Itsformer green is blue and thin,And its once firm legs sink in and in;Soon it will break down unaware,Soon it will break down unaware.
At night when reddest flowers are blackThose who once sat thereon come back;Quite a row of them sitting there,Quite a row of them sitting there.
With them the seat does not break down,Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown,For they are as light as upper air,They are as light as upper air!
François Hippolite Barthélémon, first-fiddler at Vauxhall Gardens, composed what was probably the most popular morning hymn-tune ever written. It was formerly sung, full-voiced, every Sunday in most churches, to Bishop Ken’s words, but is now seldom heard.
Hesaid: “Awake my soul, and with the sun,” . . .And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east,Where was emerging like a full-robed priestThe irradiate globe that vouched the dark as done.
It lit his face—the weary face of oneWho in the adjacent gardens charged his string,Nightly, with many a tuneful tender thing,Till stars were weak, and dancing hours outrun.
And then were threads of matin music spunIn trial tones as he pursued his way:“This is a morn,” he murmured, “well begun:This strain to Ken will count when I am clay!”
And count it did; till, caught by echoing lyres,It spread to galleried naves and mighty quires.
Isometimesthink as here I sitOf things I have done,Which seemed in doing not unfitTo face the sun:Yet never a soul has paused a whitOn such—not one.
There was that eager strenuous pressTo sow good seed;There was that saving from distressIn the nick of need;There were those words in the wilderness:Who cared to heed?
Yet can this be full true, or no?For one did care,And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,Like wind on the stair,Cares still, heeds all, and will, even thoughI may despair.
Didthey catch as it were in a Vision at shut of the day—When their cavalry smote through the ancient Esdraelon Plain,And they crossed where the Tishbite stood forth in his enemy’s way—His gaunt mournful Shade as he bade the King haste off amain?
On war-men at this end of time—even on Englishmen’s eyes—Who slay with their arms of new might in that long-ago place,Flashed he who drove furiously? . . . Ah, did the phantom ariseOf that queen, of that proud Tyrian woman who painted her face?
Faintly marked they the words “Throw her down!” rise from Night eerily,Spectre-spots of the blood of her body on some rotten wall?And the thin note of pity that came: “A King’s daughter is she,”As they passed where she trodden was once by the chargers’ footfall?
Could such be the hauntings of men of to-day, at the ceaseOf pursuit, at the dusk-hour, ere slumber their senses could seal?Enghosted seers, kings—one on horseback who asked “Is it peace?” . . .Yea, strange things and spectral may men have beheld in Jezreel!
September24, 1918.
Whowere the twain that trod this trackSo many times togetherHither and back,In spells of certain and uncertain weather?
Commonplace in conduct theyWho wandered to and fro hereDay by day:Two that few dwellers troubled themselves to know here.
The very gravel-path was primThat daily they would follow:Borders trim:Never a wayward sprout, or hump, or hollow.
Trite usages in tamest styleHad tended to their plighting.“It’s just worth while,Perhaps,” they had said. “And saves much sad good-nighting.”
And petty seemed the happeningsThat ministered to their joyance:Simple things,Onerous to satiate souls, increased their buoyance.
Who could those common people be,Of days the plainest, barest?They were we;Yes; happier than the cleverest, smartest, rarest.
I
Thecurtains now are drawn,And the spindrift strikes the glass,Blown up the jagged passBy the surly salt sou’-west,And the sneering glare is goneBehind the yonder crest,While she sings to me:“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,And death may come, but loving is divine.”
II
I stand here in the rain,With its smite upon her stone,And the grasses that have grownOver women, children, men,And their texts that “Life is vain”;But I hear the notes as whenOnce she sang to me:“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,And death may come, but loving is divine.”
1913.
I
Whenmoiling seems at ceaseIn the vague void of night-time,And heaven’s wide roomage stormlessBetween the dusk and light-time,And fear at last is formless,We call the allurement Peace.
II
Peace, this hid riot, Change,This revel of quick-cued mumming,This never truly being,This evermore becoming,This spinner’s wheel onfleeingOutside perception’s range.
1917.
Iwasnot he—the manWho used to pilgrim to your gate,At whose smart step you grew elate,And rosed, as maidens can,For a brief span.
It was not I who sangBeside the keys you touched so trueWith note-bent eyes, as if with youIt counted not whence sprangThe voice that rang . . .
Yet though my destinyIt was to miss your early sweet,You still, when turned to you my feet,Had sweet enough to beA prize for me!
AveryWest-of-Wessex girl,As blithe as blithe could be,Was once well-known to me,And she would laud her native town,And hope and hope that weMight sometime study up and downIts charms in company.
But never I squired my Wessex girlIn jaunts to Hoe or streetWhen hearts were high in beat,Nor saw her in the marbled waysWhere market-people meetThat in her bounding early daysWere friendly with her feet.
Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl,When midnight hammers slowFrom Andrew’s, blow by blow,As phantom draws me by the handTo the place—Plymouth Hoe—Where side by side in life, as planned,We never were to go!
Begun in Plymouth,March1913.
Tomy native placeBent upon returning,Bosom all day burningTo be where my raceWell were known, ’twas much with meThere to dwell in amity.
Folk had sought their beds,But I hailed: to view meUnder the moon, out to meSeveral pushed their heads,And to each I told my name,Plans, and that therefrom I came.
“Did you? . . . Ah, ’tis trueI once heard, back a long time,Here had spent his young time,Some such man as you . . .Good-night.” The casement closed again,And I was left in the frosty lane.
I
Themoving sun-shapes on the spray,The sparkles where the brook was flowing,Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,These were the things we wished would stay;But they were going.
II
Seasons of blankness as of snow,The silent bleed of a world decaying,The moan of multitudes in woe,These were the things we wished would go;But they were staying.
III
Then we looked closelier at Time,And saw his ghostly arms revolvingTo sweep off woeful things with prime,Things sinister with things sublimeAlike dissolving.
Ipausedto read a letter of hersBy the moon’s cold shine,Eyeing it in the tenderest way,And edging it up to catch each rayUpon her light-penned line.I did not know what years would flowOf her life’s span and mineEre I read another letter of hersBy the moon’s cold shine!
I chance now on the last of hers,By the moon’s cold shine;It is the one remaining pageOut of the many shallow and sageWhereto she set her sign.Who could foresee there were to beSuch letters of pain and pineEre I should read this last of hersBy the moon’s cold shine!
Opoet, come you haunting hereWhere streets have stolen up all around,And never a nightingale pours oneFull-throated sound?
Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,Thought you to find all just the sameHere shining, as in hours of old,If you but came?
What will you do in your surpriseAt seeing that changes wrought in RomeAre wrought yet more on the misty slopeOne time your home?
Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?Swing the doors open noisily?Show as an umbraged ghost besideYour ancient tree?
Or will you, softening, the whileYou further and yet further look,Learn that a laggard few would fainPreserve your nook? . . .
—Where the Piazza steps incline,And catch late light at eventide,I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,“’Twas here he died.”
I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,Where day and night a pyramid keepsUplifted its white hand, and said,“’Tis there he sleeps.”
Pleasanter now it is to holdThat here, where sang he, more of himRemains than where he, tuneless, cold,Passed to the dim.
July1920.
“AhMadam; you’ve indeed come back here?’Twas sad—your husband’s so swift death,And you away! You shouldn’t have left him:It hastened his last breath.”
“Dame, I am not the lady you think me;I know not her, nor know her name;I’ve come to lodge here—a friendless woman;My health my only aim.”
She came; she lodged. Wherever she rambledThey held her as no other thanThe lady named; and told how her husbandHad died a forsaken man.
So often did they call her thuswiseMistakenly, by that man’s name,So much did they declare about him,That his past form and fame
Grew on her, till she pitied his sorrowAs if she truly had been the cause—Yea, his deserter; and came to wonderWhat mould of man he was.
“Tell me my history!” would exclaim she;“Ourhistory,” she said mournfully.“Butyouknow, surely, Ma’am?” they would answer,Much in perplexity.
Curious, she crept to his grave one evening,And a second time in the dusk of the morrow;Then a third time, with crescent emotionLike a bereaved wife’s sorrow.
No gravestone rose by the rounded hillock;—“I marvel why this is?” she said.—“He had no kindred, Ma’am, but you near.”—She set a stone at his head.
She learnt to dream of him, and told them:“In slumber often uprises he,And says: ‘I am joyed that, after all, Dear,You’ve not deserted me!”
At length died too this kinless woman,As he had died she had grown to crave;And at her dying she besought themTo bury her in his grave.
Such said, she had paused; until she added:“Call me by his name on the stone,As I were, first to last, his dearest,Not she who left him lone!”
And this they did. And so it became thereThat, by the strength of a tender whim,The stranger was she who bore his name there,Not she who wedded him.
Isangthat song on Sunday,To witch an idle while,I sang that song on Monday,As fittest to beguile;I sang it as the year outwore,And the new slid in;I thought not what might shape beforeAnother would begin.
I sang that song in summer,All unforeknowingly,To him as a new-comerFrom regions strange to me:I sang it when in afteryearsThe shades stretched out,And paths were faint; and flocking fearsBrought cup-eyed care and doubt.
Sings he that song on SundaysIn some dim land afar,On Saturdays, or Mondays,As when the evening starGlimpsed in upon his bending faceAnd my hanging hair,And time untouched me with a traceOf soul-smart or despair?
Ninedrops of water bead the jessamine,And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:—’Twas not so in that August—full-rayed, fine—When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.
Or was there then no noted radiancyOf summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough,Gilt over by the light I bore in me,And was the waste world just the same as now?
It can have been so: yea, that threateningsOf coming down-drip on the sunless gray,By the then possibilities in thingsWere wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.
1920.
“Itwas not you I came to please,Only myself,” flipped she;“I like this spot of phantasies,And thought you far from me.”But O, he was the secret spellThat led her to the lea!
“It was not she who shaped my ways,Or works, or thoughts,” he said.“I scarcely marked her living days,Or missed her much when dead.”But O, his joyance knew its knellWhen daisies hid her head!
Joyfullady, sing!And I will lurk here listening,Though nought be done, and nought begun,And work-hours swift are scurrying.
Sing, O lady, still!Aye, I will wait each note you trill,Though duties due that press to doThis whole day long I unfulfil.
“—It is an evening tune;One not designed to waste the noon,”You say. I know: time bids me go—For daytide passes too, too soon!
But let indulgence be,This once, to my rash ecstasy:When sounds nowhere that carolled airMy idled morn may comfort me!
Onthat gray night of mournful drone,A part from aught to hear, to see,I dreamt not that from shires unknownIn gloom, alone,By Halworthy,A man was drawing near to me.
I’d no concern at anything,No sense of coming pull-heart play;Yet, under the silent outspreadingOf even’s wingWhere Otterham lay,A man was riding up my way.
I thought of nobody—not of one,But only of trifles—legends, ghosts—Though, on the moorland dim and dunThat travellers shunAbout these coasts,The man had passed Tresparret Posts.
There was no light at all inland,Only the seaward pharos-fire,Nothing to let me understandThat hard at handBy Hennett ByreThe man was getting nigh and nigher.
There was a rumble at the door,A draught disturbed the drapery,And but a minute passed before,With gaze that boreMy destiny,The man revealed himself to me.
“Ihearthe piano playing—Just as a ghost might play.”“—O, but what are you saying?There’s no piano to-day;Their old one was sold and broken;Years past it went amiss.”“—I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken:A strange house, this!
“I catch some undertone here,From some one out of sight.”“—Impossible; we are alone here,And shall be through the night.”“—The parlour-door—what stirred it?”“—No one: no soul’s in range.”“—But, anyhow, I heard it,And it seems strange!
“Seek my own room I cannot—A figure is on the stair!”“—What figure? Nay, I scan notAny one lingering there.A bough outside is waving,And that’s its shade by the moon.”“—Well, all is strange! I am cravingStrength to leave soon.”
“—Ah, maybe you’ve some visionOf showings beyond our sphere;Some sight, sense, intuitionOf what once happened here?The house is old; they’ve hintedIt once held two love-thralls,And they may have imprintedTheir dreams on its walls?
“They were—I think ’twas told me—Queer in their works and ways;The teller would often hold meWith weird tales of those days.Some folk can not abide here,But we—we do not careWho loved, laughed, wept, or died here,Knew joy, or despair.”
As’twere to-night, in the brief spaceOf a far eventime,My spirit rang achimeAt vision of a girl of grace;As ’twere to-night, in the brief spaceOf a far eventime.
As ’twere at noontide of to-morrowI airily walked and talked,And wondered as I walkedWhat it could mean, this soar from sorrow;As ’twere at noontide of to-morrowI airily walked and talked.
As ’twere at waning of this weekBroke a new life on me;Trancings of bliss to beIn some dim dear land soon to seek;As ’twere at waning of this weekBroke a new life on me!
Aforwardrush by the lamp in the gloom,And we clasped, and almost kissed;But she was not the woman whomI had promised to meet in the thawing brumeOn that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.
So loosening from me swift she said:“O why, why feign to beThe one I had meant!—to whom I have spedTo fly with, being so sorrily wed!”—’Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me.
My assignation had struck uponSome others’ like it, I found.And her lover rose on the night anon;And then her husband entered onThe lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around.
“Take her and welcome, man!” he cried:“I wash my hands of her.I’ll find me twice as good a bride!”—All this to me, whom he had eyed,Plainly, as his wife’s planned deliverer.
And next the lover: “Little I knew,Madam, you had a third!Kissing here in my very view!”—Husband and lover then withdrew.I let them; and I told them not they erred.
Why not? Well, there faced she and I—Two strangers who’d kissed, or near,Chancewise. To see stand weeping byA woman once embraced, will tryThe tension of a man the most austere.
So it began; and I was young,She pretty, by the lamp,As flakes came waltzing down amongThe waves of her clinging hair, that hungHeavily on her temples, dark and damp.
And there alone still stood we two;She one cast off for me,Or so it seemed: while night ondrew,Forcing a parley what should doWe twain hearts caught in one catastrophe.
In stranded souls a common straitWakes latencies unknown,Whose impulse may precipitateA life-long leap. The hour was late,And there was the Jersey boat with its funnel agroan.
“Is wary walking worth much pother?”It grunted, as still it stayed.“One pairing is as good as anotherWhere all is venture! Take each other,And scrap the oaths that you have aforetime made.” . . .
—Of the four involved there walks but oneOn earth at this late day.And what of the chapter so begun?In that odd complex what was done?Well; happiness comes in full to none:Let peace lie on lulled lips: I will not say.
Weymouth.
Idweltin the shade of a city,She far by the sea,With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;But never with me.
Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooringI never once met,To guide her with accents adoringThrough Weippert’s “First Set.”[46]
I spent my life’s seasons with pale onesIn Vanity Fair,And she enjoyed hers among hale onesIn salt-smelling air.
Maybe she had eyes of deep colour,Maybe they were blue,Maybe as she aged they got duller;That never I knew.
She may have had lips like the coral,But I never kissed them,Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel,Nor sought for, nor missed them.
Not a word passed of love all our lifetime,Between us, nor thrill;We’d never a husband-and-wife time,For good or for ill.
Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal,Lie I and lies she,This never-known lady, eternalCompanion to me!
Ihaveseen her in gowns the brightest,Of azure, green, and red,And in the simplest, whitest,Muslined from heel to head;I have watched her walking, riding,Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,Or in fixed thought abidingBy the foam-fingered sea.
In woodlands I have known her,When boughs were mourning loud,In the rain-reek she has shown herWild-haired and watery-browed.And once or twice she has cast meAs she pomped along the streetCourt-clad, ere quite she had passed me,A glance from her chariot-seat.
But in my memoried passionFor evermore stands sheIn the gown of fading fashionShe wore that night when we,Doomed long to part, assembledIn the snug small room; yea, whenShe sang with lips that trembled,“Shall I see his face again?”
Imarkedwhen the weather changed,And the panes began to quake,And the winds rose up and ranged,That night, lying half-awake.
Dead leaves blew into my room,And alighted upon my bed,And a tree declared to the gloomIts sorrow that they were shed.
One leaf of them touched my hand,And I thought that it was youThere stood as you used to stand,And saying at last you knew!
(?) 1913.
Sinceevery sound moves memories,How can I play youJust as I might if you raised no scene,By your ivory rows, of a form betweenMy vision and your time-worn sheen,As when each day youAnswered our fingers with ecstasy?So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!
And as I am doomed to counterchordHer notes no moreIn those old things I used to know,In a fashion, when we practised so,“Good-night!—Good-bye!” to your pleated showOf silk, now hoar,Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key,For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!
I fain would second her, strike to her stroke,As when she was by,Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “FallOf Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal,To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call”Sung soft as a sigh:But upping ghosts press achefully,And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!
Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quaversAfresh on the air,Too quick would the small white shapes be hereOf the fellow twain of hands so dear;And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear;—Then how shall I bearSuch heavily-haunted harmony?Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!
Wherethree roads joined it was green and fair,And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,And life laughed sweet when I halted there;Yet there I never again would be.
I am sure those branchways are brooding now,With a wistful blankness upon their face,While the few mute passengers notice howSpectre-beridden is the place;
Which nightly sighs like a laden soul,And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spellNot far from thence, should have let it rollAway from them down a plumbless well
While the phasm of him who fared starts up,And of her who was waiting him sobs from near,As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cupThey filled for themselves when their sky was clear.
Yes, I see those roads—now rutted and bare,While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea;And though life laughed when I halted there,It is where I never again would be.
I
Therehad been years of Passion—scorching, cold,And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,Among the young, among the weak and old,And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”
II
Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraughtPierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,Philosophies that sages long had taught,And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought,And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness.
III
The feeble folk at home had grown full-usedTo “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adeptIn the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;To day—dreamt men in millions, when they mused—To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.
IV
Waking to wish existence timeless, null,Sirius they watched above where armies fell;He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lullOf night a boom came thencewise, like the dullPlunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.
V
So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowlyWere dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!”One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,“Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?”
VI
Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glanceTo where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,As they had raised it through the four years’ danceOf Death in the now familiar flats of France;And murmured, “Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?”
VII
Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not,The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.One checkless regiment slung a clinching shotAnd turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What?Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?”
VIII
Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”;No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.
IX
Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;Some could, some could not, shake off misery:The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”
“Areyou awake,Comrades, this silent night?Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey makeLay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!”
“O viol, my friend,I watch, though Phosphor nears,And I fain would drowse away to its utter endThis dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!”
And they felt past handlers clutch them,Though none was in the room,Old players’ dead fingers touch them,Shrunk in the tomb.
“’Cello, good mate,You speak my mind as yours:Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state,Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?”
“Once I could thrillThe populace through and through,Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” . . .(A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)
And they felt old muscles travelOver their tense contours,And with long skill unravelCunningest scores.
“The tender patOf her aery finger-tipsUpon me daily—I rejoiced thereat!”(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)
“My keys’ white shine,Now sallow, met a handEven whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mineIn sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!”
And its clavier was filmed with fingersLike tapering flames—wan, cold—Or the nebulous light that lingersIn charnel mould.
“Gayer than mostWas I,” reverbed a drum;“The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! What a hostI stirred—even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!”
Trilled an aged viol:“Much tune have I set freeTo spur the dance, since my first timid trialWhere I had birth—far hence, in sun-swept Italy!”
And he feels apt touches on himFrom those that pressed him then;Who seem with their glance to con him,Saying, “Not again!”
“A holy calm,”Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued,“Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalmPoured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.”
“I faced the sockNightly,” twanged a sick lyre,“Over ranked lights! O charm of life in mock,O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!”
Thus they, till each past playerStroked thinner and more thin,And the morning sky grew grayerAnd day crawled in.
Astranger, I threaded sunken-heartedA lamp-lit crowd;And anon there passed me a soul departed,Who mutely bowed.In my far-off youthful years I had met her,Full-pulsed; but now, no more life’s debtor,Onward she slidIn a shroud that furs half-hid.
“Why do you trouble me, dead woman,Trouble me;You whom I knew when warm and human?—How it beThat you quitted earth and are yet upon itIs, to any who ponder on it,Past being read!”“Still, it is so,” she said.
“These were my haunts in my olden sprightlyHours of breath;Here I went tempting frail youth nightlyTo their death;But you deemed me chaste—me, a tinselled sinner!How thought you one with pureness in herCould pace this streetEyeing some man to greet?
“Well; your very simplicity made me love youMid such town dross,Till I set not Heaven itself above you,Who grew my Cross;For you’d only nod, despite how I sighed for you;So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!—What I suffered thenWould have paid for the sins of ten!
“Thus went the days. I feared you despised meTo fling me a nodEach time, no more: till love chastised meAs with a rodThat a fresh bland boy of no assuranceShould fire me with passion beyond endurance,While others allI hated, and loathed their call.
“I said: ‘It is his mother’s spiritHovering aroundTo shield him, maybe!’ I used to fear it,As still I foundMy beauty left no least impression,And remnants of pride withheld confessionOf my true tradeBy speaking; so I delayed.
“I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flowerHe’ll be beguiled.’I held it, in passing you one late hour,To your face: you smiled,Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see thereA single one that rivalled me there! . . .Well: it’s all past.I died in the Lock at last.”
So walked the dead and I togetherThe quick among,Elbowing our kind of every featherSlowly and long;Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk thereWith me seemed nothing strange, and talk thereThat winter nightBy flaming jets of light.
She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,Guessing their lot;She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,And that did not.Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me,Why asked you never, ere death befell me,To have my love,Much as I dreamt thereof?”
I could not answer. And she, well weetingAll in my heart,Said: “God your guardian kept our fleetingForms apart!”Sighing and drawing her furs around herOver the shroud that tightly bound her,With wafts as from clayShe turned and thinned away.
London, 1918.
Ifit’s ever spring again,Spring again,I shall go where went I whenDown the moor-cock splashed, and hen,Seeing me not, amid their flounder,Standing with my arm around her;If it’s ever spring again,Spring again,I shall go where went I then.
If it’s ever summer-time,Summer-time,With the hay crop at the prime,And the cuckoos—two—in rhyme,As they used to be, or seemed to,We shall do as long we’ve dreamed to,If it’s ever summer-time,Summer-time,With the hay, and bees achime.
Inthe heart of night,When farers were not near,The left house said to the house on the right,“I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.”
Said the right, cold-eyed:“Newcomer here I am,Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.
“Modern my wood,My hangings fair of hue;While my windows open as they should,And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.
“Your gear is gray,Your face wears furrows untold.”“—Yours might,” mourned the other, “if you held, brother,The Presences from aforetime that I hold.
“You have not knownMen’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens;You are but a heap of stick and stone:A new house has no sense of the have-beens.
“Void as a drumYou stand: I am packed with these,Though, strangely, living dwellers who comeSee not the phantoms all my substance sees!
“Visible in the morningStand they, when dawn drags in;Visible at night; yet hint or warningOf these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.
“Babes new-brought-forthObsess my rooms; straight-stretchedLank corpses, ere outborne to earth;Yea, throng they as when first from the ’Byss upfetched.
“Dancers and singersThrob in me now as once;Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingersOf heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce.
“Note here withinThe bridegroom and the bride,Who smile and greet their friends and kin,And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.
“Where such inbe,A dwelling’s characterTakes theirs, and a vague semblancyTo them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.
“Yet the blind folkMy tenants, who come and goIn the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke,Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.”
“—Will the day come,”Said the new one, awestruck, faint,“When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb—And with such spectral guests become acquaint?”
“—That will it, boy;Such shades will people thee,Each in his misery, irk, or joy,And print on thee their presences as on me.”
Iglimpseda woman’s muslined formSing-songing airilyAgainst the moon; and still she sang,And took no heed of me.
Another trice, and I beheldWhat first I had not scanned,That now and then she tapped and shookA timbrel in her hand.
So late the hour, so white her drape,So strange the look it lentTo that blank hill, I could not guessWhat phantastry it meant.
Then burst I forth: “Why such from you?Are you so happy now?”Her voice swam on; nor did she showThought of me anyhow.
I called again: “Come nearer; muchThat kind of note I need!”The song kept softening, loudening on,In placid calm unheed.
“What home is yours now?” then I said;“You seem to have no care.”But the wild wavering tune went forthAs if I had not been there.
“This world is dark, and where you are,”I said, “I cannot be!”But still the happy one sang on,And had no heed of me.
Onewithout looks in to-nightThrough the curtain-chinkFrom the sheet of glistening white;One without looks in to-nightAs we sit and thinkBy the fender-brink.
We do not discern those eyesWatching in the snow;Lit by lamps of rosy dyesWe do not discern those eyesWondering, aglow,Fourfooted, tiptoe.
Abirdbills the selfsame song,With never a fault in its flow,That we listened to here those longLong years ago.
A pleasing marvel is howA strain of such rapturous roteShould have gone on thus till nowUnchanged in a note!
—But it’s not the selfsame bird.—No: perished to dust is he . . .As also are those who heardThat song with me.
Thereis nobody on the roadBut I,And no beseeming abodeI can tryFor shelter, so abroadI must lie.
The stars feel not far up,And to beThe lights by which I supGlimmeringly,Set out in a hollow cupOver me.
They wag as though they werePanting for joyWhere they shine, above all care,And annoy,And demons of despair—Life’s alloy.
Sometimes outside the fenceFeet swing past,Clock-like, and then go hence,Till at lastThere is a silence, dense,Deep, and vast.
A wanderer, witch-drawnTo and fro,To-morrow, at the dawn,On I go,And where I rest anonDo not know!
Yet it’s meet—this bed of hayAnd roofless plight;For there’s a house of clay,My own, quite,To roof me soon, all dayAnd all night.
Thisis the story a man told meOf his life’s one day of dreamery.
A woman came into his roomBetween the dawn and the creeping day:She was the years-wed wife from whomHe had parted, and who lived far away,As if strangers they.
He wondered, and as she stoodShe put on youth in her look and air,And more was he wonderstruck as he viewedHer form and flesh bloom yet more fairWhile he watched her there;
Till she freshed to the pink and brownThat were hers on the night when first they met,When she was the charm of the idle townAnd he the pick of the club-fire set . . .His eyes grew wet,
And he stretched his arms: “Stay—rest!—”He cried. “Abide with me so, my own!”But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;She had vanished with all he had looked uponOf her beauty: gone.
He clothed, and drew downstairs,But she was not in the house, he found;And he passed out under the leafy pairsOf the avenue elms, and searched aroundTo the park-pale bound.
He mounted, and rode till nightTo the city to which she had long withdrawn,The vision he bore all day in his sightBeing her young self as pondered onIn the dim of dawn.
“—The lady here long ago—Is she now here?—young—or such age as she is?”“—She is still here.”—“Thank God. Let her know;She’ll pardon a comer so late as thisWhom she’d fain not miss.”
She received him—an ancient dame,Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb,“How strange!—I’d almost forgotten your name!—A call just now—is troublesome;Why did you come?”
Calloff your eyes from careBy some determined deftness; put forth joysDear as excess without the core that cloys,And charm Life’s lourings fair.
Exalt and crown the hourThat girdles us, and fill it full with glee,Blind glee, excelling aught could ever beWere heedfulness in power.
Send up such touching strainsThat limitless recruits from Fancy’s packShall rush upon your tongue, and tender backAll that your soul contains.
For what do we know best?That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry,And that men moment after moment die,Of all scope dispossest.
If I have seen one thingIt is the passing preciousness of dreams;That aspects are within us; and who seemsMost kingly is the King.
1867:Westbourne Park Villas.
HadI but lived a hundred years agoI might have gone, as I have gone this year,By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,And Time have placed his finger on me there:
“You see that man?”—I might have looked, and said,“O yes: I see him. One that boat has broughtWhich dropped down Channel round Saint Alban’s Head.So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.”
“You see that man?”—“Why yes; I told you; yes:Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;And as the evening light scants less and lessHe looks up at a star, as many do.”
“You see that man?”—“Nay, leave me!” then I plead,“I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!
“Good. That man goes to Rome—to death, despair;And no one notes him now but you and I:A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.”
September1920.
Note.—In September 1820 Keats, on his way to Rome, landed one day on the Dorset coast, and composed the sonnet, “Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.” The spot of his landing is judged to have been Lulworth Cove.
Thatnight, that night,That song, that song!Will such again be evened quiteThrough lifetimes long?
No mirth was shownTo outer seers,But mood to match has not been knownIn modern years.
O eyes that smiled,O lips that lured;That such would last was one beguiledTo think ensured!
That night, that night,That song, that song;O drink to its recalled delight,Though tears may throng!
Lateon Christmas Eve, in the street alone,Outside a house, on the pavement-stone,I sang to her, as we’d sung togetherOn former eves ere I felt her tether.—Above the door of green by meWas she, her casement seen by me;But she would not heedWhat I melodiedIn my soul’s sore need—She would not heed.
Cassiopeia overhead,And the Seven of the Wain, heard what I saidAs I bent me there, and voiced, and fingeredUpon the strings. . . . Long, long I lingered:Only the curtains hid from herOne whom caprice had bid from her;But she did not come,And my heart grew numbAnd dull my strum;She did not come.
Iskimmedthe strings; I sang quite low;I hoped she would not come or knowThat the house next door was the one now dittied,Not hers, as when I had played unpitied;—Next door, where dwelt a heart fresh stirred,My new Love, of good will to me,Unlike my old Love chill to me,Who had not cared for my notes when heard:Yet that old Love cameTo the other’s nameAs hers were the claim;Yea, the old Love came
My viol sank mute, my tongue stood still,I tried to sing on, but vain my will:I prayed she would guess of the later, and leave me;She stayed, as though, were she slain by the smart,She would bear love’s burn for a newer heart.The tense-drawn moment wrought to bereave meOf voice, and I turned in a dumb despairAt her finding I’d come to another there.Sick I withdrewAt love’s grim hueEre my last Love knew;Sick I withdrew.
From an old copy.