THE PHOTOGRAPH

The flame crept up the portrait line by line

As it lay on the coals in the silence of night's profound,

And over the arm's incline,

And along the marge of the silkwork superfine,

And gnawed at the delicate bosom's defenceless round.

Then I vented a cry of hurt, and averted my eyes;

The spectacle was one that I could not bear,

To my deep and sad surprise;

But, compelled to heed, I again looked furtive-wise

Till the flame had eaten her breasts, and mouth, and hair.

"Thank God, she is out of it now!" I said at last,

In a great relief of heart when the thing was done

That had set my soul aghast,

And nothing was left of the picture unsheathed from the past

But the ashen ghost of the card it had figured on.

She was a woman long hid amid packs of years,

She might have been living or dead; she was lost to my sight,

And the deed that had nigh drawn tears

Was done in a casual clearance of life's arrears;

But I felt as if I had put her to death that night! . . .

* * *

- Well; she knew nothing thereof did she survive,

And suffered nothing if numbered among the dead;

Yet - yet - if on earth alive

Did she feel a smart, and with vague strange anguish strive?

If in heaven, did she smile at me sadly and shake her head?

-o0o-

88

HE NEVER EXPECTED MUCH

Well, World, you have kept faith with me, 

Kept faith with me; 

Upon the whole you have proved to be 

Much as you said you were. 

Since as a child I used to lie 

Upon the leaze and watch the sky, 

Never, I own, expected I 

That life would all be fair. 

'Twas then you said, and since have said, 

Times since have said, 

In that mysterious voice you shed 

From clouds and hills around: 

"Many have loved me desperately, 

Many with smooth serenity, 

While some have shown contempt of me 

Till they dropped underground. 

"I do not promise overmuch, 

Child; overmuch; 

Just neutral-tinted haps and such," 

You said to minds like mine. 

Wise warning for your credit's sake! 

Which I for one failed not to take, 

And hence could stem such strain and ache 

As each year might assign. 

-o0o-

87

A WOMAN DRIVING

How she held up the horses' heads,

Firm-lipped, with steady rein,

Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,

Till all was safe again!

With form erect and keen contour

She passed against the sea,

And, dipping into the chine's obscure,

Was seen no more by me.

To others she appeared anew

At times of dusky light,

But always, so they told, withdrew

From close and curious sight.

Some said her silent wheels would roll

Rutless on softest loam,

And even that her steeds' footfall

Sank not upon the foam.

Where drives she now? It may be where

No mortal horses are,

But in a chariot of the air

Towards some radiant star.

-o0o-

THE TORN LETTER

I tore your letter into strips

No bigger than the airy feathers

That ducks preen out in changing weathers

Upon the shifting ripple-tips.

In darkness on my bed alone

I seemed to see you in a vision,

And hear you say: "Why this derision

Of one drawn to you, though unknown?"

Yes, eve's quick mood had run its course,

The night had cooled my hasty madness;

I suffered a regretful sadness

Which deepened into real remorse.

I thought what pensive patient days

A soul must know of grain so tender,

How much of good must grace the sender

Of such sweet words in such bright phrase.

Uprising then, as things unpriced

I sought each fragment, patched and mended;

The midnight whitened ere I had ended

And gathered words I had sacrificed.

But some, alas, of those I threw

Were past my search, destroyed for ever:

They were your name and place; and never

Did I regain those clues to you.

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.

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.

-o0o-

85

LOOKING ACROSS

It is dark in the sky,

And silence is where

Our laughs rang high;

And recall do I

That One is out there.

The dawn is not nigh,

And the trees are bare,

And the waterways sigh

That a year has drawn by,

And Two are out there.

The wind drops to die

Like the phantom of Care

Too frail for a cry,

And heart brings to eye

That Three are out there.

This Life runs dry

That once ran rare

And rosy in dye,

And fleet the days fly,

And Four are out there.

Tired, tired am I

Of this earthly air,

And my wraith asks: Why,

Since these calm lie,

Are not Five out there?

-o0o-

84

AT  TEA

The kettle descants in a cozy drone,

And the young wife looks in her husband's face,

And then at her guest's, and shows in her own

Her sense that she fills an envied place;

And the visiting lady is all abloom,

And says there was never so sweet a room.

And the happy young housewife does not know

That the woman beside her was first his choice,

Till the fates ordained it could not be so. . . .

Betraying nothing in look or voice

The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,

And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

-o0o-

HE INADVERTENTLY CURES HIS LOVE-PAINS

I said: " O let me sing the praise

Of her who sweetly racks my days, -

Her I adore;

Her lips, her eyes, her moods, her ways!"

In miseries of pulse and pang

I strung my harp, and straightway sang

As none before: -

To wondrous words my quavers rang!

Thus I let heartaches lilt my verse,

Which suaged and soothed, and made disperse

The smarts I bore

To stagnance like a sepulchre's.

But, eased, the days that thrilled ere then

Lost value; and I ask, O when,

And how, restore

Those old sweet agonies again!

-o0o-

82

JUST THE SAME

I sat.  It all was past;

Hope never would hail again;

Fair days had ceased at a blast,

The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone,

And the halo in which I had hied

So gaily gallantly on

Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither,

In a cloud too black for name:

- People frisked hither and thither;

The world was just the same.

-o0o-

ANY LITTLE OLD SONG

Any little old song

will do for me,

Tell it of joys gone long,

or joys to be,

or friendly faces best

loved to see.

Newest themes I want not

On subtle strings,

and for thrillings pant not

that new song brings:

I only need the homeliest

of heart-stirrings.

-o0o-

80

THE SELFSAME SONG

A bird sings the selfsame song, 

With never a fault in its flow, 

That we listened to here those long 

Long years ago.

A pleasing marvel is how 

A strain of such rapturous rote 

Should have gone on thus till now 

unchanged in a note!

- But its not the selfsame bird. - 

No: perished to dust is he . . .

As also are those who heard 

That song with me. 

90plus and still blogging was updated today

-o0o-

THE PLACE ON THE MAP

I look upon the map that hangs by me -

Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry -

And I mark a jutting height

Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea.

'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.

This hanging map depicts the coast and place,

And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case

All distinctly to my sight,

And her tension, and the aspect of her face.

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.

For the wonder and the wormwood of the whole

Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soul

Wore a torrid tragic light

Under order-keeping's rigorous control.

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.

-o0o-

78

IN THE SERVANTS' QUARTERS

"Man, you too, aren't you, one of these rough followers of the criminal?

All hanging hereabout to gather how he's going to bear

Examination in the hall." She flung disdainful glances on

The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there,

Who warmed them by its flare.

"No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know nothing of the trial here,

Or criminal, if so he be. I chanced to come this way,

And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold now;

I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play,

That I see not every day."

"Ha, ha!" then laughed the constables who also stood to warm themselves,

The while another maiden scrutinised his features hard,

As the blaze threw into contrast every line and knot that wrinkled them,

Exclaiming, "Why, last night when he was brought in by the guard,

You were with him in the yard!"

"Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I say! You know you speak mistakenly.

Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar

Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble marketings,

Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are

Afoot by morning star?"

"O, come, come!" laughed the constables. "Why, man, you speak the dialect

He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs.

So own it. We shan't hurt ye. There he's speaking now! His syllables

Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares,

As this pretty girl declares."

"And you shudder when his chain clinks!" she rejoined. "O yes, I noticed it.

And you winced, too, when those cuffs they gave him echoed to us here.

They'll soon be coming down, and you may then have to defend yourself

Unless you hold your tongue, or go away and keep you clear

When he's led to judgement near!"

"No! I'll be damned in hell if I know anything about the man!

No single thing about him more than everybody knows!

Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with blasphemies?" 

. . . 

His face convulses as the morning cock that moment crows,

And he stops, and turns, and goes.

-o0o-

AN UPBRAIDING

Now I am dead you sing to me

The songs we used to know,

But while I lived you had no wish

Or care for doing so.

Now I am dead you come to me

In the moonlight, comfortless;

Ah, what would I have given alive

To win such tenderness!

When you are dead, and stand to me

Not differenced, as now,

But like again, will you be cold

As when we lived, or how?

-o0o-

THE MAN WHO FORGOT

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met

I sat upon a gate;

I saw the sun decline and set,

And still was fain to wait.

A trotting boy passed up the way

And roused me from my thought;

I called to him, and showed where lay

A spot I shyly sought.

"A summer-house fair stands hidden where

You see the moonlight thrown;

Go, tell me if within it there

A lady sits alone."

He half demurred, but took the track,

And silence held the scene;

I saw his figure rambling back;

I asked him if he had been.

"I went just where you said, but found

No summer-house was there:

Beyond the slope 'tis all bare ground;

Nothing stands anywhere.

"A man asked what my brains were worth;

The house, he said, grew rotten,

And was pulled down before my birth,

And is almost forgotten!"

My right mind woke, and I stood dumb;

Forty years' frost and flower

Had fleeted since I'd used to come

To meet her in that bower.

-o0o-

75

ON THE DOORSTEP

The rain imprinted the step's wet shine

With target-circles that quivered and crossed

As I was leaving this porch of mine;

When from within there swelled and paused

A song's sweet note;

And back I turned, and thought,

"Here I'll abide."

The step shines wet beneath the rain,

Which prints its circles as heretofore;

I watch them from the porch again,

But no song-notes within the door

Now call to me

To shun the dripping lea

And forth I stride.

-o0o-

74

THE BLINDED BIRD

So zestfully canst thou sing?
And all this indignity,
With God's consent, on thee!
Blinded ere yet a-wing
By the red-hot needle thou,
I stand and wonder how
So zestfully thou canst sing!

Resenting not such wrong,
Thy grievous pain forgot,
Eternal dark thy lot,
Groping thy whole life long;
After that stab of fire;
Enjailed in pitiless wire;
Resenting not such wrong!

Who hath charity? This bird.
Who suffereth long and is kind,
Is not provoked, though blind
And alive ensepulchred?
Who hopeth, endureth all things?
Who thinketh no evil, but sings?
Who is divine? This bird.

-o0o-

THE HAUNTER

He does not think that I haunt here nightly: 

How shall I let him know 

That whither his fancy sets him wandering 

I, too, alertly go? - 

Hover and hover a few feet from him 

Just as I used to do, 

But cannot answer the words he lifts me – 

Only listen thereto! 

When I could answer he did not say them: 

When I could let him know 

How I would like to join in his journeys 

Seldom he wished to go. 

Now that he goes and wants me with him 

More than he used to do, 

Never he sees my faithful phantom 

Though he speaks thereto. 

Yes, I companion him to places 

Only dreamers know, 

Where the shy hares print long paces, 

Where the night rooks go; 

Into old aisles where the past is all to him, 

Close as his shade can do, 

Always lacking the power to call to him, 

Near as I reach thereto! 

What a good haunter I am, O tell him, 

Quickly make him know 

If he but sigh since my loss befell him 

Straight to his side I go. 

Tell him a faithful one is doing 

All that love can do 

Still that his path may be worth pursuing, 

And to bring peace thereto. 

-o0o-

EVERYTHING COMES

"The house is bleak and cold

Built so new for me!

All the winds upon the wold

Search it through for me;

No screening trees abound,

And the curious eyes around

Keep on view for me."

"My Love, I am planting trees

As a screen for you

Both from winds, and eyes that tease

And peer in for you.

Only wait till they have grown,

No such bower will be known

As I mean for you."

"Then I will bear it, Love,

And will wait," she said.

- So, with years, there grew a grove.

"Skill how great!" she said.

"As you wished, Dear?" - "Yes, I see!

But - I'm dying; and for me

'Tis too late," she said.

-o0o-

TO LIFE

O life with the sad seared face, 

   I weary of seeing thee, 

And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, 

   And thy too-forced pleasantry! 

   I know what thou would'st tell 

   Of Death, Time, Destiny - 

I have known it long, and know, too, well 

   What it all means for me. 

   But canst thou not array 

   Thyself in rare disguise, 

And feign like truth, for one mad day, 

   That Earth is Paradise? 

   I'll tune me to the mood, 

   And mumm with thee till eve; 

And maybe what as interlude 

   I feign, I shall believe! 

-o0o-

THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE

One without looks in tonight

Through the curtain-chink

From the sheet of glistening white;

One without looks in tonight

As we sit and think 

By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes

Watching in the snow;

Lit by lamps of rosy dyes

We do not discern those eyes

Wandering, aglow

Four-footed, tiptoe. 

-o0o-

I ROSE UP AS MY CUSTOM IS

I rose up as my custom is 

On the eve of All-Souls' day, 

And left my grave for an hour or so 

To call on those I used to know 

Before I passed away. 

I visited my former Love 

As she lay by her husband's side; 

I asked her if life pleased her, now 

She was rid of a poet wrung in brow, 

And crazed with the ills he eyed; 

Who used to drag her here and there 

Wherever his fancies led, 

And point out pale phantasmal things, 

And talk of vain vague purposings 

That she discredited. 

She was quite civil, and replied, 

"Old comrade, is that you? 

Well, on the whole, I like my life. - 

I know I swore I'd be no wife, 

But what was I to do? 

"You see, of all men for my sex 

A poet is the worst; 

Women are practical, and they 

Crave the wherewith to pay their way, 

And slake their social thirst. 

"You were a poet - quite the ideal 

That we all love awhile: 

But look at this man snoring here - 

He's no romantic chanticleer, 

Yet keeps me in good style. 

"He makes no quest into my thoughts, 

But a poet wants to know 

What one has felt from earliest days, 

Why one thought not in other ways, 

And one's Loves of long ago."

Her words benumbed my fond frail ghost; 

The nightmares neighed from their stalls, 

The vampires screeched, the harpies flew, 

And under the dim dawn I withdrew 

To Death's inviolate halls.

-o0o-

THROWING A TREE

The two executioners stalk along over the knolls, 

Bearing two axes with heavy heads shining and wide, 

And a long limp two-handled saw toothed for cutting great boles, 

And so they approach the proud tree that bears the death-mark on its side.

Jackets doffed they swing axes and chop away just above ground, 

And the chips fly about and lie white on the moss and fallen leaves; 

Till a broad deep gash in the bark is hewn all the way round, 

And one of them tries to hook upward a rope, which at last he achieves.

The saw then begins, till the top of the tall giant shivers: 

The shivers are seen to grow greater with each cut than before: 

They edge out the saw, tug the rope; but the tree only quivers, 

And kneeling and sawing again, they step back to try pulling once more.

Then, lastly, the living mast sways, further sways: with a shout 

Job and Ike rush aside. Readied the end of its long staying powers 

The tree crashes downward: it shakes all its neighbours throughout, 

And two hundred years' steady growth has been ended in less than two hours.

-o0o-

THE MILKMAID

Under a daisied bank 

There stands a rich red ruminating cow, 

   And hard against her flank 

A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow. 

   The flowery river-ooze 

Upheaves and falls; the milk purrs in the pail; 

   Few pilgrims but would choose 

The peace of such a life in such a vale. 

   The maid breathes words - to vent, 

It seems, her sense of Nature's scenery, 

   Of whose life, sentiment, 

And essence, very part itself is she. 

   She bends a glance of pain, 

And, at a moment, lets escape a tear; 

   Is it that passing train, 

Whose alien whirr offends her country ear? - 

   Nay! Phyllis does not dwell 

On visual and familiar things like these; 

   What moves her is the spell 

Of inner themes and inner poetries: 

   Could but by Sunday morn 

Her gay new gown come, meads might dry to dun, 

   Trains shriek till ears were torn, 

If Fred would not prefer that Other One. 

-o0o-

I LOOK INTO MY GLASS

I look into my glass,

And view my wasting skin,

And say, “Would God it came to pass

My heart had shrunk as thin!”

For then, I, undistrest

By hearts grown cold to me,

Could lonely wait my endless rest

With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

With throbbings of noontide.

90plus was updated today

-o0o-

BY HER AUNT'S GRAVE

"Sixpence a week", says the girl to her lover,

"Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide

In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover

The cost of her headstone when she died.

And that was a year ago last June;

I've not yet fixed it. But I must soon."

"And where is the money now, my dear?"

"O, snug in my purse - Aunt was so slow

In saving it - eighty weeks, or near." - 

"Let's spend it," he hints. "For she won't know.

There's a dance to-night at the Load of Hay."

She passively nods. And they go that way.

-o0o-

POSTPONEMENT

Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word,

Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,

Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,

Wearily waiting: -

"I planned her a nest in a leafless tree,

But the passers eyed and twitted me,

And said: 'How reckless a bird is he,

Cheerily mating!'

"Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,

In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;

But alas! her love for me waned and died,

Wearily waiting.

"Ah, had I been like some I see,

Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,

None had eyed and twitted me,

Cheerily mating!"

-o0o-

A GENTLEMAN'S SECOND-HAND SUIT

Here it is hanging in the sun

By the pawn-shop door,

A dress-suit - all its revels done

Of heretofore.

Long drilled to the waltzers' swing and sway,

As its tokens show:

What it has seen, what it could say

If it did but know!

The sleeve bears still a print of powder

Rubbed from her arms

When she warmed up as the notes swelled louder

And livened her charms -

Or rather theirs, for beauties many

Leant there, no doubt,

Leaving these tell-tale traces when he

Spun them about.

Its cut seems rather in bygone style

On looking close,

So it mayn't have bent it for some while

To the dancing pose:

Anyhow, often within its clasp

Fair partners hung,

Assenting to the wearer's grasp

With soft sweet tongue.

Where is, alas, the gentleman

Who wore this suit?

And where are his ladies? Tell none can:

Gossip is mute.

Some of them may forget him quite

Who smudged his sleeve,

Some think of a wild and whirling night

With him, and grieve.

-o0o-

IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

What do you see in that time-touched stone,

When nothing is there

But ashen blankness, although you give it

A rigid stare?

You look not quite as if you saw,

But as if you heard,

Parting your lips, and treading softly

As mouse or bird.

It is only the base of a pillar, they'll tell you,

That came to us

From a far old hill men used to name

Areopagus.

"I know no art, and I only view

A stone from a wall,

But I am thinking that stone has echoed

The voice of Paul,

"Paul as he stood and preached beside it

Facing the crowd,

A small gaunt figure with wasted features,

Calling out loud

"Words that in all their intimate accents

Pattered upon

That marble front, and were far reflected,

And then were gone.

"I'm a labouring man, and know but little,

Or nothing at all;

But I can't help thinking that stone once echoed

The voice of Paul."

-o0o-

THE VOICE

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, 

Saying that now you are not as you were 

When you had changed from the one who was all to me, 

But as at first, when our day was fair. 

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, 

Standing as when I drew near to the town 

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, 

Even to the original air-blue gown! 

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness 

Travelling across the wet mead to me here, 

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, 

Heard no more again far or near? 

Thus I; faltering forward, 

Leaves around me falling, 

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, 

And the woman calling.

-o0o-

THE WELL-BELOVED

I wayed by star and planet shine 

         Towards the dear one's home 

At Kingsbere, there to make her mine 

         When the next sun upclomb. 

I edged the ancient hill and wood 

         Beside the Ikling Way, 

Nigh where the Pagan temple stood 

         In the world's earlier day. 

And as I quick and quicker walked 

         On gravel and on green, 

I sang to sky, and tree, or talked 

         Of her I called my queen. 

 "O faultless is her dainty form, 

         And luminous her mind; 

She is the God-created norm 

         Of perfect womankind!" 

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed 

         Glode softly by my side, 

A woman's; and her motion seemed 

         The motion of my bride. 

And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile 

         Adown the ancient leaze, 

Where once were pile and peristyle 

         For men's idolatries. 

- "O maiden lithe and lone, what may 

         Thy name and lineage be, 

Who so resemblest by this ray 

         My darling? - Art thou she?" 

The Shape: "Thy bride remains within 

         Her father's grange and grove." 

- "Thou speakest rightly," I broke in, 

         "Thou art not she I love." 

- "Nay, though thy bride remains inside 

         Her father's walls," said she, 

"The one most dear is with thee here, 

         For thou dost love but me." 

Then I: "But she, my only choice, 

         Is now at Kingsbere Grove?" 

Again her soft mysterious voice - 

         "I am thy only Love." 

Thus still she vouched, and still I said, 

         "O sprite, that cannot be." 

It was as if my bosom bled, 

         So much she troubled me. 

The sprite resumed: "Thou hast transferred 

         To her dull form awhile 

My beauty, fame, and deed, and word, 

         My gestures and my smile. 

"O fatuous man, this truth infer, 

         Brides are not what they seem; 

Thou lovest what thou dream'st her; 

         I am thy very dream!" 

- "O then," I answered miserably, 

         Speaking as scarce I knew, 

"My loved one, I must wed with thee 

         If what thou say'st be true!" 

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom - 

         "Though, since troth-plight began, 

I've ever stood as bride to groom, 

         I wed no mortal man." 

Thereat she vanished by the Cross 

         That, entering Kingsbere Town, 

The two long lanes form, near the fosse 

         Below the faneless Down. 

When I arrived and met my bride, 

         Her look was pinched and thin, 

As if her soul had shrunk and died, 

         And left a waste within. 

-o0o-