Iseethe ghost of a perished day;I know his face, and the feel of his dawn:’Twas he who took me far awayTo a spot strange and gray:Look at me, Day, and then pass on,But come again: yes, come anon!
Enters another into view;His features are not cold or white,But rosy as a vein seen through:Too soon he smiles adieu.Adieu, O ghost-day of delight;But come and grace my dying sight.
Enters the day that brought the kiss:He brought it in his foggy handTo where the mumbling river is,And the high clematis;It lent new colour to the land,And all the boy within me manned.
Ah, this one. Yes, I know his name,He is the day that wrought a shineEven on a precinct common and tame,As ’twere of purposed aim.He shows him as a rainbow signOf promise made to me and mine.
The next stands forth in his morning clothes,And yet, despite their misty blue,They mark no sombre custom-growthsThat joyous living loathes,But a meteor act, that left in its queueA train of sparks my lifetime through.
I almost tremble at his nod—This next in train—who looks at meAs I were slave, and he were godWielding an iron rod.I close my eyes; yet still is heIn front there, looking mastery.
In the similitude of a nurseThe phantom of the next one comes:I did not know what better or worseChancings might bless or curseWhen his original glossed the thrumsOf ivy, bringing that which numbs.
Yes; trees were turning in their sleepUpon their windy pillows of grayWhen he stole in. Silent his creepOn the grassed eastern steep . . .I shall not soon forget that day,And what his third hour took away!
Ina heavy time I dogged myselfAlong a louring way,Till my leading self to my following selfSaid: “Why do you hang on meSo harassingly?”
“I have watched you, Heart of mine,” I cried,“So often going astrayAnd leaving me, that I have pursued,Feeling such truancyOught not to be.”
He said no more, and I dogged him onFrom noon to the dun of dayBy prowling paths, until anewHe begged: “Please turn and flee!—What do you see?”
“Methinks I see a man,” said I,“Dimming his hours to gray.I will not leave him while I knowPart of myself is heWho dreams such dree!”
“I go to my old friend’s house,” he urged,“So do not watch me, pray!”“Well, I will leave you in peace,” said I,“Though of this poignancyYou should fight free:
“Your friend, O other me, is dead;You know not what you say.”—“That do I! And at his green-grassed doorBy night’s bright galaxyI bend a knee.”
—The yew-plumes moved like mockers’ beards,Though only boughs were they,And I seemed to go; yet still was there,And am, and there haunt weThus bootlessly.
Therewas a singing womanCame riding across the meadAt the time of the mild May weather,Tameless, tireless;This song she sung: “I am fair, I am young!”And many turned to heed.
And the same singing womanSat crooning in her needAt the time of the winter weather;Friendless, fireless,She sang this song: “Life, thou’rt too long!”And there was none to heed.
Itwas what you bore with you, Woman,Not inly were,That throned you from all else human,However fair!
It was that strange freshness you carriedInto a soulWhereon no thought of yours tarriedTwo moments at all.
And out from his spirit flew death,And bale, and ban,Like the corn-chaff under the breathOf the winnowing-fan.
“O I won’t lead a homely lifeAs father’s Jack and mother’s Jill,But I will be a fiddler’s wife,With music mine at will!Just a little tune,Another one soon,As I merrily fling my fill!”
And she became a fiddler’s Dear,And merry all day she strove to be;And he played and played afar and near,But never at home played heAny little tuneOr late or soon;And sunk and sad was she!
Ilayin my bed and fiddledWith a dreamland viol and bow,And the tunes flew back to my fingersI had melodied years ago.It was two or three in the morningWhen I fancy-fiddled soLong reels and country-dances,And hornpipes swift and slow.
And soon anon came crossingThe chamber in the grayFigures of jigging fieldfolk—Saviours of corn and hay—To the air of “Haste to the Wedding,”As after a wedding-day;Yea, up and down the middleIn windless whirls went they!
There danced the bride and bridegroom,And couples in a train,Gay partners time and travailHad longwhiles stilled amain! . . .It seemed a thing for weepingTo find, at slumber’s waneAnd morning’s sly increeping,That Now, not Then, held reign.
Creak, little wood thing, creak,When I touch you with elbow or knee;That is the way you speakOf one who gave you to me!
You, little table, she brought—Brought me with her own hand,As she looked at me with a thoughtThat I did not understand.
—Whoever owns it anon,And hears it, will never knowWhat a history hangs uponThis creak from long ago.
Vagg Hollow is a marshy spot on the old Roman Road near Ilchester, where “things” are seen. Merchandise was formerly fetched inland from the canal-boats at Load-Bridge by waggons this way.
“Whatdo you see in Vagg Hollow,Little boy, when you goIn the morning at five on your lonely drive?”“—I see men’s souls, who followTill we’ve passed where the road lies low,When they vanish at our creaking!
“They are like white faces speakingBeside and behind the waggon—One just as father’s was when here.The waggoner drinks from his flagon,(Or he’d flinch when the Hollow is near)But he does not give me any.
“Sometimes the faces are many;But I walk along by the horses,He asleep on the straw as we jog;And I hear the loud water-courses,And the drops from the trees in the fog,And watch till the day is breaking.
“And the wind out by Tintinhull waking;I hear in it father’s callAs he called when I saw him dying,And he sat by the fire last Fall,And mother stood by sighing;But I’m not afraid at all!”
Iamlaughing by the brook with her,Splashed in its tumbling stir;And then it is a blankness loomsAs if I walked not there,Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,And treading a lonely stair.
With radiant cheeks and rapid eyesWe sit where none espies;Till a harsh change comes edging inAs no such scene were there,But winter, and I were bent and thin,And cinder-gray my hair.
We dance in heys around the hall,Weightless as thistleball;And then a curtain drops between,As if I danced not there,But wandered through a mounded greenTo find her, I knew where.
March1913.
Littlefogs were gathered in every hollow,But the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weatherAs we marched with our fiddles over the heather—How it comes back!—to their wedding that day.
Our getting there brought our neighbours and all, O!Till, two and two, the couples stood ready.And her father said: “Souls, for God’s sake, be steady!”And we strung up our fiddles, and sounded out “A.”
The groomsman he stared, and said, “You must follow!”But we’d gone to fiddle in front of the party,(Our feelings as friends being true and hearty)And fiddle in front we did—all the way.
Yes, from their door by Mill-tail-Shallow,And up Styles-Lane, and by Front-Street houses,Where stood maids, bachelors, and spouses,Who cheered the songs that we knew how to play.
I bowed the treble before her father,Michael the tenor in front of the lady,The bass-viol Reub—and right well played he!—The serpent Jim; ay, to church and back.
I thought the bridegroom was flurried rather,As we kept up the tune outside the chancel,While they were swearing things none can cancelInside the walls to our drumstick’s whack.
“Too gay!” she pleaded. “Clouds may gather,And sorrow come.” But she gave in, laughing,And by supper-time when we’d got to the quaffingHer fears were forgot, and her smiles weren’t slack.
A grand wedding ’twas! And what would followWe never thought. Or that we should have buried herOn the same day with the man that married her,A day like the first, half hazy, half clear.
Yes: little fogs were in every hollow,Though the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather,When we went to play ’em to church together,And carried ’em there in an after year.
Ifgrief come earlyJoy comes late,If joy come earlyGrief will wait;Aye, my dear and tender!
Wise ones joy them earlyWhile the cheeks are red,Banish grief till surlyTime has dulled their dread.
And joy being oursEre youth has flown,The later hoursMay find us gone;Aye, my dear and tender!
Lonelyher fate was,Environed from sightIn the house where the gate wasPast finding at night.None there to share it,No one to tell:Long she’d to bear it,And bore it well.
Elsewhere just so sheSpent many a day;Wishing to go sheContinued to stay.And people withoutBasked warm in the air,But none sought her out,Or knew she was there.Even birthdays were passed so,Sunny and shady:Years did it last soFor this sad lady.Never declaring it,No one to tell,Still she kept bearing it—Bore it well.
The days grew chillier,And then she wentTo a city, familiarIn years forespent,When she walked gailyFar to and fro,But now, moving frailly,Could nowhere go.The cheerful colourOf houses she’d knownHad died to a dullerAnd dingier tone.Streets were now noisyWhere once had rolledA few quiet coaches,Or citizens strolled.Through the party-wallOf the memoried spotThey danced at a ballWho recalled her not.Tramlines lay crossingOnce gravelled slopes,Metal rods clanked,And electric ropes.So she endured it all,Thin, thinner wrought,Until time cured it all,And she knew nought.
Versified from a Diary.
What did it mean that noontide, whenYou bade me pluck the flowerWithin the other woman’s bower,Whom I knew nought of then?
I thought the flower blushed deeplier—aye,And as I drew its stalk to meIt seemed to breathe: “I am, I see,Made use of in a human play.”
And while I plucked, upstarted sheerAs phantom from the pane therebyA corpse-like countenance, with eyeThat iced me by its baleful peer—Silent, as from a bier . . .
When I came back your face had changed,It was no face for me;O did it speak of hearts estranged,And deadly rivalry
In times beforeI darked your door,To seise me ofMere second love,Which still the haunting first deranged?
Isatat dinner in my prime,And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,And started as if I had seen a crime,And prayed the ghastly show might pass.
Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,Grinning back to me as my own;I well-nigh fainted with affrightAt finding me a haggard crone.
My husband laughed. He had slily setA warping mirror there, in whimTo startle me. My eyes grew wet;I spoke not all the eve to him.
He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,And took away the distorting glass,Uncovering the accustomed one;And so it ended? No, alas,
Fifty years later, when he died,I sat me in the selfsame chair,Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed,I saw the sideboard facing there;
And from its mirror looked the leanThing I’d become, each wrinkle and scoreThe image of me that I had seenIn jest there fifty years before.
Thereit stands, though alas, what a little of herShows in its cold white look!Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of herVoice like the purl of a brook;Not her thoughts, that you read like a book.
It may stand for her once in NovemberWhen first she breathed, witless of all;Or in heavy years she would rememberWhen circumstance held her in thrall;Or at last, when she answered her call!
Nothing more. The still marble, date-graven,Gives all that it can, tersely lined;That one has at length found the havenWhich every one other will find;With silence on what shone behind.
St. Juliot:September8, 1916.
I
Weare budding, Master, budding,We of your favourite tree;March drought and April floodingArouse us merrily,Our stemlets newly studding;And yet you do not see!
II
We are fully woven for summerIn stuff of limpest green,The twitterer and the hummerHere rest of nights, unseen,While like a long-roll drummerThe nightjar thrills the treen.
III
We are turning yellow, Master,And next we are turning red,And faster then and fasterShall seek our rooty bed,All wasted in disaster!But you lift not your head.
IV
—“I mark your early going,And that you’ll soon be clay,I have seen your summer showingAs in my youthful day;But why I seem unknowingIs too sunk in to say!”
1917.
Petwas never mourned as you,Purrer of the spotless hue,Plumy tail, and wistful gazeWhile you humoured our queer ways,Or outshrilled your morning callUp the stairs and through the hall—Foot suspended in its fall—While, expectant, you would standArched, to meet the stroking hand;Till your way you chose to wendYonder, to your tragic end.
Never another pet for me!Let your place all vacant be;Better blankness day by dayThan companion torn away.Better bid his memory fade,Better blot each mark he made,Selfishly escape distressBy contrived forgetfulness,Than preserve his prints to makeEvery morn and eve an ache.
From the chair whereon he satSweep his fur, nor wince thereat;Rake his little pathways outMid the bushes roundabout;Smooth away his talons’ markFrom the claw-worn pine-tree bark,Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,Waiting us who loitered round.
Strange it is this speechless thing,Subject to our mastering,Subject for his life and foodTo our gift, and time, and mood;Timid pensioner of us Powers,His existence ruled by ours,Should—by crossing at a breathInto safe and shielded death,By the merely taking henceOf his insignificance—Loom as largened to the sense,Shape as part, above man’s will,Of the Imperturbable.
As a prisoner, flight debarred,Exercising in a yard,Still retain I, troubled, shaken,Mean estate, by him forsaken;And this home, which scarcely tookImpress from his little look,By his faring to the DimGrows all eloquent of him.
Housemate, I can think you stillBounding to the window-sill,Over which I vaguely seeYour small mound beneath the tree,Showing in the autumn shadeThat you moulder where you played.
October2, 1904.
Andhe is risen? Well, be it so . . .And still the pensive lands complain,And dead men wait as long ago,As if, much doubting, they would knowWhat they are ransomed from, beforeThey pass again their sheltering door.
I stand amid them in the rain,While blusters vex the yew and vane;And on the road the weary wainPlods forward, laden heavily;And toilers with their aches are fainFor endless rest—though risen is he.
Whena night in NovemberBlew forth its bleared airsAn infant descendedHis birth-chamber stairsFor the very first time,At the still, midnight chime;All unapprehendedHis mission, his aim.—Thus, first, one November,An infant descendedThe stairs.
On a night in NovemberOf weariful cares,A frail aged figureAscended those stairsFor the very last time:All gone his life’s prime,All vanished his vigour,And fine, forceful frame:Thus, last, one NovemberAscended that figureUpstairs.
On those nights in November—Apart eighty years—The babe and the bent oneWho traversed those stairsFrom the early first timeTo the last feeble climb—That fresh and that spent one—Were even the same:Yea, who passed in NovemberAs infant, as bent one,Those stairs.
Wise child of November!From birth to blanched hairsDescending, ascending,Wealth-wantless, those stairs;Who saw quick in timeAs a vain pantomimeLife’s tending, its ending,The worth of its fame.Wise child of November,Descending, ascendingThose stairs!
Imissedone night, but the next I went;It was gusty above, and clear;She was there, with the look of one ill-content,And said: “Do not come near!”
—“I am sorry last night to have failed you here,And now I have travelled all day;And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier,So brief must be my stay.”
—“O man of mystery, why not sayOut plain to me all you mean?Why you missed last night, and must now awayIs—another has come between!”
—“O woman so mocking in mood and mien,So be it!” I replied:“And if I am due at a differing sceneBefore the dark has died,
“’Tis that, unresting, to wander wideHas ever been my plight,And at least I have met you at Cremyll sideIf not last eve, to-night.”
—“You get small rest—that read I quite;And so do I, maybe;Though there’s a rest hid safe from sightElsewhere awaiting me!”
A mad star crossed the sky to the sea,Wasting in sparks as it streamed,And when I looked to where stood sheShe had changed, much changed, it seemed:
The sparks of the star in her pupils gleamed,She was vague as a vapour now,And ere of its meaning I had dreamedShe’d vanished—I knew not how.
I stood on, long; each cliff-top bough,Like a cynic nodding there,Moved up and down, though no man’s browBut mine met the wayward air.
Still stood I, wholly unawareOf what had come to pass,Or had brought the secret of my new FairTo my old Love, alas!
I went down then by crag and grassTo the boat wherein I had come.Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lassOf Edgcumbe, is sharp for some!
“Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numbOn the shore here, whither she’d spedTo meet her lover last night in the glum,And he came not, ’tis said.
“And she leapt down, heart-hit. Pity she’s dead:So much for the faithful-bent!” . . .I looked, and again a star overheadShot through the firmament.
“Didyou see something within the houseThat made me call you before the red sunsetting?Something that all this common scene endowsWith a richened impress there can be no forgetting?”
“—I have found nothing to see therein,O Sage, that should have made you urge me to enter,Nothing to fire the soul, or the sense to win:I rate you as a rare misrepresenter!”
“—Go anew, Lady,—in by the right . . .Well: why does your face not shine like the face of Moses?”“—I found no moving thing there save the lightAnd shadow flung on the wall by the outside roses.”
“—Go yet once more, pray. Look on a seat.”“—I go . . . O Sage, it’s only a man that sits thereWith eyes on the sun. Mute,—average head to feet.”“—No more?”—“No more. Just one the place befits there,
“As the rays reach in through the open door,And he looks at his hand, and the sun glows through his fingers,While he’s thinking thoughts whose tenour is no moreTo me than the swaying rose-tree shade that lingers.”
No more. And years drew on and onTill no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding;And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone,As a vision what she had missed when the real beholding.
“Whyare you so bent down before your time,Old mason? Many have not left their primeSo far behind at your age, and can stillStand full upright at will.”
He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;“Those upper blocks,” he said, “that there you see,It was that ruined me.”
There stood in the air up to the parapetCrowning the corner height, the stones as setBy him—ashlar whereon the gales might drumFor centuries to come.
“I carried them up,” he said, “by a ladder there;The last was as big a load as I could bear;But on I heaved; and something in my backMoved, as ’twere with a crack.
“So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain;And those who live there, walled from wind and rainBy freestone that I lifted, do not knowThat my life’s ache came so.
“They don’t know me, or even know my name,But good I think it, somehow, all the sameTo have kept ’em safe from harm, and right and tight,Though it has broke me quite.
“Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud,Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud,And to stand storms for ages, beating roundWhen I lie underground.”
“Owhencedo you come,Figure in the night-fog that chills me numb?”
“I come to you across from my house up there,And I don’t mind the brine-mist clinging to meThat blows from the quay,For I heard him in my chamber, and thought you unaware.”
“But what did you hear,That brought you blindly knocking in this middle-watch so drear?”
“My sailor son’s voice as ’twere calling at your door,And I don’t mind my bare feet clammy on the stones,And the blight to my bones,For he only knows ofthishouse I lived in before.”
“Nobody’s nigh,Woman like a skeleton, with socket-sunk eye.”
“Ah—nobody’s nigh! And my life is drearisome,And this is the old home we loved in many a dayBefore he went away;And the salt fog mops me. And nobody’s come!”
From “To Please his Wife.”
Wesat in the roomAnd praised her whomWe saw in the portico-shade outside:She could not hearWhat was said of her,But smiled, for its purport we did not hide.
Then in was broughtThat message, fraughtWith evil fortune for her out there,Whom we loved that dayMore than any could say,And would fain have fenced from a waft of care.
And the question pressedLike lead on each breast,Should we cloak the tidings, or call her and tell?It was too intenseA choice for our sense,As we pondered and watched her we loved so well.
Yea, spirit failed usAt what assailed us;How long, while seeing what soon must come,Should we counterfeitNo knowledge of it,And stay the stroke that would blanch and numb?
And thus, beforeFor evermoreJoy left her, we practised to beguileHer innocence whenShe now and againLooked in, and smiled us another smile.
He used to pass, well-trimmed and brushed,My window every day,And when I smiled on him he blushed,That youth, quite as a girl might; aye,In the shyest way.
Thus often did he pass hereby,That youth of bounding gait,Until the one who blushed was I,And he became, as here I sate,My joy, my fate.
And now he passes by no more,That youth I loved too true!I grieve should he, as here of yore,Pass elsewhere, seated in his view,Some maiden new!
If such should be, alas for her!He’ll make her feel him dear,Become her daily comforter,Then tire him of her beauteous gear,And disappear!
Iwasthe midmost of my worldWhen first I frisked me free,For though within its circuit gleamedBut a small company,And I was immature, they seemedTo bend their looks on me.
She was the midmost of my worldWhen I went further forth,And hence it was that, whether I turnedTo south, east, west, or north,Beams of an all-day Polestar burnedFrom that new axe of earth.
Where now is midmost in my world?I trace it not at all:No midmost shows it here, or there,When wistful voices call“We are fain! We are fain!” from everywhereOn Earth’s bewildering ball!
“Whatdo I catch upon the night-wind, husband?—What is it sounds in this house so eerily?It seems to be a woman’s voice: each little while I hear it,And it much troubles me!”
“’Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:Letting fancies worry thee!—sure ’tis a foolish thing,When we were on’y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,And now it’s but evening.”
“Yet seems it still a woman’s voice outside the castle, husband,And ’tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventureEre ever thou sawest my face?”
“It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatchesLike a creature that sighs and mopes.”
“Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,And it saddens me much that so piteous a soundOn this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrowShould so ghost-like wander round!”
“To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,And throw the light over the moor.”
He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber,And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight,And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern,And go out into the night.
She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,And his voice as he unclothed him: “’Twas nothing, as I said,But the nor’-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath’art the river,And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head.”
“Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,Why is it silent now?
“And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,And thy breath as if hard to get?”
He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing,Then started up and walked about the room resentfully:“O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded,Why castedst thou thy spells on me?
“There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e’en the cry you heard, wife,But she will cry no more!
“And now I can’t abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on’t,This farmstead once a castle: I’ll get me straight away!”He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,And went ere the dawn turned day.
They found a woman’s body at a spot called Rocky Shallow,Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground,And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly known her,But he could not be found.
And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,And sometimes an infant’s moan.
Whenyour soft welcomings were said,This curl was waving on your head,And when we walked where breakers dinnedIt sported in the sun and wind,And when I had won your words of graceIt brushed and clung about my face.Then, to abate the miseryOf absentness, you gave it me.
Where are its fellows now? Ah, theyFor brightest brown have donned a gray,And gone into a caverned ark,Ever unopened, always dark!
Yet this one curl, untouched of time,Beams with live brown as in its prime,So that it seems I even could nowRestore it to the living browBy bearing down the western roadTill I had reached your old abode.
February1913.
Whowould have thoughtThat, not having missed herTalks, tears, laughterIn absence, or soughtTo recall for so longHer gamut of song;Or ever to waft herSignal of aughtThat she, fancy-fanned,Would well understand,I should have kissed herPicture when scannedYawning years after!
Yet, seeing her poorDim-outlined formChancewise at night-time,Some old allureCame on me, warm,Fresh, pleadful, pure,As in that bright timeAt a far seasonOf love and unreason,And took me by stormHere in this blight-time!
And thus it aroseThat, yawning years afterOur early flowsOf wit and laughter,And framing of rhymesAt idle times,At sight of her painting,Though she lies coldIn churchyard mould,I took its feintingAs real, and kissed it,As if I had wist itHerself of old.
Therewas a spell of leisure,No record vouches when;With honours, praises, pleasureTo womankind from men.
But no such lures bewitched me,No hand was stretched to raise,No gracious gifts enriched me,No voices sang my praise.
Yet an iris at that seasonAmid the accustomed slightFrom denseness, dull unreason,Ringed me with living light.
That“Sacred to the Memory”Is clearly carven there I own,And all may think that on the stoneThe words have been inscribed by meIn bare conventionality.
They know not and will never knowThat my full script is not confinedTo that stone space, but stands deep linedUpon the landscape high and lowWherein she made such worthy show.
Gladold house of lichened stonework,What I owed you in my lone work,Noon and night!Whensoever faint or ailing,Letting go my grasp and failing,You lent light.
How by that fair title came you?Did some forward eye so name youKnowing that one,Sauntering down his century blindly,Would remark your sound, so kindly,And be won?
Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,Bask in April, May, and June-light,Zephyr-fanned;Let your chambers show no sorrow,Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,While they stand.
Myfather was the whipper-in,—Is still—if I’m not misled?And now I see, where the hedge is thin,A little spot of red;Surely it is my fatherGoing to the kennel-shed!
“I cursed and fought my father—aye,And sailed to a foreign land;And feeling sorry, I’m back, to stay,Please God, as his helping hand.Surely it is my fatherNear where the kennels stand?”
“—True. Whipper-in he used to beFor twenty years or more;And you did go away to seaAs youths have done before.Yes, oddly enough that red thereIs the very coat he wore.
“But he—he’s dead; was thrown somehow,And gave his back a crick,And though that is his coat, ’tis nowThe scarecrow of a rick;You’ll see when you get nearer—’Tis spread out on a stick.
“You see, when all had settled downYour mother’s things were sold,And she went back to her own town,And the coat, ate out with mould,Is now used by the farmerFor scaring, as ’tis old.”
“Soback you have come from the town, Nan, dear!And have you seen him there, or near—That soldier of mine—Who long since promised to meet me here?”
“—O yes, Nell: from the town I come,And have seen your lover on sick-leave home—That soldier of yours—Who swore to meet you, or Strike-him-dumb;
“But has kept himself of late away;Yet,—in short, he’s coming, I heard him say—That lover of yours—To this very spot on this very day.”
“—Then I’ll wait, I’ll wait, through wet or dry!I’ll give him a goblet brimming high—This lover of mine—And not of complaint one word or sigh!”
“—Nell, him I have chanced so much to see,That—he has grown the lover of me!—That lover of yours—And it’s here our meeting is planned to be.”
Inmy loamy nookAs I dig my holeI observe men lookAt a stone, and sighAs they pass it byTo some far goal.
Something it saysTo their glancing eyesThat must distressThe frail and lame,And the strong of frameGladden or surprise.
Do signs on its faceDeclare how farFeet have to traceBefore they gainSome blest champaignWhere no gins are?
Wordsfrom the mirror softly passTo the curtains with a sigh:“Why should I trouble again to glassThese smileless things hard by,Since she I pleasured once, alas,Is now no longer nigh!”
“I’ve imaged shadows of coursing cloud,And of the plying limbOn the pensive pine when the air is loudWith its aerial hymn;But never do they make me proudTo catch them within my rim!
“I flash back phantoms of the nightThat sometimes flit by me,I echo roses red and white—The loveliest blooms that be—But now I never hold to sightSo sweet a flower as she.”
Theyparted—a pallid, trembling I pair,And rushing down the laneHe left her lonely near me there;—I asked her of their pain.
“It is for ever,” at length she said,“His friends have schemed it so,That the long-purposed day to wedNever shall we two know.”
“In such a cruel case,” said I,“Love will contrive a course?”“—Well, no . . . A thing may underlie,Which robs that of its force;
“A thing I could not tell him of,Though all the year I have tried;This: never could I have given him love,Even had I been his bride.
“So, when his kinsfolk stop the wayPoint-blank, there could not beA happening in the world to-dayMore opportune for me!
“Yet hear—no doubt to your surprise—I am sorry, for his sake,That I have escaped the sacrificeI was prepared to make!”
’Twasto greet the new rector I called I here,But in the arm-chair I seeMy old friend, for long years installed here,Who palely nods to me.
The new man explains what he’s planningIn a smart and cheerful tone,And I listen, the while that I’m scanningThe figure behind his own.
The newcomer urges things on me;I return a vague smile thereto,The olden face gazing upon meJust as it used to do!
And on leaving I scarcely rememberWhich neighbour to-day I have seen,The one carried out in September,Or him who but entered yestreen.
“Ατιυά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμενα
“Ατιυά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμενα
“Awomanfor whom great gods might strive!”I said, and kissed her there:And then I thought of the other five,And of how charms outwear.
I thought of the first with her eating eyes,And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.
And I thought of the fifth, whom I’d called a jade,And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;And that each had shown her a passable maid,Yet not of the favour sought.
So I traced these words on the bark of a beech,Just at the falling of the mast:“After scanning five; yes, each and each,I’ve found the woman desired—at last!”
“—I feel a strange benumbing spell,As one ill-wished!” said she.And soon it seemed that something fellWas starving her love for me.
“I feel some curse. O,fivewere there?”And wanly she swerved, and went away.I followed sick: night numbed the air,And dark the mournful moorland lay.
I cried: “O darling, turn your head!”But never her face I viewed;“O turn, O turn!” again I said,And miserably pursued.
At length I came to a Christ-cross stoneWhich she had passed without discern;And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,And prayed aloud that she might turn.
I rose, and looked; and turn she did;I cried, “My heart revives!”“Look more,” she said. I looked as bid;Her face was all the five’s.
All the five women, clear come back,I saw in her—with her made one,The while she drooped upon the track,And her frail term seemed well-nigh run.
She’d half forgot me in her change;“Who are you? Won’t you sayWho you may be, you man so strange,Following since yesterday?”
I took the composite form she was,And carried her to an arbour small,Not passion-moved, but even becauseIn one I could atone to all.
And there she lies, and there I tend,Till my life’s threads unwind,A various womanhood in blend—Not one, but all combined.
Sir Johnwas entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she,Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun,Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually,As his widowed one.
And to pleasure her in her sorrow, and fix his nameAs a memory Time’s fierce frost should never kill,She caused to be richly chased a brass to his fame,Which should link them still;
For she bonded her name with his own on the brazen page,As if dead and interred there with him, and cold, and numb,(Omitting the day of her dying and year of her ageTill her end should come;)
And implored good people to pray “Of their CharytieFor these twaine Soules,”—yea, she who did last remainForgoing Heaven’s bliss if ever with spouse should sheAgain have lain.
Even there, as it first was set, you may see it now,Writ in quaint Church text, with the date of her death left bare,In the aged Estminster aisle, where the folk yet bowThemselves in prayer.
Thereafter some years slid, till there came a dayWhen it slowly began to be marked of the standers-byThat she would regard the brass, and would bend awayWith a drooping sigh.
Now the lady was fair as any the eye might scanThrough a summer day of roving—a type at whose lipDespite her maturing seasons, no meet manWould be loth to sip.
And her heart was stirred with a lightning love to its pithFor a newcomer who, while less in years, was oneFull eager and able to make her his own forthwith,Restrained of none.
But she answered Nay, death-white; and still as he urgedShe adversely spake, overmuch as she loved the while,Till he pressed for why, and she led with the face of one scourgedTo the neighbouring aisle,
And showed him the words, ever gleaming upon her pew,Memorizing her there as the knight’s eternal wife,Or falsing such, debarred inheritance dueOf celestial life.
He blenched, and reproached her that one yet undeceasedShould bury her future—that future which none can spell;And she wept, and purposed anon to inquire of the priestIf the price were hell
Of her wedding in face of the record. Her lover agreed,And they parted before the brass with a shudderful kiss,For it seemed to flash out on their impulse of passionate need,“Mock ye not this!”
Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one,Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were deadHer name and adjuration; but since it was doneNought could be said
Save that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul,And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good,If she wished anon to reach the coveted goalOf beatitude.
To erase from the consecrate text her prayer as there prayedWould aver that, since earth’s joys most drew her, past doubt,Friends’ prayers for her joy above by Jesu’s aidCould be done without.
Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibeThat would rise at her back in the nave when she should passAs another’s avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribeOn the changeless brass.
And so for months she replied to her Love: “No, no”;While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more,Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to showLess warmth than before.
And, after an absence, wrote words absolute:That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear;And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit,He should wed elsewhere.
Thence on, at unwonted times through the lengthening daysShe was seen in the church—at dawn, or when the sun diptAnd the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze,Before the script.
She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowersAs summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed,When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours,She was missed from her bed.
“The church!” they whispered with qualms; “where often she sits.”They found her: facing the brass there, else seeing none,But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits;And she knew them not one.
And so she remained, in her handmaids’ charge; late, soon,Tracing words in the air with her finger, as seen that night—Those incised on the brass—till at length unwatched one noon,She vanished from sight.
And, as talebearers tell, thence on to her last-taken breathWas unseen, save as wraith that in front of the brass made moan;So that ever the way of her life and the time of her deathRemained unknown.
And hence, as indited above, you may read even nowThe quaint church-text, with the date of her death left bare,In the aged Estminster aisle, where folk yet bowThemselves in prayer.
October30, 1907.
Ireachthe marble-streeted town,Whose “Sound” outbreathes its airOf sharp sea-salts;I see the movement up and downAs when she was there.Ships of all countries come and go,The bandsmen boom in the sunA throbbing waltz;The schoolgirls laugh along the HoeAs when she was one.
I move away as the music rolls:The place seems not to mindThat she—of oldThe brightest of its native souls—Left it behind!Over this green aforedays sheOn light treads went and came,Yea, times untold;Yet none here knows her history—Has heard her name.
Plymouth(1914?).