The Project Gutenberg eBook ofSatires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous PiecesThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous PiecesAuthor: Thomas HardyRelease date: October 1, 2001 [eBook #2863]Most recently updated: January 23, 2015Language: EnglishCredits: Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE, LYRICS AND REVERIES, WITH MISCELLANEOUS PIECES ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous PiecesAuthor: Thomas HardyRelease date: October 1, 2001 [eBook #2863]Most recently updated: January 23, 2015Language: EnglishCredits: Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price
Title: Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces
Author: Thomas Hardy
Author: Thomas Hardy
Release date: October 1, 2001 [eBook #2863]Most recently updated: January 23, 2015
Language: English
Credits: Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE, LYRICS AND REVERIES, WITH MISCELLANEOUS PIECES ***
Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BYTHOMAS HARDY
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON1919
COPYRIGHT
First Edition1914Reprinted1915, 1919Pocket Edition1919
Lyrics and Reveries—
PAGE
In Front of the Landscape
3
Channel Firing
7
The Convergence of the Twain
9
The Ghost of the Past
12
After the Visit
14
To Meet, or Otherwise
16
The Difference
18
The Sun on the Bookcase
19
“When I set out for Lyonnesse”
20
A Thunderstorm in Town
21
The Torn Letter
22
Beyond the Last Lamp
25
The Face at the Casement
27
Lost Love
30
“My spirit will not haunt the mound”
31
Wessex Heights
32
In Death divided
35
The Place on the Map
37
Where the Picnic was
39
The Schreckhorn
41
A Singer asleep
42
A Plaint to Man
45
God’s Funeral
47
Spectres that grieve
52
“Ah, are you digging on my grave?”
54
Satires of Circumstance—
I.
At Tea
59
II.
In Church
60
III.
By her Aunt’s Grave
61
IV.
In the Room of the Bride-elect
62
V.
At the Watering-place
63
VI.
In the Cemetery
64
VII.
Outside the Window
65
VIII.
In the Study
66
IX.
At the Altar-rail
67
X.
In the Nuptial Chamber
68
XI.
In the Restaurant
69
XII.
At the Draper’s
70
XIII.
On the Death-bed
71
XIV.
Over the Coffin
72
XV.
In the Moonlight
73
Lyrics and Reveries(continued)—
Self-unconscious
77
The Discovery
80
Tolerance
81
Before and after Summer
82
At Day-close in November
83
The Year’s Awakening
84
Under the Waterfall
85
The Spell of the Rose
88
St. Launce’s revisited
90
Poems of1912–13–
The Going
95
Your Last Drive
97
The Walk
99
Rain on a Grace
100
“I found her out there”
102
Without Ceremony
104
Lament
105
The Haunter
107
The Voice
109
His Visitor
110
A Circular
112
A Dream or No
113
After a Journey
115
A Death-ray recalled
117
Beeny Cliff
119
At Castle Boterel
121
Places
123
The Phantom Horsewoman
125
Miscellaneous Pieces—
The Wistful Lady
129
The Woman in the Rye
131
The Cheval-Glass
132
The Re-enactment
134
Her Secret
140
“She charged me”
141
The Newcomer’s Wife
142
A Conversation at Dawn
143
A King’s Soliloquy
152
The Coronation
154
Aquae Sulis
157
Seventy-four and Twenty
160
The Elopement
161
“I rose up as my custom is”
163
A Week
165
Had you wept
167
Bereft, she thinks she dreams
169
In the British Museum
170
In the Servants’ Quarters
172
The Obliterate Tomb
175
“Regret not me”
183
The Recalcitrants
185
Starlings on the Roof
186
The Moon looks in
187
The Sweet Hussy
188
The Telegram
189
The Moth-signal
191
Seen by the Waits
193
The Two Soldiers
194
The Death of Regret
195
In the Days of Crinoline
197
The Roman Gravemounds
199
The Workbox
201
The Sacrilege
203
The Abbey Mason
210
The Jubilee of a Magazine
222
The Satin Shoes
224
Exeunt Omnes
227
A Poet
228
Postscript—
“Men who march away”
229
Plungingand labouring on in a tide of visions,Dolorous and dear,Forward I pushed my way as amid waste watersStretching around,Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscapeYonder and near,
Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the uplandFoliage-crowned,Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flatStroked by the light,Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantialMeadow or mound.
What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremostUnder my sight,Hindering me to discern my paced advancementLengthening to miles;What were the re-creations killing the daytimeAs by the night?
O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent,Some as with smiles,Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundledOver the wreckedCheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with anguish,Harrowed by wiles.
Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them—Halo-bedecked—And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason,Rigid in hate,Smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision,Dreaded, suspect.
Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasonsFurther in date;Instruments of strings with the tenderest passionVibrant, besideLamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth’s crustNow corporate.
Also there rose a headland of hoary aspectGnawed by the tide,Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood thereGuilelessly glad—Wherefore they knew not—touched by the fringe of an ecstasyScantly descried.
Later images too did the day unfurl me,Shadowed and sad,Clay cadavers of those who had shared in the dramas,Laid now at ease,Passions all spent, chiefest the one of the broad browSepulture-clad.
So did beset me scenes miscalled of the bygone,Over the leaze,Past the clump, and down to where lay the beheld ones;—Yea, as the rhymeSung by the sea-swell, so in their pleading dumbnessCaptured me these.
For, their lost revisiting manifestationsIn their own timeMuch had I slighted, caring not for their purport,Seeing behindThings more coveted, reckoned the better worth callingSweet, sad, sublime.
Thus do they now show hourly before the intenserStare of the mindAs they were ghosts avenging their slights by my bypastBody-borne eyes,Show, too, with fuller translation than rested upon themAs living kind.
Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, sayingIn their surmise,“Ah—whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing noughtRound him that loomsWhithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings,Save a few tombs?”
Thatnight your great guns, unawares,Shook all our coffins as we lay,And broke the chancel window-squares,We thought it was the Judgment-day
And sat upright. While drearisomeArose the howl of wakened hounds:The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,The worms drew back into the mounds,
The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;It’s gunnery practice out at seaJust as before you went below;The world is as it used to be:
“All nations striving strong to makeRed war yet redder. Mad as hattersThey do no more for Christés sakeThan you who are helpless in such matters.
“That this is not the judgment-hourFor some of them’s a blessed thing,For if it were they’d have to scourHell’s floor for so much threatening . . .
“Ha, ha. It will be warmer whenI blow the trumpet (if indeedI ever do; for you are men,And rest eternal sorely need).”
So down we lay again. “I wonder,Will the world ever saner be,”Said one, “than when He sent us underIn our indifferent century!”
And many a skeleton shook his head.“Instead of preaching forty year,”My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”
Again the guns disturbed the hour,Roaring their readiness to avenge,As far inland as Stourton Tower,And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
April1914.
(Lines on the loss of the“Titanic”)
I
Ina solitude of the seaDeep from human vanity,And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyresOf her salamandrine fires,Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meantTo glass the opulentThe sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designedTo ravish the sensuous mindLie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes nearGaze at the gilded gearAnd query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” . . .
VI
Well: while was fashioningThis creature of cleaving wing,The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mateFor her—so gaily great—A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship grewIn stature, grace, and hue,In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:No mortal eye could seeThe intimate welding of their later history,
X
Or sign that they were bentBy paths coincidentOn being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the YearsSaid “Now!” And each one hears,And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
Wetwo kept house, the Past and I,The Past and I;I tended while it hovered nigh,Leaving me never alone.It was a spectral housekeepingWhere fell no jarring tone,As strange, as still a housekeepingAs ever has been known.
As daily I went up the stairAnd down the stair,I did not mind the Bygone there—The Present once to me;Its moving meek companionshipI wished might ever be,There was in that companionshipSomething of ecstasy.
It dwelt with me just as it was,Just as it wasWhen first its prospects gave me pauseIn wayward wanderings,Before the years had torn old trothsAs they tear all sweet things,Before gaunt griefs had torn old trothsAnd dulled old rapturings.
And then its form began to fade,Began to fade,Its gentle echoes faintlier playedAt eves upon my earThan when the autumn’s look embrownedThe lonely chambers here,The autumn’s settling shades embrownedNooks that it haunted near.
And so with time my vision less,Yea, less and lessMakes of that Past my housemistress,It dwindles in my eye;It looms a far-off skeletonAnd not a comrade nigh,A fitful far-off skeletonDimming as days draw by.
Comeagain to the placeWhere your presence was as a leaf that skimsDown a drouthy way whose ascent bedimsThe bloom on the farer’s face.
Come again, with the feetThat were light on the green as a thistledown ball,And those mute ministrations to one and to allBeyond a man’s saying sweet.
Until then the faint scentOf the bordering flowers swam unheeded away,And I marked not the charm in the changes of dayAs the cloud-colours came and went.
Through the dark corridorsYour walk was so soundless I did not knowYour form from a phantom’s of long agoSaid to pass on the ancient floors,
Till you drew from the shade,And I saw the large luminous living eyesRegard me in fixed inquiring-wiseAs those of a soul that weighed,
Scarce consciously,The eternal question of what Life was,And why we were there, and by whose strange lawsThat which mattered most could not be.
Whetherto sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,Or whether to stayAnd see thee not! How vast the difference seemsOf Yea from NayJust now. Yet this same sun will slant its beamsAt no far dayOn our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh!
Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and makeThe most I canOf what remains to us amid this brake CimmerianThrough which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache,While still we scanRound our frail faltering progress for some path or plan.
By briefest meeting something sure is won;It will have been:Nor God nor Daemon can undo the done,Unsight the seen,Make muted music be as unbegun,Though things terreneGroan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.
So, to the one long-sweeping symphonyFrom times remoteTill now, of human tenderness, shall weSupply one note,Small and untraced, yet that will ever beSomewhere afloatAmid the spheres, as part of sick Life’s antidote.
I
Sinkingdown by the gate I discern the thin moon,And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine,But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird’s tune,For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine.
II
Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such as now,The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon;But she will see never this gate, path, or bough,Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune.
Oncemore the cauldron of the sunSmears the bookcase with winy red,And here my page is, and there my bed,And the apple-tree shadows travel along.Soon their intangible track will be run,And dusk grow strongAnd they be fled.
Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,And I have wasted another day . . .But wasted—wasted, do I say?Is it a waste to have imaged oneBeyond the hills there, who, anon,My great deeds doneWill be mine alway?
WhenI set out for Lyonnesse,A hundred miles away,The rime was on the spray,And starlight lit my lonesomenessWhen I set out for LyonnesseA hundred miles away.
What would bechance at LyonnesseWhile I should sojourn thereNo prophet durst declare,Nor did the wisest wizard guessWhat would bechance at LyonnesseWhile I should sojourn there.
When I came back from LyonnesseWith magic in my eyes,None managed to surmiseWhat meant my godlike gloriousness,When I came back from LyonnesseWith magic in my eyes.
Shewore a new “terra-cotta” dress,And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,Within the hansom’s dry recess,Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionlessWe sat on, snug and warm.
Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,And the glass that had screened our forms beforeFlew up, and out she sprang to her door:I should have kissed her if the rainHad lasted a minute more.
I
I tore your letter into stripsNo bigger than the airy feathersThat ducks preen out in changing weathersUpon the shifting ripple-tips.
II
In darkness on my bed aloneI seemed to see you in a vision,And hear you say: “Why this derisionOf one drawn to you, though unknown?”
III
Yes, eve’s quick mood had run its course,The night had cooled my hasty madness;I suffered a regretful sadnessWhich deepened into real remorse.
IV
I thought what pensive patient daysA soul must know of grain so tender,How much of good must grace the senderOf such sweet words in such bright phrase.
V
Uprising then, as things unpricedI sought each fragment, patched and mended;The midnight whitened ere I had endedAnd gathered words I had sacrificed.
VI
But some, alas, of those I threwWere past my search, destroyed for ever:They were your name and place; and neverDid I regain those clues to you.
VII
I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,My track; that, so the Will decided,In life, death, we should be divided,And at the sense I ached indeed.
VIII
That ache for you, born long ago,Throbs on; I never could outgrow it.What a revenge, did you but know it!But that, thank God, you do not know.
I
Whilerain, with eve in partnership,Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip,Beyond the last lone lamp I passedWalking slowly, whispering sadly,Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast:Some heavy thought constrained each face,And blinded them to time and place.
II
The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbedIn mental scenes no longer orbedBy love’s young rays. Each countenanceAs it slowly, as it sadlyCaught the lamplight’s yellow glanceHeld in suspense a miseryAt things which had been or might be.
III
When I retrod that watery waySome hours beyond the droop of day,Still I found pacing there the twainJust as slowly, just as sadly,Heedless of the night and rain.One could but wonder who they wereAnd what wild woe detained them there.
IV
Though thirty years of blur and blotHave slid since I beheld that spot,And saw in curious converse thereMoving slowly, moving sadlyThat mysterious tragic pair,Its olden look may linger on—All but the couple; they have gone.
V
Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And yetTo me, when nights are weird and wet,Without those comrades there at trystCreeping slowly, creeping sadly,That lone lane does not exist.There they seem brooding on their pain,And will, while such a lane remain.
Ifever joy leaveAn abiding sting of sorrow,So befell it on the morrowOf that May eve . . .
The travelled sun droppedTo the north-west, low and lower,The pony’s trot grew slower,And then we stopped.
“This cosy house just byI must call at for a minute,A sick man lies within itWho soon will die.
“He wished to marry me,So I am bound, when I drive near him,To inquire, if but to cheer him,How he may be.”
A message was sent in,And wordlessly we waited,Till some one came and statedThe bulletin.
And that the sufferer said,For her call no words could thank her;As his angel he must rank herTill life’s spark fled.
Slowly we drove away,When I turned my head, although notCalled; why so I turned I know notEven to this day.
And lo, there in my viewPressed against an upper latticeWas a white face, gazing at usAs we withdrew.
And well did I divineIt to be the man’s there dying,Who but lately had been sighingFor her pledged mine.
Then I deigned a deed of hell;It was done before I knew it;What devil made me do itI cannot tell!
Yes, while he gazed above,I put my arm about herThat he might see, nor doubt herMy plighted Love.
The pale face vanished quick,As if blasted, from the casement,And my shame and self-abasementBegan their prick.
And they prick on, ceaselessly,For that stab in Love’s fierce fashionWhich, unfired by lover’s passion,Was foreign to me.
She smiled at my caress,But why came the soft embowmentOf her shoulder at that momentShe did not guess.
Long long years has he lainIn thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather:What tears there, bared to weather,Will cleanse that stain!
Love is long-suffering, brave,Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel;But O, too, Love is cruel,Cruel as the grave.
Iplaymy sweet old airs—The airs he knewWhen our love was true—But he does not balkHis determined walk,And passes up the stairs.
I sing my songs once more,And presently hearHis footstep nearAs if it would stay;But he goes his way,And shuts a distant door.
So I wait for another mornAnd another nightIn this soul-sick blight;And I wonder muchAs I sit, why suchA woman as I was born!
Myspirit will not haunt the moundAbove my breast,But travel, memory-possessed,To where my tremulous being foundLife largest, best.
My phantom-footed shape will goWhen nightfall graysHither and thither along the waysI and another used to knowIn backward days.
And there you’ll find me, if a jotYou still should careFor me, and for my curious air;If otherwise, then I shall not,For you, be there.
Thereare some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly handFor thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.
In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man’s friend—Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend:Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I,But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky.
In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways—Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days:They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things—Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings.
Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was,And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass causeCan have merged him into such a strange continuator as this,Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.
I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there’s a figure against the moon,Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passedFor everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast.
There’s a ghost at Yell’ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night,There’s a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a shroud of white,There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near,I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear.
As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers,I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers;Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know;Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go.
So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west,Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest,Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me,And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.
I
Ishallrot here, with those whom in their dayYou never knew,And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,Met not my view,Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you.
II
No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower,While earth endures,Will fall on my mound and within the hourSteal on to yours;One robin never haunt our two green covertures.
III
Some organ may resound on Sunday noonsBy where you lie,Some other thrill the panes with other tunesWhere moulder I;No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby.
IV
The simply-cut memorial at my headPerhaps may takeA Gothic form, and that above your bedBe Greek in make;No linking symbol show thereon for our tale’s sake.
V
And in the monotonous moils of strained, hard-runHumanity,The eternal tie which binds us twain in oneNo eye will seeStretching across the miles that sever you from me.
I
Ilookupon the map that hangs by me—Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry—And I mark a jutting heightColoured purple, with a margin of blue sea.
II
—’Twas a day of latter summer, hot and dry;Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked on, she and I,By this spot where, calmly quite,She informed me what would happen by and by.
III
This hanging map depicts the coast and place,And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous caseAll distinctly to my sight,And her tension, and the aspect of her face.
IV
Weeks and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue,Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too,While she told what, as by sleight,Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue.
V
For the wonder and the wormwood of the wholeWas that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soulWore a torrid tragic lightUnder order-keeping’s rigorous control.
VI
So, the map revives her words, the spot, the time,And the thing we found we had to face before the next year’s prime;The charted coast stares bright,And its episode comes back in pantomime.
Wherewe made the fire,In the summer time,Of branch and briarOn the hill to the seaI slowly climbThrough winter mire,And scan and traceThe forsaken placeQuite readily.
Now a cold wind blows,And the grass is gray,But the spot still showsAs a burnt circle—aye,And stick-ends, charred,Still strew the swardWhereon I stand,Last relic of the bandWho came that day!
Yes, I am hereJust as last year,And the sea breathes brineFrom its strange straight lineUp hither, the sameAs when we four came.—But two have wandered farFrom this grassy riseInto urban roarWhere no picnics are,And one—has shut her eyesFor evermore.
Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim;Now that its spare and desolate figure gleamsUpon my nearing vision, less it seemsA looming Alp-height than a guise of himWho scaled its horn with ventured life and limb,Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe,Of semblance to his personalityIn its quaint glooms, keen lights, and rugged trim.
At his last change, when Life’s dull coils unwind,Will he, in old love, hitherward escape,And the eternal essence of his mindEnter this silent adamantine shape,And his low voicing haunt its slipping snowsWhen dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose?
I
In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,That sentrys up and down all night, all day,From cove to promontory, from ness to bay,The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally.
II
—It was as though a garland of red rosesHad fallen about the hood of some smug nunWhen irresponsibly dropped as from the sun,In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes,Upon Victoria’s formal middle timeHis leaves of rhythm and rhyme.
III
O that far morning of a summer dayWhen, down a terraced street whose pavements layGlassing the sunshine into my bent eyes,I walked and read with a quick glad surpriseNew words, in classic guise,—
IV
The passionate pages of his earlier years,Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears;Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel whoBlew them not naïvely, but as one who knewFull well why thus he blew.
V
I still can hear the brabble and the roarAt those thy tunes, O still one, now passed throughThat fitful fire of tongues then entered new!Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore;Thine swells yet more and more.
VI
—His singing-mistress verily was no otherThan she the Lesbian, she the music-motherOf all the tribe that feel in melodies;Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steepInto the rambling world-encircling deepWhich hides her where none sees.
VII
And one can hold in thought that nightly hereHis phantom may draw down to the water’s brim,And hers come up to meet it, as a dimLone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere,And mariners wonder as they traverse near,Unknowing of her and him.
VIII
One dreams him sighing to her spectral form:“O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line;Where are those songs, O poetess divineWhose very arts are love incarnadine?”And her smile back: “Disciple true and warm,Sufficient now are thine.” . . .
IX
So here, beneath the waking constellations,Where the waves peal their everlasting strains,And their dull subterrene reverberationsShake him when storms make mountains of their plains—Him once their peer in sad improvisations,And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes—I leave him, while the daylight gleam declinesUpon the capes and chines.
Bonchurch, 1910.