak Thus they to the buxom woman not unlike his prisoned wife;
\forcelinebreak “The difference he’s past seeing; it will soothe his sinking life.”
Well, the friendly neighbour did it; and he kissed her; held her fast;
\forcelinebreak Kissed her again and yet again. “I — knew she’d — come at last! —
\forcelinebreak Where have you been? — Ah, kept away! — I’m sorry — overtried —
\forcelinebreak God bless you!” And he loosed her, fell back tiredly, and died.
His wife stood six months after on the scaffold before the crowd,
\forcelinebreak Ten thousand of them gathered there; fixed, silent, and hard-browed.
\forcelinebreak To see her strangled and burnt to dust, as was the verdict then
\forcelinebreak On women truly judged, or false, of doing to death their men.
Some of them said as they watched her burn: “I am glad he never knew,
\forcelinebreak Since a few hold her as innocent — think such she could not do!
\forcelinebreak Glad, too, that (as they tell) he thought she kissed him ere he died.”
\forcelinebreak And they seemed to make no question that the cheat was justified.
\section{THE FIGHT ON DURNOVER MOOR}
(183*)
We’d loved, we two, some while,
\forcelinebreak And that had come which comes when men too much beguile;
\forcelinebreak And without more ado
\forcelinebreak My lady said: “O shame! Get home, and hide!” But he was true.
Yes: he was true to me,
\forcelinebreak And helped me some miles homealong; and vowing to come
\forcelinebreak Before the weeks were three,
\forcelinebreak And do in church a deed should strike all scandal dumb.
And when we had traipsed to Grey’s great Bridge, and pitched my box
\forcelinebreak On its cope, to breathe us there,
\forcelinebreak He cried: “What wrangle’s that in yonder moor? Those knocks,
\forcelinebreak Gad, seem not to be fair!
“And a woman on her knees! . . . I’ll go. . . . There’s surely something wrong!”
\forcelinebreak I said: “You are tired and spent
\forcelinebreak With carrying my heavy things so far and long!”
\forcelinebreak But he would go, and went.
And there I stood, steadying my box, and screened from none,
\forcelinebreak Upon the crown of the bridge,
\forcelinebreak Ashamed o’ my shape, as lower and lower slipped the sun
\forcelinebreak Down behind Pummery Ridge. . . .
“O you may long wait so!
\forcelinebreak Your young man’s done — aye, dead!” they by and by ran and cried.
\forcelinebreak “You shouldn’t have let him go
\forcelinebreak And join that whorage, but have kept him at your side!
“It was another wench,
\forcelinebreak Biggening as you, that he championed: yes, he came on straight
\forcelinebreak With a warmth no words could quench
\forcelinebreak For her helpless face, as soon as ever he eyed her state,
“And fought her fancy-lad, who had used her far from well,
\forcelinebreak So soon to make her moan,
\forcelinebreak Aye, closed with him in fight, till at a blow yours fell,
\forcelinebreak His skull against a stone.
“She’d followed him there, this man who’d won her, and overwon,
\forcelinebreak So, when he set to twit her
\forcelinebreak Yours couldn’t abide him — him all other fighters shun,
\forcelinebreak For he’s a practised hitter.
“Your man moved not, and the constables came for the other; so he,
\forcelinebreak He’ll never make her his wife
\forcelinebreak Any more than yours will you; for they say that at least ‘twill be
\forcelinebreak Across the water for life.”
“O what has she brought about!”
\forcelinebreak I groaned; “this woman met here in my selfsame plight;
\forcelinebreak She’s put another yielding heart’s poor candle out
\forcelinebreak By dogging her man to-night!
“He might never have done her his due
\forcelinebreak Of amends! But mine had bidden the banns for marrying me!
\forcelinebreak Why did we rest on this bridge; why rush to a quarrel did he
\forcelinebreak With which he had nothing to do!”
But vain were bursts of blame:
\forcelinebreak We twain stood like and like, though strangers till that hour,
\forcelinebreak Foredoomed to tread our paths beneath like gaze and glower,
\forcelinebreak Bear a like blushful name.
Almost the selfsame day
\forcelinebreak It fell that her time and mine came on, — a lad and a lass:
\forcelinebreak The father o’ mine was where the worms waggle under the grass,
\forcelinebreak Of hers, at Botany Bay.
\section{LAST LOOK ROUND ST. MARTIN’S FAIR}
The sun is like an open furnace door,
\forcelinebreak Whose round revealed retort confines the roar
\forcelinebreak Of fires beyond terrene;
\forcelinebreak The moon presents the lustre-lacking face
\forcelinebreak Of a brass dial gone green,
\forcelinebreak Whose hours no eye can trace.
\forcelinebreak The unsold heathcroppers are driven home
\forcelinebreak To the shades of the Great Forest whence they come
\forcelinebreak By men with long cord-waistcoats in brown monochrome.
\forcelinebreak The stars break out, and flicker in the breeze,
\forcelinebreak It seems, that twitches the trees. —
\forcelinebreak From its hot idol soon
\forcelinebreak The fickle unresting earth has turned to a fresh patroon —
\forcelinebreak The cold, now brighter, moon.
\forcelinebreak The woman in red, at the nut-stall with the gun,
\forcelinebreak Lights up, and still goes on:
\forcelinebreak She’s redder in the flare-lamp than the sun
\forcelinebreak Showed it ere it was gone.
\forcelinebreak Her hands are black with loading all the day,
\forcelinebreak And yet she treats her labour as ‘twere play,
\forcelinebreak Tosses her ear-rings, and talks ribaldry
\forcelinebreak To the young men around as natural gaiety,
\forcelinebreak And not a weary work she’d readily stay,
\forcelinebreak And never again nut-shooting see,
\forcelinebreak Though crying, “Fire away!”
\section{THE CARICATURE}
Of the Lady Lu there were stories told,
\forcelinebreak For she was a woman of comely mould,
\forcelinebreak In heart-experience old.
Too many a man for her whimful sake
\forcelinebreak Had borne with patience chill and ache,
\forcelinebreak And nightly lain awake!
This epicure in pangs, in her tooth
\forcelinebreak For more of the sweet, with a calm unruth
\forcelinebreak Cast eyes on a painter-youth.
Her junior he; and the bait of bliss
\forcelinebreak Which she knew to throw — not he to miss —
\forcelinebreak She threw, till he dreamed her his.
To her arts not blind, he yet sued long,
\forcelinebreak As a songster jailed by a deed of wrong
\forcelinebreak Will shower the doer with song;
Till tried by tones now smart, now suave,
\forcelinebreak He would flee in ire, to return a slave
\forcelinebreak Who willingly forgave.
When no! One day he left her door,
\forcelinebreak “I’ll ease mine agony!” he swore,
\forcelinebreak “And bear this thing no more!
“I’ll practise a plan!” Thereon he took
\forcelinebreak Her portrait from his sketching-book,
\forcelinebreak And, though his pencil shook,
He moulded on the real its mock;
\forcelinebreak Of beauteous brow, lip, eye, and lock
\forcelinebreak Composed a laughingstock.
Amazed at this satire of his long lure,
\forcelinebreak Whenever he scanned it he’d scarce endure
\forcelinebreak His laughter. ‘Twas his cure.
And, even when he woke in the night,
\forcelinebreak And chanced to think of the comic sight,
\forcelinebreak He laughed till exhausted quite.
“Why do you laugh?” she said one day
\forcelinebreak As he gazed at her in a curious way.
\forcelinebreak “Oh — for nothing,” said he. “Mere play.”
— A gulf of years then severed the twain;
\forcelinebreak Till he heard — a painter of high attain —
\forcelinebreak She was dying on her domain.
“And,” dryly added the friend who told,
\forcelinebreak “You may know or not that, in semblance cold,
\forcelinebreak She loved once, loved whole-souled;
“And that you were the man? Did you break your vow?
\forcelinebreak Well, well; she is good as gone by now . . .
\forcelinebreak But you hit her, all allow!”
Ah, the blow past bearing that he received!
\forcelinebreak In his bachelor quiet he grieved and grieved;
\forcelinebreak How cruel; how self-deceived!
Did she ever know? . . . Men pitied his state
\forcelinebreak As the curse of his own contrivance ate
\forcelinebreak Like canker into his fate.
For ever that thing of his evil craft
\forcelinebreak Uprose on his grief — his mocking draught —
\forcelinebreak Till, racked, he insanely laughed.
Thence onward folk would muse in doubt
\forcelinebreak What gloomed him so as he walked about,
\forcelinebreak But few, or none, found out.
\section{A LEADER OF FASHION}
Never has she known
\forcelinebreak The way a robin will skip and come,
\forcelinebreak With an eye half bold, half timorsome,
\forcelinebreak To the table’s edge for a breakfast crumb:
Nor has she seen
\forcelinebreak A streak of roseate gently drawn
\forcelinebreak Across the east, that means the dawn,
\forcelinebreak When, up and out, she foots it on:
Nor has she heard
\forcelinebreak The rustle of the sparrow’s tread
\forcelinebreak To roost in roof-holes near her head
\forcelinebreak When dusk bids her, too, seek her bed:
Nor has she watched
\forcelinebreak Amid a stormy eve’s turmoil
\forcelinebreak The pipkin slowly come to boil,
\forcelinebreak In readiness for one at toil:
Nor has she hearkened
\forcelinebreak Through the long night-time, lone and numb,
\forcelinebreak For sounds of sent-for help to come
\forcelinebreak Ere the swift-sinking life succumb:
Nor has she ever
\forcelinebreak Held the loved-lost one on her arm,
\forcelinebreak Attired with care his straightened form,
\forcelinebreak As if he were alive and warm:
Yea, never has she
\forcelinebreak Known, seen, heard, felt, such things as these,
\forcelinebreak Haps of so many in their degrees
\forcelinebreak Throughout their count of calvaries!
\section{MIDNIGHT ON BEECHEN, 187*}
On Beechen Cliff self-commune I
\forcelinebreak This night of mid-June, mute and dry;
\forcelinebreak When darkness never rises higher
\forcelinebreak Than Bath’s dim concave, towers, and spire,
\forcelinebreak Last eveglow loitering in the sky
To feel the dawn, close lurking by,
\forcelinebreak The while the lamps as glow-worms lie
\forcelinebreak In a glade, myself their lonely eyer
\forcelinebreak On Beechen Cliff:
The city sleeps below. I sigh,
\forcelinebreak For there dwells one, all testify,
\forcelinebreak To match the maddest dream’s desire:
\forcelinebreak What swain with her would not aspire
\forcelinebreak To walk the world, yea, sit but nigh
\forcelinebreak On Beechen Cliff!
\section{THE AËROLITE}
I thought a germ of Consciousness
\forcelinebreak Escaped on an aërolite
\forcelinebreak Aions ago
\forcelinebreak From some far globe, where no distress
\forcelinebreak Had means to mar supreme delight;
But only things abode that made
\forcelinebreak The power to feel a gift uncloyed
\forcelinebreak Of gladsome glow,
\forcelinebreak And life unendingly displayed
\forcelinebreak Emotions loved, desired, enjoyed.
And that this stray, exotic germ
\forcelinebreak Fell wanderingly upon our sphere,
\forcelinebreak After its wingings,
\forcelinebreak Quickened, and showed to us the worm
\forcelinebreak That gnaws vitalities native here,
And operated to unblind
\forcelinebreak Earth’s old-established ignorance
\forcelinebreak Of stains and stingings,
\forcelinebreak Which grin no griefs while not opined,
\forcelinebreak But cruelly tax intelligence.
“How shall we,” then the seers said,
\forcelinebreak “Oust this awareness, this disease
\forcelinebreak Called sense, here sown,
\forcelinebreak Though good, no doubt, where it was bred,
\forcelinebreak And wherein all things work to please?”
Others cried: “Nay, we rather would,
\forcelinebreak Since this untoward gift is sent
\forcelinebreak For ends unknown,
\forcelinebreak Limit its registerings to good,
\forcelinebreak And hide from it all anguishment.”
I left them pondering. This was how
\forcelinebreak (Or so I dreamed) was waked on earth
\forcelinebreak The mortal moan
\forcelinebreak Begot of sentience. Maybe now
\forcelinebreak Normal unwareness waits rebirth.
\section{THE PROSPECT}
The twigs of the birch imprint the December sky
\forcelinebreak Like branching veins upon a thin old hand;
\forcelinebreak I think of summer-time, yes, of last July,
\forcelinebreak When she was beneath them, greeting a gathered band
\forcelinebreak Of the urban and bland.
Iced airs wheeze through the skeletoned hedge from the north,
\forcelinebreak With steady snores, and a numbing that threatens snow,
\forcelinebreak And skaters pass; and merry boys go forth
\forcelinebreak To look for slides. But well, well do I know
\forcelinebreak Whither I would go!
December 1912.
\section{GENITRIX LAESA}
(MEASURE OF A SARUM SEQUENCE)
Nature, through these generations
\forcelinebreak You have nursed us with a patience
\forcelinebreak Cruelly crossed by malversations,
\forcelinebreak Marring mother-ministry
\forcelinebreak To your multitudes, so blended
\forcelinebreak By your processes, long-tended,
\forcelinebreak And the painstaking expended
\forcelinebreak On their chording tunefully.
But this stuff of slowest moulding,
\forcelinebreak In your fancy ever enfolding
\forcelinebreak Life that rhythmic chime is holding:
\forcelinebreak (Yes; so deem it you, Ladye —
\forcelinebreak This “concordia discors”!) — truly,
\forcelinebreak Rather, as if some imp unruly
\forcelinebreak Twitched your artist-arm when newly
\forcelinebreak Shaping forth your scenery!
Aye. Yet seem you not to know it.
\forcelinebreak Hence your world-work needs must show it
\forcelinebreak Good in dream, in deed below it:
\forcelinebreak (Lady, yes: so sight it we!)
\forcelinebreak Thus, then, go on fondly thinking:
\forcelinebreak Why should man your purblind blinking
\forcelinebreak Crave to cure, when all is sinking
\forcelinebreak To dissolubility?
\section{THE FADING ROSE}
I saw a rose, in bloom, but sad,
\forcelinebreak Shedding the petals that still it had,
\forcelinebreak And I heard it say: “O where is she
\forcelinebreak Who used to come and muse on me?
“The pruner says she comes no more
\forcelinebreak Because she loves another flower,
\forcelinebreak The weeder says she’s tired of me
\forcelinebreak Because I droop so suddenly.
“Because of a sweetheart she comes not,
\forcelinebreak Declares the man with the watering-pot;
\forcelinebreak ‘She does not come,’ says he with the rake,
\forcelinebreak ‘Because all women are fickle in make.’
“He with the spade and humorous leer
\forcelinebreak Says: ‘Know, I delve elsewhere than here,
\forcelinebreak Mid text-writ stones and grassy heaps,
\forcelinebreak Round which a curious silence creeps.
“‘She must get to you underground
\forcelinebreak If any way at all be found,
\forcelinebreak For, clad in her beauty, marble’s kin,
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis there I have laid her and trod her in.’”
\section{WHEN OATS WERE REAPED}
That day when oats were reaped, and wheat was ripe, and barley ripening,
\forcelinebreak The road-dust hot, and the bleaching grasses dry,
\forcelinebreak I walked along and said,
\forcelinebreak While looking just ahead to where some silent people lie:
“I wounded one who’s there, and now know well I wounded her:
\forcelinebreak But, ah, she does not know that she wounded me!”
\forcelinebreak And not an air stirred,
\forcelinebreak Nor a bill of any bird; and no response accorded she.
August 1913.
\section{LOUIE}
I am forgetting Louie the buoyant;
\forcelinebreak Why not raise her phantom, too,
\forcelinebreak Here in daylight
\forcelinebreak With the elect one’s?
\forcelinebreak She will never thrust the foremost figure out of view!
Mid this heat, in gauzy muslin
\forcelinebreak See I Louie’s life-lit brow
\forcelinebreak Here in daylight
\forcelinebreak By the elect one’s. —
\forcelinebreak Long two strangers they and far apart; such neighbours now!
July 1913.
\section{SHE OPENED THE DOOR}
She opened the door of the West to me,
\forcelinebreak With its loud sea-lashings,
\forcelinebreak And cliff-side clashings
\forcelinebreak Of waters rife with revelry.
She opened the door of Romance to me,
\forcelinebreak The door from a cell
\forcelinebreak I had known too well,
\forcelinebreak Too long, till then, and was fain to flee.
She opened the door of a Love to me,
\forcelinebreak That passed the wry
\forcelinebreak World-welters by
\forcelinebreak As far as the arching blue the lea.
She opens the door of the Past to me,
\forcelinebreak Its magic lights,
\forcelinebreak Its heavenly heights,
\forcelinebreak When forward little is to see!
\section{WHAT’S THERE TO TELL?}
(SONG)
What’s th
ere to tell of the world
\forcelinebreak More than is told?
\forcelinebreak — Into its vortex hurled,
\forcelinebreak Out of it rolled,
\forcelinebreak Can we yet more of the world
\forcelinebreak Find to be told?
\forcelinebreak Lalla-la, lu!
If some could last alive
\forcelinebreak Much might be told;
\forcelinebreak Yes, gladness might survive;
\forcelinebreak But they go cold —
\forcelinebreak Each and each late alive —
\forcelinebreak All their tale told.
\forcelinebreak Lalla-la, lu!
There’s little more of the world,
\forcelinebreak Then, to be told;
\forcelinebreak Had ever life unfurled
\forcelinebreak Joys manifold,
\forcelinebreak There had been more of the world
\forcelinebreak Left to be told.
\forcelinebreak Lalla-la, lalla-la, lalla-la, lu!
190*.
\section{THE HARBOUR BRIDGE}
From here, the quay, one looks above to mark
\forcelinebreak The bridge across the harbour, hanging dark
\forcelinebreak Against the day’s-end sky, fair-green in glow
\forcelinebreak Over and under the middle archway’s bow:
\forcelinebreak It draws its skeleton where the sun has set,
\forcelinebreak Yea, clear from cutwater to parapet;
\forcelinebreak On which mild glow, too, lines of rope and spar
\forcelinebreak Trace themselves black as char.
Down here in shade we hear the painters shift
\forcelinebreak Against the bollards with a drowsy lift,
\forcelinebreak As moved by the incoming stealthy tide.
\forcelinebreak High up across the bridge the burghers glide
\forcelinebreak As cut black-paper portraits hastening on
\forcelinebreak In conversation none knows what upon:
\forcelinebreak Their sharp-edged lips move quickly word by word
\forcelinebreak To speech that is not heard.
There trails the dreamful girl, who leans and stops,
\forcelinebreak There presses the practical woman to the shops,
There is a sailor, meeting his wife with a start,
\forcelinebreak And we, drawn nearer, judge they are keeping apart.
\forcelinebreak Both pause. She says: “I’ve looked for you. I thought
\forcelinebreak We’d make it up.” Then no words can be caught.
\forcelinebreak At last: “Won’t you come home?” She moves still nigher:
\forcelinebreak “‘Tis comfortable, with a fire.”
“No,” he says gloomily. “And, anyhow,
\forcelinebreak I can’t give up the other woman now:
\forcelinebreak You should have talked like that in former days,
\forcelinebreak When I was last home.” They go different ways.
\forcelinebreak And the west dims, and yellow lamplights shine:
\forcelinebreak And soon above, like lamps more opaline,
\forcelinebreak White stars ghost forth, that care not for men’s wives,
\forcelinebreak Or any other lives.
Weymouth.
\section{VAGRANT’S SONG}
(WITH AN OLD WESSEX REFRAIN)
\subsection{I}
When a dark-eyed dawn
\forcelinebreak Crawls forth, cloud-drawn,
\forcelinebreak And starlings doubt the night-time’s close;
\forcelinebreak And “three months yet,”
\forcelinebreak They seem to fret,
\forcelinebreak “Before we cease us slaves of snows,
\forcelinebreak And sun returns
\forcelinebreak To loose the burns,
\forcelinebreak And this wild woe called Winter goes!” —
\forcelinebreak O a hollow tree
\forcelinebreak Is as good for me
\forcelinebreak As a house where the back-brand glows!
\forcelinebreak Che-hane, mother; che-hane, mother,
\forcelinebreak As a house where the back-brand glows!
\subsection{II}
When autumn brings
\forcelinebreak A whirr of wings
\forcelinebreak Among the evergreens around,
\forcelinebreak And sundry thrills
\forcelinebreak About their quills
\forcelinebreak Awe rooks, and misgivings abound,
\forcelinebreak And the joyless pines
\forcelinebreak In leaning lines
\forcelinebreak Protect from gales the lower ground,
\forcelinebreak O a hollow tree
\forcelinebreak Is as good for me
\forcelinebreak As a house of a thousand pound!
\forcelinebreak Che-hane, mother; che-hane, mother,
\forcelinebreak As a house of a thousand pound!
“Back-brand” — the log which used to be laid at the back of a wood fire.
\section{FARMER DUNMAN’S FUNERAL}
“Bury me on a Sunday,”
\forcelinebreak He said; “so as to see
\forcelinebreak Poor folk there. ‘Tis their one day
\forcelinebreak To spare for following me.”
With forethought of that Sunday,
\forcelinebreak He wrote, while he was well,
\forcelinebreak On ten rum-bottles one day,
\forcelinebreak “Drink for my funeral.”
They buried him on a Sunday,
\forcelinebreak That folk should not be balked
\forcelinebreak His wish, as ‘twas their one day:
\forcelinebreak And forty couple walked.
They said: “To have it Sunday
\forcelinebreak Was always his concern;
\forcelinebreak His meaning being that one day
\forcelinebreak He’d do us a good turn.
“We must, had it been Monday,
\forcelinebreak Have got it over soon,
\forcelinebreak But now we gain, being Sunday,
\forcelinebreak A jolly afternoon.”
\section{THE SEXTON AT LONGPUDDLE}
He passes down the churchyard track
\forcelinebreak On his way to toll the bell;
\forcelinebreak And stops, and looks at the graves around,
\forcelinebreak And notes each finished and greening mound
\forcelinebreak Complacently,
\forcelinebreak As their shaper he,
\forcelinebreak And one who can do it well,
\forcelinebreak And, with a prosperous sense of his doing,
\forcelinebreak Thinks he’ll not lack
\forcelinebreak Plenty such work in the long ensuing
\forcelinebreak Futurity.
\forcelinebreak For people will always die,
\forcelinebreak And he will always be nigh
\forcelinebreak To shape their cell.
\section{THE HARVEST-SUPPER}
(Circa 1850)
Nell and the other maids danced their best
\forcelinebreak With the Scotch-Greys in the barn;
\forcelinebreak These had been asked to the harvest-feast;
\forcelinebreak Red shapes amid the corn.
Nell and the other maids sat in a row
\forcelinebreak Within the benched barn-nook;
\forcelinebreak Nell led the songs of long ago
\forcelinebreak She’d learnt from never a book.
She sang of the false Sir John of old,
\forcelinebreak The lover who witched to win,
\forcelinebreak And the parrot, and cage of glittering gold;
\forcelinebreak And the other maids joined in.
Then whispered to her a gallant Grey,
\forcelinebreak “Dear, sing that ballet again!
\forcelinebreak For a bonnier mouth in a bonnier way
\forcelinebreak Has sung not anywhen!”
As she loosed her lips anew there sighed
\forcelinebreak To Nell through the dark barn-door
\forcelinebreak The voice of her Love from the night outside,
\forcelinebreak Who was buried the month before:
“O Nell, can you sing ballets there,
\forcelinebreak And I out here in the clay,
\forcelinebreak Of lovers false of yore, nor care
\forcelinebreak What you vowed to me one day!
“O can you dance with soldiers bold,
\forcelinebreak Who kiss when dancing’s done,
\forcelinebreak Your little waist within their hold,
\forcelinebreak As ancient troth were none!”
She cried: “My heart is pierced with a wound!
\forcelinebreak There’s something outside the wall
\forcelinebreak That calls me forth to a greening mound:
\forcelinebreak I can sing no more at all!
“My old Love rises from the worms,
\forcelinebreak Just as he used to be,
\forcelinebreak And I must let gay gallants’ arms
\forcelinebreak No more encircle me!”
They bore her home from the merry-making;
\forcelinebreak Bad dreams disturbed her bed:
\forcelinebreak “Nevermore will I dance and sing,”
\forcelinebreak Mourned Nell; “and never wed!”
\section{AT A PAUSE IN A COUNTRY DANCE}
(MIDDLE OF LAST CENTURY)
They stood at the foot of the figure,
\forcelinebreak And panted: they’d danced it down through —
\forcelinebreak That “Dashing White Serjeant” they loved so: —
\forcelinebreak A window, uncurtained, was nigh them
\forcelinebreak That end of the room. Thence in view
Outside it a valley updrew,
\forcelinebreak Where the frozen moon lit frozen snow:
\forcelinebreak At the furthermost reach of the valley
\forcelinebreak A light from a window shone low.
\forcelinebreak “They are inside that window,” said she,
As she looked. “They sit up there for me;
\forcelinebreak And baby is sleeping there, too.”
\forcelinebreak He glanced. “Yes,” he said. “Never mind,
\forcelinebreak Let’s foot our way up again; do!
\forcelinebreak And dance down the line as before.
What’s the world to us, meeting once more!”
\forcelinebreak “ — Not much, when your husband full trusts you,
\forcelinebreak And thinks the child his that I bore!”
\forcelinebreak He was silent. The fiddlers six-eighted
\forcelinebreak With even more passionate vigour.
The pair swept again up the figure,
\forcelinebreak The child’s cuckoo-father and she,
\forcelinebreak And the next couples threaded below,
\forcelinebreak And the twain wove their way to the top
\forcelinebreak Of “The Dashing White Serjeant” they loved so,
\forcelinebreak Restarting: right, left, to and fro.
— From the homestead, seen yon, the small glow
\forcelinebreak Still adventured forth over the white,
\forcelinebreak Where the child slept, unknowing who sired it,
\forcelinebreak In the cradle of wicker tucked tight,
\forcelinebreak And its grandparents, nodding, admired it
\forcelinebreak In elbow-chairs through the slow night.
\section{ON THE PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN ABOUT TO BE HANGED}
Comely and capable one of our race,
\forcelinebreak Posing there in your gown of grace,
\forcelinebreak Plain, yet becoming;
\forcelinebreak Could subtlest breast
\forcelinebreak Ever have guessed
\forcelinebreak What was behind that innocent face,
\forcelinebreak Drumming, drumming!
Would that your Causer, ere knoll your knell
\forcelinebreak For this riot of passion, might deign to tell
\forcelinebreak Why, since It made you
\forcelinebreak Sound in the germ,
\forcelinebreak It sent a worm
\forcelinebreak To madden Its handiwork, when It might well
\forcelinebreak Not have assayed you,
Not have implanted, to your deep rue,
\forcelinebreak The Clytaemnestra spirit in you,
\forcelinebreak And with purblind vision
\forcelinebreak Sowed a tare
\forcelinebreak In a field so fair,
\forcelinebreak And a thing of symmetry, seemly to view,
\forcelinebreak Brought to derision!
January 6, 1923.
\section{THE CHURCH AND THE WEDDING}
“I’ll restore this old church for our marriage:
\forcelinebreak I’ve ordered the plans:
\forcelinebreak Style of wedding your choice — foot or carriage —
\forcelinebreak By licence, or banns.”
He restored it, as though built newly:
\forcelinebreak The bishop was won
\forcelinebreak To preach, who pronounced it truly
\forcelinebreak A thing well done.
But the wedding waits; long, long has waited;
\forcelinebreak And guesswork is dumb
\forcelinebreak Why those who were there to have mated
\forcelinebreak Do not come.
And when the nights moan like the wailings
\forcelinebreak Of souls sore-tried,
\forcelinebreak The folk say who pass the church-palings
\forcelinebreak They hear inside
Strange sounds as of anger and sadness
\forcelinebreak That cut the heart’s core,
\forcelinebreak And shaken words bitter to madness;
\forcelinebreak And then no more.
\section{THE SHIVER}
Five lone clangs from the house-clock nigh,
\forcelinebreak And I woke with a sigh:
\forcelinebreak Stars wore west like a slow tide flowing,
\forcelinebreak And my lover had told yesternight of his going, —
\forcelinebreak That at this gray hour he’d be hasting by,
Starting betimes on a journey afar: —
\forcelinebreak So, casement ajar,
\forcelinebreak I eyed in the upland pasture his figure,
\forcelinebreak A dim dumb speck, growing darker and bigger,
\forcelinebreak Then smalling to nought where the nut-trees are.
He could not bend his track to my window, he’d said,
\forcelinebreak Being hurried ahead:
\forcelinebreak But I wished he had tried to! — and then felt a shiver,
\forcelinebreak Corpse-cold, as he sank toward the town by the river;
\forcelinebreak And back I went sadly and slowly to bed.
What meant my shiver while seeing him pass
\forcelinebreak As a dot on the grass
\forcelinebreak I surmised not then. But later I knew it
\forcelinebreak When came again he; and my words outdrew it,
\forcelinebreak As said he: “It’s hard for your bearing, alas!
“But I’ve seen, I have clasped, where the smart ships plough,
\forcelinebreak One of far brighter brow.
\forcelinebreak A sea-goddess. Shiver not. One far rarer
\forcelinebreak In gifts than I find thee; yea, warmer and fairer: —
\forcelinebreak I seek her again; and I love you not now.”
\section{NOT ONLY I}
Not only I
\forcelinebreak Am doomed awhile to lie
\forcelinebreak In this close bin with earthen sides;
\forcelinebreak But the things I thought, and the songs I sang,
\forcelinebreak And the hopes I had, and the passioned pang
\forcelinebreak For people I knew
\forcelinebreak Who passed before me,
\forcelinebreak Whose memory barely abides;
\forcelinebreak And the visions I drew
\forcelinebreak That daily upbore me!
And the joyous springs and summers,
\forcelinebreak And the jaunts with blithe newcomers,
\forcelinebreak And my plans and appearances; drives and rides
\forcelinebreak That fanned my face to a lively red;
\forcelinebreak And the grays and blues
\forcelinebreak Of the far-off views,
\forcelinebreak That nobody else discerned outspread;
\forcelinebreak And little achievements for blame or praise;
\forcelinebreak Things left undone; things left unsaid;
\forcelinebreak In brief, my days!
Compressed here in six feet by two,
\forcelinebreak In secrecy
\forcelinebreak To lie with me
\forcelinebreak Till the Call shall be,
\forcelinebreak Are all these things I knew,
\forcelinebreak Which cannot be handed on;
\forcelinebreak Strange happenings quite unrecorded,
\forcelinebreak Lost to the world and disregarded,
\forcelinebreak That only thinks: “Here moulders till Doom’s-dawn
\forcelinebreak A woman’s skeleton.”
\section{SHE SAW HIM, SHE SAID}
“Why, I saw you with the sexton, outside the church-door,
\forcelinebreak So I did not hurry me home,
\forcelinebreak Thinking you’d not be come,
\forcelinebreak Having something to him to say. —
\forcelinebreak Yes: ‘twas you, Dear, though you seemed sad, heart-sore;
\forcelinebreak How fast you’ve got therefrom!”
“I’ve not been out. I’ve watched the moon through the birch,
\forcelinebreak And heard the bell toll. Yes,
\forcelinebreak Like a passing soul in distress!”
\forcelinebreak “ — But no bell’s tolled to-day?” . . .
\forcelinebreak His face looked strange, like the face of him seen by the church,
\forcelinebreak And she sank to musefulness.
\section{ONCE AT SWANAGE}
The spray sprang up across the cusps of the moon,
\forcelinebreak And all its light loomed green
\forcelinebreak As a witch-flame’s weirdsome sheen
\forcelinebreak At the minute of an incantation scene;
\forcelinebreak And it greened our gaze — that night at demilune.
Roaring high and roaring low was the sea
\forcelinebreak Behind the headland shores:
\forcelinebreak It symboled the slamming of doors,
\forcelinebreak Or a regiment hurrying over hollow floors. . . .
\forcelinebreak And there we two stood, hands clasped; I and she!
\section{THE FLOWER’S TRAGEDY}
In the bedchamber window, near the glass,
\forcelinebreak Stood the little flower in the little vase,
\forcelinebreak Unnoticed quite
\forcelinebreak For a whole fortnight,
\forcelinebreak And withered for lack of watering
\forcelinebreak To a skeleton mere — a mummied thing.
But it was not much, mid a world of teen,
\forcelinebreak That a flower should waste in a nook unseen!
One needed no thought to ascertain
\forcelinebreak How it happened; that when she went in the rain
\forcelinebreak To return here not,
\forcelinebreak She was mindless what
\forcelinebreak She had left here to perish. — Ah, well: for an hour
\forcelinebreak I wished I had not found the flower!
Yet it was not much. And she never had known
\forcelinebreak Of the flower’s fate; nor it of her own.
\section{AT THE AQUATIC SPORTS}
With their backs to the sea two fiddlers stand
\forcelinebreak Facing the concourse on the strand,
\forcelinebreak And a third man who sings.
\forcelinebreak The sports proceed; there are crab-catchings;
\forcelinebreak The people laugh as levity spreads;
\forcelinebreak Yet these three do not turn their heads
\forcelinebreak To see whence the merriment springs.
They cease their music, but even then
\forcelinebreak They stand as before, do those three men,
\forcelinebreak Though pausing, nought to do:
\forcelinebreak They never face to the seaward view
\forcelinebreak To enjoy the contests, add their cheer,
\forcelinebreak So wholly is their being here
\forcelinebreak A business they pursue.
\section{A WATCHER’S REGRET}
J. E.’S STORY
I slept across the front of the clock,
\forcelinebreak Close to the long case-door;
\forcelinebreak The hours were brought by their brazen knock
\forcelinebreak To my ear as the slow nights wore.
Thus did I, she being sick to death,
\forcelinebreak That each hour as it belled
\forcelinebreak Should wake me to rise, and learn by her breath
\forcelinebreak Whether her strength still held.
Yet though throughout life’s midnights all
\forcelinebreak I would have watched till spent
\forcelinebreak For her dear sake, I missed the call
\forcelinebreak Of the hour in which she went.
\section{HORSES ABOARD}
Horses in horsecloths stand in a row
\forcelinebreak On board the huge ship that at last lets go:
\forcelinebreak Whither are they sailing? They do not know,
\forcelinebreak Nor what for, nor how. —
\forcelinebreak They are horses of war,
\forcelinebreak And are going to where there is fighting afar;
\forcelinebreak But they gaze through their eye-holes unwitting they are,
\forcelinebreak And that in some wilderness, gaunt and ghast,
\forcelinebreak Their bones will bleach ere a year has passed,
\forcelinebreak And the item be as “war-waste” classed. —
\forcelinebreak And when the band booms, and the folk say “Good-bye!”
\forcelinebreak And the shore slides astern, they appear wrenched awry
\forcelinebreak From the scheme Nature planned for them, — wondering why.
\section{THE HISTORY OF AN HOUR}
Vain is the wish to try rhyming it, writing it!
\forcelinebreak Pen cannot weld into words what it was;
\forcelinebreak Time will be squandered in toil at inditing it;
\forcelinebreak Clear is the cause!
Yea, ‘twas too satiate with soul, too ethereal;
\forcelinebreak June-morning scents of a rose-bush in flower
\forcelinebreak Catch in a clap-net of hempen material;
\forcelinebreak So catch that hour!
\section{THE MISSED TRAIN}
How I was caught
\forcelinebreak Hieing home, after days of allure,
\forcelinebreak And forced to an inn — small, obscure —
\forcelinebreak At the junction, gloom-fraught.
How civil my face
\forcelinebreak To get them to chamber me there —
\forcelinebreak A roof I had scorned, scarce aware
\forcelinebreak That it stood at the place.
And how all the night
\forcelinebreak I had dreams of the unwitting cause
\forcelinebreak Of my lodgment. How lonely I was;
\forcelinebreak How consoled by her sprite!
Thus onetime to me . . .
\forcelinebreak Dim wastes of dead years bar away
\forcelinebreak Then from now. But such happenings to-day
\forcelinebreak Fall to lovers, may be!
Years, years as shoaled seas,
\forcelinebreak Truly, stretch now between! Less and less
\forcelinebreak Shrink the visions then vast in me. — Yes,
\forcelinebreak Then in me: Now in these.
\section{UNDER HIGH-STOY HILL}
Four climbed High-Stoy from Ivelwards,
\forcelinebreak Where hedge meets hedge, and cart-ruts wind,
\forcelinebreak Chattering like birds,
\forcelinebreak And knowing not what lay behind.
We laughed beneath the moonlight blink,
\forcelinebreak Said supper would be to our mind,
\forcelinebreak And did not think
\forcelinebreak Of Time, and what might lie behind. . . .
The moon still meets that tree-tipped height,
\forcelinebreak The road — as then — still trails inclined;
\forcelinebreak But since that night
\forcelinebreak We have well learnt what lay behind!
For all of the four then climbing here
\forcelinebreak But one are ghosts, and he brow-lined;
\forcelinebreak With him they fare,
\forcelinebreak Yet speak not of what lies behind.
\section{AT THE MILL}
O Miller Knox, whom we knew well,
\forcelinebreak And the mill, and the floury floors,
\forcelinebreak And the corn, — and those two women,
\forcelinebreak And infants — yours!
The sun was shining when you rode
\forcelinebreak To market on that day:
\forcelinebreak The sun was set when home-along
\forcelinebreak You ambled in the gray,
\forcelinebreak And gathered what had taken place
\forcelinebreak While you were away.
O Miller Knox, ‘twas grief to see
\forcelinebreak Your good wife hanging there
\forcelinebreak By her own rash and passionate hand,
\forcelinebreak In a throe of despair;
And those two children, one by her,
\forcelinebreak And one by the waiting-maid,
\forcelinebreak Borne the same hour, and you afar,
\forcelinebreak And she past aid.
And though sometimes you walk of nights,
\forcelinebreak Sleepless, to Yalbury Brow,
\forcelinebreak And glance the graveyard way, and grunt,
\forcelinebreak “‘Twas not much, anyhow:
\forcelinebreak She shouldn’t ha’ minded!” nought it helps
\forcelinebreak To say that now.
And the water dribbles down your wheel,
\forcelinebreak Your mead blooms green and gold,
\forcelinebreak And birds ‘twit in your apple-boughs
\forcelinebreak Just as of old.
\section{ALIKE AND UNLIKE}
(GREAT-ORME’S HEAD)
We watched the selfsame scene on that long drive,
\forcelinebreak Saw the magnificent purples, as one eye,
\forcelinebreak Of those near mountains; saw the storm arrive;
\forcelinebreak Laid up the sight in memory, you and I,
\forcelinebreak As if for joint recallings by and by.
But our eye-records, like in hue and line,
\forcelinebreak Had superimposed on them, that very day,
\forcelinebreak Gravings on your side deep, but slight on mine! —
\forcelinebreak Tending to sever us thenceforth alway;
\forcelinebreak Mine commonplace; yours tragic, gruesome, gray.
\section{THE THING UNPLANNED}
The white winter sun struck its stroke on the bridge,
\forcelinebreak The meadow-rills rippled and gleamed
\forcelinebreak As I left the thatched post-office, just by the ridge,
\forcelinebreak And dropped in my pocket her long tender letter,
\forcelinebreak With: “This must be snapped! it is more than it seemed;
\forcelinebreak And now is the opportune time!”
But against what I willed worked the surging sublime
\forcelinebreak Of the thing that I did — the thing better!
\section{THE SHEEP-BOY}
A yawning, sunned concave
\forcelinebreak Of purple, spread as an ocean wave
\forcelinebreak Entroughed on a morning of swell and sway
\forcelinebreak After a night when wind-fiends have been heard to rave:
\forcelinebreak Thus was the Heath called “Draäts,” on an August day.
Suddenly there intunes a hum:
\forcelinebreak This side, that side, it seems to come.
\forcelinebreak From the purple in myriads rise the bees
\forcelinebreak With consternation mid their rapt employ.
\forcelinebreak So headstrongly each speeds him past, and flees,
\forcelinebreak As to strike the face of the shepherd-boy.
\forcelinebreak Awhile he waits, and wonders what they mean;
\forcelinebreak Till none is left upon the shagged demesne.
To learn what ails, the sheep-boy looks around;
\forcelinebreak Behind him, out of the sea in swirls
\forcelinebreak Flexuous and solid, clammy vapour-curls
\forcelinebreak Are rolling over Pokeswell Hills to the inland ground,
\forcelinebreak Into the heath they sail,
\forcelinebreak And travel up the vale
\forcelinebreak Like the moving pillar of cloud raised by the Israelite: —
\forcelinebreak In a trice the lonely sheep-boy seen so late ago,
\forcelinebreak Draäts’-Hollow in gorgeous blow,
\forcelinebreak And Kite-Hill’s regal glow,
\forcelinebreak Are viewless — folded into those creeping scrolls of white.
On Rainbarrows.
\section{RETTY’S PHASES}
\subsection{I}
Retty used to shake her head,
\forcelinebreak Look with wicked eye;
\forcelinebreak Say, “I’d tease you, simple Ned,
\forcelinebreak If I cared to try!”
\forcelinebreak Then she’d hot-up scarlet red,
\forcelinebreak Stilly step away,
\forcelinebreak Much afraid that what she’d said
\forcelinebreak Sounded bold to say.
\subsection{II}
Retty used to think she loved
\forcelinebreak (Just a little) me.
\forcelinebreak Not untruly, as it proved
\forcelinebreak Afterwards to be.
For, when weakness forced her rest
\forcelinebreak If we walked a mile,
\forcelinebreak She would whisper she was blest
\forcelinebreak By my clasp awhile.
\subsection{III}
Retty used at last to say
\forcelinebreak When she neared the Vale,
\forcelinebreak “Mind that you, Dear, on that day
\forcelinebreak Ring my wedding peal!”
\forcelinebreak And we all, with pulsing pride,
\forcelinebreak Vigorous sounding gave
\forcelinebreak Those six bells, the while outside
\forcelinebreak John filled in her grave.
\subsection{IV}
Retty used to draw me down
\forcelinebreak To the turfy heaps,
\forcelinebreak Where, with yeoman, squire, and clown
\forcelinebreak Noticeless she sleeps.
\forcelinebreak Now her silent slumber-place
\forcelinebreak Seldom do I know,
\forcelinebreak For when last I saw her face
\forcelinebreak Was so long ago!
From an old draft of 1868.
In many villages it was customary after the funeral of an unmarried young woman to ring a peal as for her wedding while the grave was being filled in, as if Death were not to be allowed to balk her of bridal honours. Young unmarried men were always her bearers.
\section{A POOR MAN AND A LADY}
We knew it was not a valid thing,
\forcelinebreak And only sanct in the sight of God
\forcelinebreak (To use your phrase), as with fervent nod
\forcelinebreak You swore your assent when I placed the ring
On your pale slim hand. Our whispering
\forcelinebreak Was soft as the fan of a turtledove
\forcelinebreak That round our heads might have seemed to wing;
\forcelinebreak So solemn were we; so sincere our love.
We could do no better; and thus it stood
\forcelinebreak Through a time of timorous secret bliss,
\forcelinebreak Till we were divided, and never a kiss
\forcelinebreak Of mine could touch you, or likelihood
\forcelinebreak Illumed our sky that we might, or should
\forcelinebreak Be each to each in the world’s wide eye
\forcelinebreak What we were unviewed; and our vows make good
\forcelinebreak In the presence of parents and standers by.
I was a striver with deeds to do,
\forcelinebreak And little enough to do them with,
\forcelinebreak And a comely woman of noble kith,
\forcelinebreak With a courtly match to make, were you;
\forcelinebreak And we both were young; and though sterling-true
\forcelinebreak You had proved to our pledge under previous strains,
\forcelinebreak Our “union,” as we called it, grew
\forcelinebreak Less grave to your eyes in your town campaigns.
Well: the woeful neared, you needn’t be told:
\forcelinebreak The current news-sheets clarioned soon
\forcelinebreak That you would be wived on a summer noon
\forcelinebreak By a man of illustrious line and old:
\forcelinebreak Nor better nor worse than the manifold
\forcelinebreak Of marriages made, had there not been
\forcelinebreak Our faith-swearing when fervent-souled,
\forcelinebreak Which, to me, seemed a breachless bar between.
We met in a Mayfair church, alone:
\forcelinebreak (The request was mine, which you yielded to.)
\forcelinebreak “But we were not married at all!” urged you:
\forcelinebreak “Why, of course we were!” I said. Your tone,
\forcelinebreak I noted, was world-wise. You went on:
\forcelinebreak “‘Twas sweet while it lasted. But you well know
\forcelinebreak That law is law. He’ll be, anon,
\forcelinebreak My husband really. You, Dear, weren’t so.”
“I wished — but to learn if — ” faltered I,
\forcelinebreak And stopped. “But I’ll sting you not. Farewell!”
\forcelinebreak And we parted. — Do you recall the bell
\forcelinebreak That tolled by chance as we said good-bye? . . .
\forcelinebreak I saw you no more. The track of a high,
\forcelinebreak Sweet, liberal lady you’ve doubtless trod.
\forcelinebreak — All’s past! No heart was burst thereby,
\forcelinebreak And no one knew, unless it was God.
The foregoing was intended to preserve an episode in the story of “The Poor Man and the Lady,” written in 1868, and, like these lines, in the first person; but never printed, and ultimately destroyed.
\section{AN EXPOSTULATION}
Why want to go afar
\forcelinebreak Where pitfalls are,
\forcelinebreak When all we swains adore
\forcelinebreak Your featness more and more
\forcelinebreak As heroine of our artless masquings here,
\forcelinebreak And count few Wessex’ daughters half so dear?
Why paint your appealing face,
\forcelinebreak When its born grace
\forcelinebreak Is such no skill can match
\forcelinebreak With powder, puff, or patch,
\forcelinebreak Whose every touch defames your bloomfulness,
\forcelinebreak And with each stain increases our distress?
Yea, is it not enough
\forcelinebreak That (rare or rough
\forcelinebreak Your lines here) all uphold you,
\forcelinebreak And as with wings enfold you,
\forcelinebreak But you must needs desert the kine-cropt vale
\forcelinebreak Wherein your foredames gaily filled the pail?
\section{TO A SEA-CLIFF}
(DURLSTON HEAD)
Lend me an ear
\forcelinebreak While I read you here
\forcelinebreak A page from your history,
\forcelinebreak Old cliff — not known
\forcelinebreak To your solid stone,
\forcelinebreak Yet yours inseparably.
Near to your crown
\forcelinebreak There once sat down
\forcelinebreak A silent listless pair;
\forcelinebreak And the sunset ended,
\forcelinebreak And dark descended,
\forcelinebreak And still the twain sat there.
Past your jutting head
\forcelinebreak Then a line-ship sped,
\forcelinebreak Lit brightly as a city;
\forcelinebreak And she sobbed: “There goes
\forcelinebreak A man who knows
\forcelinebreak I am his, beyond God’s pity!”
He slid apart
\forcelinebreak Who had thought her heart
\forcelinebreak His own, and not aboard
\forcelinebreak A bark, sea-bound. . . .
\forcelinebreak That night they found
\forcelinebreak Between them lay a sword.
\section{THE ECHO-ELF ANSWERS}
How much shall I love her?
\forcelinebreak For life, or not long?
\forcelinebreak “Not long.”
Alas! When forget her?
\forcelinebreak In years, or by June?
\forcelinebreak “By June.”
And whom woo I after?
\forcelinebreak No one, or a throng?
\forcelinebreak “A throng.”
Of these shall I wed one
\forcelinebreak Long hence, or quite soon?
\forcelinebreak “Quite soon.”
And which will my bride be?
\forcelinebreak The right or the wrong?
\forcelinebreak “The wrong.”
And my remedy — what kind?
\forcelinebreak Wealth-wove, or earth-hewn?
\forcelinebreak “Earth-hewn.”
\section{CYNIC’S EPITAPH}
A race with the sun as he downed
\forcelinebreak I ran at evetide,
\forcelinebreak Intent who should first gain the ground
\forcelinebreak And there hide.
He beat me by some minutes then,
\forcelinebreak But I triumphed anon,
\forcelinebreak For when he’d to rise up again
\forcelinebreak I stayed on.
\section{A BEAUTY’S SOLILOQUY DURING HER HONEYMOON}
Too late, too late! I did not know my fairness
\forcelinebreak Would catch the world’s keen eyes so!
\forcelinebreak How the men look at me! My radiant rareness
\forcelinebreak I deemed not they would prize so!
That I was a peach for any man’s possession
\forcelinebreak Why did not some one say
\forcelinebreak Before I leased myself in an hour’s obsession
\forcelinebreak To this dull mate for aye!
His days are mine. I am one who cannot steal her
\forcelinebreak Ahead of his plodding pace:
\forcelinebreak As he is, so am I. One doomed to feel her
\forcelinebreak A wasted form and face!
I was so blind! It did sometimes just strike me
\forcelinebreak All girls were not as I,
\forcelinebreak But, dwelling much alone, how few were like me
\forcelinebreak I could not well descry;
Till, at this Grand Hotel, all looks bend on me
\forcelinebreak In homage as I pass
\forcelinebreak To take my seat at breakfast, dinner, — con me
\forcelinebreak As poorly spoused, alas!
I was too young. I dwelt too much on duty:
\forcelinebreak If I had guessed my powers
\forcelinebreak Where might have sailed this cargo of choice beauty
\forcelinebreak In its unanchored hours!
Well, husband, poor plain man; I’ve lost life’s battle! —
\forcelinebreak Come — let them look at me.
\forcelinebreak O damn, don’t show in your looks that I’m your chattel
\forcelinebreak Quite so emphatically!
In a London Hotel, 1892.
\section{DONAGHADEE}
(SONG)
I’ve never gone to Donaghadee,
\forcelinebreak That vague far townlet by the sea;
\forcelinebreak In Donaghadee I shall never be:
\forcelinebreak Then why do I sing of Donaghadee,
\forcelinebreak That I know not in a faint degree? . . .
\forcelinebreak — Well, once a woman wrote to me
\forcelinebreak With a tender pen from Donaghadee.
“Susan,” I’ve sung, “Pride of Kildare,”
\forcelinebreak Because I’d heard of a Susan there,
\forcelinebreak The “Irish Washerwoman’s” capers
\forcelinebreak I’ve shared for hours to midnight tapers,
And “Kitty O’Linch” has made me spin
\forcelinebreak Till dust rose high, and day broke in:
\forcelinebreak That other “Kitty, of Coleraine,”
\forcelinebreak Too, set me aching in heart and brain:
\forcelinebreak While “Kathleen Mavourneen,” of course, would ring
\forcelinebreak When that girl learnt to make me sing.
\forcelinebreak Then there was “Irish Molly O”
\forcelinebreak I tuned as “the fairest one I know,”
\forcelinebreak And “Nancy Dawson,” if I remember,
\forcelinebreak Rhymed sweet in moonlight one September.
But the damsel who once wrote so free
\forcelinebreak And tender-toned from Donaghadee,
\forcelinebreak Is a woman who has no name for me —
\forcelinebreak Moving sylph-like, mysteriously,
\forcelinebreak (For doubtless, of that sort is she)
\forcelinebreak In the pathways of her destiny;
\forcelinebreak But that is where I never shall be; —
\forcelinebreak And yet I sing of Donaghadee!
\section{HE INADVERTENTLY CURES HIS LOVE-PAINS}
(SONG)
I said: “O let me sing the praise
\forcelinebreak Of her who sweetly racks my days, —
\forcelinebreak Her I adore;
\forcelinebreak Her lips, her eyes, her moods, her ways!”
In miseries of pulse and pang
\forcelinebreak I strung my harp, and straightway sang
\forcelinebreak As none before: —
\forcelinebreak To wondrous words my quavers rang!
Thus I let heartaches lilt my verse,
\forcelinebreak Which suaged and soothed, and made disperse
\forcelinebreak The smarts I bore
\forcelinebreak To stagnance like a sepulchre’s.
But, eased, the days that thrilled ere then
\forcelinebreak Lost value; and I ask, O when,
\forcelinebreak And how, restore
\forcelinebreak Those old sweet agonies again!
\section{THE PEACE PEAL}
(AFTER FOUR YEARS OF SILENCE)
Said a wistful daw in Saint Peter’s tower,
\forcelinebreak High above Casterbridge slates and tiles,
\forcelinebreak “Why do the walls of my Gothic bower
\forcelinebreak Shiver, and shrill out sounds for miles?
\forcelinebreak This gray old rubble
\forcelinebreak Has scorned such din
\forcelinebreak Since I knew trouble
\forcelinebreak And joy herein.
\forcelinebreak How still did abide them
\forcelinebreak These bells now swung,
\forcelinebreak While our nest beside them
\forcelinebreak Securely clung! . . .
\forcelinebreak It means some snare
\forcelinebreak For our feet or wings;
\forcelinebreak But I’ll be ware
\forcelinebreak Of such baleful things!”
\forcelinebreak And forth he flew from his louvred niche
\forcelinebreak To take up life in a damp dark ditch.
\forcelinebreak — So mortal motives are misread,
\forcelinebreak And false designs attributed,
\forcelinebreak In upper spheres of straws and sticks,
\forcelinebreak Or lower, of pens and politics.
At the end of the War.
\section{LADY VI}
There goes the Lady Vi. How well,
\forcelinebreak How well I know the spectacle
\forcelinebreak The earth presents
\forcelinebreak And its events
\forcelinebreak To her sweet sight
\forcelinebreak Each day and night!
“Life is a wheeling show, with me
\forcelinebreak As its pivot of interest constantly.
\forcelinebreak Below in the hollows of towns is sin,
\forcelinebreak Like a blue brimstone mist therein,
\forcelinebreak Which makes men lively who plunge amid it,
\forcelinebreak But wrongfully, and wives forbid it.
\forcelinebreak London is a place for prancing
\forcelinebreak Along the Row and, later, dancing
\forcelinebreak Till dawn, with tightening arm-embowments
\forcelinebreak As hours warm up to tender moments.
“Travel is piquant, and most thrilling
\forcelinebreak If, further, joined to big-game killing:
\forcelinebreak At home, too, hunting, hounds full cry,
\forcelinebreak When Reynard nears his time to die,
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis glee to mark his figure flag,
\forcelinebreak And how his brush begins to drag,
\forcelinebreak Till, his earth reached by many a wend,
\forcelinebreak He finds it stopped, and meets his end.
“Religion is good for all who are meek;
\forcelinebreak It stays in the Bible through the week,
\forcelinebreak And floats about the house on Sundays,
\forcelinebreak But does not linger on till Mondays.
\forcelinebreak The ten Commandments in one’s prime
\forcelinebreak Are matter for another time,
\forcelinebreak While griefs and graves and things allied
\forcelinebreak In well-bred talk one keeps outside.”
\section{A POPULAR PERSONAGE AT HOME}
“I live here: ‘Wessex’ is my name:
\forcelinebreak I am a dog known rather well:
\forcelinebreak I guard the house; but how that came
\forcelinebreak To be my whim I cannot tell.
“With a leap and a heart elate I go
\forcelinebreak At the end of an hour’s expectancy
\forcelinebreak To take a walk of a mile or so
\forcelinebreak With the folk I let live here with me.
“Along the path, amid the grass
\forcelinebreak I sniff, and find out rarest smells
\forcelinebreak For rolling over as I pass
\forcelinebreak The open fields towards the dells.
“No doubt I shall always cross this sill,
\forcelinebreak And turn the corner, and stand steady,
\forcelinebreak Gazing back for my mistress till
\forcelinebreak She reaches where I have run already,
“And that this meadow with its brook,
\forcelinebreak And bulrush, even as it appears
\forcelinebreak As I plunge by with hasty look,
\forcelinebreak Will stay the same a thousand years.”
Thus “Wessex.” But a dubious ray
\forcelinebreak At times informs his steadfast eye,
\forcelinebreak Just for a trice, as though to say,
\forcelinebreak “Yet, will this pass, and pass shall I?”
1924
\section{INSCRIPTIONS FOR A PEAL OF EIGHT BELLS}
AFTER A RESTORATION
\subsection{I}
Thomas Tremble new-made me
\forcelinebreak Eighteen hundred and fifty-three:
\forcelinebreak Why he did I fail to see.
\subsection{II}
I was well-toned by William Brine,
\forcelinebreak Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine;
\forcelinebreak Now, re-cast, I weakly whine!
\subsection{III}
Fifteen hundred used to be
\forcelinebreak My date, but since they melted me
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis only eighteen fifty-three.
\subsection{IV}
Henry Hopkins got me made,
\forcelinebreak And I summon folk as bade;
\forcelinebreak Not to much purpose, I’m afraid!
\subsection{V}
I likewise; for I bang and bid
\forcelinebreak In commoner metal than I did,
\forcelinebreak Some of me being stolen and hid.
VI
I, too, since in a mould they flung me,
\forcelinebreak Drained my silver, and rehung me,
\forcelinebreak So that in tin-like tones I tongue me.
VII
In nineteen hundred, so ‘tis said,
\forcelinebreak They cut my canon off my head,
\forcelinebreak And made me look scalped, scraped, and dead.
VIII
I’m the peal’s tenor still, but rue it!
\forcelinebreak Once it took two to swing me through it:
\forcelinebreak Now I’m rehung, one dolt can do it.
\section{A REFUSAL}
Said the grave Dean of Westminster:
\forcelinebreak Mine is the best minster
\forcelinebreak Seen in Great Britain,
\forcelinebreak As many have written:
\forcelinebreak So therefore I cannot
\forcelinebreak Rule here if I ban not
\forcelinebreak Such liberty-taking
\forcelinebreak As movements for making
Its grayness environ
\forcelinebreak The memory of Byron,
\forcelinebreak Which some are demanding
\forcelinebreak Who think them of standing,
\forcelinebreak But in my own viewing
\forcelinebreak Require some subduing
\forcelinebreak For tendering suggestions
\forcelinebreak On Abbey-wall questions
\forcelinebreak That must interfere here
\forcelinebreak With my proper sphere here,
\forcelinebreak And bring to disaster
\forcelinebreak This fane and its master,
\forcelinebreak Whose dict is but Christian
\forcelinebreak Though nicknamed Philistian.
A lax Christian charity —
\forcelinebreak No mental clarity
\forcelinebreak Ruling its movements
\forcelinebreak For fabric improvements —
\forcelinebreak Demands admonition
\forcelinebreak And strict supervision
\forcelinebreak When bent on enshrining
\forcelinebreak Rapscallions, and signing
\forcelinebreak Their names on God’s stonework,
\forcelinebreak As if like His own work
\forcelinebreak Were their lucubrations:
\forcelinebreak And passed is my patience
\forcelinebreak That such a creed-scorner
\forcelinebreak (Not mentioning horner)
\forcelinebreak Should claim Poet’s Corner.
‘Tis urged that some sinners
\forcelinebreak Are here for worms’ dinners
\forcelinebreak Already in person;
\forcelinebreak That he could not worsen
\forcelinebreak The walls by a name mere
\forcelinebreak With men of such fame here.
\forcelinebreak Yet nay; they but leaven
\forcelinebreak The others in heaven
\forcelinebreak In just true proportion,
\forcelinebreak While more mean distortion.
‘Twill next be expected
\forcelinebreak That I get erected
\forcelinebreak To Shelley a tablet
\forcelinebreak In some niche or gablet.
\forcelinebreak Then — what makes my skin burn,
\forcelinebreak Yea, forehead to chin burn —
\forcelinebreak That I ensconce Swinburne!
August 1924.
\section{EPITAPH ON A PESSIMIST}
I’m Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd,
\forcelinebreak I’ve lived without a dame
\forcelinebreak From youth-time on; and would to God
\forcelinebreak My dad had done the same.
From the French and Greek.
\section{THE PROTEAN MAIDEN}
(SONG)
This single girl is two girls:
\forcelinebreak How strange such things should be!
\forcelinebreak One noon eclipsed by few girls,
\forcelinebreak The next no beauty she.
And daily cries the lover,
\forcelinebreak In voice and feature vext:
\forcelinebreak “My last impression of her
\forcelinebreak Is never to be the next!
“She’s plain: I will forget her!
\forcelinebreak She’s turned to fair. Ah no,
\forcelinebreak Forget? — not I! I’ll pet her
\forcelinebreak With kisses swift and slow.”
\section{A WATERING-PLACE LADY INVENTORIED}
A sweetness of temper unsurpassed and unforgettable,
\forcelinebreak A mole on the cheek whose absence would have been regrettable,
\forcelinebreak A ripple of pleasant converse full of modulation,
\forcelinebreak A bearing of inconveniences without vexation,
\forcelinebreak Till a cynic would find her amiability provoking,
\forcelinebreak Tempting him to indulge in mean and wicked joking.
Flawlessly oval of face, especially cheek and chin,
\forcelinebreak With a glance of a quality that beckoned for a glance akin,
\forcelinebreak A habit of swift assent to any intelligence broken,
\forcelinebreak Before the fact to be conveyed was fully spoken
\forcelinebreak And she could know to what her colloquist would win her, —
\forcelinebreak This from a too alive impulsion to sympathy in her, —
\forcelinebreak All with a sense of the ridiculous, keen yet charitable;
\forcelinebreak In brief, a rich, profuse attractiveness unnarratable.
I should have added her hints that her husband prized her but slenderly,
\forcelinebreak And that (with a sigh) ‘twas a pity she’d no one to treat her tenderly.
\section{THE SEA FIGHT}
31 May: 1916
IN MEMORIAM CAPTAIN PROWSE
Down went the grand “Queen Mary,”
\forcelinebreak “Queen Mary’s” captain, and her crew;
\forcelinebreak The brunt of battle bare he,
\forcelinebreak And he died;
\forcelinebreak And he died, as heroes do.
More really now we view him,
\forcelinebreak More really lives he, moves with men,
\forcelinebreak Than while on earth we knew him
\forcelinebreak As our fellow,
\forcelinebreak As our fellow-denizen.
Maybe amid the changes
\forcelinebreak Of ocean’s caverned dim profound,
\forcelinebreak Gaily his spirit ranges
\forcelinebreak With his comrades,
\forcelinebreak With his comrades all around.
1916
\section{PARADOX}
(M. H.)
Though out of sight now, and as ‘twere not the least to us;
\forcelinebreak Comes she in sorrows, as one bringing peace to us?
\forcelinebreak Lost to each meadow, each hill-top, each tree around,
\forcelinebreak Yet the whole truth may her largened sight see around?
\forcelinebreak Always away from us
\forcelinebreak She may not stray from us!
\forcelinebreak Can she, then, know how men’s fatings befall?
\forcelinebreak Yea indeed, may know well; even know thereof all.
\section{THE ROVER COME HOME}
He’s journeyed through America
\forcelinebreak From Canso Cape to Horn,
\forcelinebreak And from East Indian Comorin
\forcelinebreak To Behring’s Strait forlorn;
\forcelinebreak He’s felled trees in the backwoods,
\forcelinebreak In swamps has gasped for breath;
\forcelinebreak In Tropic heats, in Polar ice,
\forcelinebreak Has often prayed for death.
He has fought and bled in civil wars
\forcelinebreak Of no concern to him,
\forcelinebreak Has shot his fellows — beasts and men —
\forcelinebreak At risk of life and limb.
\forcelinebreak He has suffered fluxes, fevers.
\forcelinebreak Agues, and ills allied,
\forcelinebreak And now he’s home. You look at him
\forcelinebreak As he talks by your fireside.
And what is written in his glance
\forcelinebreak Stressed by such foreign wear,
\forcelinebreak After such alien circumstance
\forcelinebreak What does his face declare?
\forcelinebreak His mother’s; she who saw him not
\forcelinebreak After his starting year,
\forcelinebreak Who never left her native spot,
\forcelinebreak And lies in the churchyard near.
\section{KNOWN HAD I}
(SONG)
Known had I what I knew not
\forcelinebreak When we met eye to eye,
\forcelinebreak That thenceforth I should view not
\forcelinebreak Again beneath the sky
\forcelinebreak So truefooted a farer
\forcelinebreak As you who faced me then,
\forcelinebreak My path had been a rarer
\forcelinebreak Than it figures among men!
I would have trod beside you
\forcelinebreak To guard your feet all day,
\forcelinebreak And borne at night to guide you
\forcelinebreak A lantern on your way:
\forcelinebreak Would not have left you lonely
\forcelinebreak With wringing doubt, to cow
\forcelinebreak Old hope, if I could only
\forcelinebreak Have known what I know now.
\section{THE PAT OF BUTTER}
Once, at the Agricultural Show,
\forcelinebreak We tasted — all so yellow —
\forcelinebreak Those butter-pats, cool and mellow!
\forcelinebreak Each taste I still remember, though
\forcelinebreak It was so long ago.
This spoke of the grass of Netherhay,
\forcelinebreak And this of Kingcomb Hill,
\forcelinebreak And this of Coker Rill:
\forcelinebreak Which was the prime I could not say
\forcelinebreak Of all those tried that day,
Till she, the fair and wicked-eyed,
\forcelinebreak Held out a pat to me:
\forcelinebreak Then felt I all Yeo-Lea
\forcelinebreak Was by her sample sheer outvied;
\forcelinebreak And, “This is the best,” I cried.
\section{BAGS OF MEAT}
“Here’s a fine bag of meat,”
\forcelinebreak Says the master-auctioneer,
\forcelinebreak As the timid, quivering steer,
\forcelinebreak Starting a couple of feet
\forcelinebreak At the prod of a drover’s stick,
\forcelinebreak And trotting lightly and quick,
\forcelinebreak A ticket stuck on his rump,
\forcelinebreak Enters with a bewildered jump.
“Where he’s lived lately, friends,
\forcelinebreak I’d live till lifetime ends:
\forcelinebreak They’ve a whole life everyday
\forcelinebreak Down there in the Vale, have they!
\forcelinebreak He’d be worth the money to kill
\forcelinebreak And give away Christmas for good-will.”
“Now here’s a heifer — worth more
\forcelinebreak Than bid, were she bone-poor;
\forcelinebreak Yet she’s round as a barrel of beer”;
\forcelinebreak “She’s a plum,” said the second auctioneer.
“Now this young bull — for thirty pound?
\forcelinebreak Worth that to manure your ground!”
\forcelinebreak “Or to stand,” chimed the second one,
\forcelinebreak “And have his picter done!”
The beast was rapped on the horns and snout
\forcelinebreak To make him turn about.
\forcelinebreak “Well,” cried a buyer, “another crown —
\forcelinebreak Since I’ve dragged here from Taunton Town!”
“That calf, she sucked three cows,
\forcelinebreak Which is not matched for bouse
\forcelinebreak In the nurseries of high life
\forcelinebreak By the first-born of a nobleman’s wife!”
\forcelinebreak The stick falls, meaning, “A true tale’s told,”
\forcelinebreak On the buttock of the creature sold,
\forcelinebreak And the buyer leans over and snips
\forcelinebreak His mark on one of the animal’s hips.
Each beast, when driven in,
\forcelinebreak Looks round at the ring of bidders there
\forcelinebreak With a much-amazed reproachful stare,
\forcelinebreak As at unnatural kin,
\forcelinebreak For bringing him to a sinister scene
\forcelinebreak So strange, unhomelike, hungry, mean;
\forcelinebreak His fate the while suspended between
\forcelinebreak A butcher, to kill out of hand,
\forcelinebreak And a farmer, to keep on the land;
\forcelinebreak One can fancy a tear runs down his face
\forcelinebreak When the butcher wins, and he’s driven from the place.
\section{THE SUNDIAL ON A WET DAY}
I drip, drip here
\forcelinebreak In Atlantic rain,
\forcelinebreak Falling like handfuls
\forcelinebreak Of winnowed grain,
\forcelinebreak Which, tear-like, down
\forcelinebreak My gnomon drain,
\forcelinebreak And dim my numerals
\forcelinebreak With their stain, —
\forcelinebreak Till I feel useless,
\forcelinebreak And wrought in vain!
And then I think
\forcelinebreak In my despair
\forcelinebreak That, though unseen,
\forcelinebreak He is still up there,
\forcelinebreak And may gaze out
\forcelinebreak Anywhen, anywhere;
\forcelinebreak Not to help clockmen
\forcelinebreak Quiz and compare,
\forcelinebreak But in kindness to let me
\forcelinebreak My trade declare.
St. Juliot.
\section{HER HAUNTING-GROUND}
Can it be so? It must be so,
\forcelinebreak That visions have not ceased to be
\forcelinebreak In this the chiefest sanctuary
\forcelinebreak Of her whose form we used to know.
\forcelinebreak — Nay, but her dust is far away,
\forcelinebreak And “where her dust is, shapes her shade,
\forcelinebreak If spirit clings to flesh,” they say:
\forcelinebreak Yet here her life-parts most were played!
Her voice explored this atmosphere,
\forcelinebreak Her foot impressed this turf around,
\forcelinebreak Her shadow swept this slope and mound,
\forcelinebreak Her fingers fondled blossoms here;
\forcelinebreak And so, I ask, why, why should she
\forcelinebreak Haunt elsewhere, by a slighted tomb,
\forcelinebreak When here she flourished sorrow-free,
\forcelinebreak And, save for others, knew no gloom?
\section{A PARTING-SCENE}
The two pale women cried,
\forcelinebreak But the man seemed to suffer more,
\forcelinebreak Which he strove hard to hide.
\forcelinebreak They stayed in the waiting-room, behind the door,
\forcelinebreak Till startled by the entering engine-roar,
\forcelinebreak As if they could not bear to have unfurled
\forcelinebreak Their misery to the eyes of all the world.
A soldier and his young wife
\forcelinebreak Were the couple; his mother the third,
\forcelinebreak Who had seen the seams of life.
\forcelinebreak He was sailing for the East I later heard.
\forcelinebreak — They kissed long, but they did not speak a word;
\forcelinebreak Then, strained, he went. To the elder the wife in tears
\forcelinebreak “Too long; too long!” burst out. (‘Twas for five years.)
\section{SHORTENING DAYS AT THE HOMESTEAD}
The first fire since the summer is lit, and is smoking into the room:
\forcelinebreak The sun-rays thread it through, like woof-lines in a loom.
\forcelinebreak Sparrows spurt from the hedge, whom misgivings appal
\forcelinebreak That winter did not leave last year for ever, after all.
\forcelinebreak Like shock-headed urchins, spiny-haired,
\forcelinebreak Stand pollard willows, their twigs just bared.
Who is this coming with pondering pace,
\forcelinebreak Black and ruddy, with white embossed,
\forcelinebreak His eyes being black, and ruddy his face
\forcelinebreak And the marge of his hair like morning frost?
\forcelinebreak It’s the cider-maker,
\forcelinebreak And appletree-shaker,
\forcelinebreak And behind him on wheels, in readiness,
\forcelinebreak His mill, and tubs, and vat, and press.
\section{DAYS TO RECOLLECT}
Do you recall
\forcelinebreak That day in Fall
\forcelinebreak When we walked towards Saint Alban’s Head,
\forcelinebreak On thistledown that summer had shed,
\forcelinebreak Or must I remind you?
\forcelinebreak Winged thistle-seeds which hitherto
\forcelinebreak Had lain as none were there, or few,
\forcelinebreak But rose at the brush of your petticoat-seam
\forcelinebreak (As ghosts might rise of the recent dead),
\forcelinebreak And sailed on the breeze in a nebulous stream
\forcelinebreak Like a comet’s tail behind you:
\forcelinebreak You don’t recall
\forcelinebreak That day in Fall?
Then do you remember
\forcelinebreak That sad November
\forcelinebreak When you left me never to see me more,
\forcelinebreak And looked quite other than theretofore,
\forcelinebreak As if it could not be you?
\forcelinebreak And lay by the window whence you had gazed
\forcelinebreak So many times when blamed or praised,
\forcelinebreak Morning or noon, through years and years,
\forcelinebreak Accepting the gifts that Fortune bore,
\forcelinebreak Sharing, enduring, joys, hopes, fears!
\forcelinebreak Well: I never more did see you. —
\forcelinebreak Say you remember
\forcelinebreak That sad November!
\section{TO C. F. H.}
ON HER CHRISTENING-DAY
Fair Caroline, I wonder what
\forcelinebreak You think of earth as a dwelling-spot,
\forcelinebreak And if you’d rather have come, or not?
To-day has laid on you a name
\forcelinebreak That, though unasked for, you will claim
\forcelinebreak Lifelong, for love or praise or blame.
May chance and change impose on you
\forcelinebreak No heavier burthen than this new
\forcelinebreak Care-chosen one your future through!
Dear stranger here, the prayer is mine
\forcelinebreak That your experience may combine
\forcelinebreak Good things with glad. . . . Yes, Caroline!
\section{THE HIGH-SCHOOL LAWN}
Gray prinked with rose,
\forcelinebreak White tipped with blue,
\forcelinebreak Shoes with gay hose,
\forcelinebreak Sleeves of chrome hue;
Fluffed frills of white,
\forcelinebreak Dark bordered light;
\forcelinebreak Such shimmerings through
\forcelinebreak Trees of emerald green are eyed
\forcelinebreak This afternoon, from the road outside.
They whirl around:
\forcelinebreak Many laughters run
\forcelinebreak With a cascade’s sound;
\forcelinebreak Then a mere one.
A bell: they flee:
\forcelinebreak Silence then: —
\forcelinebreak So it will be
\forcelinebreak Some day again
\forcelinebreak With them, — with me.
\section{THE FORBIDDEN BANNS}
A BALLAD OF THE EIGHTEEN-THIRTIES
\subsection{I}
“O what’s the gain, my worthy Sir,
\forcelinebreak In stopping the banns to-day!
\forcelinebreak Your son declares he’ll marry her
\forcelinebreak If a thousand folk say Nay.”
“I’ll do’t; I’ll do’t; whether or no!
\forcelinebreak And, if I drop down dead,
\forcelinebreak To church this morning I will go,
\forcelinebreak And say they shall not wed!”
That day the parson clear outspoke
\forcelinebreak The maid’s name and the man’s:
\forcelinebreak His father, mid the assembled folk,
\forcelinebreak Said, “I forbid the banns!”
Then, white in face, lips pale and cold,
\forcelinebreak He turned him to sit down,
\forcelinebreak When he fell forward; and behold,
\forcelinebreak They found his life had flown.
\subsection{II}
‘Twas night-time, towards the middle part,
\forcelinebreak When low her husband said,
\forcelinebreak “I would from the bottom of my heart
\forcelinebreak That father was not dead!”
She turned from one to the other side,
\forcelinebreak And a sad woman was she
\forcelinebreak As he went on: “He’d not have died
\forcelinebreak Had it not been for me!”
She brought him soon an idiot child,
\forcelinebreak And then she brought another:
\forcelinebreak His face waned wan, his manner wild
\forcelinebreak With hatred of their mother.
“Hearken to me, my son. No: no:
\forcelinebreak There’s madness in her blood!”
\forcelinebreak Those were his father’s words; and lo,
\forcelinebreak Now, now he understood.
What noise is that? One noise, and two
\forcelinebreak Resound from a near gun.
\forcelinebreak Two corpses found: and neighbours knew
\forcelinebreak By whom the deed was done.
\section{THE PAPHIAN BALL}
ANOTHER CHRISTMAS EXPERIENCE OF THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE
We went our Christmas rounds once more,
\forcelinebreak With quire and viols as therefore.
Our path was near by Rushy-Pond,
\forcelinebreak Where Egdon-Heath outstretched beyond.
There stood a figure against the moon,
\forcelinebreak Tall, spare, and humming a weirdsome tune.
“You tire of Christian carols,” he said:
\forcelinebreak “Come and lute at a ball instead.
“‘Tis to your gain, for it ensures
\forcelinebreak That many guineas will be yours.
“A slight condition hangs on’t, true,
\forcelinebreak But you will scarce say nay thereto:
“That you go blindfold; that anon
\forcelinebreak The place may not be gossiped on.”
They stood and argued with each other:
\forcelinebreak “Why sing from one house to another
“These ancient hymns in the freezing night,
\forcelinebreak And all for nought? ‘Tis foolish, quite!”
“ — ’Tis serving God, and shunning evil:
\forcelinebreak Might not elsedoing serve the devil?”
“But grand pay!” . . . They were lured by his call,
\forcelinebreak Agreeing to go blindfold all.
They walked, he guiding, some new track,
\forcelinebreak Doubting to find the pathway back.
In a strange hall they found them when
\forcelinebreak They were unblinded all again.
Gilded alcoves, great chandeliers,
\forcelinebreak Voluptuous paintings ranged in tiers,
In brief, a mansion large and rare,
\forcelinebreak With rows of dancers waiting there.
They tuned and played; the couples danced;
\forcelinebreak Half-naked women tripped, advanced,
With handsome partners footing fast,
\forcelinebreak Who swore strange oaths, and whirled them past.
And thus and thus the slow hours wore them:
\forcelinebreak While shone their guineas heaped before them.
Drowsy at length, in lieu of the dance
\forcelinebreak “While Shepherds watched . . .” they bowed by chance;
And in a moment, at a blink,
\forcelinebreak There flashed a change; ere they could think
The ball-room vanished and all its crew:
\forcelinebreak Only the well-known heath they view —
The spot of their crossing overnight,
\forcelinebreak When wheedled by the stranger’s sleight.
There, east, the Christmas dawn hung red,
\forcelinebreak And dark Rainbarrow with its dead
Bulged like a supine negress’ breast
\forcelinebreak Against Clyffe-Clump’s faint far-off crest.
Yea; the rare mansion, gorgeous, bright,
\forcelinebreak The ladies, gallants, gone were quite.
The heaped-up guineas, too, were gone
\forcelinebreak With the gold table they were on.
“Why did not grasp we what was owed!”
\forcelinebreak Cried some, as homeward, shamed, they strode.
Now comes the marvel and the warning:
\forcelinebreak When they had dragged to church next morning,
With downcast heads and scarce a word,
\forcelinebreak They were astound at what they heard.
Praises from all came forth in showers
\forcelinebreak For how they’d cheered the midnight hours.
“We’ve heard you many times,” friends said,
\forcelinebreak “But like that never have you played!
“Rejoice, ye tenants of the earth,
\forcelinebreak And celebrate your Saviour’s birth
“Never so thrilled the darkness through,
\forcelinebreak Or more inspired us so to do!” . . .
— The man who used to tell this tale
\forcelinebreak Was the tenor-viol, Michael Mail;
Yes; Mail the tenor, now but earth! —
\forcelinebreak I give it for what it may be worth.
\section{ON MARTOCK MOOR}
\subsection{I}
My deep-dyed husband trusts me,
\forcelinebreak He feels his mastery sure,
\forcelinebreak Although I leave his evening hearth
\forcelinebreak To walk upon the moor.
\subsection{II}
— I had what wealth I needed,
\forcelinebreak And of gay gowns a score,
\forcelinebreak And yet I left my husband’s house
\forcelinebreak To muse upon the moor.
\subsection{III}
O how I loved a dear one
\forcelinebreak Who, save in soul, was poor!
\forcelinebreak O how I loved the man who met
\forcelinebreak Me nightly on the moor.
\subsection{IV}
I’d feather-beds and couches,
\forcelinebreak And carpets for the floor,
\forcelinebreak Yet brighter to me was, at eves,
\forcelinebreak The bareness of the moor.
\subsection{V}
There was a dogging figure,
\forcelinebreak There was a hiss of “Whore!”
\forcelinebreak There was a flounce at Weir-water
\forcelinebreak One night upon the moor. . . .
VI
Yet do I haunt there, knowing
\forcelinebreak By rote each rill’s low pour,
\forcelinebreak But only a fitful phantom now
\forcelinebreak Meets me upon the moor.
1899
\section{THAT MOMENT}
The tragedy of that moment
\forcelinebreak Was deeper than the sea,
\forcelinebreak When I came in that moment
\forcelinebreak And heard you speak to me!
What I could not help seeing
\forcelinebreak Covered life as a blot;
\forcelinebreak Yes, that which I was seeing,
\forcelinebreak And knew that you were not
\section{PREMONITIONS}
“The bell went heavy to-day
\forcelinebreak At afternoon service, they say,
\forcelinebreak And a screech-owl cried in the boughs,
\forcelinebreak And a raven flew over the house,
\forcelinebreak And Betty’s old clock with one hand,
\forcelinebreak That’s worn out, as I understand,
\forcelinebreak And never goes now, never will,
\forcelinebreak Struck twelve when the night was dead still,
\forcelinebreak Just as when my last loss came to me. . . .
\forcelinebreak Ah! I wonder who next it will be!”
\section{THIS SUMMER AND LAST}
Unhappy summer you,
\forcelinebreak Who do not see
\forcelinebreak What your yester-summer saw!
\forcelinebreak Never, never will you be
\forcelinebreak Its match to me,
\forcelinebreak Never, never draw
\forcelinebreak Smiles your forerunner drew,
\forcelinebreak Know what it knew!
Divine things done and said
\forcelinebreak Illumined it,
\forcelinebreak Whose rays crept into corn-brown curls,
\forcelinebreak Whose breezes heard a humorous wit
\forcelinebreak Of fancy flit. —
\forcelinebreak Still the alert brook purls,
\forcelinebreak Though feet that there would tread
\forcelinebreak Elsewhere have sped.
So, bran-new summer, you
\forcelinebreak Will never see
\forcelinebreak All that yester-summer saw!
\forcelinebreak Never, never will you be
\forcelinebreak In memory
\forcelinebreak Its rival, never draw
\forcelinebreak Smiles your forerunner drew,
\forcelinebreak Know what it knew!
1913?
\section{NOTHING MATTERS MUCH}
(B. F. L.)
“Nothing matters much,” he said
\forcelinebreak Of something just befallen unduly:
\forcelinebreak He, then active, but now dead,
\forcelinebreak Truly, truly!
He knew the letter of the law
\forcelinebreak As voiced by those of wig and gown,
\forcelinebreak Whose slightest syllogistic flaw
\forcelinebreak He hammered down.
And often would he shape in word
\forcelinebreak That nothing needed much lamenting;
\forcelinebreak And she who sat there smiled and heard,
\forcelinebreak Sadly assenting.
Facing the North Sea now he lies,
\forcelinebreak Toward the red altar of the East,
\forcelinebreak The Flamborough roar his psalmodies,
\forcelinebreak The wind his priest.
And while I think of his bleak bed,
\forcelinebreak Of Time that builds, of Time that shatters,
\forcelinebreak Lost to all thought is he, who said
\forcelinebreak “Nothing much matters.”
\section{IN THE EVENING}
IN MEMORIAM FREDERICI TREVES, 1853–1923 (Dorchester Cemetery, Jan. 2, 1924)
In the evening, when the world knew he was dead,
\forcelinebreak He lay amid the dust and hoar
\forcelinebreak Of ages; and to a spirit attending said:
\forcelinebreak “This chalky bed? —
\forcelinebreak I surely seem to have been here before?”
“O yes. You have been here. You knew the place,
\forcelinebreak Substanced as you, long ere your call;
\forcelinebreak And if you cared to do so you might trace
\forcelinebreak In this gray space
\forcelinebreak Your being, and the being of men all.”
Thereto said he: “Then why was I called away?
\forcelinebreak I knew no trouble or discontent:
\forcelinebreak Why did I not prolong my ancient stay
\forcelinebreak Herein for aye?”
\forcelinebreak The spirit shook its head. “None knows: you went.
“And though, perhaps, Time did not sign to you
\forcelinebreak The need to go, dream-vision sees
\forcelinebreak How Aesculapius’ phantom hither flew,
\forcelinebreak With Galen’s, too,
\forcelinebreak And his of Cos — plague-proof Hippocrates,
“And beckoned you forth, whose skill had read as theirs,
\forcelinebreak Maybe, had Science chanced to spell
\forcelinebreak In their day, modern modes to stem despairs
\forcelinebreak That mankind bears! . . .
\forcelinebreak Enough. You have returned. And all is well.”
\section{THE SIX BOARDS}
Six boards belong to me:
\forcelinebreak I do not know where they may be;
\forcelinebreak If growing green, or lying dry
\forcelinebreak In a cockloft nigh.
Some morning I shall claim them,
\forcelinebreak And who may then possess will aim them
\forcelinebreak To bring to me those boards I need
\forcelinebreak With thoughtful speed.
But though they hurry so
\forcelinebreak To yield me mine, I shall not know
\forcelinebreak How well my want they’ll have supplied
\forcelinebreak When notified.
Those boards and I — how much
\forcelinebreak In common we, of feel and touch
\forcelinebreak Shall share thence on, — earth’s far core-quakings,
\forcelinebreak Hill-shocks, tide-shakings —
Yea, hid where none will note,
\forcelinebreak The once live tree and man, remote
\forcelinebreak From mundane hurt as if on Venus, Mars,
\forcelinebreak Or furthest stars.
\section{BEFORE MY FRIEND ARRIVED}
I sat on the eve-lit weir,
\forcelinebreak Which gurgled in sobs and sighs;
\forcelinebreak I looked across the meadows near
\forcelinebreak To the towered church on the rise.
\forcelinebreak Overmuch cause had my look!
\forcelinebreak I pulled out pencil and book,
\forcelinebreak And drew a white chalk mound,
\forcelinebreak Outthrown on the sepulchred ground.
Why did I pencil that chalk?
\forcelinebreak It was fetched from the waiting grave,
\forcelinebreak And would return there soon,
\forcelinebreak Of one who had stilled his walk
\forcelinebreak And sought oblivion’s cave.
\forcelinebreak He was to come on the morrow noon
\forcelinebreak And take a good rest in the bed so hewn.
He came, and there he is now, although
\forcelinebreak This was a wondrous while ago.
\forcelinebreak And the sun still dons a ruddy dye;
\forcelinebreak The weir still gurgles nigh;
\forcelinebreak The tower is dark on the sky.
\section{COMPASSION}
AN ODE
In Celebration of the Centenary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
\subsection{I}
Backward among the dusky years
\forcelinebreak A lonesome lamp is seen arise,
\forcelinebreak Lit by a few fain pioneers
\forcelinebreak Before incredulous eyes. —
\forcelinebreak We read the legend that it lights:
\forcelinebreak “Wherefore beholds this land of historied rights
Mild creatures, despot-doomed, bewildered, plead
\forcelinebreak Their often hunger, thirst, pangs, prisonment,
\forcelinebreak In deep dumb gaze more eloquent
\forcelinebreak Than tongues of widest heed?”
\subsection{II}
What was faint-written, read in a breath
\forcelinebreak In that year — ten times ten away —
\forcelinebreak A larger louder conscience saith
\forcelinebreak More sturdily to-day. —
\forcelinebreak But still those innocents are thralls
\forcelinebreak To throbless hearts, near, far, that hear no calls
\forcelinebreak Of honour towards their too-dependent frail,
\forcelinebreak And from Columbia Cape to Ind we see
\forcelinebreak How helplessness breeds tyranny
\forcelinebreak In power above assail.
\subsection{III}
Cries still are heard in secret nooks,
\forcelinebreak Till hushed with gag or slit or thud;
\forcelinebreak And hideous dens whereon none looks
\forcelinebreak Are sprayed with needless blood.
\forcelinebreak But here, in battlings, patient, slow,
\forcelinebreak Much has been won — more, maybe, than we know —
\forcelinebreak And on we labour hopeful. “Ailinon!”
\forcelinebreak A mighty voice calls: “But may the good prevail!”
\forcelinebreak And “Blessed are the merciful!”
\forcelinebreak Calls a yet mightier one.
January 22, 1924.
\section{WHY SHE MOVED HOUSE}
(THE DOG MUSES)
Why she moved house, without a word,
\forcelinebreak I cannot understand;
\forcelinebreak She’d mirrors, flowers, she’d book and bird,
\forcelinebreak And callers in a band.
And where she is she gets no sun,
\forcelinebreak No flowers, no book, no glass;
\forcelinebreak Of callers I am the only one.
\forcelinebreak And I but pause and pass.
\section{TRAGEDIAN TO TRAGEDIENNE}
Shall I leave you behind me
\forcelinebreak When I play
\forcelinebreak In earnest what we’ve played in mock to-day?
Why, yes; most surely shall I
\forcelinebreak Leave you behind
\forcelinebreak In yet full orbit, when my years upwind.
I may creep off in the night-time,
\forcelinebreak And none know
\forcelinebreak Till comes the morning, bringing news ‘tis so.
Will you then turn for a moment
\forcelinebreak White or red,
\forcelinebreak Recall those spells of ours; things done, things said?
Aye, those adventurous doings
\forcelinebreak And those days
\forcelinebreak Of stress, when I’d the blame and you the praise?
Still you will meet adventure —
\forcelinebreak None knows what —
\forcelinebreak Still you will go on changing: I shall not.
Still take a call at the mummings
\forcelinebreak Daily or nightly,
\forcelinebreak Yielding to custom, calmly, gloomily, brightly.
Last, you will flag, and finish
\forcelinebreak Your masquings too:
\forcelinebreak Yes: end them: I not there to succour you.
\section{THE LADY OF FOREBODINGS}
“What do you so regret, my lady,
\forcelinebreak Sitting beside me here?
\forcelinebreak Are there not days as clear
\forcelinebreak As this to come — ev’n shaped less shady?”
\forcelinebreak “O no,” said she. “Come what delight
\forcelinebreak To you, by voice or pen,
\forcelinebreak To me will fall such day, such night,
\forcelinebreak Not, not again!”
The lamps above and round were fair,
\forcelinebreak The tables were aglee,
\forcelinebreak As if ‘twould ever be
\forcelinebreak That we should smile and sit on there.
\forcelinebreak But yet she said, as though she must,
\forcelinebreak “Yes: it will soon be gone,
\forcelinebreak And all its dearness leave but dust
\forcelinebreak To muse upon.”
\section{THE BIRD-CATCHER’S BOY}
“Father, I fear your trade:
\forcelinebreak Surely it’s wrong!
\forcelinebreak Little birds limed and made
\forcelinebreak Captive life-long.
“Larks bruise and bleed in jail,
\forcelinebreak Trying to rise;
\forcelinebreak Every caged nightingale
\forcelinebreak Soon pines and dies.”
“Don’t be a dolt, my boy!
\forcelinebreak Birds must be caught;
\forcelinebreak My lot is such employ,
\forcelinebreak Yours to be taught.
“Soft shallow stuff as that
\forcelinebreak Out from your head!
\forcelinebreak Just learn your lessons pat,
\forcelinebreak Then off to bed.”
Lightless, without a word
\forcelinebreak Bedwise he fares;
\forcelinebreak Groping his way is heard
\forcelinebreak Seek the dark stairs
Through the long passage, where
\forcelinebreak Hang the caged choirs:
\forcelinebreak Harp-like his fingers there
\forcelinebreak Sweep on the wires.
Next day, at dye of dawn,
\forcelinebreak Freddy was missed:
\forcelinebreak Whither the boy had gone
\forcelinebreak Nobody wist.
That week, the next one, whiled:
\forcelinebreak No news of him:
\forcelinebreak Weeks up to months were piled:
\forcelinebreak Hope dwindled dim.
Yet not a single night
\forcelinebreak Locked they the door,
\forcelinebreak Waiting, heart-sick, to sight
\forcelinebreak Freddy once more.
Hopping there long anon
\forcelinebreak Still the birds hung:
\forcelinebreak Like those in Babylon
\forcelinebreak Captive, they sung.
One wintry Christmastide
\forcelinebreak Both lay awake;
\forcelinebreak All cheer within them dried,
\forcelinebreak Each hour an ache.
Then some one seemed to flit
\forcelinebreak Soft in below;
\forcelinebreak “Freddy’s come!” Up they sit,
\forcelinebreak Faces aglow.
Thereat a groping touch
\forcelinebreak Dragged on the wires
\forcelinebreak Lightly and softly — much
\forcelinebreak As they were lyres;
“Just as it used to be
\forcelinebreak When he came in,
\forcelinebreak Feeling in darkness the
\forcelinebreak Stairway to win!”
Waiting a trice or two
\forcelinebreak Yet, in the gloom,
\forcelinebreak Both parents pressed into
\forcelinebreak Freddy’s old room.
There on the empty bed
\forcelinebreak White the moon shone,
\forcelinebreak As ever since they’d said,
\forcelinebreak “Freddy is gone!”
That night at Durdle-Door
\forcelinebreak Foundered a hoy,
\forcelinebreak And the tide washed ashore
\forcelinebreak One sailor boy.
November 21, 1912.
Durdle-Door, a rock on the south coast.
\section{A HURRIED MEETING}
It is August moonlight in the tall plantation,
\forcelinebreak Whose elms, by aged squirrels’ footsteps worn,
\forcelinebreak Outscreen the noon, and eve, and morn.
\forcelinebreak On the facing slope a faint irradiation
From a mansion’s marble front is borne,
\forcelinebreak Mute in its woodland wreathing.
\forcelinebreak Up here the night-jar whirrs forlorn,
\forcelinebreak And the trees seem to withhold their softest breathing.
To the moonshade slips a woman in muslin vesture:
\forcelinebreak Her naked neck the gossamer-web besmears,
\forcelinebreak And she sweeps it away with a hasty gesture
\forcelinebreak Again it touches her forehead, her neck, her ears,
\forcelinebreak Her fingers, the backs of her hands.
\forcelinebreak She sweeps it away again
\forcelinebreak Impatiently, and then
\forcelinebreak She takes no notice; and listens, and sighs, and stands.
The night-hawk stops. A man shows in the obscure:
\forcelinebreak They meet, and passively kiss,
\forcelinebreak And he says: “Well, I’ve come quickly. About this —
\forcelinebreak Is it really so? You are sure?”
\forcelinebreak “I am sure. In February it will be.
\forcelinebreak That such a thing should come to me!
\forcelinebreak We should have known. We should have left off meeting.
\forcelinebreak Love is a terrible thing: a sweet allure
\forcelinebreak That ends in heart-outeating!”
“But what shall we do, my Love, and how?”
\forcelinebreak “You need not call me by that name now.”
\forcelinebreak Then he more coldly: “What is your suggestion?”
\forcelinebreak “I’ve told my mother, and she sees a way,
\forcelinebreak Since of our marriage there can be no question.
\forcelinebreak We are crossing South — near about New Year’s Day
\forcelinebreak The event will happen there.
\forcelinebreak It is the only thing that we can dare
\forcelinebreak To keep them unaware!”
\forcelinebreak “Well, you can marry me.”
\forcelinebreak She shook her head. “No: that can never be.
“‘Twill be brought home as hers. She’s forty-one,
\forcelinebreak When many a woman’s bearing is not done,
\forcelinebreak And well might have a son. —
\forcelinebreak We should have left off specious self-deceiving:
I feared that such might come,
\forcelinebreak And knowledge struck me numb.
\forcelinebreak Love is a terrible thing: witching when first begun,
\forcelinebreak To end in grieving, grieving!”
And with one kiss again the couple parted:
\forcelinebreak Inferior clearly he; she haughty-hearted.
\forcelinebreak He watched her down the slope to return to her place.
\forcelinebreak The marble mansion of her ancient race,
\forcelinebreak And saw her brush the gossamers from her face
\forcelinebreak As she emerged from shade to the moonlight ray.
\forcelinebreak And when she had gone away
\forcelinebreak The night-jar seemed to imp, and say,
\forcelinebreak “You should have taken warning:
\forcelinebreak Love is a terrible thing: sweet for a space,
\forcelinebreak And then all mourning, mourning!”
\section{DISCOURAGEMENT}
To see the Mother, naturing Nature, stand
\forcelinebreak All racked and wrung by her unfaithful lord,
\forcelinebreak Her hopes dismayed by his defiling hand,
\forcelinebreak Her passioned plans for bloom and beauty marred.
Where she would mint a perfect mould, an ill;
\forcelinebreak Where she would don divinest hues, a stain,
\forcelinebreak Over her purposed genial hour a chill,
\forcelinebreak Upon her charm of flawless flesh a blain:
Her loves dependent on a feature’s trim,
\forcelinebreak A whole life’s circumstance on hap of birth,
\forcelinebreak A soul’s direction on a body’s whim,
\forcelinebreak Eternal Heaven upon a day of Earth,
\forcelinebreak Is frost to flower of heroism and worth,
\forcelinebreak And fosterer of visions ghast and grim.
Westbourne Park Villas, 1863–7.
(From old MS.)
\section{A LEAVING}
Knowing what it bore
\forcelinebreak I watched the rain-smitten back of the car —
\forcelinebreak (Brown-curtained, such as the old ones were) —
\forcelinebreak When it started forth for a journey afar
\forcelinebreak Into the sullen November air,
\forcelinebreak And passed the glistening laurels and round the bend.
I have seen many gayer vehicles turn that bend
\forcelinebreak In autumn, winter, and summer air,
\forcelinebreak Bearing for journeys near or afar
\forcelinebreak Many who now are not, but were,
\forcelinebreak But I don’t forget that rain-smitten car,
\forcelinebreak Knowing what it bore!
\section{SONG TO AN OLD BURDEN}
The feet have left the wormholed flooring,
\forcelinebreak That danced to the ancient air,
\forcelinebreak The fiddler, all-ignoring,
\forcelinebreak Sleeps by the gray-grassed ‘cello player:
\forcelinebreak Shall I then foot around around around,
\forcelinebreak As once I footed there!
The voice is heard in the room no longer
\forcelinebreak That trilled, none sweetlier,
\forcelinebreak To gentle stops or stronger,
\forcelinebreak Where now the dust-draped cobwebs stir:
\forcelinebreak Shall I then sing again again again,
\forcelinebreak As once I sang with her!
The eyes that beamed out rapid brightness
\forcelinebreak Have longtime found their close,
\forcelinebreak The cheeks have wanned to whiteness
\forcelinebreak That used to sort with summer rose:
\forcelinebreak Shall I then joy anew anew anew,
\forcelinebreak As once I joyed in those!
O what’s to me this tedious Maying,
\forcelinebreak What’s to me this June?
\forcelinebreak O why should viols be playing
\forcelinebreak To catch and reel and rigadoon?
\forcelinebreak Shall I sing, dance around around around,
\forcelinebreak When phantoms call the tune!
\section{WHY DO I?}
Why do I go on doing these things?
\forcelinebreak Why not cease?
\forcelinebreak Is it that you are yet in this world of welterings
\forcelinebreak And unease,
\forcelinebreak And that, while so, mechanic repetitions please?
When shall I leave off doing these things? —
\forcelinebreak When I hear
\forcelinebreak You have dropped your dusty cloak and taken you wondrous wings
\forcelinebreak To another sphere,
\forcelinebreak Where no pain is: Then shall I hush this dinning gear.
\chapter{WINTER WORDS IN VARIOUS MOODS AND METRES
\forcelinebreak}
\subsection{CONTENTS}
\begin{itemize}
\item\relax
THE NEW DAWN’S BUSINESS
\item\relax
PROUD SONGSTERS
\item\relax
THOUGHTS AT MIDNIGHT
\item\relax
I AM THE ONE
\item\relax
THE PROPHETESS
\item\relax
A WISH FOR UNCONSCIOUSNESS
\item\relax
THE BAD EXAMPLE
\item\relax
TO LOUISA IN THE LANE
\item\relax
LOVE WATCHES A WINDOW
\item\relax
THE LOVE-LETTERS
\item\relax
AN UNKINDLY MAY
\item\relax
UNKEPT GOOD FRIDAYS
\item\relax
THE MOUND
\item\relax
LIDDELL AND SCOTT
\item\relax
CHRISTMASTIDE
\item\relax
RELUCTANT CONFESSION
\item\relax
EXPECTATION AND EXPERIENCE
\item\relax
ARISTODEMUS THE MESSENIAN
\item\relax
EVENING SHADOWS
\item\relax
THE THREE TALL MEN
\item\relax
THE LODGING-HOUSE FUCHSIAS
\item\relax
THE WHALER’S WIFE
\item\relax
THROWING A TREE
\item\relax
THE WAR-WIFE OF CATKNOLL
\item\relax
CONCERNING HIS OLD HOME
\item\relax
HER SECOND HUSBAND HEARS HER STORY
\item\relax
YULETIDE IN A YOUNGER WORLD
\item\relax
AFTER THE DEATH OF A FRIEND
\item\relax
THE SON’S PORTRAIT
\item\relax
LYING AWAKE
\item\relax
THE LADY IN THE FURS
\item\relax
CHILDHOOD AMONG THE FERNS
\item\relax
A COUNTENANCE
\item\relax
A POET’S THOUGHT
\item\relax
SILENCES
\item\relax
I WATCHED A BLACKBIRD
\item\relax
A NIGHTMARE, AND THE NEXT THING
\item\relax
TO A TREE IN LONDON
\item\relax
THE FELLED ELM AND SHE
\item\relax
HE DID NOT KNOW ME
\item\relax
SO VARIOUS
\item\relax
A SELF-GLAMOURER
\item\relax
THE DEAD BASTARD
\item\relax
THE CLASPED SKELETONS
\item\relax
IN THE MARQUEE
\item\relax
AFTER THE BURIAL
\item\relax
THE MONGREL
\item\relax
CONCERNING AGNES
\item\relax
HENLEY REGATTA
\item\relax
AN EVENING IN GALILEE
\item\relax
THE BROTHER
\item\relax
WE FIELD-WOMEN
\item\relax
A PRACTICAL WOMAN
\item\relax
SQUIRE HOOPER
\item\relax
A GENTLEMAN’S SECOND-HAND SUIT
\item\relax
WE SAY WE SHALL NOT MEET
\item\relax
SEEING THE MOON RISE
\item\relax
SONG TO AURORE
\item\relax
HE NEVER EXPECTED MUCH
\item\relax
STANDING BY THE MANTELPIECE
\item\relax
BOYS THEN AND NOW
\item\relax
THAT KISS IN THE DARK
\item\relax
A NECESSITARIAN’S EPITAPH
\item\relax
BURNING THE HOLLY
\item\relax
SUSPENSE
\item\relax
THE SECOND VISIT
\item\relax
OUR OLD FRIEND DUALISM
\item\relax
FAITHFUL WILSON
\item\relax
GALLANT’S SONG
\item\relax
A PHILOSOPHICAL FANTASY
\item\relax
A QUESTION OF MARRIAGE
\item\relax
THE LETTER’S TRIUMPH
\item\relax
A FORGOTTEN MINIATURE
\item\relax
WHISPERED AT THE CHURCH-OPENING
\item\relax
IN WEATHERBURY STOCKS
\item\relax
A PLACID MAN’S EPITAPH
\item\relax
THE NEW BOOTS
\item\relax
THE MUSING MAIDEN
\item\relax
LORNA THE SECOND
\item\relax
A DAUGHTER RETURNS
\item\relax
THE THIRD KISSING-GATE
\item\relax
DRINKING SONG
\item\relax
THE TARRYING BRIDEGROOM
\item\relax
THE DESTINED PAIR
\item\relax
A MUSICAL INCIDENT
\item\relax
JUNE LEAVES AND AUTUMN
\item\relax
NO BELL-RINGING
\item\relax
I LOOKED BACK
\item\relax
THE AGED NEWSPAPER SOLILOQUIZES
\item\relax
THE SINGLE WITNESS
\item\relax
HOW SHE WENT TO IRELAND
\item\relax
DEAD WESSEX THE DOG TO THE HOUSEHOLD
\item\relax
THE WOMAN WHO WENT EAST
\item\relax
NOT KNOWN
\item\relax
THE BOY’S DREAM
\item\relax
THE GAP IN THE WHITE
\item\relax
FAMILY PORTRAITS
\item\relax
THE CATCHING BALLET OF THE WEDDING CLOTHES
\item\relax
A WINSOME WOMAN
\item\relax
THE BALLAD OF LOVE’S SKELETON
\item\relax
A PRIVATE MAN ON PUBLIC MEN
\item\relax
CHRISTMAS IN THE ELGIN ROOM
\item\relax
WE ARE GETTING TO THE END
\item\relax
HE RESOLVES TO SAY NO MORE
\end{itemize}
\section{THE NEW DAWN’S BUSINESS}
What are you doing outside my walls,
\forcelinebreak O Dawn of another day?
\forcelinebreak I have not called you over the edge
\forcelinebreak Of the heathy ledge,
\forcelinebreak So why do you come this way,
\forcelinebreak With your furtive footstep without sound here,
\forcelinebreak And your face so deedily gray?
“I show a light for killing the man
\forcelinebreak Who lives not far from you,
\forcelinebreak And for bringing to birth the lady’s child,
\forcelinebreak Nigh domiciled,
\forcelinebreak And for earthing a corpse or two,
\forcelinebreak And for several other such odd jobs round here
\forcelinebreak That Time to-day must do.
“But you he leaves alone (although,
\forcelinebreak As you have often said,
\forcelinebreak You are always ready to pay the debt
\forcelinebreak You don’t forget
\forcelinebreak You owe for board and bed):
\forcelinebreak The truth is, when men willing are found here
\forcelinebreak He takes those loth instead.”
\section{PROUD SONGSTERS}
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
\forcelinebreak And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
\forcelinebreak And as it gets dark loud nightingales
\forcelinebreak In bushes
\forcelinebreak Pipe, as they can when April wears,
\forcelinebreak As if all Time were theirs.
These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing,
\forcelinebreak Which a year ago, or less than twain,
\forcelinebreak No finches were, nor nightingales,
\forcelinebreak Nor thrushes,
\forcelinebreak But only particles of grain,
\forcelinebreak And earth, and air, and rain.
\section{THOUGHTS AT MIDNIGHT}
Mankind, you dismay me
\forcelinebreak When shadows waylay me! —
\forcelinebreak Not by your splendours
\forcelinebreak Do you affray me,
\forcelinebreak Not as pretenders
\forcelinebreak To demonic keenness,
\forcelinebreak Not by your meanness,
\forcelinebreak Nor your ill-teachings,
\forcelinebreak Nor your false preachings,
\forcelinebreak Nor your banalities
\forcelinebreak And immoralities,
\forcelinebreak Nor by your daring
\forcelinebreak Nor sinister bearing;
\forcelinebreak But by your madnesses
\forcelinebreak Capping cool badnesses,
\forcelinebreak Acting like puppets
\forcelinebreak Under Time’s buffets;
\forcelinebreak In superstitions
\forcelinebreak And ambitions
\forcelinebreak Moved by no wisdom,
\forcelinebreak Far-sight, or system,
\forcelinebreak Led by sheer senselessness
\forcelinebreak And presciencelessness
\forcelinebreak Into unreason
\forcelinebreak And hideous self-treason. . . .
\forcelinebreak God, look he on you,
\forcelinebreak Have mercy upon you!
Part written 25th May 1906.
\section{I AM THE ONE}
I am the one whom ringdoves see
\forcelinebreak Through chinks in boughs
\forcelinebreak When they do not rouse
\forcelinebreak In sudden dread,
\forcelinebreak But stay on cooing, as if they said:
\forcelinebreak “Oh; it’s only he.”
I am the passer when up-eared hares,
\forcelinebreak Stirred as they eat
\forcelinebreak The new-sprung wheat,
\forcelinebreak Their munch resume
\forcelinebreak As if they thought: “He is one for whom
\forcelinebreak Nobody cares.”
Wet-eyed mourners glance at me
\forcelinebreak As in train they pass
\forcelinebreak Along the grass
\forcelinebreak To a hollowed spot,
\forcelinebreak And think: “No matter; he quizzes not
\forcelinebreak Our misery.”
I hear above: “We stars must lend
\forcelinebreak No fierce regard
\forcelinebreak To his gaze, so hard
\forcelinebreak Bent on us thus, —
\forcelinebreak Must scathe him not. He is one with us
\forcelinebreak Beginning and end.”
\section{THE PROPHETESS}
1
“Now shall I sing
\forcelinebreak That pretty thing
\forcelinebreak ‘The Mocking-Bird’?” — And sing it straight did she.
\forcelinebreak I had no cause
\forcelinebreak To think it was
\forcelinebreak A Mocking-bird in truth that sang to me.
2
Not even the glance
\forcelinebreak She threw askance
\forcelinebreak Foretold to me, nor did the tune or rhyme,
\forcelinebreak That the words bore
\forcelinebreak A meaning more
\forcelinebreak Than that they were a ditty of the time.
3
But after years
\forcelinebreak Of hopes and fears,
\forcelinebreak And all they bring, and all they take away,
\forcelinebreak I found I had heard
\forcelinebreak The Mocking-bird
\forcelinebreak In person singing there to me that day.
\section{A WISH FOR UNCONSCIOUSNESS}
If I could but abide
\forcelinebreak As a tablet on a wall,
\forcelinebreak Or a hillock daisy-pied,
\forcelinebreak Or a picture in a hall,
\forcelinebreak And as nothing else at all,
\forcelinebreak I should feel no doleful achings,
\forcelinebreak I should hear no judgment-call,
\forcelinebreak Have no evil dreams or wakings,
\forcelinebreak No uncouth or grisly care;
\forcelinebreak In a word, no cross to bear.
\section{THE BAD EXAMPLE}
Fie, Aphrodite, shamming you are no mother,
\forcelinebreak And your maternal markings trying to smother,
\forcelinebreak As you were maiden, now you love another! . . .
\forcelinebreak If one like you need such pretence to noose him,
\forcelinebreak Indulgence in too early fires beware you,
\forcelinebreak All girls yet virgin, and have constant care you
\forcelinebreak Become not staled by use as she has, ere you
\forcelinebreak Meet your most-loved; lest, tumbled, you should lose him
Partly from Meleager.
\section{TO LOUISA IN THE LANE}
Meet me again as at that time
\forcelinebreak In the hollow of the lane;
\forcelinebreak I will not pass as in my prime
\forcelinebreak I passed at each day’s wane.
\forcelinebreak — Ah, I remember!
\forcelinebreak To do it you will have to see
\forcelinebreak Anew this sorry scene wherein you have ceased to be!
But I will welcome your aspen form
\forcelinebreak As you gaze wondering round
\forcelinebreak And say with spectral frail alarm,
\forcelinebreak “Why am I still here found?
\forcelinebreak — Ah, I remember!
\forcelinebreak It is through him with blitheful brow
\forcelinebreak Who did not love me then, but loves and draws me now!”
And I shall answer: “Sweet of eyes,
\forcelinebreak Carry me with you, Dear,
\forcelinebreak To where you donned this spirit-guise;
\forcelinebreak It’s better there than here!”
\forcelinebreak — Till I remember
\forcelinebreak Such is a deed you cannot do:
\forcelinebreak Wait must I, till with flung-off flesh I follow you.
\section{LOVE WATCHES A WINDOW}
“Here in the window beaming across
\forcelinebreak Is he — the lineaments like him so! —
\forcelinebreak The saint whose name I do not know,
\forcelinebreak With the holy robe and the cheek aglow.
\forcelinebreak Here will I kneel as if worshipping God
\forcelinebreak When all the time I am worshipping you,
\forcelinebreak Whose Love I was —
\forcelinebreak You that with me will nevermore tread anew
\forcelinebreak The paradise-paths we trod!”
She came to that prominent pew each day,
\forcelinebreak And sat there. Zealously she came
\forcelinebreak And watched her Love — looking just the same
\forcelinebreak From the rubied eastern tracery-frame —
\forcelinebreak The man who had quite forsaken her
\forcelinebreak And followed another, it was thought. —
\forcelinebreak Be’t as it may,
\forcelinebreak Thinner, more thin, was the lady’s figure wrought
\forcelinebreak By some ache, year on year.
Well, now she’s dead, and dead is he
\forcelinebreak From whom her heart once drew delight,
\forcelinebreak Whose face glowed daily, lover-bright,
\forcelinebreak High in the glass before her sight.
\forcelinebreak And still the face is seen as clear
\forcelinebreak In the rubied eastern window-gleam
\forcelinebreak As formerly;
\forcelinebreak But not seen now is a passioned woman’s dream
\forcelinebreak Glowing beside it there.
\section{THE LOVE-LETTERS}
(IN MEMORIAM H. R.)
I met him quite by accident
\forcelinebreak In a bye-path that he’d frequent.
\forcelinebreak And, as he neared, the sunset glow
\forcelinebreak Warmed up the smile of pleasantry
\forcelinebreak Upon his too thin face, while he
\forcelinebreak Held a square packet up to me,
\forcelinebreak Of what, I did not know.
“Well,” said he then; “they are my old letters.
\forcelinebreak Perhaps she — rather felt them fetters. . . .
\forcelinebreak You see, I am in a slow decline,
\forcelinebreak And she’s broken off with me. Quite right
\forcelinebreak To send them back, and true foresight;
\forcelinebreak I’d got too fond of her! To-night
\forcelinebreak I burn them — stuff of mine!”
He laughed in the sun — an ache in his laughter —
\forcelinebreak And went. I heard of his death soon after.
\section{AN UNKINDLY MAY}
A shepherd stands by a gate in a white smock-frock:
\forcelinebreak He holds the gate ajar, intently counting his flock.
The sour spring wind is blurting boisterous-wise,
\forcelinebreak And bears on it dirty clouds across the skies;
\forcelinebreak Plantation timbers creak like rusty cranes,
\forcelinebreak And pigeons and rooks, dishevelled by late rains,
\forcelinebreak Are like gaunt vultures, sodden and unkempt,
\forcelinebreak And song-birds do not end what they attempt:
\forcelinebreak The buds have tried to open, but quite failing
\forcelinebreak Have pinched themselves together in their quailing.
\forcelinebreak The sun frowns whitely in eye-trying flaps
\forcelinebreak Through passing cloud-holes, mimicking audible taps.
\forcelinebreak “Nature, you’re not commendable to-day!”
\forcelinebreak I think. “Better to-morrow!” she seems to say.
That shepherd still stands in that white smock-frock,
\forcelinebreak Unnoting all things save the counting his flock.
\section{UNKEPT GOOD FRIDAYS}
There are many more Good Fridays
\forcelinebreak Than this, if we but knew
\forcelinebreak The names, and could relate them,
\forcelinebreak Of men whom rulers slew
\forcelinebreak For their goodwill, and date them
\forcelinebreak As runs the twelvemonth through.
These nameless Christs’ Good Fridays,
\forcelinebreak Whose virtues wrought their end,
\forcelinebreak Bore days of bonds and burning,
\forcelinebreak With no man to their friend,
\forcelinebreak Of mockeries, and spurning;
\forcelinebreak Yet they are all unpenned.
When they had their Good Fridays
\forcelinebreak Of bloody sweat and strain
\forcelinebreak Oblivion hides. We quote not
\forcelinebreak Their dying words of pain,
\forcelinebreak Their sepulchres we note not,
\forcelinebreak Unwitting where they have lain.
No annual Good Fridays
\forcelinebreak Gained they from cross and cord,
\forcelinebreak From being sawn asunder,
\forcelinebreak Disfigured and abhorred,
\forcelinebreak Smitten and trampled under:
\forcelinebreak Such dates no hands have scored.
Let be. Let lack Good Fridays
\forcelinebreak These Christs of unwrit names;
\forcelinebreak The world was not even worthy
\forcelinebreak To taunt their hopes and aims,
\forcelinebreak As little of earth, earthy,
\forcelinebreak As his mankind proclaims.
Good Friday, 1927.
\section{THE MOUND}
For a moment pause: —
\forcelinebreak Just here it was;
\forcelinebreak And through the thin thorn hedge, by the rays of the moon,
\forcelinebreak I can see the tree in the field, and beside it the mound —
\forcelinebreak Now sheeted with snow — whereon we sat that June
\forcelinebreak When it was green and round,
\forcelinebreak And she crazed my mind by what she coolly told —
\forcelinebreak The history of her undoing,
\forcelinebreak (As I saw it), but she called “comradeship,”
\forcelinebreak That bred in her no rueing:
\forcelinebreak And saying she’d not be bound
\forcelinebreak For life to one man, young, ripe-yeared, or old,
\forcelinebreak Left me — an innocent simpleton to her viewing;
For, though my accompt of years outscored her own,
\forcelinebreak Hers had more hotly flown. . . .
\forcelinebreak We never met again by this green mound,
\forcelinebreak To press as once so often lip on lip,
\forcelinebreak And palter, and pause: —
\forcelinebreak Yes; here it was!
\section{LIDDELL AND SCOTT}
ON THE COMPLETION OF THEIR LEXICON
(Written after the death of Liddell in 1898. Scott had died some ten years earlier.)
“Well, though it seems
\forcelinebreak Beyond our dreams,”
\forcelinebreak Said Liddell to Scott,
\forcelinebreak “We’ve really got
\forcelinebreak To the very end,
\forcelinebreak All inked and penned
\forcelinebreak Blotless and fair
\forcelinebreak Without turning a hair,
\forcelinebreak This sultry summer day, A.D.
\forcelinebreak Eighteen hundred and forty-three.
“I’ve often, I own,
\forcelinebreak Belched many a moan
\forcelinebreak At undertaking it,
\forcelinebreak And dreamt forsaking it.
\forcelinebreak — Yes, on to Pi,
\forcelinebreak When the end loomed nigh,
\forcelinebreak And friends said: ‘You’ve as good as done,’
\forcelinebreak I almost wished we’d not begun.
\forcelinebreak Even now, if people only knew
\forcelinebreak My sinkings, as we slowly drew
\forcelinebreak Along through Kappa, Lambda, Mu,
They’d be concerned at my misgiving,
\forcelinebreak And how I mused on a College living
\forcelinebreak Right down to Sigma,
\forcelinebreak But feared a stigma
\forcelinebreak If I succumbed, and left old Donnegan
\forcelinebreak For weary freshmen’s eyes to con again:
\forcelinebreak And how I often, often wondered
\forcelinebreak What could have led me to have blundered
\forcelinebreak So far away from sound theology
\forcelinebreak To dialects and etymology;
\forcelinebreak Words, accents not to be breathed by men
\forcelinebreak Of any country ever again!”
“My heart most failed,
\forcelinebreak Indeed, quite quailed,”
\forcelinebreak Said Scott to Liddell,
\forcelinebreak “Long ere the middle! . . .
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas one wet dawn
\forcelinebreak When, slippers on,
\forcelinebreak And a cold in the head anew,
\forcelinebreak Gazing at Delta
\forcelinebreak I turned and felt a
\forcelinebreak Wish for bed anew,
\forcelinebreak And to let supersedings
\forcelinebreak Of Passow’s readings
\forcelinebreak In dialects go.
\forcelinebreak ‘That German has read
\forcelinebreak More than we!’ I said;
\forcelinebreak Yea, several times did I feel so! . . .
“O that first morning, smiling bland,
\forcelinebreak With sheets of foolscap, quills in hand,
\forcelinebreak To write ±±±Ä¿Â and ±±³·Â,
\forcelinebreak Followed by fifteen hundred pages,
\forcelinebreak What nerve was ours
\forcelinebreak So to back our powers,
\forcelinebreak Assured that we should reach ÉÉ´·Â
\forcelinebreak While there was breath left in our bodies!”
Liddell replied: “Well, that’s past now;
\forcelinebreak The job’s done, thank God, anyhow.”
“And yet it’s not,”
\forcelinebreak Considered Scott,
\forcelinebreak “For we’ve to get
\forcelinebreak Subscribers yet
\forcelinebreak We must remember;
\forcelinebreak Yes; by September.”
“O Lord; dismiss that. We’ll succeed.
\forcelinebreak Dinner is my immediate need.
\forcelinebreak I feel as hollow as a fiddle,
\forcelinebreak Working so many hours,” said Liddell.
\section{CHRISTMASTIDE}
The rain-shafts splintered on me
\forcelinebreak As despondently I strode;
\forcelinebreak The twilight gloomed upon me
\forcelinebreak And bleared the blank high-road.
\forcelinebreak Each bush gave forth, when blown on
\forcelinebreak By gusts in shower and shower,
\forcelinebreak A sigh, as it were sown on
\forcelinebreak In handfuls by a sower.
A cheerful voice called, nigh me,
\forcelinebreak “A merry Christmas, friend!” —
\forcelinebreak There rose a figure by me,
\forcelinebreak Walking with townward trend,
\forcelinebreak A sodden tramp’s, who, breaking
\forcelinebreak Into thin song, bore straight
\forcelinebreak Ahead, direction taking
\forcelinebreak Toward the Casuals’ gate.
\section{RELUCTANT CONFESSION}
“What did you do? Cannot you let me know?”
\forcelinebreak “Don’t ask! . . . ‘Twas midnight, and I’d lost at cards.”
\forcelinebreak “Ah. Was it crime — or seemed it to be so?”
\forcelinebreak “No — not till afterwards.”
\forcelinebreak “But what, then, did you do?”
“Well — that was the beginning — months ago;
\forcelinebreak You see, I had lost, and could not pay but — so.
\forcelinebreak And there flashed from him strange and strong regards
\forcelinebreak That you only see when scruples smash to shards;
\forcelinebreak And thus it happened — O it rained and blew! —
\forcelinebreak But I can’t tell. ‘Twas all so lurid in hue!
\forcelinebreak And what was worst came after, when I knew
\forcelinebreak What first crossed not my mind,
\forcelinebreak And he has never divined!” . . .
\forcelinebreak “But he must have, if he proposed it you?”
\forcelinebreak “I mean, that — I got rid of what resulted
\forcelinebreak In a way a woman told me I consulted:
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis that he does not know;
\forcelinebreak Great God, it harrows me so!
\forcelinebreak I did not mean to. Every night —
\forcelinebreak In hell-dark dreams
\forcelinebreak I see an appealing figure in white —
\forcelinebreak That somehow seems
\forcelinebreak A newborn child in the clothes I set to make,
\forcelinebreak But left off, for my own depraved name’s sake!”
\section{EXPECTATION AND EXPERIENCE}
“I had a holiday once,” said the woman —
\forcelinebreak Her name I did not know —
\forcelinebreak “And I thought that where I’d like to go,
\forcelinebreak Of all the places for being jolly,
\forcelinebreak And getting rid of melancholy,
\forcelinebreak Would be to a good big fair:
\forcelinebreak And I went. And it rained in torrents, drenching
\forcelinebreak Every horse, and sheep, and yeoman,
\forcelinebreak And my shoulders, face and hair;
\forcelinebreak And I found that I was the single woman
\forcelinebreak In the field — and looked quite odd there!
\forcelinebreak Everything was spirit-quenching:
\forcelinebreak I crept and stood in the lew of a wall
\forcelinebreak To think, and could not tell at all
\forcelinebreak What on earth made me plod there!”
\section{ARISTODEMUS THE MESSENIAN}
(DRAMATIC HENDECASYLLABICS)
Scene: Before the Stronghold of Ithome, Messenia, 735 B.C.
\forcelinebreak His daughter’s lover discovered, in the disguise of a soothsayer; to whom enters Aristodemus.
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
(apostrophically)
\forcelinebreak Straightway let it be done!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
Let what be done, chief?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
Who art thou that art speaking? Some sage prophet? —
\forcelinebreak She, my daughter’s to perish on the altar!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
Thou called hero! — a myth thy vaunted power,
\forcelinebreak If it fail to redeem thy best beloved.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
Power is nought to the matter. What the Sibyl
\forcelinebreak Bids, must be!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
But I doubt such bidding thereto.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
Nay. White lippings above the Delphic tripod
\forcelinebreak Mangle never their message! And they lip such.
\forcelinebreak Thriving, conquering shall Messene be forthwith —
\forcelinebreak Future worthy my gift of this intact one.
\forcelinebreak Yea, and who of the Aépytids’ renowned house
\forcelinebreak Weigh can greater with Zeus than she my offspring?
\forcelinebreak Shall these Spartiats sway to save me reavement?
\forcelinebreak What is fatherhood when they march in hearing?
\forcelinebreak Hark! E’en now they are here!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak (Marching soldiers heard afar.)
Lover
(after a silence)
\forcelinebreak And mean you to warn her?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
Not till evening shades can cover pallor.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak [Exit.
\forcelinebreak Lover stands motionless. Enter the daughter of Aristodemus.
\forcelinebreak Daughter
Ah! Thou comest to me, Love, not as earlier! Lover, as it were waking, approaches, unhoods his face, and embraces her.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Why not speak to me?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
Sweetest, thou’rt a doomed one!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
How?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
Thy sacrifice by thy father waits thee —
\forcelinebreak Thee, as offering for the State’s salvation.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
Not the slaying of me?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
Fail I to stay him — (She droops in his arms)
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Whereto bursts in a flame a means upon me!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
How? My father is mighty. Thou’rt so powerless.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
Thus and now it adumbrates. Haste I to him,
\forcelinebreak Vowing love for thee!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
Which he’ll value wryly —
\forcelinebreak Less than nought, as I know.
Lover
Till comes my sequel;
\forcelinebreak This, to wit. Thou art got with child by me. Ay,
\forcelinebreak List: the Sibylline utterance asks a virgin;
\forcelinebreak So th’rt saved!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
But a maid’s the thing I am, Love!
\forcelinebreak Gods! With child I am not, but veriest virgin —
\forcelinebreak Who knows surer than thou?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
I’ll make him think so,
\forcelinebreak Though no man upon earth more knows its falseness,
\forcelinebreak Such will I.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
But alas, thou canst not make him:
\forcelinebreak Me he knows to the core. He’ll not believe thee.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
Then thou canst. He’ll accept thy vouching, sure, Sweet,
\forcelinebreak And another intact one, equal serving,
\forcelinebreak Straightway find for the knife.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
My Love, I must not!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
Not? And yet there is pending for thee, elsewise,
\forcelinebreak Dark destruction, and all thy burning being
\forcelinebreak Dungeoned in an eternal nescientness! She shudders, but weepingly shows unwillingness.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Stay. I’ll make the asseverance first. Thou’lt clinch it?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
(with white cheeks, after a pause)
\forcelinebreak Be it so! . . .
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak The Messenian army is heard going out to meet the Spartans. Lover hoods himself as Aristodemus enters from the stronghold.
Aristodemus
(looking strangely at his daughter)
\forcelinebreak Stay you yet at the gate? The old man also?
\forcelinebreak Hath indeed he disclosed the sore pronouncement?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
(falteringly)
\forcelinebreak Sore pronouncement? And what is, sire, its substance?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Messenger enters.
\forcelinebreak Messenger
King Euphaes is just found slain in combat:
\forcelinebreak Thereby King is the Chief, Aristodemus,
\forcelinebreak E’en ere falters the strife — still hard against us!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
Ha! And is it in balance yet! — The deed, then! Daughter looks at her lover, who throws off his disguise; and they go up to Aristodemus together.
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Who’s this man? And to what tends all this feigning?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
He — my lover — who thinks to be my husband —
\forcelinebreak O my father, thy pardon! Know a secret!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
Lover? Secret? And what? But such is nought now:
\forcelinebreak Husband he nor another can be to thee,
\forcelinebreak Let him think as he may! And though I meant not
\forcelinebreak Death to broach till the eve, let doom be dealt now.
\forcelinebreak Hark, the Spartan assays! It straight behoves me,
\forcelinebreak Cost it what to my soul, to give deliverance
\forcelinebreak To my country the instant. Thou, my daughter,
\forcelinebreak Foremost maiden of all the maidens round us —
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Daughter
O but save me, I pray, sire! And to that end
\forcelinebreak There has now to be spoke a thing immediate,
\forcelinebreak And I fain would be speaker. But I cannot!
\forcelinebreak What he now will reveal, receive as vouched for!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak (She rushes into the castle.)
Aristodemus
(to lover)
\forcelinebreak What means this in her? Reads she what’s impending?
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
King, its meaning is much! That she’s with child. Yea,
\forcelinebreak By me! Hence there is called for immolation
\forcelinebreak One who’s what she is not — a sure-sealed virgin —
\forcelinebreak If you’d haste to deliver stressed Ithome,
\forcelinebreak Bulking yet overhead as though unweakened!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus sinks on to a projection of the rock, and covers his eyes.
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
(brokenly)
Better had she been made the purposed victim
\forcelinebreak Than that this should have so befallen to save her!
\forcelinebreak Foul disaster of fatherhood and home-pride! . . .
\forcelinebreak Let this citadel fall; the Spartan army
\forcelinebreak Trample over its dust, and enter in here!
\forcelinebreak She is worse than a martyr for the State-weal,
\forcelinebreak I than one of the slain. And king to-morrow!
(He pauses)
Tis not true!
He makes as if to fall upon her lover with his sword. Lover defends himself with his dagger. Aristodemus turns to rush into the castle after his daughter.
I misdoubt it! They speak falsely!
[Exit Aristodemus. Lover walks up and down in strained suspense. Interval. A groan is heard. Lover is about to rush out, but re-enter Aristodemus sword in hand, now bloody.
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
I have proved me her honour, shown the falsehood
\forcelinebreak Ye twain both have declared me!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Lover
That canst not do!
Aristodemus
I say I have outshown it; proved her even
\forcelinebreak Until death very virgin pure and spotless!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Enter Attendants.
\forcelinebreak Attendants
(severally)
\forcelinebreak Horror, horror indeed! He’s ripped her up — yea,
\forcelinebreak With his sword! He hath split her beauteous body
\forcelinebreak To prove her maid!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak Aristodemus
(to lover)
\forcelinebreak Now diest thou for thy lying, like as she died!
\forcelinebreak
\forcelinebreak He turns his sword on lover, but falls from exhaustion. Lover seizes Aristodemus’ sword, and is about to run him through with it; but he checks his hand, and turn the sword upon himself.
\forcelinebreak (Lover dies.)
\section{EVENING SHADOWS}
The shadows of my chimneys stretch afar
\forcelinebreak Across the plot, and on to the privet bower,
\forcelinebreak And even the shadows of their smokings show,
\forcelinebreak And nothing says just now that where they are
\forcelinebreak They will in future stretch at this same hour,
\forcelinebreak Though in my earthen cyst I shall not know.
And at this time the neighbouring Pagan mound,
\forcelinebreak Whose myths the Gospel news now supersede,
\forcelinebreak Upon the greensward also throws its shade,
\forcelinebreak And nothing says such shade will spread around
\forcelinebreak Even as to-day when men will no more heed
\forcelinebreak The Gospel news than when the mound was made.
\section{THE THREE TALL MEN}
The First Tapping
“What’s that tapping at night: tack, tack,
\forcelinebreak In some house in the street at the back?”
“O, ‘tis a man who, when he has leisure,
\forcelinebreak Is making himself a coffin to measure.
\forcelinebreak He’s so very tall that no carpenter
\forcelinebreak Will make it long enough, he’s in fear.
\forcelinebreak His father’s was shockingly short for his limb —
\forcelinebreak And it made a deep impression on him.”
The Second Tapping
“That tapping has begun again,
\forcelinebreak Which ceased a year back, or near then?”
“Yes, ‘tis the man you heard before
\forcelinebreak Making his coffin. The first scarce done
\forcelinebreak His brother died — his only one —
\forcelinebreak And, being of his own height, or more,
\forcelinebreak He used it for him; for he was afraid
\forcelinebreak He’d not get a long enough one quick made.
\forcelinebreak He’s making a second now, to fit
\forcelinebreak Himself when there shall be need for it.
\forcelinebreak Carpenters work so by rule of thumb
\forcelinebreak That they make mistakes when orders come.”
The Third Tapping
“It’s strange, but years back, when I was here,
\forcelinebreak I used to notice a tapping near;
\forcelinebreak A man was making his coffin at night,
\forcelinebreak And he made a second, if I am right?
\forcelinebreak I have heard again the self-same tapping —
\forcelinebreak Yes, late last night — or was I napping?”
“O no. It’s the same man. He made one
\forcelinebreak Which his brother had; and a second was done —
\forcelinebreak For himself, as he thought. But lately his son,
\forcelinebreak As tall as he, died; aye, and as trim,
\forcelinebreak And his sorrowful father bestowed it on him.
\forcelinebreak And now the man is making a third,
\forcelinebreak To be used for himself when he is interred.”
“Many years later was brought to me
\forcelinebreak News that the man had died at sea.”
\section{THE LODGING-HOUSE FUCHSIAS}
Mrs. Masters’s fuchsias hung
\forcelinebreak Higher and broader, and brightly swung,
\forcelinebreak Bell-like, more and more
\forcelinebreak Over the narrow garden-path,
\forcelinebreak Giving the passer a sprinkle-bath
\forcelinebreak In the morning.
She put up with their pushful ways,
\forcelinebreak And made us tenderly lift their sprays,
\forcelinebreak Going to her door:
\forcelinebreak But when her funeral had to pass
\forcelinebreak They cut back all the flowery mass
\forcelinebreak In the morning.
\section{THE WHALER’S WIFE}
I never pass that inn “The Ring of Bells”
\forcelinebreak Without recalling what its signpost tells
\forcelinebreak To recollection:
\forcelinebreak A tale such as all houses yield, maybe,
\forcelinebreak That ever have known of fealties, phantasy,
\forcelinebreak Hate, or affection.
He has come from a whaling cruise to settle down
\forcelinebreak As publican in his small native town,
\forcelinebreak Where his wife dwells.
\forcelinebreak It is a Sunday morning; she has gone
\forcelinebreak To church with others. Service still being on,
\forcelinebreak He seeks “The Bells.”
“Yes: she’s quite thriving; very much so, they say.
\forcelinebreak I don’t believe in tales; ‘tis not my way!
\forcelinebreak I hold them stuff.
\forcelinebreak But — as you press me — certainly we know
\forcelinebreak He visits her once at least each week or so,
\forcelinebreak Fair weather or rough.
“And, after all, he’s quite a gentleman,
\forcelinebreak And lonely wives must friend them where they can.
\forcelinebreak She’ll tell you all,
\forcelinebreak No doubt, when prayers are done and she comes home.
\forcelinebreak I’m glad to hear your early taste to roam
\forcelinebreak Begins to pall.”
“I’ll stroll out and await her,” then said he.
\forcelinebreak Anon the congregation passed, and she
\forcelinebreak Passed with the rest,
\forcelinebreak Unconscious of the great surprise at hand
\forcelinebreak And bounding on, and smiling — fair and bland —
\forcelinebreak In her Sunday best.
Straight she was told. She fainted at the news,
\forcelinebreak But rallied, and was able to refuse
\forcelinebreak Help to her home.
\forcelinebreak There she sat waiting all day — with a look —
\forcelinebreak A look of joy, it seemed, if none mistook . . .
\forcelinebreak But he did not come.
Time flew: her husband kept him absent still,
\forcelinebreak And by slow slips the woman pined, until,
\forcelinebreak Grown thin, she died —
\forcelinebreak Of grief at loss of him, some would aver,
\forcelinebreak But how could that be? They anyway buried her
\forcelinebreak By her mother’s side.
And by the grave stood, at the funeral,
\forcelinebreak A tall man, elderly and grave withal;
\forcelinebreak Gossip grew grim:
\forcelinebreak He was the same one who had been seen before;
\forcelinebreak He paid, in cash, all owing; and no more
\forcelinebreak Was heard of him.
At the pulling down of her house, decayed and old,
\forcelinebreak Many years after, was the true tale told
\forcelinebreak By an ancient swain.
\forcelinebreak The tall man was the father of the wife.
\forcelinebreak He had beguiled her mother in maiden life,
\forcelinebreak And to cover her stain,
Induced to wive her one in his service bred,
\forcelinebreak Who brought her daughter up as his till wed.
\forcelinebreak — This the girl knew,
\forcelinebreak But hid it close, to save her mother’s name,
\forcelinebreak Even from her seaman spouse, and ruined her fame
\forcelinebreak With him, though true.
\section{THROWING A TREE}
NEW FOREST
The two executioners stalk along over the knolls,
\forcelinebreak Bearing two axes with heavy heads shining and wide,
\forcelinebreak And a long limp two-handled saw toothed for cutting great boles,
\forcelinebreak And so they approach the proud tree that bears the death-mark on its side.
Jackets doffed they swing axes and chop away just above ground,
\forcelinebreak And the chips fly about and lie white on the moss and fallen leaves;
\forcelinebreak Till a broad deep gash in the bark is hewn all the way round,
\forcelinebreak And one of them tries to hook upward a rope, which at last he achieves.
The saw then begins, till the top of the tall giant shivers:
\forcelinebreak The shivers are seen to grow greater each cut than before:
\forcelinebreak They edge out the saw, tug the rope; but the tree only quivers,
\forcelinebreak And kneeling and sawing again, they step back to try pulling once more.
Then, lastly, the living mast sways, further sways: with a shout
\forcelinebreak Job and Ike rush aside. Reached the end of its long staying powers
\forcelinebreak The tree crashes downward: it shakes all its neighbours throughout,
\forcelinebreak And two hundred years’ steady growth has been ended in less than two hours.
\section{THE WAR-WIFE OF CATKNOLL}
“What crowd is this in Catknoll Street,
\forcelinebreak Now I am just come home?
\forcelinebreak What crowd is this in my old street,
\forcelinebreak That flings me such a glance?
\forcelinebreak A stretcher — and corpse? A sobering sight
\forcelinebreak To greet me, when my heart is light
\forcelinebreak With thoughts of coming cheer to-night
\forcelinebreak Now I am back from France.”
“O ‘tis a woman, soldier-man,
\forcelinebreak Who seem to be new come:
\forcelinebreak O ‘tis a woman, soldier-man,
\forcelinebreak Found in the river here,
\forcelinebreak Whither she went and threw her in,
\forcelinebreak And now they are carrying her within:
\forcelinebreak She’s drowned herself for a sly sin
\forcelinebreak Against her husband dear.
“‘A said to me, who knew her well,
\forcelinebreak ‘O why was I so weak!’
\forcelinebreak ‘A said to me, who knew her well,
\forcelinebreak And have done all her life,
\forcelinebreak With a downcast face she said to me,
\forcelinebreak ‘O why did I keep company
\forcelinebreak Wi’ them that practised gallantry,
\forcelinebreak When vowed a faithful wife!’
“‘O God, I’m driven mad!’ she said,
\forcelinebreak ‘To hear he’s coming back;
\forcelinebreak I’m fairly driven mad!’ she said:
\forcelinebreak ‘He’s been two years agone,
\forcelinebreak And now he’ll find me in this state,
\forcelinebreak And not forgive me. Had but fate
\forcelinebreak Kept back his coming three months late,
\forcelinebreak Nothing of it he’d known!’
“We did not think she meant so much,
\forcelinebreak And said: ‘He may forgive.’
\forcelinebreak O never we thought she meant so much
\forcelinebreak As to go doing this.
And now she must be crowned ! — so fair! —
\forcelinebreak Who drew men’s eyes so everywhere! —
\forcelinebreak And love-letters beyond compare
\forcelinebreak For coaxing to a kiss.
“She kept her true a year or more
\forcelinebreak Against the young men all;
\forcelinebreak Yes, kept her true a year or more,
\forcelinebreak And they were most to blame.
\forcelinebreak There was Will Peach who plays the flute,
\forcelinebreak And Waywell with the dandy suit,
\forcelinebreak And Nobb, and Knight. . . . But she’s been mute
\forcelinebreak As to the father’s name.”
Old English for “there must be a coroner’s inquest over her.”
\section{CONCERNING HIS OLD HOME}
Mood I
I wish to see it never —
\forcelinebreak That dismal place
\forcelinebreak With cracks in its floor —
\forcelinebreak I would forget it ever!
Mood II
To see it once, that sad
\forcelinebreak And memoried place —
\forcelinebreak Yes, just once more —
\forcelinebreak I should be faintly glad!
Mood III
To see it often again —
\forcelinebreak That friendly place
\forcelinebreak With its green low door —
\forcelinebreak I’m willing anywhen!
Mood IV
I’ll haunt it night and day —
\forcelinebreak That loveable place,
\forcelinebreak With its flowers’ rich store
\forcelinebreak That drives regret away!
\section{HER SECOND HUSBAND HEARS HER STORY}
“Still, Dear, it is incredible to me
\forcelinebreak That here, alone,
\forcelinebreak You should have sewed him up until he died,
\forcelinebreak And in this very bed. I do not see
\forcelinebreak How you could do it, seeing what might betide.”
“Well, he came home one midnight, liquored deep —
\forcelinebreak Worse than I’d known —
\forcelinebreak And lay down heavily, and soundly slept:
\forcelinebreak Then, desperate driven, I thought of it, to keep
\forcelinebreak Him from me when he woke. Being an adept
“With needle and thimble, as he snored, click-click
\forcelinebreak An hour I’d sewn,
\forcelinebreak Till, had he roused, he couldn’t have moved from bed,
\forcelinebreak So tightly laced in sheet and quilt and tick
\forcelinebreak He lay. And in the morning he was dead.
“Ere people came I drew the stitches out,
\forcelinebreak And thus ‘twas shown
\forcelinebreak To be a stroke.” — ”It’s a strange tale!” said he.
\forcelinebreak “And this same bed?” — ”Yes, here it came about.”
\forcelinebreak “Well, it sounds strange — told here and now to me.
“Did you intend his death by your tight lacing?”
\forcelinebreak “O, that I cannot own.
\forcelinebreak I could not think of else that would avail
\forcelinebreak When he should wake up, and attempt embracing.” —
\forcelinebreak “Well, it’s a cool queer tale!”
\section{YULETIDE IN A YOUNGER WORLD}
We believed in highdays then,
\forcelinebreak And could glimpse at night
\forcelinebreak On Christmas Eve
\forcelinebreak Imminent oncomings of radiant revel —
\forcelinebreak Doings of delight: —
\forcelinebreak Now we have no such sight.
We had eyes for phantoms then,
\forcelinebreak And at bridge or stile
\forcelinebreak On Christmas Eve
\forcelinebreak Clear beheld those countless ones who had crossed it
\forcelinebreak Cross again in file: —
\forcelinebreak Such has ceased longwhile!
We liked divination then,
\forcelinebreak And, as they homeward wound
\forcelinebreak On Christmas Eve,
\forcelinebreak We could read men’s dreams within them spinning
\forcelinebreak Even as wheels spin round: —
\forcelinebreak Now we are blinker-bound.
We heard still small voices then,
\forcelinebreak And, in the dim serene
\forcelinebreak Of Christmas Eve,
\forcelinebreak Caught the fartime tones of fire-filled prophets
\forcelinebreak Long on earth unseen. . . .
\forcelinebreak — Can such ever have been?
\section{AFTER THE DEATH OF A FRIEND}
You died, and made but little of it! —
\forcelinebreak Why then should I, when called to doff it,
\forcelinebreak Drop, and renounce this worm-holed raiment,
\forcelinebreak Shrink edgewise off from its grey claimant?
\forcelinebreak Rather say, when I am Time-outrun,
\forcelinebreak As you did: Take me, and have done,
\forcelinebreak Inexorable, insatiate one!
\section{THE SON’S PORTRAIT}
I walked the streets of a market town,
\forcelinebreak And came to a lumber-shop,
\forcelinebreak Which I had known ere I met the frown
\forcelinebreak Of fate and fortune,
\forcelinebreak And habit led me to stop.
In burrowing mid this chattel and that,
\forcelinebreak High, low, or edgewise thrown,
\forcelinebreak I lit upon something lying flat —
\forcelinebreak A fly-flecked portrait,
\forcelinebreak Framed. ‘Twas my dead son’s own.
“That photo? . . . A lady — I know not whence —
\forcelinebreak Sold it me, Ma’am, one day,
\forcelinebreak With more. You can have it for eighteenpence:
\forcelinebreak The picture’s nothing;
\forcelinebreak It’s but for the frame you pay.”
He had given it her in their heyday shine,
\forcelinebreak When she wedded him, long her wooer:
\forcelinebreak And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
\forcelinebreak And fell there fighting;
\forcelinebreak And she took a new bridegroom to her.
I bought the gift she had held so light,
\forcelinebreak And buried it — as ‘twere he. —
\forcelinebreak Well, well! Such things are trifling, quite,
\forcelinebreak But when one’s lonely
\forcelinebreak How cruel they can be!
\section{LYING AWAKE}
You, Morningtide Star, now are steady-eyed, over the east,
\forcelinebreak I know it as if I saw you;
\forcelinebreak You, Beeches, engrave on the sky your thin twigs, even the least;
\forcelinebreak Had I paper and pencil I’d draw you.
You, Meadow, are white with your counterpane cover of dew,
\forcelinebreak I see it as if I were there;
\forcelinebreak You, Churchyard, are lightening faint from the shade of the yew,
\forcelinebreak The names creeping out everywhere.
\section{THE LADY IN THE FURS}
“I’m a lofty lovely woman,”
\forcelinebreak Says the lady in the furs,
\forcelinebreak In the glance she throws around her
\forcelinebreak On the poorer dames and sirs:
\forcelinebreak “This robe, that cost three figures,
\forcelinebreak Yes, is mine,” her nod avers.
“True, my money did not buy it,
\forcelinebreak But my husband’s, from the trade;
\forcelinebreak And they, they only got it
\forcelinebreak From things feeble and afraid
\forcelinebreak By murdering them in ambush
\forcelinebreak With a cunning engine’s aid.
“True, my hands, too, did not shape it
\forcelinebreak To the pretty cut you see,
\forcelinebreak But the hands of midnight workers
\forcelinebreak Who are strangers quite to me:
\forcelinebreak It was fitted, too, by dressers
\forcelinebreak Ranged around me toilsomely.
“But I am a lovely lady,
\forcelinebreak Though sneerers say I shine
\forcelinebreak By robbing Nature’s children
\forcelinebreak Of apparel not mine,
\forcelinebreak And that I am but a broom-stick,
\forcelinebreak Like a scarecrow’s wooden spine.”
\section{CHILDHOOD AMONG THE FERNS}
I sat one sprinkling day upon the lea,
\forcelinebreak Where tall-stemmed ferns spread out luxuriantly,
\forcelinebreak And nothing but those tall ferns sheltered me.
The rain gained strength, and damped each lopping frond,
\forcelinebreak Ran down their stalks beside me and beyond,
\forcelinebreak And shaped slow-creeping rivulets as I conned,
With pride, my spray-roofed house. And though anon
\forcelinebreak Some drops pierced its green rafters, I sat on,
\forcelinebreak Making pretence I was not rained upon.
The sun then burst, and brought forth a sweet breath
\forcelinebreak From the limp ferns as they dried underneath:
\forcelinebreak I said: “I could live on here thus till death”;
And queried in the green rays as I sate:
\forcelinebreak “Why should I have to grow to man’s estate,
\forcelinebreak And this afar-noised World perambulate?”
\section{A COUNTENANCE}
Her laugh was not in the middle of her face quite,
\forcelinebreak As a gay laugh springs,
\forcelinebreak It was plain she was anxious about some things
\forcelinebreak I could not trace quite.
\forcelinebreak Her curls were like fir-cones — piled up, brown —
\forcelinebreak Or rather like tight-tied sheaves:
\forcelinebreak It seemed they could never be taken down. . . .
And her lips were too full, some might say:
\forcelinebreak I did not think so. Anyway,
\forcelinebreak The shadow her lower one would cast
\forcelinebreak Was green in hue whenever she passed
\forcelinebreak Bright sun on midsummer leaves.
\forcelinebreak Alas, I knew not much of her,
\forcelinebreak And lost all sight and touch of her!
If otherwise, should I have minded
\forcelinebreak The shy laugh not in the middle of her mouth quite,
\forcelinebreak And would my kisses have died of drouth quite
\forcelinebreak As love became unblinded?
1884
\section{A POET’S THOUGHT}
It sprang up out of him in the dark,
\forcelinebreak And took on the lightness of a lark:
\forcelinebreak It went from his chamber along the city strand,
\forcelinebreak Lingered awhile, then leapt all over the land.
It came back maimed and mangled. And the poet
\forcelinebreak When he beheld his offspring did not know it:
\forcelinebreak Yea, verily, since its birth Time’s tongue had tossed to him
\forcelinebreak Such travesties that his old thought was lost to him.
\section{SILENCES}
There is the silence of a copse or croft
\forcelinebreak When the wind sinks dumb,
\forcelinebreak And of a belfry-loft
\forcelinebreak When the tenor after tolling stops its hum.
And there’s the silence of a lonely pond
\forcelinebreak Where a man was drowned,
\forcelinebreak Nor nigh nor yond
\forcelinebreak A newt, frog, toad, to make the merest sound.
But the rapt silence of an empty house
\forcelinebreak Where oneself was born,
\forcelinebreak Dwelt, held carouse
\forcelinebreak With friends, is of all silences most forlorn!
Past are remembered songs and music-strains
\forcelinebreak Once audible there:
\forcelinebreak Roof, rafters, panes
\forcelinebreak Look absent-thoughted, tranced, or locked in prayer.
It seems no power on earth can waken it
\forcelinebreak Or rouse its rooms,
\forcelinebreak Or its past permit
\forcelinebreak The present to stir a torpor like a tomb’s.
\section{I WATCHED A BLACKBIRD}
I watched a blackbird on a budding sycamore
\forcelinebreak One Easter Day, when sap was stirring twigs to the core;
\forcelinebreak I saw his tongue, and crocus-coloured bill
\forcelinebreak Parting and closing as he turned his trill;
\forcelinebreak Then he flew down, seized on a stem of hay,
\forcelinebreak And upped to where his building scheme was under way,
\forcelinebreak As if so sure a nest were never shaped on spray.
\section{A NIGHTMARE, AND THE NEXT THING}
On this decline of Christmas Day
\forcelinebreak The empty street is fogged and blurred:
\forcelinebreak The house-fronts all seem backwise turned
\forcelinebreak As if the outer world were spurned:
\forcelinebreak Voices and songs within are heard,
\forcelinebreak Whence red rays gleam when fires are stirred,
\forcelinebreak Upon this nightmare Christmas Day.
The lamps, just lit, begin to outloom
\forcelinebreak Like dandelion-globes in the gloom;
\forcelinebreak The stonework, shop-signs, doors, look bald;
\forcelinebreak Curious crude details seem installed,
\forcelinebreak And show themselves in their degrees
\forcelinebreak As they were personalities
\forcelinebreak Never discerned when the street was bustling
\forcelinebreak With vehicles, and farmers hustling.
\forcelinebreak Three clammy casuals wend their way
\forcelinebreak To the Union House. I hear one say:
\forcelinebreak “Jimmy, this is a treat! Hay-hay!”
Six laughing mouths, six rows of teeth,
\forcelinebreak Six radiant pairs of eyes, beneath
Six yellow hats, looking out at the back
\forcelinebreak Of a waggonette on its slowed-down track
\forcelinebreak Up the steep street to some gay dance,
\forcelinebreak Suddenly interrupt my glance.
They do not see a gray nightmare
\forcelinebreak Astride the day, or anywhere.
\section{TO A TREE IN LONDON}
(CLEMENT’S INN)
Here you stay
\forcelinebreak Night and day,
\forcelinebreak Never, never going away!
Do you ache
\forcelinebreak When we take
\forcelinebreak Holiday for our health’s sake?
Wish for feet
\forcelinebreak When the heat
\forcelinebreak Scalds you in the brick-built street,
That you might
\forcelinebreak Climb the height
\forcelinebreak Where your ancestry saw light,
Find a brook
\forcelinebreak In some nook
\forcelinebreak There to purge your swarthy look?
No. You read
\forcelinebreak Trees to need
\forcelinebreak Smoke like earth whereon to feed. . . .
Have no sense
\forcelinebreak That far hence
\forcelinebreak Air is sweet in a blue immense,
Thus, black, blind,
\forcelinebreak You have opined
\forcelinebreak Nothing of your brightest kind;
Never seen
\forcelinebreak Miles of green,
\forcelinebreak Smelt the landscape’s sweet serene.
192*.
\section{THE FELLED ELM AND SHE}
When you put on that inmost ring
\forcelinebreak She, like you, was a little thing:
\forcelinebreak When your circles reached their fourth,
\forcelinebreak Scarce she knew life’s south from north:
\forcelinebreak When your year-zones counted twenty
\forcelinebreak She had fond admirers plenty:
\forcelinebreak When you’d grown your twenty-second
\forcelinebreak She and I were lovers reckoned:
\forcelinebreak When you numbered twenty-three
\forcelinebreak She went everywhere with me:
\forcelinebreak When you, at your fortieth line,
\forcelinebreak Showed decay, she seemed to pine:
\forcelinebreak When you were quite hollow within
\forcelinebreak She was felled — mere bone and skin:
\forcelinebreak You too, lacking strength to grow
\forcelinebreak Further trunk-rings, were laid low,
\forcelinebreak Matching her; both unaware
\forcelinebreak That your lives formed such a pair.
\section{HE DID NOT KNOW ME}
(WOMAN’S SORROW SONG)
He said: “I do not know you;
\forcelinebreak You are not she who came
\forcelinebreak And made my heart grow tame?”
\forcelinebreak I laughed: “The same!”
Still said he: “I don’t know you.”
\forcelinebreak “But I am your Love!” laughed I:
\forcelinebreak “Yours — faithful ever — till I die,
\forcelinebreak And pulseless lie!”
Yet he said: “I don’t know you.”
\forcelinebreak Freakful, I went away,
\forcelinebreak And met pale Time, with “Pray,
\forcelinebreak What means his Nay?”
Said Time: “He does not know you
\forcelinebreak In your mask of Comedy.”
\forcelinebreak “But,” said I, “that I have chosen to be:
\forcelinebreak Tragedy he.”
“True; hence he did not know you.”
\forcelinebreak “But him I could recognize?”
\forcelinebreak “Yea. Tragedy is true guise,
\forcelinebreak Comedy lies.”
\section{SO VARIOUS}
You may have met a man — quite young —
\forcelinebreak A brisk-eyed youth, and highly strung:
\forcelinebreak One whose desires
\forcelinebreak And inner fires
\forcelinebreak Moved him as wires.
And you may have met one stiff and old,
\forcelinebreak If not in years; of manner cold;
\forcelinebreak Who seemed as stone,
\forcelinebreak And never had known
\forcelinebreak Of mirth or moan.
And there may have crossed your path a lover,
\forcelinebreak In whose clear depths you could discover
\forcelinebreak A staunch, robust,
\forcelinebreak And tender trust,
\forcelinebreak Through storm and gust.
And you may have also known one fickle,
\forcelinebreak Whose fancies changed as the silver sickle
\forcelinebreak Of yonder moon,
\forcelinebreak Which shapes so soon
\forcelinebreak To demilune!
You entertained a person once
\forcelinebreak Whom you internally deemed a dunce: —
\forcelinebreak As he sat in view
\forcelinebreak Just facing you
\forcelinebreak You saw him through.
You came to know a learned seer
\forcelinebreak Of whom you read the surface mere:
\forcelinebreak Your soul quite sank;
\forcelinebreak Brain of such rank
\forcelinebreak Dubbed yours a blank.
Anon you quizzed a man of sadness,
\forcelinebreak Who never could have known true gladness:
\forcelinebreak Just for a whim
\forcelinebreak You pitied him
\forcelinebreak In his sore trim.
You journeyed with a man so glad
\forcelinebreak You never could conceive him sad:
\forcelinebreak He proved to be
\forcelinebreak Indubitably
\forcelinebreak Good company.
You lit on an unadventurous slow man,
\forcelinebreak Who, said you, need be feared by no man;
\forcelinebreak That his slack deeds
\forcelinebreak And sloth must needs
\forcelinebreak Produce but weeds.
A man of enterprise, shrewd and swift,
\forcelinebreak Who never suffered affairs to drift,
\forcelinebreak You eyed for a time
\forcelinebreak Just in his prime,
\forcelinebreak And judged he might climb.
You smoked beside one who forgot
\forcelinebreak All that you said, or grasped it not.
\forcelinebreak Quite a poor thing,
\forcelinebreak Not worth a sting
\forcelinebreak By satirizing!
Next year you nearly lost for ever
\forcelinebreak Goodwill from one who forgot slights never;
\forcelinebreak And, with unease,
\forcelinebreak Felt you must seize
\forcelinebreak Occasion to please . . .
Now. . . . All these specimens of man,
\forcelinebreak So various in their pith and plan,
\forcelinebreak Curious to say
\forcelinebreak Were one man. Yea,
\forcelinebreak I was all they.
\section{A SELF-GLAMOURER}
My little happiness,
\forcelinebreak How much I have made of it! —
\forcelinebreak As if I had been not less
\forcelinebreak Than a queen, to be straight obeyed of it.
\forcelinebreak “Life, be fairer far,”
\forcelinebreak I said, “Than you are.”
So I counted my springtime-day’s
\forcelinebreak Dream of futurity
\forcelinebreak Enringed with golden rays
\forcelinebreak To be quite a summer surety;
\forcelinebreak And my trustful daring undoubt
\forcelinebreak Brought it about!
Events all human-wrought
\forcelinebreak Had look of divinity,
\forcelinebreak And what I foreframed in thought
\forcelinebreak Grew substanced, by force of affinity:
\forcelinebreak Visions to verities came,
\forcelinebreak Seen as the same.
My years in trusting spent
\forcelinebreak Make to shape towardly,
\forcelinebreak And fate and accident
\forcelinebreak Behave not perversely or frowardly.
\forcelinebreak Shall, then, Life’s winter snow
\forcelinebreak To me be so?
\section{THE DEAD BASTARD}
Many and many a time I thought,
\forcelinebreak “Would my child were in its grave!”
\forcelinebreak Such the trouble and shame it brought.
Now ‘tis there. And now I’d brave
\forcelinebreak Opinion’s worst, in word or act,
\forcelinebreak To have that child alive; yes, slave
To dress and flaunt it to attract;
\forcelinebreak Show it the gossips brazenly,
\forcelinebreak And let as nothing be the fact
\forcelinebreak That never its father married me.
\section{THE CLASPED SKELETONS}
SURMISED DATE 1800 B.C.
(In an Ancient British barrow near the writer’s house)
O why did we uncover to view
\forcelinebreak So closely clasped a pair?
\forcelinebreak Your chalky bedclothes over you,
\forcelinebreak This long time here!
Ere Paris lay with Helena —
\forcelinebreak The poets’ dearest dear —
\forcelinebreak Ere David bedded Bathsheba
\forcelinebreak You two were bedded here.
Aye, even before the beauteous Jael
\forcelinebreak Bade Sisera doff his gear
\forcelinebreak And lie in her tent; then drove the nail,
\forcelinebreak You two lay here.
Wicked Aholah, in her youth,
\forcelinebreak Colled loves from far and near
\forcelinebreak Until they slew her without ruth;
\forcelinebreak But you had long colled here.
Aspasia lay with Pericles,
\forcelinebreak And Philip’s son found cheer
\forcelinebreak At eves in lying on Thais’ knees
\forcelinebreak While you lay here.
Cleopatra with Antony,
\forcelinebreak Resigned to dalliance sheer,
\forcelinebreak Lay, fatuous he, insatiate she,
\forcelinebreak Long after you’d lain here.
Pilate by Procula his wife
\forcelinebreak Lay tossing at her tear
\forcelinebreak Of pleading for an innocent life;
\forcelinebreak You tossed not here.
Ages before Monk Abélard
\forcelinebreak Gained tender Héloïse’ ear,
\forcelinebreak And loved and lay with her till scarred,
\forcelinebreak Had you lain loving here.
So long, beyond chronology,
\forcelinebreak Lovers in death as ‘twere,
\forcelinebreak So long in placid dignity
\forcelinebreak Have you lain here!
Yet what is length of time? But dream!
\forcelinebreak Once breathed this atmosphere
\forcelinebreak Those fossils near you, met the gleam
\forcelinebreak Of day as you did here;
But so far earlier theirs beside
\forcelinebreak Your life-span and career,
\forcelinebreak That they might style of yestertide
\forcelinebreak Your coming here!
\section{IN THE MARQUEE}
It was near last century’s ending,
\forcelinebreak And, though not much to rate
\forcelinebreak In a world of getting and spending,
\forcelinebreak To her it was great.
The scene was a London suburb
\forcelinebreak On a night of summer weather,
\forcelinebreak And the villas had back gardens
\forcelinebreak Running together.
Her neighbours behind were dancing
\forcelinebreak Under a marquee;
\forcelinebreak Two violoncellos played there,
\forcelinebreak And violins three.
She had not been invited,
\forcelinebreak Although her lover was;
\forcelinebreak She lay beside her husband,
\forcelinebreak Perplexed at the cause.
Sweet after sweet quadrille rang:
\forcelinebreak Absence made her weep;
\forcelinebreak The tears dried on her eyelids
\forcelinebreak As she fell asleep.
She dreamt she was whirling with him
\forcelinebreak In this dance upon the green
\forcelinebreak To which she was not invited
\forcelinebreak Though her lover had been.
All night she danced as he clasped her —
\forcelinebreak That is, in the happy dream
\forcelinebreak The music kept her dreaming
\forcelinebreak Till the first daybeam.
“O damn those noisy fiddles!”
\forcelinebreak Her husband said as he turned:
\forcelinebreak “Close to a neighbour’s bedroom:
\forcelinebreak I’d like them burned!”
At intervals thus all night-long
\forcelinebreak Her husband swore. But she
\forcelinebreak Slept on, and danced in the loved arms,
\forcelinebreak Under the marquee.
Next day she found that her lover,
\forcelinebreak Though asked, had gone elsewhere,
\forcelinebreak And that she had possessed him in absence
\forcelinebreak More than if there.
\section{AFTER THE BURIAL}
The family had buried him,
\forcelinebreak Their bread-bringer, their best:
\forcelinebreak They had returned to the house, whose hush a dim
\forcelinebreak Vague vacancy expressed.
There sat his sons, mute, rigid-faced,
\forcelinebreak His daughters, strained, red-eyed,
\forcelinebreak His wife, whose wan, worn features, vigil-traced,
\forcelinebreak Bent over him when he died.
At once a peal bursts from the bells
\forcelinebreak Of a large tall tower hard by:
\forcelinebreak Along the street the jocund clangour swells,
\forcelinebreak And upward to the sky.
Probably it was a wedding-peal,
\forcelinebreak Or possibly for a birth,
\forcelinebreak Or townsman knighted for political zeal,
\forcelinebreak This resonant mark of mirth.
The mourners, heavy-browed, sat on
\forcelinebreak Motionless. Well they heard,
\forcelinebreak They could not help it; nevertheless thereon
\forcelinebreak Spoke not a single word,
Nor window did they close, to numb
\forcelinebreak The bells’ insistent calls
\forcelinebreak Of joy; but suffered the harassing din to come
\forcelinebreak And penetrate their souls.
\section{THE MONGREL}
In Havenpool Harbour the ebb was strong,
\forcelinebreak And a man with a dog drew near and hung,
\forcelinebreak And taxpaying day was coming along,
\forcelinebreak So the mongrel had to be drowned.
\forcelinebreak The man threw a stick from the paved wharf-side
\forcelinebreak Into the midst of the ebbing tide,
\forcelinebreak And the dog jumped after with ardent pride
\forcelinebreak To bring the stick aground.
But no: the steady suck of the flood
\forcelinebreak To seaward needed, to be withstood,
\forcelinebreak More than the strength of mongrelhood
\forcelinebreak To fight its treacherous trend.
\forcelinebreak So, swimming for life with desperate will,
\forcelinebreak The struggler with all his natant skill
\forcelinebreak Kept buoyant in front of his master still
\forcelinebreak There standing to wait the end.
The loving eyes of the dog inclined
\forcelinebreak To the man he held as a god enshrined,
\forcelinebreak With no suspicion in his mind
\forcelinebreak That this had all been meant.
\forcelinebreak Till the effort not to drift from shore
\forcelinebreak Of his little legs grew slower and slower,
\forcelinebreak And, the tide still outing with brookless power,
\forcelinebreak Outward the dog, too, went.
Just ere his sinking what does one see
\forcelinebreak Break on the face of that devotee?
\forcelinebreak A wakening to the treachery
\forcelinebreak He had loved with love so blind?
\forcelinebreak The faith that had shone in that mongrel’s eye
\forcelinebreak That his owner would save him by and by
\forcelinebreak Turned to much like a curse as he sank to die,
\forcelinebreak And a loathing of mankind.
\section{CONCERNING AGNES}
I am stopped from hoping what I have hoped before —
\forcelinebreak Yes, many a time! —
\forcelinebreak To dance with that fair woman yet once more
\forcelinebreak As in the prime
\forcelinebreak Of August, when the wide-faced moon looked through
\forcelinebreak The boughs at the faery lamps of the Larmer Avenue.
I could not, though I should wish, have over again
\forcelinebreak That old romance,
\forcelinebreak And sit apart in the shade as we sat then
\forcelinebreak After the dance
\forcelinebreak The while I held her hand, and, to the booms
\forcelinebreak Of contrabassos, feet still pulsed from the distant rooms.
I could not. And you do not ask me why.
\forcelinebreak Hence you infer
\forcelinebreak That what may chance to the fairest under the sky
\forcelinebreak Has chanced to her.
\forcelinebreak Yes. She lies white, straight, features marble-keen,
\forcelinebreak Unapproachable, mute, in a nook I have never seen.
There she may rest like some vague goddess, shaped
\forcelinebreak As out of snow;
\forcelinebreak Say Aphrodite sleeping; or bedraped
\forcelinebreak Like Kalupso;
\forcelinebreak Or Amphitrite stretched on the Mid-sea swell,
\forcelinebreak Or one of the Nine grown stiff from thought. I cannot tell!
\section{HENLEY REGATTA}
She looks from the window: still it pours down direly,
\forcelinebreak And the avenue drips. She cannot go, she fears;
\forcelinebreak And the Regatta will be spoilt entirely;
\forcelinebreak And she sheds half-crazed tears.
Regatta Day and rain come on together
\forcelinebreak Again, years after. Gutters trickle loud;
\forcelinebreak But Nancy cares not. She knows nought of weather,
\forcelinebreak Or of the Henley crowd:
She’s a Regatta quite her own. Inanely
\forcelinebreak She laughs in the asylum as she floats
\forcelinebreak Within a water-tub, which she calls “Henley,”
\forcelinebreak Her little paper boats.
\section{AN EVENING IN GALILEE}
She looks far west towards Carmel, shading her eyes with her hand,
\forcelinebreak And she then looks east to the Jordan, and the smooth Tiberias’ strand.
\forcelinebreak “Is my son mad?” she asks; and never an answer has she,
\forcelinebreak Save from herself, aghast at the possibility.
\forcelinebreak “He professes as his firm faiths things far too grotesque to be true,
\forcelinebreak And his vesture is odd — too careless for one of his fair young hue! . . .
“He lays down doctrines as if he were old — aye, fifty at least:
\forcelinebreak In the Temple he terrified me, opposing the very High-Priest!
\forcelinebreak Why did he say to me, ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’
\forcelinebreak O it cuts to the heart that a child of mine thus spoke to me!
\forcelinebreak And he said, too, ‘Who is my mother?’ — when he knows so very well.
\forcelinebreak He might have said, ‘Who is my father?’ — and I’d found it hard to tell!
\forcelinebreak That no one knows but Joseph and — one other, nor ever will;
\forcelinebreak One who’ll not see me again. . . . How it chanced! — I dreaming no ill! . . .
“Would he’d not mix with the lowest folk — like those fishermen —
\forcelinebreak The while so capable, culling new knowledge, beyond our ken! . . .
\forcelinebreak That woman of no good character, ever following him,
\forcelinebreak Adores him if I mistake not: his wish of her is but a whim
\forcelinebreak Of his madness, it may be, outmarking his lack of coherency;
\forcelinebreak After his ‘Keep the Commandments!’ to smile upon such as she!
\forcelinebreak It is just what all those do who are wandering in their wit.
\forcelinebreak I don’t know — dare not say — what harm may grow from it.
O a mad son is a terrible thing; it even may lead
\forcelinebreak To arrest, and death! . . . And how he can preach, expound, and read!
\forcelinebreak “Here comes my husband. Shall I unveil him this tragedy-brink?
\forcelinebreak No. He has nightmares enough. I’ll pray, and think, and think.” . . .
\forcelinebreak She remembers she’s never put on any pot for his evening meal,
\forcelinebreak And pondering a plea looks vaguely to south of her — towards Jezreel.
\section{THE BROTHER}
O know you what I have done
\forcelinebreak To avenge our sister? She,
\forcelinebreak I thought, was wantoned with
\forcelinebreak By a man of levity:
And I lay in wait all day,
\forcelinebreak All day did I wait for him,
\forcelinebreak And dogged him to Bollard Head
\forcelinebreak When twilight dwindled dim,
And hurled him over the edge
\forcelinebreak And heard him fall below:
\forcelinebreak O would I were lying with him,
\forcelinebreak For the truth I did not know!
“O where’s my husband?” she asked,
\forcelinebreak As evening wore away:
\forcelinebreak “Best you had one, forsooth,
\forcelinebreak But never had you!” I say.
“Yes, but I have!” says she,
\forcelinebreak “My Love made it up with me,
\forcelinebreak And we churched it yesterday
\forcelinebreak And mean to live happily.”
And now I go in haste
\forcelinebreak To the Head, before she’s aware,
\forcelinebreak To join him in death for the wrong
\forcelinebreak I’ve done them both out there!
\section{WE FIELD-WOMEN}
How it rained
\forcelinebreak When we worked at Flintcomb-Ash,
\forcelinebreak And could not stand upon the hill
\forcelinebreak Trimming swedes for the slicing-mill.
\forcelinebreak The wet washed through us — plash, plash, plash:
\forcelinebreak How it rained!
How it snowed
\forcelinebreak When we crossed from Flintcomb-Ash
\forcelinebreak To the Great Barn for drawing reed,
\forcelinebreak Since we could nowise chop a swede. —
\forcelinebreak Flakes in each doorway and casement-sash:
\forcelinebreak How it snowed!
How it shone
\forcelinebreak When we went from Flintcomb-Ash
\forcelinebreak To start at dairywork once more
\forcelinebreak In the laughing meads, with cows three-score,
\forcelinebreak And pails, and songs, and love — too rash:
\forcelinebreak How it shone!
\section{A PRACTICAL WOMAN}
“O who’ll get me a healthy child: —
\forcelinebreak I should prefer a son —
\forcelinebreak Seven have I had in thirteen years,
\forcelinebreak Sickly every one!
“Three mope about as feeble shapes;
\forcelinebreak Weak; white; they’ll be no good.
\forcelinebreak One came deformed; an idiot next;
\forcelinebreak And two are crass as wood.
“I purpose one not only sound
\forcelinebreak In flesh, but bright in mind:
\forcelinebreak And duly for producing him
\forcelinebreak A means I’ve now to find.”
She went away. She disappeared,
\forcelinebreak Years, years. Then back she came:
\forcelinebreak In her hand was a blooming boy
\forcelinebreak Mentally and in frame.
“I found a father at last who’d suit
\forcelinebreak The purpose in my head,
\forcelinebreak And used him till he’d done his job,”
\forcelinebreak Was all thereon she said.
\section{SQUIRE HOOPER}
Hooper was ninety. One September dawn
\forcelinebreak He sent a messenger
\forcelinebreak For his physician, who asked thereupon
\forcelinebreak What ailed the sufferer
\forcelinebreak Which he might circumvent, and promptly bid begone.
“Doctor, I summoned you,” the squire replied —
\forcelinebreak “Pooh-pooh me though you may —
\forcelinebreak To ask what’s happened to me — burst inside,
\forcelinebreak It seems — not much, I’d say —
\forcelinebreak But awkward with a house-full here for a shoot to-day.”
And he described the symptoms. With bent head
\forcelinebreak The listener looked grave.
\forcelinebreak “H’m. . . . You’re a dead man in six hours,” he said. —
\forcelinebreak “I speak out, since you are brave —
\forcelinebreak And best ‘tis you should know, that last things may be sped.”
“Right,” said the squire. “And now comes — what to do?
\forcelinebreak One thing: on no account
\forcelinebreak Must I now spoil the sport I’ve asked them to —
\forcelinebreak My guests are paramount —
\forcelinebreak They must scour scrub and stubble; and big bags bring as due.”
He downed to breakfast, and bespoke his guests: —
\forcelinebreak “I find I have to go
\forcelinebreak An unexpected journey, and it rests
\forcelinebreak With you, my friends, to show
\forcelinebreak The shoot can go off gaily, whether I’m there or no.”
Thus blandly spoke he; and to the fields they went,
\forcelinebreak And Hooper up the stair.
\forcelinebreak They had a glorious day; and stiff and spent
\forcelinebreak Returned as dusk drew near. —
\forcelinebreak “Gentlemen,” said the doctor, “he’s not back as meant,
To his deep regret!” — So they took leave, each guest
\forcelinebreak Observing: “I dare say
\forcelinebreak Business detains him in the town: ‘tis best
\forcelinebreak We should no longer stay
\forcelinebreak Just now. We’ll come again anon”; and they went their way.
Meeting two men in the obscurity
\forcelinebreak Shouldering a box a thin
\forcelinebreak Cloth-covering wrapt, one sportsman cried: “Damn me,
\forcelinebreak I thought them carrying in,
\forcelinebreak At first, a coffin; till I knew it could not be.”
\section{A GENTLEMAN’S SECOND-HAND SUIT}
Here it is hanging in the sun
\forcelinebreak By the pawn-shop door,
\forcelinebreak A dress-suit — all its revels done
\forcelinebreak Of heretofore.
\forcelinebreak Long drilled to the waltzers’ swing and sway,
\forcelinebreak As its tokens show:
\forcelinebreak What it has seen, what it could say
\forcelinebreak If it did but know!
The sleeve bears still a print of powder
\forcelinebreak Rubbed from her arms
\forcelinebreak When she warmed up as the notes swelled louder
\forcelinebreak And livened her charms —
\forcelinebreak Or rather theirs, for beauties many
\forcelinebreak Leant there, no doubt,
\forcelinebreak Leaving these tell-tale traces when he
\forcelinebreak Spun them about.
Its cut seems rather in bygone style
\forcelinebreak On looking close,
\forcelinebreak So it mayn’t have bent it for some while
\forcelinebreak To the dancing pose:
\forcelinebreak Anyhow, often within its clasp
\forcelinebreak Fair partners hung,
\forcelinebreak Assenting to the wearer’s grasp
\forcelinebreak With soft sweet tongue.
Where is, alas, the gentleman
\forcelinebreak Who wore this suit?
\forcelinebreak And where are his ladies? Tell none can:
\forcelinebreak Gossip is mute.
\forcelinebreak Some of them may forget him quite
\forcelinebreak Who smudged his sleeve,
\forcelinebreak Some think of a wild and whirling night
\forcelinebreak With him, and grieve.
\section{WE SAY WE SHALL NOT MEET}
We say we shall not meet
\forcelinebreak Again beneath this sky,
\forcelinebreak And turn with leaden feet,
\forcelinebreak Murmuring “Good-bye!”
But laugh at how we rued
\forcelinebreak Our former time’s adieu
\forcelinebreak When those who went for good
\forcelinebreak Are met anew.
We talk in lightest vein
\forcelinebreak On trifles talked before,
\forcelinebreak And part to meet again,
\forcelinebreak But meet no more.
\section{SEEING THE MOON RISE}
We used to go to Froom-hill Barrow
\forcelinebreak To see the round moon rise
\forcelinebreak Into the heath-rimmed skies,
\forcelinebreak Trudging thither by plough and harrow
\forcelinebreak Up the pathway, steep and narrow,
\forcelinebreak Singing a song.
\forcelinebreak Now we do not go there. Why?
\forcelinebreak Zest burns not so high!
Latterly we’ve only conned her
\forcelinebreak With a passing glance
\forcelinebreak From window or door by chance,
\forcelinebreak Hoping to go again, high yonder,
\forcelinebreak As we used, and gaze, and ponder,
\forcelinebreak Singing a song.
\forcelinebreak Thitherward we do not go:
\forcelinebreak Feet once quick are slow!
August 1927
\section{SONG TO AURORE}
We’ll not begin again to love,
\forcelinebreak It only leads to pain;
\forcelinebreak The fire we now are master of
\forcelinebreak Has seared us not in vain.
\forcelinebreak Any new step of yours I’m fain
\forcelinebreak To hear of from afar,
\forcelinebreak And even in such may find a gain
\forcelinebreak While lodged not where you are.
No: that must not be done anew
\forcelinebreak Which has been done before;
\forcelinebreak I scarce could bear to seek, or view,
\forcelinebreak Or clasp you any more!
\forcelinebreak Life is a labour, death is sore,
\forcelinebreak And lonely living wrings;
\forcelinebreak But go your courses, Sweet Aurore,
\forcelinebreak Kisses are caresome things!
\section{HE NEVER EXPECTED MUCH}
[or] A CONSIDERATION
[A reflection] ON MY EIGHTY-SIXTH BIRTHDAY
Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
\forcelinebreak Kept faith with me;
\forcelinebreak Upon the whole you have proved to be
\forcelinebreak Much as you said you were.
\forcelinebreak Since as a child I used to lie
\forcelinebreak Upon the leaze and watch the sky,
\forcelinebreak Never, I own, expected I
\forcelinebreak That life would all be fair.
‘Twas then you said, and since have said,
\forcelinebreak Times since have said,
\forcelinebreak In that mysterious voice you shed
\forcelinebreak From clouds and hills around:
\forcelinebreak “Many have loved me desperately,
\forcelinebreak Many with smooth serenity,
\forcelinebreak While some have shown contempt of me
\forcelinebreak Till they dropped underground.
“I do not promise overmuch,
\forcelinebreak Child; overmuch;
\forcelinebreak Just neutral-tinted haps and such,”
\forcelinebreak You said to minds like mine.
\forcelinebreak Wise warning for your credit’s sake!
\forcelinebreak Which I for one failed not to take,
\forcelinebreak And hence could stem such strain and ache
\forcelinebreak As each year might assign.
\section{STANDING BY THE MANTELPIECE}
(H. M. M., 1873)
This candle-wax is shaping to a shroud
\forcelinebreak To-night. (They call it that, as you may know) —
\forcelinebreak By touching it the claimant is avowed,
\forcelinebreak And hence I press it with my finger — so.
To-night. To me twice night, that should have been
\forcelinebreak The radiance of the midmost tick of noon,
\forcelinebreak And close around me wintertime is seen
\forcelinebreak That might have shone the veriest day of June!
But since all’s lost, and nothing really lies
\forcelinebreak Above but shade, and shadier shade below,
\forcelinebreak Let me make clear, before one of us dies,
\forcelinebreak My mind to yours, just now embittered so.
Since you agreed, unurged and full-advised,
\forcelinebreak And let warmth grow without discouragement,
\forcelinebreak Why do you bear you now as if surprised,
\forcelinebreak When what has come was clearly consequent?
Since you have spoken, and finality
\forcelinebreak Closes around, and my last movements loom,
\forcelinebreak I say no more: the rest must wait till we
\forcelinebreak Are face to face again, yonside the tomb.
And let the candle-wax thus mould a shape
\forcelinebreak Whose meaning now, if hid before, you know,
\forcelinebreak And how by touch one present claims its drape,
\forcelinebreak And that it’s I who press my finger — so.
\section{BOYS THEN AND NOW}
“More than one cuckoo?”
\forcelinebreak And the little boy
\forcelinebreak Seemed to lose something
\forcelinebreak Of his spring joy.
When he’d grown up
\forcelinebreak He told his son
\forcelinebreak He’d used to think
\forcelinebreak There was only one,
Who came each year
\forcelinebreak With the trees’ new trim
\forcelinebreak On purpose to please
\forcelinebreak England and him:
And his son — old already
\forcelinebreak In life and its ways —
\forcelinebreak Said yawning: “How foolish
\forcelinebreak Boys were in those days!”
\section{THAT KISS IN THE DARK}
Recall it you? —
\forcelinebreak Say you do! —
\forcelinebreak When you went out into the night,
\forcelinebreak In an impatience that would not wait,
\forcelinebreak From that lone house in the woodland spot,
\forcelinebreak And when I, thinking you had gone
\forcelinebreak For ever and ever from my sight,
\forcelinebreak Came after, printing a kiss upon
\forcelinebreak Black air
\forcelinebreak In my despair,
\forcelinebreak And my two lips lit on your cheek
\forcelinebreak As you leant silent against a gate,
\forcelinebreak Making my woman’s face flush hot
\forcelinebreak At what I had done in the dark, unware
\forcelinebreak You lingered for me but would not speak:
\forcelinebreak Yes, kissed you, thinking you were not there!
\forcelinebreak Recall it you? —
\forcelinebreak Say you do!
\section{A NECESSITARIAN’S EPITAPH}
A world I did not wish to enter
\forcelinebreak Took me and poised me on my centre,
\forcelinebreak Made me grimace, and foot, and prance,
\forcelinebreak As cats on hot bricks have to dance
\forcelinebreak Strange jigs to keep them from the floor,
\forcelinebreak Till they sink down and feel no more.
\section{BURNING THE HOLLY}
O you are sad on Twelfth Night,
\forcelinebreak I notice: sad on Twelfth Night;
\forcelinebreak You are as sad on Twelfth Night
\forcelinebreak As any that I know.
“Yes: I am sad on that night,
\forcelinebreak Doubtless I’m sad on that night:
\forcelinebreak Yes; I am sad on that night,
\forcelinebreak For we all loved her so!”
Why are you sad on Twelfth Night,
\forcelinebreak Especially on Twelfth Night?
\forcelinebreak Why are you sad on Twelfth Night
\forcelinebreak When wit and laughter flow?
— ”She’d been a famous dancer,
\forcelinebreak Much lured of men; a dancer.
\forcelinebreak She’d been a famous dancer,
\forcelinebreak Facile in heel and toe. . . .
“And we were burning the holly
\forcelinebreak On Twelfth Night; the holly,
\forcelinebreak As people do: the holly,
\forcelinebreak Ivy, and mistletoe.
“And while it popped and crackled,
\forcelinebreak (She being our lodger), crackled;
\forcelinebreak And while it popped and crackled,
\forcelinebreak Her face caught by the glow,
“In he walked and said to her,
\forcelinebreak In a slow voice he said to her;
\forcelinebreak Yes, walking in he said to her,
\forcelinebreak ‘We sail before cock-crow.’
“‘Why did you not come on to me,
\forcelinebreak As promised? Yes, come on to me?
\forcelinebreak Why did you not come on to me,
\forcelinebreak Since you had sworn to go?’
“His eyes were deep and flashing,
\forcelinebreak As flashed the holm-flames: flashing;
\forcelinebreak His eyes were deep, and flashing
\forcelinebreak In their quick, keen upthrow.
“As if she had been ready,
\forcelinebreak Had furtively been ready;
\forcelinebreak As if she had been ready
\forcelinebreak For his insistence — lo! —
“She clasped his arm and went with him
\forcelinebreak As his entirely: went with him.
\forcelinebreak She clasped his arm and went with him
\forcelinebreak Into the sprinkling snow.
“We saw the prickly leaves waste
\forcelinebreak To ashes: saw the leaves waste;
\forcelinebreak The burnt-up prickly leaves waste. . . .
\forcelinebreak The pair had gone also.
— ”On Twelfth Night, two years after —
\forcelinebreak Yes, Twelfth Night, two years after;
\forcelinebreak On Twelfth Night, two years after,
\forcelinebreak We sat — our spirits low —
“Musing, when back the door swung
\forcelinebreak Without a knock. The door swung;
\forcelinebreak Thought flew to her. The door swung,
\forcelinebreak And in she came, pale, slow;
“Against her breast a child clasped;
\forcelinebreak Close to her breast a child clasped;
\forcelinebreak She stood there with the child clasped,
\forcelinebreak Swaying it to and fro.
“Her look alone the tale told;
\forcelinebreak Quite wordless was the tale told;
\forcelinebreak Her careworn eyes the tale told
\forcelinebreak As larger they seemed to grow. . . .
“One day next spring she disappeared,
\forcelinebreak The second time she disappeared.
\forcelinebreak And that time, when she’d disappeared
\forcelinebreak Came back no more. Ah, no!
“But we still burn the holly
\forcelinebreak On Twelfth Night; burn the holly
\forcelinebreak As people do: the holly,
\forcelinebreak Ivy, and mistletoe.”
\section{SUSPENSE}
A clamminess hangs over all like a clout,
\forcelinebreak The fields are a water-colour washed out,
\forcelinebreak The sky at its rim leaves a chink of light,
\forcelinebreak Like the lid of a pot that will not close tight.
She is away by the groaning sea,
\forcelinebreak Strained at the heart, and waiting for me:
\forcelinebreak Between us our foe from a hid retreat
\forcelinebreak Is watching, to wither us if we meet. . . .
But it matters little, however we fare —
\forcelinebreak Whether we meet, or I get not there;
\forcelinebreak The sky will look the same thereupon,
\forcelinebreak And the wind and the sea go groaning on.
\section{THE SECOND VISIT}
Clack, clack, clack, went the mill-wheel as I came,
\forcelinebreak And she was on the bridge with the thin hand-rail,
\forcelinebreak And the miller at the door, and the ducks at mill-tail;
\forcelinebreak I come again years after, and all there seems the same.
And so indeed it is: the apple-tree’d old house,
\forcelinebreak And the deep mill-pond, and the wet wheel clacking,
\forcelinebreak And a woman on the bridge, and white ducks quacking,
\forcelinebreak And the miller at the door, powdered pale from boots to brows.
But it’s not the same miller whom long ago I knew,
\forcelinebreak Nor are they the same apples, nor the same drops that dash
\forcelinebreak Over the wet wheel, nor the ducks below that splash,
\forcelinebreak Nor the woman who to fond plaints replied, “You know I do!”
\section{OUR OLD FRIEND DUALISM}
All hail to him, the Protean! A tough old chap is he:
\forcelinebreak Spinoza and the Monists cannot make him cease to be.
\forcelinebreak We pound him with our “Truth, Sir, please!” and quite appear to still him:
\forcelinebreak He laughs; holds Bergson up, and James; and swears we cannot kill him.
\forcelinebreak We argue them pragmatic cheats. “Aye,” says he. “They’re deceiving:
\forcelinebreak But I must live; for flamens plead I am all that’s worth believing!”
1920
\section{FAITHFUL WILSON}
“I say she’s handsome, by all laws
\forcelinebreak Of beauty, if wife ever was!”
\forcelinebreak Wilson insists thus, though each day
\forcelinebreak The years fret Fanny towards decay.
\forcelinebreak “She was once beauteous as a jewel,”
\forcelinebreak Hint friends; “but Time, of course, is cruel.”
\forcelinebreak Still Wilson does not quite feel how,
\forcelinebreak Once fair, she can be different now.
Partly from Strato of Sardis.
\section{GALLANT’S SONG}
When the maiden leaves off teasing,
\forcelinebreak Then the man may leave off pleasing:
\forcelinebreak Yea, ‘tis sign,
\forcelinebreak Wet or fine,
\forcelinebreak She will love him without ceasing
\forcelinebreak With a love there’s no appeasing.
\forcelinebreak Is it so?
\forcelinebreak Ha-ha. Ho!
Nov. 1868.
From an old notebook.
\section{A PHILOSOPHICAL FANTASY}
“Milton . . . made God argue.” — Walter Bagehot.
“Well, if thou wilt, then, ask me;
\forcelinebreak To answer will not task me:
\forcelinebreak I’ve a response, I doubt not.
\forcelinebreak And quite agree to flout not
\forcelinebreak Thy question, if of reason,
\forcelinebreak Albeit not quite in season:
\forcelinebreak A universe to marshal,
\forcelinebreak What god can give but partial
\forcelinebreak Eye to frail Earth — life-shotten
\forcelinebreak Ere long, extinct, forgotten! —
\forcelinebreak But seeing indications
\forcelinebreak That thou read’st my limitations,
\forcelinebreak And since my lack of forethought
\forcelinebreak Aggrieves thy more and more thought,
\forcelinebreak I’ll hearken to thy pleading:
\forcelinebreak Some lore may lie in heeding
\forcelinebreak Thy irregular proceeding.”
“‘Tis this unfulfilled intention,
\forcelinebreak O Causer, I would mention: —
\forcelinebreak Will you, in condescension
\forcelinebreak This evening, ere we’ve parted,
\forcelinebreak Say why you felt fainthearted,
\forcelinebreak And let your aim be thwarted,
\forcelinebreak Its glory be diminished,
\forcelinebreak Its concept stand unfinished? —
\forcelinebreak Such I ask you, Sir or Madam,
\forcelinebreak (I know no more than Adam,
\forcelinebreak Even vaguely, what your sex is, —
\forcelinebreak Though feminine I had thought you
\forcelinebreak Till seers as ‘Sire’ besought you; —
\forcelinebreak And this my ignorance vexes
\forcelinebreak Some people not a little,
\forcelinebreak And, though not me one tittle,
\forcelinebreak It makes me sometimes choose me
\forcelinebreak Call you ‘It,’ if you’ll excuse me?”)
“Call me ‘It’ with a good conscience,
\forcelinebreak And be sure it is all nonsense
\forcelinebreak That I mind a fault of manner
\forcelinebreak In a pigmy towards his planner!
\forcelinebreak Be I, be not I, sexless,
\forcelinebreak I am in nature vexless.
\forcelinebreak — How vain must clay-carved man be
\forcelinebreak To deem such folly can be
\forcelinebreak As that freaks of my own framing
\forcelinebreak Can set my visage flaming —
\forcelinebreak Start me volleying interjections
\forcelinebreak Against my own confections,
\forcelinebreak As the Jews and others limned me,
\forcelinebreak And in fear and trembling hymned me!
\forcelinebreak Call me ‘but dream-projected,’
\forcelinebreak I shall not be affected;
\forcelinebreak Call me ‘blind force persisting,’
\forcelinebreak I shall remain unlisting;
\forcelinebreak (A few have done it lately,
\forcelinebreak And, maybe, err not greatly.)
\forcelinebreak — Another such a vanity
\forcelinebreak In witless weak humanity
\forcelinebreak Is thinking that of those all
\forcelinebreak Through space at my disposal,
\forcelinebreak Man’s shape must needs resemble
\forcelinebreak Mine, that makes zodiacs tremble!
“Continuing where we started: —
\forcelinebreak As for my aims being thwarted,
\forcelinebreak Wherefore I feel fainthearted,
\forcelinebreak Aimless am I, revealing
\forcelinebreak No heart-scope for faint feeling.
\forcelinebreak — But thy mistake I’ll pardon,
\forcelinebreak And, as Adam’s mentioned to me,
\forcelinebreak (Though in timeless truth there never
\forcelinebreak Was a man like him whatever)
\forcelinebreak I’ll meet thee in thy garden,
\forcelinebreak As I did not him, beshrew me!
\forcelinebreak In the sun of so-called daytime —
\forcelinebreak Say, just about the Maytime
\forcelinebreak Of my next, or next, Creation?
\forcelinebreak (I love procrastination,
To use the words in thy sense,
\forcelinebreak Which have no hold on my sense)
\forcelinebreak Or at any future stray-time. —
\forcelinebreak One of thy representatives
\forcelinebreak In some later incarnation
\forcelinebreak I mean, of course, well knowing
\forcelinebreak Thy present conformation
\forcelinebreak But a unit of my tentatives,
\forcelinebreak Whereof such heaps lie blowing
\forcelinebreak As dust, where thou art going;
\forcelinebreak Yea, passed to where suns glow not,
\forcelinebreak Begrieved of those that go not
\forcelinebreak (Though what grief is, I know not.)
“Perhaps I may inform thee,
\forcelinebreak In case I should alarm thee,
\forcelinebreak That no dramatic stories
\forcelinebreak Like ancient ones whose core is
\forcelinebreak A mass of superstition
\forcelinebreak And monkish imposition
\forcelinebreak Will mark my explanation
\forcelinebreak Of the world’s sore situation
\forcelinebreak (As thou tell’st), with woes that shatter;
\forcelinebreak Though from former aions to latter
\forcelinebreak To me ‘tis malleable matter
\forcelinebreak For treatment scientific
\forcelinebreak More than sensitive and specific —
\forcelinebreak Stuff without moral features,
\forcelinebreak Which I’ve no sense of ever,
\forcelinebreak Or of ethical endeavour,
\forcelinebreak Or of justice to Earth’s creatures,
\forcelinebreak Or how Right from Wrong to sever:
\forcelinebreak Let these be as men learn such;
\forcelinebreak For me, I don’t discern such,
\forcelinebreak And — real enough I daresay —
\forcelinebreak I know them but by hearsay
\forcelinebreak As something Time hath rendered
\forcelinebreak Out of substance I engendered,
\forcelinebreak Time, too, being a condition
\forcelinebreak Beyond my recognition.
\forcelinebreak — I would add that, while unknowing
\forcelinebreak Of this justice earthward owing,
Nor explanation offering
\forcelinebreak Of what is meant by suffering,
\forcelinebreak Thereof I’m not a spurner,
\forcelinebreak Or averse to be a learner.
“To return from wordy wandering
\forcelinebreak To the question we are pondering;
\forcelinebreak Though, viewing the world in my mode,
\forcelinebreak I fail to see it in thy mode
\forcelinebreak As ‘unfulfilled intention,’
\forcelinebreak Which is past my comprehension
\forcelinebreak Being unconscious in my doings
\forcelinebreak So largely, (whence thy rueings); —
\forcelinebreak Aye, to human tribes nor kindlessness
\forcelinebreak Nor love I’ve given, but mindlessness,
\forcelinebreak Which state, though far from ending,
\forcelinebreak May nevertheless be mending.
“However, I’ll advise him —
\forcelinebreak Him thy scion, who will walk here
\forcelinebreak When Death hath dumbed thy talk here —
\forcelinebreak In phrase that may surprise him,
\forcelinebreak What thing it was befel me,
\forcelinebreak (A thing that my confessing
\forcelinebreak Lack of forethought helps thy guessing),
\forcelinebreak And acted to compel me
\forcelinebreak By that purposeless propension
\forcelinebreak Which is mine, and not intention,
\forcelinebreak Along lines of least resistance,
\forcelinebreak Or, in brief, unsensed persistence,
\forcelinebreak That saddens thy existence
\forcelinebreak To think my so-called scheming
\forcelinebreak Not that of my first dreaming.”
1920 and 1926.
\section{A QUESTION OF MARRIAGE}
“I yield you my whole heart, Countess,” said he;
\forcelinebreak “Come, Dear, and be queen of my studio.”
\forcelinebreak “No, sculptor. You’re merely my friend,” said she:
\forcelinebreak “We dine our artists; but marry them — no.”
“Be it thus,” he replied. And his love, so strong,
\forcelinebreak He subdued as a stoic should. Anon
\forcelinebreak He wived some damsel who’d loved him long,
\forcelinebreak Of lineage noteless; and chiselled on.
And a score years passed. As a master-mind
\forcelinebreak The world made much of his marching fame,
\forcelinebreak And his wife’s little charms, with his own entwined,
\forcelinebreak Won day after day increased acclaim.
The countess-widow had closed with a mate
\forcelinebreak In rank and wealth of her own degree,
\forcelinebreak And they moved among the obscurely great
\forcelinebreak Of an order that had no novelty.
And oldening — neither with blame nor praise —
\forcelinebreak Their stately lives begot no stir,
\forcelinebreak And she saw that when death should efface her days
\forcelinebreak All men would abandon thought of her;
And said to herself full gloomily:
\forcelinebreak “Far better for me had it been to shine
\forcelinebreak The wench of a genius such as he
\forcelinebreak Than rust as the wife of a spouse like mine!”
\section{THE LETTER’S TRIUMPH}
(A FANCY)
Yes: I perceive it’s to your Love
\forcelinebreak You are bent on sending me. That this is so
\forcelinebreak Your words and phrases prove!
And now I am folded, and start to go,
\forcelinebreak Where you, my writer, have no leave to come:
\forcelinebreak My entry none will know!
And I shall catch her eye, and dumb
\forcelinebreak She’ll keep, should my unnoised arrival be
\forcelinebreak Hoped for, or troublesome.
My face she’ll notice readily:
\forcelinebreak And, whether she care to meet you, or care not,
\forcelinebreak She will perforce meet me;
Take me to closet or garden-plot
\forcelinebreak And, blushing or pouting, bend her eyes quite near,
\forcelinebreak Moved much, or never a jot.
And while you wait in hope and fear,
\forcelinebreak Far from her cheeks and lips, snug I shall stay
\forcelinebreak In close communion there,
And hear her heart-beats, things she may say,
\forcelinebreak As near her naked fingers, sleeve, or glove
\forcelinebreak I lie — ha-ha! — all day.
\section{A FORGOTTEN MINIATURE}
There you are in the dark,
\forcelinebreak Deep in a box
\forcelinebreak Nobody ever unlocks,
\forcelinebreak Or even turns to mark;
\forcelinebreak — Out of mind stark.
Yet there you have not been worsed
\forcelinebreak Like your sitter
\forcelinebreak By Time, the Fair’s hard-hitter;
\forcelinebreak Your beauties, undispersed,
\forcelinebreak Glow as at first.
Shut in your case for years,
\forcelinebreak Never an eye
\forcelinebreak Of the many passing nigh,
\forcelinebreak Fixed on their own affairs,
\forcelinebreak Thinks what it nears!
— While you have lain in gloom,
\forcelinebreak A form forgot,
\forcelinebreak Your reign remembered not,
\forcelinebreak Much life has come to bloom
\forcelinebreak Within this room.
Yea, in Time’s cyclic sweep
\forcelinebreak Unrest has ranged:
\forcelinebreak Women and men have changed:
\forcelinebreak Some you knew slumber deep;
\forcelinebreak Some wait for sleep.
\section{WHISPERED AT THE CHURCH-OPENING}
In the bran-new pulpit the bishop stands,
\forcelinebreak And gives out his text, as his gaze expands
\forcelinebreak To the people, the aisles, the roof’s new frame,
\forcelinebreak And the arches, and ashlar with coloured bands.
“Why — he’s the man,” says one, “who came
\forcelinebreak To preach in my boyhood — a fashion then —
\forcelinebreak In a series of sermons to working-men
\forcelinebreak On week-day evenings, a novelty
\forcelinebreak Which brought better folk to hear and see.
\forcelinebreak They preached each one each week, by request:
\forcelinebreak Some were eloquent speakers, among the best
\forcelinebreak Of the lot being this, as all confessed.”
“I remember now. And reflection brings
\forcelinebreak Back one in especial, sincerest of all;
\forcelinebreak Whose words, though unpicked, gave the essence of things; —
\forcelinebreak And where is he now, whom I well recall?”
“Oh, he’d no touches of tactic skill:
\forcelinebreak His mind ran on charity and good will:
\forcelinebreak He’s but as he was, a vicar still.”
\section{IN WEATHERBURY STOCKS}
-1850
“I sit here in these stocks,
\forcelinebreak And Saint-Mary’s moans eleven;
\forcelinebreak The sky is dark and cold:
\forcelinebreak I would I were in heaven!
“What footsteps do I hear?
\forcelinebreak Ah, you do not forget,
\forcelinebreak My Sophy! O, my dear,
\forcelinebreak We may be happy yet!
“But — . Mother, is’t your voice?
\forcelinebreak You who have come to me? —
\forcelinebreak It did not cross my thought:
\forcelinebreak I was thinking it was she.”
“She! Foolish simple son!
\forcelinebreak She says: ‘I’ve finished quite
\forcelinebreak With him or any one
\forcelinebreak Put in the stocks to-night.’
“She’s gone to Blooms-End dance,
\forcelinebreak And will not come back yet:
\forcelinebreak Her new man sees his chance,
\forcelinebreak And is teaching her to forget.
“Jim, think no other woman
\forcelinebreak To such a fellow is true
\forcelinebreak But the mother you have grieved so,
\forcelinebreak Or cares for one like you!”
\section{A PLACID MAN’S EPITAPH}
As for my life, I’ve led it
\forcelinebreak With fair content and credit:
\forcelinebreak It said: “Take this.” I took it.
\forcelinebreak Said: “Leave.” And I forsook it.
\forcelinebreak If I had done without it
\forcelinebreak None would have cared about it,
\forcelinebreak Or said: “One has refused it
\forcelinebreak Who might have meetly used it.”
1925
\section{THE NEW BOOTS}
“They are his new boots,” she pursued;
\forcelinebreak “They have not been worn at all:
\forcelinebreak They stay there hung on the wall,
\forcelinebreak And are getting as stiff as wood.
\forcelinebreak He bought them for the wet weather,
\forcelinebreak And they are of waterproof leather.”
“Why does her husband,” said I,
\forcelinebreak “Never wear those boots bought new?”
\forcelinebreak To a neighbour of hers I knew;
\forcelinebreak Who answered: “Ah, those boots. Aye,
\forcelinebreak He bought them to wear whenever
\forcelinebreak It rained. But there they hang ever.
“‘Yes,’ he laughed, as he hung them up,
\forcelinebreak ‘I’ve got them at last — a pair
\forcelinebreak I can walk in anywhere
\forcelinebreak Through rain and slush and slop.
\forcelinebreak For many a year I’ve been haunted
\forcelinebreak By thoughts of how much they were wanted.’
“And she’s not touched them or tried
\forcelinebreak To remove them. . . . Anyhow,
\forcelinebreak As you see them hanging now
\forcelinebreak They have hung ever since he died
\forcelinebreak The day after gaily declaring:
\forcelinebreak ‘Ha-ha! Now for wet wayfaring.
\forcelinebreak They’re just the chaps for my wearing!’”
\section{THE MUSING MAIDEN}
“Why so often, silent one,
\forcelinebreak Do you steal away alone?”
\forcelinebreak Starting, half she turned her head,
\forcelinebreak And guiltily she said: —
“When the vane points to his far town
\forcelinebreak I go upon the hog-backed down,
\forcelinebreak And think the breeze that stroked his lip
\forcelinebreak Over my own may slip.
“When he walks at close of day
\forcelinebreak I ramble on the white highway,
\forcelinebreak And think it reaches to his feet:
\forcelinebreak A meditation sweet!
“When coasters hence to London sail
\forcelinebreak I watch their puffed wings waning pale;
\forcelinebreak His window opens near the quay;
\forcelinebreak Their coming he can see.
“I go to meet the moon at night;
\forcelinebreak To mark the moon was our delight;
\forcelinebreak Up there our eyesights touch at will
\forcelinebreak If such he practise still.”
W.P.V. October 1866 (recopied).
\section{LORNA THE SECOND}
Lorna! Yes, you are sweet,
\forcelinebreak But you are not your mother,
\forcelinebreak Lorna the First, frank, feat,
\forcelinebreak Never such another! —
\forcelinebreak Love of her could smother
\forcelinebreak Griefs by day or night;
\forcelinebreak Nor could any other,
\forcelinebreak Lorna, dear and bright,
\forcelinebreak Ever so well adorn a
\forcelinebreak Mansion, coach, or cot,
\forcelinebreak Or so make men scorn a
\forcelinebreak Rival in their sight;
\forcelinebreak Even you could not!
\forcelinebreak Hence I have to mourn a
\forcelinebreak Loss ere you were born; a Lorna!
\section{A DAUGHTER RETURNS}
I like not that dainty-cut raiment, those earrings of pearl,
\forcelinebreak I like not the light in that eye;
\forcelinebreak I like not the note of that voice. Never so was the girl
\forcelinebreak Who a year ago bade me good-bye!
Hadst but come bare and moneyless, worn in the vamp, weather-gray,
\forcelinebreak But innocent still as before,
\forcelinebreak How warmly I’d lodged thee! But sport thy new gains far away;
\forcelinebreak I pray thee now — come here no more!
And yet I’ll not try to blot out every memory of thee;
\forcelinebreak I’ll think of thee — yes, now and then:
\forcelinebreak One who’s watched thee since Time called thee out o’ thy mother and me
\forcelinebreak Must think of thee; aye, I know when! . . .
When the cold sneer of dawn follows night-shadows black as a hearse,
\forcelinebreak And the rain filters down the fruit tree,
\forcelinebreak And the tempest mouths into the flue-top a word like a curse,
\forcelinebreak Then, then I shall think, think of thee!
December 17, 1901.
\section{THE THIRD KISSING-GATE}
She foots it forward down the town,
\forcelinebreak Then leaves the lamps behind,
\forcelinebreak And trots along the eastern road
\forcelinebreak Where elms stand double-lined.
She clacks the first dim kissing-gate
\forcelinebreak Beneath the storm-strained trees,
\forcelinebreak And passes to the second mead
\forcelinebreak That fringes Mellstock Leaze.
She swings the second kissing-gate
\forcelinebreak Next the gray garden-wall,
\forcelinebreak And sees the third mead stretching down
\forcelinebreak Towards the waterfall.
And now the third-placed kissing-gate
\forcelinebreak Her silent shadow nears,
\forcelinebreak And touches with; when suddenly
\forcelinebreak Her person disappears.
What chanced by that third kissing-gate
\forcelinebreak When the hushed mead grew dun?
\forcelinebreak Lo — two dark figures clasped and closed
\forcelinebreak As if they were but one.
\section{DRINKING SONG}
Once on a time when thought began
\forcelinebreak Lived Thales: he
\forcelinebreak Was said to see
\forcelinebreak Vast truths that mortals seldom can;
\forcelinebreak It seems without
\forcelinebreak A moment’s doubt
\forcelinebreak That everything was made for man.
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: feel no distress
\forcelinebreak That thoughts so great should now be less!
Earth mid the sky stood firm and flat,
\forcelinebreak He held, till came
\forcelinebreak A sage by name
\forcelinebreak Copernicus, and righted that.
\forcelinebreak We trod, he told,
\forcelinebreak A globe that rolled
\forcelinebreak Around a sun it warmed it at.
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis only one great thought the less!
But still we held, as Time flew by
\forcelinebreak And wit increased,
\forcelinebreak Ours was, at least,
\forcelinebreak The only world whose rank was high:
\forcelinebreak Till rumours flew
\forcelinebreak From folk who knew
\forcelinebreak Of globes galore about the sky.
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: fell no distress;
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis only one great thought the less!
And that this earth, our one estate,
\forcelinebreak Was no prime ball,
\forcelinebreak The best of all,
\forcelinebreak But common, mean; indeed, tenth-rate:
\forcelinebreak And men, so proud,
\forcelinebreak A feeble crowd,
\forcelinebreak Unworthy any special fate.
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis only one great thought the less!
Then rose one Hume, who could not see,
\forcelinebreak If earth were such,
\forcelinebreak Required were much
\forcelinebreak To prove no miracles could be:
\forcelinebreak “Better believe
\forcelinebreak The eyes deceive
\forcelinebreak Than that God’s clockwork jolts,” said he.
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis only one great thought the less!
Next this strange message Darwin brings,
\forcelinebreak (Though saying his say
\forcelinebreak In a quiet way);
\forcelinebreak We all are one with creeping things;
\forcelinebreak And apes and men
\forcelinebreak Blood-brethren,
\forcelinebreak And likewise reptile forms with stings.
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis only one great thought the less!
And when this philosoph had done
\forcelinebreak Came Doctor Cheyne:
\forcelinebreak Speaking plain he
\forcelinebreak Proved no virgin bore a son.
\forcelinebreak “Such tale, indeed,
\forcelinebreak Helps not our creed,”
\forcelinebreak He said. “A tale long known to none.”
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis only one great thought the less!
And now comes Einstein with a notion —
\forcelinebreak Not yet quite clear
\forcelinebreak To many here —
\forcelinebreak That’s there’s no time, no space, no motion,
\forcelinebreak Nor rathe nor late,
\forcelinebreak Nor square nor straight,
\forcelinebreak But just a sort of bending-ocean.
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
\forcelinebreak ‘Tis only one great thought the less!
So here we are, in piteous case:
\forcelinebreak Like butterflies
\forcelinebreak Of many dyes
\forcelinebreak Upon an Alpine glacier’s face:
\forcelinebreak To fly and cower
\forcelinebreak In some warm bower
\forcelinebreak Our chief concern in such a place.
Chorus.
Fill full your cups: feel no distress
\forcelinebreak At all our great thoughts shrinking less:
\forcelinebreak We’ll do a good deed nevertheless!
\section{THE TARRYING BRIDEGROOM}
Wildly bound the bells this morning
\forcelinebreak For the glad solemnity;
\forcelinebreak People are adorning
\forcelinebreak Chancel and canopy;
\forcelinebreak But amid the peal a warning
\forcelinebreak Under-echo calls to me.
Where the lane divides the pasture
\forcelinebreak Long I watch each bend and stone,
\forcelinebreak Why not now as last year,
\forcelinebreak When he sought me — lone?
\forcelinebreak Come, O come, and see, and cast here
\forcelinebreak Light and love on one your own!
How it used to draw him to me,
\forcelinebreak When I piped a pretty tune;
\forcelinebreak Yes, when first he knew me
\forcelinebreak In my pink shalloon:
\forcelinebreak Little I guessed ‘twould so undo me
\forcelinebreak Lacking him this summer noon!
\section{THE DESTINED PAIR}
Two beings were drifting
\forcelinebreak Each one to the other:
\forcelinebreak No moment’s veil-lifting
\forcelinebreak Or hint from another
\forcelinebreak Led either to weet
\forcelinebreak That the tracks of their feet
\forcelinebreak Were arcs that would meet.
One moved in a city,
\forcelinebreak And one in a village,
\forcelinebreak Where many a ditty
\forcelinebreak He tongued when at tillage
\forcelinebreak On dreams of a dim
\forcelinebreak Figure fancy would limn
\forcelinebreak That was viewless to him.
Would Fate have been kinder
\forcelinebreak To keep night between them? —
\forcelinebreak Had he failed to find her
\forcelinebreak And time never seen them
\forcelinebreak Unite; so that, caught
\forcelinebreak In no burning love-thought,
\forcelinebreak She had faded unsought?
\section{A MUSICAL INCIDENT}
When I see the room it hurts me
\forcelinebreak As with a pricking blade,
\forcelinebreak Those women being the memoried reason why my cheer deserts me. —
\forcelinebreak ‘Twas thus. One of them played
\forcelinebreak To please her friend, not knowing
\forcelinebreak That friend was speedily growing,
\forcelinebreak Behind the player’s chair,
\forcelinebreak Somnolent, unaware
\forcelinebreak Of any music there.
I saw it, and it distressed me,
\forcelinebreak For I had begun to think
\forcelinebreak I loved the drowsy listener, when this arose to test me
\forcelinebreak And tug me from love’s brink.
\forcelinebreak “Beautiful!” said she, waking
\forcelinebreak As the music ceased. “Heart-aching!”
\forcelinebreak Though never a note she’d heard
\forcelinebreak To judge of as averred —
\forcelinebreak Save that of the very last word.
All would have faded in me,
\forcelinebreak But that the sleeper brought
\forcelinebreak News a week thence that her friend was dead. It stirred within me
\forcelinebreak Sense of injustice wrought
\forcelinebreak That dead player’s poor intent —
\forcelinebreak So heartily, kindly meant —
\forcelinebreak As blandly added the sigher:
\forcelinebreak “How glad I am I was nigh her,
\forcelinebreak To hear her last tune!” — ”Liar!”
\forcelinebreak I lipped. — This gave love pause,
\forcelinebreak And killed it, such as it was.
\section{JUNE LEAVES AND AUTUMN}
\subsection{I}
Lush summer lit the trees to green;
\forcelinebreak But in the ditch hard by
\forcelinebreak Lay dying boughs some hand unseen
\forcelinebreak Had lopped when first with festal mien
\forcelinebreak They matched their mates on high.
\forcelinebreak It seemed a melancholy fate
\forcelinebreak That leaves but brought to birth so late
\forcelinebreak Should rust there, red and numb,
\forcelinebreak In quickened fall, while all their race
\forcelinebreak Still joyed aloft in pride of place
\forcelinebreak With store of days to come.
\subsection{II}
At autumn-end I fared that way,
\forcelinebreak And traced those boughs fore-hewn
\forcelinebreak Whose leaves, awaiting their decay
\forcelinebreak In slowly browning shades, still lay
\forcelinebreak Where they had lain in June
\forcelinebreak And now, no less embrowned and curst
\forcelinebreak Than if they had fallen with the first,
\forcelinebreak Nor known a morning more,
\forcelinebreak Lay there alongside, dun and sere,
\forcelinebreak Those that at my last wandering here
\forcelinebreak Had length of days in store.
November 19, 1898.
\section{NO BELL-RINGING}
A BALLAD OF DURNOVER
The little boy legged on through the dark,
\forcelinebreak To hear the New-Year’s ringing:
\forcelinebreak The three-mile road was empty, stark,
\forcelinebreak No sound or echo bringing.
When he got to the tall church tower
\forcelinebreak Standing upon the hill,
\forcelinebreak Although it was hard on the midnight hour
\forcelinebreak The place was, as elsewhere, still;
Except that the flag-staff rope, betossed
\forcelinebreak By blasts from the nor’-east,
\forcelinebreak Like a dead man’s bones on a gibbet-post
\forcelinebreak Tugged as to be released.
“Why is there no ringing to-night?”
\forcelinebreak Said the boy to a moveless one
\forcelinebreak On a tombstone where the moon struck white;
\forcelinebreak But he got answer none.
“No ringing in of New Year’s Day.”
\forcelinebreak He mused as he dragged back home;
\forcelinebreak And wondered till his head was gray
\forcelinebreak Why the bells that night were dumb.
And often thought of the snowy shape
\forcelinebreak That sat on the moonlit stone,
\forcelinebreak Nor spoke nor moved, and in mien and drape
\forcelinebreak Seemed like a sprite thereon.
And then he met one left of the band
\forcelinebreak That had treble-bobbed when young,
\forcelinebreak And said: “I never could understand
\forcelinebreak Why, that night, no bells rung.”
“True. There’d not happened such a thing
\forcelinebreak For half a century; aye,
\forcelinebreak And never I’ve told why they did not ring
\forcelinebreak From that time till to-day. . . .
“Through the week in bliss at The Hit or Miss
\forcelinebreak We had drunk — not a penny left;
\forcelinebreak What then we did — well, now ‘tis hid, —
\forcelinebreak But better we’d stooped to theft!
“Yet, since none other remains who can,
\forcelinebreak And few more years are mine,
\forcelinebreak I may tell you,” said the cramped old man.
\forcelinebreak “We — swilled the Sacrament-wine.
“Then each set-to with the strength of two,
\forcelinebreak Every man to his bell;
\forcelinebreak But something was wrong we found ere long
\forcelinebreak Though what, we could not tell.
“We pulled till the sweat-drops fell around,
\forcelinebreak As we’d never pulled before,
\forcelinebreak An hour by the clock, but not one sound
\forcelinebreak Came down through the bell-loft floor.
“On the morrow all folk of the same thing spoke,
\forcelinebreak They had stood at the midnight time
\forcelinebreak On their doorsteps near with a listening ear,
\forcelinebreak But there reached them never a chime.
“We then could read the dye of our deed,
\forcelinebreak And we knew we were accurst;
\forcelinebreak But we broke to none the thing we had done,
\forcelinebreak And since then never durst.”
An old tavern now demolished. The full legend over the door ran, “Hit or Miss: Luck’s All!”
\section{I LOOKED BACK}
I looked back as I left the house,
\forcelinebreak And, past the chimneys and neighbour tree,
\forcelinebreak The moon upsidled through the boughs: —
\forcelinebreak I thought: “I shall a last time see
\forcelinebreak This picture; when will that time be?”
I paused amid the laugh-loud feast,
\forcelinebreak And selfward said: “I am sitting where,
\forcelinebreak Some night, when ancient songs have ceased,
\forcelinebreak ‘Now is the last time I shall share
\forcelinebreak Such cheer,’” will be the thought I bear.
An eye-sweep back at a look-out corner
\forcelinebreak Upon a hill, as forenight wore,
\forcelinebreak Stirred me to think: “Ought I to warn her
\forcelinebreak That, though I come here times three-score,
\forcelinebreak One day ‘twill be I come no more?”
Anon I reasoned there had been,
\forcelinebreak Ere quite forsaken was each spot,
\forcelinebreak Bygones whereon I’d lastly seen
\forcelinebreak That house, that feast, that maid forgot;
\forcelinebreak But when? — Ah, I remembered not!
\section{THE AGED NEWSPAPER SOLILOQUIZES}
Yes; yes; I am old. In me appears
\forcelinebreak The history of a hundred years;
\forcelinebreak Empires’, kings’, captives’, births and deaths,
\forcelinebreak Strange faiths, and fleeting shibboleths.
\forcelinebreak — Tragedy, comedy, throngs my page
\forcelinebreak Beyond all mummed on any stage:
\forcelinebreak Cold hearts beat hot, hot hearts beat cold,
\forcelinebreak And I beat on. Yes; yes; I am old.
CHRISTMAS: 1 “Peace upon earth!” was said. We sing it,
\forcelinebreak And pay a million priests to bring it.
\forcelinebreak After two thousand years of mass
\forcelinebreak We’ve got as far as poison-gas.
1924
\section{THE SINGLE WITNESS}
“Did no one else, then, see them, man,
\forcelinebreak Lying among the whin?
\forcelinebreak Did no one else, behold them at all
\forcelinebreak Commit this shameless sin,
\forcelinebreak But you, in the hollow of the down
\forcelinebreak No traveller’s eye takes in?”
“Nobody else, my noble lord,
\forcelinebreak Saw them together there —
\forcelinebreak Your young son’s tutor and she. I made
\forcelinebreak A short cut from the fair,
\forcelinebreak And lit on them. I’ve said no word
\forcelinebreak About it anywhere.”
“Good. . . . Now, you see my father’s sword,
\forcelinebreak Hanging up in your view;
\forcelinebreak No hand has swung it since he came
\forcelinebreak Home after Waterloo.
\forcelinebreak I’ll show it you. . . . There is the sword:
\forcelinebreak And this is what I’ll do.”
He ran the other through the breast,
\forcelinebreak Ere he could plead or cry.
\forcelinebreak “It is a dire necessity,
\forcelinebreak But — since no one was nigh
\forcelinebreak Save you and they, my historied name
\forcelinebreak Must not be smirched thereby.”
\section{HOW SHE WENT TO IRELAND}
Dora’s gone to Ireland
\forcelinebreak Through the sleet and snow:
\forcelinebreak Promptly she has gone there
\forcelinebreak In a ship, although
\forcelinebreak Why she’s gone to Ireland
\forcelinebreak Dora does not know.
That was where, yea, Ireland,
\forcelinebreak Dora wished to be:
\forcelinebreak When she felt, in lone times,
\forcelinebreak Shoots of misery,
\forcelinebreak Often there, in Ireland,
\forcelinebreak Dora wished to be.
Hence she’s gone to Ireland,
\forcelinebreak Since she meant to go,
\forcelinebreak Through the drift and darkness
\forcelinebreak Onward labouring, though
\forcelinebreak That she’s gone to Ireland
\forcelinebreak Dora does not know.
\section{DEAD WESSEX THE DOG TO THE HOUSEHOLD}
Do you think of me at all,
\forcelinebreak Wistful ones?
\forcelinebreak Do you think of me at all
\forcelinebreak As if nigh?
\forcelinebreak Do you think of me at all
\forcelinebreak At the creep of evenfall,
\forcelinebreak Or when the sky-birds call
\forcelinebreak As they fly?
Do you look for me at times,
\forcelinebreak Wistful ones?
\forcelinebreak Do you look for me at times
\forcelinebreak Strained and still?
\forcelinebreak Do you look for me at times,
\forcelinebreak When the hour for walking chimes,
\forcelinebreak On that grassy path that climbs
\forcelinebreak Up the hill?
You may hear a jump or trot,
\forcelinebreak Wistful ones,
\forcelinebreak You may hear a jump or trot —
\forcelinebreak Mine, as ‘twere —
\forcelinebreak You may hear a jump or trot
\forcelinebreak On the stair or path or plot;
\forcelinebreak But I shall cause it not,
\forcelinebreak Be not there.
Should you call as when I knew you,
\forcelinebreak Wistful ones,
\forcelinebreak Should you call as when I knew you,
\forcelinebreak Shared your home;
Should you call as when I knew you,
\forcelinebreak I shall not turn to view you,
\forcelinebreak I shall not listen to you,
\forcelinebreak Shall not come.
\section{THE WOMAN WHO WENT EAST}
“Where is that woman of the west,
\forcelinebreak Good Sir, once friends with me,
\forcelinebreak In rays of her own rareness drest,
\forcelinebreak And fired by sunset from the sea?
\forcelinebreak Yes, she — once friends with me.”
“ — She went to sojourn in the east,
\forcelinebreak O stranger Dame, one day;
\forcelinebreak Her own west land she reckoned least
\forcelinebreak Of all lands, with its weird old way,
\forcelinebreak So left it, Dame, one day:
“Doubtless they prized her marvellous mould
\forcelinebreak At its right worth elsewhere,
\forcelinebreak Yea, Dame, and kept her shrined in gold,
\forcelinebreak So speaking, as one past compare;
\forcelinebreak Aye, prized her worth elsewhere!”
— ”Must, must I then a story tell,
\forcelinebreak Old native, here to you,
\forcelinebreak Of peradventures that befel
\forcelinebreak Her eastward — shape it as ‘twere new,
\forcelinebreak Old native, here to you?
“O unforgotten day long back,
\forcelinebreak When, wilful, east she sped
\forcelinebreak From you with her new Love. Alack,
\forcelinebreak Her lips would still be ripe and red
\forcelinebreak Had she not eastward sped!
“For know, old lover, dull of eyes,
\forcelinebreak That woman, I am she:
\forcelinebreak This skeleton that Time so tries
\forcelinebreak Your rose of rareness used to be;
\forcelinebreak Yes, sweetheart, I am she.”
\section{NOT KNOWN}
They know the wilings of the world,
\forcelinebreak The latest flippancy;
\forcelinebreak They know each jest at hazard hurled,
\forcelinebreak But know not me.
They know a phasm they name as me,
\forcelinebreak In whom I should not find
\forcelinebreak A single self-held quality
\forcelinebreak Of body or mind.
\section{THE BOY’S DREAM}
Provincial town-boy he, — frail, lame,
\forcelinebreak His face a waning lily-white,
\forcelinebreak A court the home of his wry, wrenched frame,
\forcelinebreak Where noontide shed no warmth or light.
Over his temples — flat and wan,
\forcelinebreak Where bluest veins were patterned keen,
\forcelinebreak The skin appeared so thinly drawn
\forcelinebreak The skull beneath was almost seen.
Always a wishful, absent look
\forcelinebreak Expressed it in his face and eye;
\forcelinebreak At the strong shape this longing took
\forcelinebreak One guessed what wish must underlie.
But no. That wish was not for strength,
\forcelinebreak For other boys’ agility,
\forcelinebreak To race with ease the field’s far length,
\forcelinebreak Now hopped across so painfully.
He minded not his lameness much,
\forcelinebreak To shine at feats he did not long,
\forcelinebreak Nor to be best at goal and touch,
\forcelinebreak Nor at assaults to stand up strong.
But sometimes he would let be known
\forcelinebreak What the wish was: — to have, next spring,
\forcelinebreak A real green linnet — his very own —
\forcelinebreak Like that one he had late heard sing.
And as he breathed the cherished dream
\forcelinebreak To those whose secrecy was sworn,
\forcelinebreak His face was beautified by the theme,
\forcelinebreak And wore the radiance of the morn.
\section{THE GAP IN THE WHITE}
(178*)
Something had cracked in her mouth as she slept,
\forcelinebreak Having danced with the Prince long, and sipped his gold tass;
\forcelinebreak And she woke in alarm, and quick, breathlessly, leapt
\forcelinebreak Out of bed to the glass.
And there, in the blue dawn, her mouth now displayed
\forcelinebreak To her woe, in the white
\forcelinebreak Level line of her teeth, a black gap she had made
\forcelinebreak In a dream’s nervous bite.
“O how can I meet him to-morrow!” she said.
\forcelinebreak “I’d won him — yes, yes! Now, alas, he is lost!”
\forcelinebreak (That age knew no remedy.) Duly her dread
\forcelinebreak Proved the truth, to her cost.
And if you could go and examine her grave
\forcelinebreak You’d find the gap there,
\forcelinebreak But not understand, now that science can save,
\forcelinebreak Her unbounded despair.
\section{FAMILY PORTRAITS}
Three picture-drawn people stepped out of their frames —
\forcelinebreak The blast, how it blew!
\forcelinebreak And the white-shrouded candles flapped smoke-headed flames;
\forcelinebreak — Three picture-drawn people came down from their frames,
\forcelinebreak And dumbly in lippings they told me their names,
\forcelinebreak Full well though I knew.
The first was a maiden of mild wistful tone,
\forcelinebreak Gone silent for years,
\forcelinebreak The next a dark woman in former time known;
\forcelinebreak But the first one, the maiden of mild wistful tone,
\forcelinebreak So wondering, unpractised, so vague and alone,
\forcelinebreak Nigh moved me to tears.
The third was a sad man — a man of much gloom;
\forcelinebreak And before me they passed
\forcelinebreak In the shade of the night, at the back of the room,
\forcelinebreak The dark and fair woman, the man of much gloom,
\forcelinebreak Three persons, in far-off years forceful, but whom
\forcelinebreak Death now fettered fast.
They set about acting some drama, obscure,
\forcelinebreak The women and he,
\forcelinebreak With puppet-like movements of mute strange allure;
\forcelinebreak Yea, set about acting some drama, obscure,
\forcelinebreak Till I saw ‘twas their own lifetime’s tragic amour,
\forcelinebreak Whose course begot me;
Yea — a mystery, ancestral, long hid from my reach
\forcelinebreak In the perished years past,
\forcelinebreak That had mounted to dark doings each against each
\forcelinebreak In those ancestors’ days, and long hid from my reach;
\forcelinebreak Which their restless enghostings, it seemed, were to teach
\forcelinebreak Me in full, at this last.
But fear fell upon me like frost, of some hurt
\forcelinebreak If they entered anew
\forcelinebreak On the orbits they smartly had swept when expert
\forcelinebreak In the law-lacking passions of life, — of some hurt
\forcelinebreak To their souls — and thus mine — which I fain would avert
\forcelinebreak So, in sweat cold as dew,
“Why wake up all this?” I cried out. “Now, so late!
\forcelinebreak Let old ghosts be laid!”
\forcelinebreak And they stiffened, drew back to their frames and numb state,
\forcelinebreak Gibbering: “Thus are your own ways to shape, know too late!”
\forcelinebreak Then I grieved that I’d not had the courage to wait
\forcelinebreak And see the play played.
I have grieved ever since: to have balked future pain,
\forcelinebreak My blood’s tendance foreknown,
\forcelinebreak Had been triumph. Nights long stretched awake I have lain
\forcelinebreak Perplexed in endeavours to balk future pain
\forcelinebreak By uncovering the drift of their drama. In vain,
\forcelinebreak Though therein lay my own.
\section{THE CATCHING BALLET OF THE WEDDING CLOTHES}
(Temp. Guliel IV.)
“A gentleman’s coming
\forcelinebreak To court me, they say;
\forcelinebreak The ringers are told,
\forcelinebreak And the band is to play.
\forcelinebreak O why should he do it
\forcelinebreak Now poor Jack’s away?
\forcelinebreak I surely shall rue it:
\forcelinebreak Come, white witch, and say!”
“The gentleman’s coming
\forcelinebreak To marry you, dear;
\forcelinebreak They tell at the turnpikes
\forcelinebreak That he has been here!
\forcelinebreak He rode here in secret,
\forcelinebreak To gain eye of you: —
\forcelinebreak Throw over the sailor,
\forcelinebreak Is what I should do!”
“I will not throw over
\forcelinebreak Poor Jack: no, indeed,
\forcelinebreak For a new unknown lover
\forcelinebreak Who loves at such speed,
And writes to the ringers,
\forcelinebreak And orders the band,
\forcelinebreak As if I could only
\forcelinebreak Obey his command!
“La! now here is something
\forcelinebreak Close packed in a box,
\forcelinebreak And strapped up and corded,
\forcelinebreak And held with two locks!”
\forcelinebreak “Dear, that’s from him, surely,
\forcelinebreak As we may suppose?
\forcelinebreak Ay, through the chink shining
\forcelinebreak I spy wedding clothes!”
“Yes — here’s a drawn bonnet,
\forcelinebreak And tortoiseshell combs,
\forcelinebreak And a silk gown, silk stockings,
\forcelinebreak And scents of rare blooms;
\forcelinebreak And shoes, too, of satin,
\forcelinebreak Quite past all my pride:
\forcelinebreak O, how will it end, witch;
\forcelinebreak I can’t be his bride!”
“Don’t waste you in weeping:
\forcelinebreak Not worth it is man!
\forcelinebreak Beshrew me, my deary,
\forcelinebreak I’ve shaped a new plan.
\forcelinebreak Wear the clothes of the rich one,
\forcelinebreak Since he will not see,
\forcelinebreak But marry the poor one
\forcelinebreak You love faithfully.”
“Here’s a last packet. . . . Never!
\forcelinebreak It knocks me to bits —
\forcelinebreak The ring! ‘Just to try on,
\forcelinebreak To see if it fits.”
\forcelinebreak O I cannot!” . . . But Jack said,
\forcelinebreak Quite cool, when he came,
\forcelinebreak “Well, it will save money,
\forcelinebreak And be just the same.”
The marriage took place,
\forcelinebreak Yes; as vowed, she was true
\forcelinebreak To her dear sailor Jack
\forcelinebreak Ere the gentleman knew;
\forcelinebreak But she wore the rich clothing,
\forcelinebreak Much joyed at such guise,
\forcelinebreak Yet fearing and trembling
\forcelinebreak With tears in her eyes.
And at midnight, between her
\forcelinebreak And him she had wed,
\forcelinebreak The gentleman’s figure
\forcelinebreak Arose up and said:
\forcelinebreak “My too-cruel darling,
\forcelinebreak In spite of your oaths,
\forcelinebreak You have married the man
\forcelinebreak Of the ring and the clothes!”
Thence on, would confront her,
\forcelinebreak When sleep had grown slack,
\forcelinebreak His face on the pillow
\forcelinebreak Between her and Jack;
\forcelinebreak And he nightly kept whispering:
\forcelinebreak “You surely must see,
\forcelinebreak Though your tongue-tip took him, Love,
\forcelinebreak Your body took me.”
Till she sighed: “Yes, my word,
\forcelinebreak It must be confessed o’ me,
\forcelinebreak Jack has; but this man
\forcelinebreak Can claim all the rest o’ me!
\forcelinebreak And off to go with him
\forcelinebreak Bewitched am I now:
\forcelinebreak I’d fain not be two men’s,
\forcelinebreak And won’t, anyhow!”
So she pleaded and pleaded
\forcelinebreak From daybreak till dark,
\forcelinebreak Converting the parish
\forcelinebreak (Save parson and clerk).
She then wrote to Jack thus:
\forcelinebreak “I’m torn with mind-strife:
\forcelinebreak She who wears a man’s bride-clothes
\forcelinebreak Must be the man’s wife!”
And still she kept plaining,
\forcelinebreak Till Jack he wrote: “Aye!”
\forcelinebreak And the villagers gathered,
\forcelinebreak And on a fixed day,
\forcelinebreak They went out alertly
\forcelinebreak And stood in a row,
\forcelinebreak Quite blithe with excitement
\forcelinebreak To see John’s wife go.
Some were facing her dwelling,
\forcelinebreak And some on the bridge,
\forcelinebreak And some at the corner,
\forcelinebreak And some by the ridge.
\forcelinebreak With a nod and a word
\forcelinebreak The coach stopped at her door,
\forcelinebreak And she upped like a bird,
\forcelinebreak And they saw her no more.
‘Twas told that, years after,
\forcelinebreak When autumn winds wave,
\forcelinebreak A wealthy old lady
\forcelinebreak Stood long at Jack’s grave,
\forcelinebreak And while her coach waited: —
\forcelinebreak She mused there; and then
\forcelinebreak She stepped in, and never
\forcelinebreak Came thither again.
1919
\section{A WINSOME WOMAN}
SONG
There’s no winsome woman so winsome as she;
\forcelinebreak Some are flower-like in mouth,
\forcelinebreak Some have fire in the eyes,
\forcelinebreak Some feed a soul’s drouth
\forcelinebreak Trilling words music-wise;
\forcelinebreak But where are these gifts all in one found to be
\forcelinebreak Save in her known to me?
What her thoughts are I read not, but this much I know,
\forcelinebreak That she, too, will pass
\forcelinebreak From the sun and the air
\forcelinebreak To her cave under grass;
\forcelinebreak And the world will declare,
\forcelinebreak “No such woman as his passioned utterances show
\forcelinebreak Walked this planet, we trow!”
\section{THE BALLAD OF LOVE’S SKELETON}
(179*)
“Come, let’s to Culliford Hill and Wood,
\forcelinebreak And watch the squirrels climb,
\forcelinebreak And look in sunny places there
\forcelinebreak For shepherds’ thyme.”
— ”Can I have heart for Culliford Wood,
\forcelinebreak And hill and bank and tree,
\forcelinebreak Who know and ponder over all
\forcelinebreak Things done by me!”
— ”Then, Dear, don hat, and come along:
\forcelinebreak We’ll strut the Royal strand;
\forcelinebreak King George has just arrived, his Court,
\forcelinebreak His guards, and band.”
— ”You are a Baron of the King’s Court
\forcelinebreak From Hanover lately come,
\forcelinebreak And can forget in song and dance
\forcelinebreak What chills me numb.
“Well be the royal scenes for you,
\forcelinebreak And band beyond compare,
\forcelinebreak But how is she who hates her crime
\forcelinebreak To frolic there?
“O why did you so urge and say
\forcelinebreak ‘Twould soil your noble name! —
\forcelinebreak I should have prized a little child,
\forcelinebreak And faced the shame.
“I see the child — that should have been,
\forcelinebreak But was not, born alive;
\forcelinebreak With such a deed in a woman’s life
\forcelinebreak A year seems five.
“I asked not for the wifely rank,
\forcelinebreak Nor maiden honour saved;
\forcelinebreak To call a nestling thing my own
\forcelinebreak Was all I craved.
“For what’s the hurt of shame to one
\forcelinebreak Of no more note than me?
\forcelinebreak Can littlest life beneath the sun
\forcelinebreak More littled be?”
— ”Nay, never grieve. The day is bright,
\forcelinebreak Just as it was ere then:
\forcelinebreak In the Assembly Rooms to-night
\forcelinebreak Let’s joy again!
“The new Quick-Step is the sweetest dance
\forcelinebreak For lively toes and heels;
\forcelinebreak And when we tire of that we’ll prance
\forcelinebreak Bewitching reels.
“Dear, never grieve! As once we whirled
\forcelinebreak So let us whirl to-night,
\forcelinebreak Forgetting all things save ourselves
\forcelinebreak Till dawning light.
“The King and Queen, Princesses three,
\forcelinebreak Have promised to meet there
\forcelinebreak The mayor and townsfolk. I’ve my card
\forcelinebreak And One to spare.
“The Court will dance at the upper end;
\forcelinebreak Only a cord between
\forcelinebreak Them and the burgher-throng below;
\forcelinebreak A brilliant scene!”
— ”I’ll go. You’ve still my heart in thrall:
\forcelinebreak Save you, all’s dark to me.
\forcelinebreak And God knows what, when love is all,
\forcelinebreak The end will be!”
\section{A PRIVATE MAN ON PUBLIC MEN}
When my contemporaries were driving
\forcelinebreak Their coach through Life with strain and striving,
\forcelinebreak And raking riches into heaps,
\forcelinebreak And ably pleading in the Courts
\forcelinebreak With smart rejoinders and retorts,
\forcelinebreak Or where the Senate nightly keeps
\forcelinebreak Its vigils, till their fames were fanned
\forcelinebreak By rumour’s tongue throughout the land,
\forcelinebreak I lived in quiet, screened, unknown,
\forcelinebreak Pondering upon some stick or stone,
\forcelinebreak Or news of some rare book or bird
\forcelinebreak Latterly bought, or seen, or heard,
\forcelinebreak Not wishing ever to set eyes on
\forcelinebreak The surging crowd beyond the horizon,
\forcelinebreak Tasting years of moderate gladness
\forcelinebreak Mellowed by sundry days of sadness,
\forcelinebreak Shut from the noise of the world without,
\forcelinebreak Hearing but dimly its rush and rout,
\forcelinebreak Unenvying those amid its roar,
\forcelinebreak Little endowed, not wanting more.
\section{CHRISTMAS IN THE ELGIN ROOM}
BRITISH MUSEUM: EARLY LAST CENTURY
“What is the noise that shakes the night,
\forcelinebreak And seems to soar to the Pole-star height?”
\forcelinebreak — ”Christmas bells,
\forcelinebreak The watchman tells
\forcelinebreak Who walks this hall that blears us captives with its blight.”
“And what, then, mean such clangs, so clear?”
\forcelinebreak “ — ’Tis said to have been a day of cheer,
\forcelinebreak And source of grace
\forcelinebreak To the human race
\forcelinebreak Long ere their woven sails winged us to exile here.
“We are those whom Christmas overthrew
\forcelinebreak Some centuries after Pheidias knew
\forcelinebreak How to shape us
\forcelinebreak And bedrape us
\forcelinebreak And to set us in Athena’s temple for men’s view.
“O it is sad now we are sold —
\forcelinebreak We gods! for Borean people’s gold,
\forcelinebreak And brought to the gloom
\forcelinebreak Of this gaunt room
\forcelinebreak Which sunlight shuns, and sweet Aurore but enters cold.
“For all these bells, would I were still
\forcelinebreak Radiant as on Athenai’s Hill.”
\forcelinebreak — ”And I, and I!”
\forcelinebreak The others sigh,
\forcelinebreak “Before this Christ was known, and we had men’s good will.”
Thereat old Helios could but nod,
\forcelinebreak Throbbed, too, the Ilissus River-god,
\forcelinebreak And the torsos there
\forcelinebreak Of deities fair,
\forcelinebreak Whose limbs were shards beneath some Acropolitan clod:
Demeter too, Poseidon hoar,
\forcelinebreak Persephone, and many more
\forcelinebreak Of Zeus’ high breed, —
\forcelinebreak All loth to heed
\forcelinebreak What the bells sang that night which shook them to the core.
1905 and 1926.
\section{WE ARE GETTING TO THE END}
We are getting to the end of visioning
\forcelinebreak The impossible within this universe,
\forcelinebreak Such as that better whiles may follow worse,
\forcelinebreak And that our race may mend by reasoning.
We know that even as larks in cages sing
\forcelinebreak Unthoughtful of deliverance from the curse
\forcelinebreak That holds them lifelong in a latticed hearse,
\forcelinebreak We ply spasmodically our pleasuring.
And that when nations set them to lay waste
\forcelinebreak Their neighbours’ heritage by foot and horse,
\forcelinebreak And hack their pleasant plains in festering seams,
\forcelinebreak They may again, — not warely, or from taste,
\forcelinebreak But tickled mad by some demonic force. —
\forcelinebreak Yes. We are getting to the end of dreams!
\section{HE RESOLVES TO SAY NO MORE}
O my soul, keep the rest unknown!
\forcelinebreak It is too like a sound of moan
\forcelinebreak When the charnel-eyed
\forcelinebreak Pale Horse has nighed:
\forcelinebreak Yea, none shall gather what I hide!
Why load men’s minds with more to bear
\forcelinebreak That bear already ails to spare?
\forcelinebreak From now alway
\forcelinebreak Till my last day
\forcelinebreak What I discern I will not say.
Let Time roll backward if it will;
\forcelinebreak (Magians who drive the midnight quill
\forcelinebreak With brain aglow
\forcelinebreak Can see it so,)
\forcelinebreak What I have learnt no man shall know.
And if my vision range beyond
\forcelinebreak The blinkered sight of souls in bond,
\forcelinebreak — By truth made free —
\forcelinebreak I’ll let all be,
\forcelinebreak And show to no man what I see.
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Thomas Hardy
The Poetry Collection of Thomas Hardy - Volume 4
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\textbf{www.thetedkarchive.com}
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