IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT

"Would it had been the man of our wish!"

Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she

In the wedding-dress - the wife to be -

"Then why were you so mollyish

As not to insist on him for me!"

The mother, amazed: "Why, dearest one,

Because you pleaded for this or none!"

"But Father and you should have stood out strong!

Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find

That you were right and that I was wrong;

This man is a dolt to the one declined - 

Ah! - here he comes with his button-hole rose.

Good God - I must marry him I suppose!"

-o0o-

THE LITTLE OLD TABLE

Creak, little wood thing, creak,

When I touch you with elbow or knee;

That is the way you speak

Of one who gave you to me!

You, little table, she brought -

Brought me with her own hand,

As she looked at me with a thought

That I did not understand.

Whoever owns it anon,

And hears it, will never know

What a history hangs upon

This creak from long ago.

117

-o0o-

THE VOICE OF THINGS

Forty Augusts - aye, and several more - ago,

   When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,

The waves huzza'd like a multitude below

   In the sway of an all-including joy

      Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after,

   When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,

And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter

   At the lot of men, and all the vapoury

      Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where

   Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;

But they supplicate now - like a congregation there

   Who murmur the Confession - I outside,

      Prayer denied.

116

-o0o-

AN UNKINDLY MAY

A shepherd stands by a gate in a white smock-frock;

He holds the gate ajar, intently counting his flock.

The sour spring wind is blurting boisterous-wise,

And bears on it dirty clouds across the skies;

Plantation timbers creak like rusty cranes,

And pigeons and rooks, dishevelled by late rains,

Are like gaunt vultures, sodden and unkempt,

And songbirds do not end what they attempt;

The buds have tried to open, but quite failing

Have pinched themselves together in their quailing.

The sun frowns whitely in eye-trying flaps

Through passing cloud-holes, mimicking audible taps.

"Nature, you're not commendable today!"

I think, "Better tomorrow," she seems to say.

That shepherd still stands in that white smock-frock,

Unnoting all things save the counting his flock.

115

-o0o-

AT A COUNTRY FAIR

At a bygone Western country fair

I saw a giant led by a dwarf

With a red string like a long thin scarf;

How much he was the stronger there

The giant seemed unaware.

And then I saw that the giant was blind,

And the dwarf a shrewd-eyed little thing;

The giant, mild, timid, obeyed the string

As if he had no independent mind,

Or will of any kind.

Wherever the dwarf decided to go

At his heels the other trotted meekly,

(Perhaps - I know not - reproaching weakly)

Like one Fate bade that it must be so,

Whether he wished or no.

Various sights in various climes

I have seen, and more I may see yet,

But that sight never shall I forget,

And have thought it the sorriest of pantomimes,

If once, a hundred times!

114

-o0o-

THE OLD GOWN

I have seen 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 abiding

By the foam-fingered sea.

In woodlands I have known her,

When boughs were mourning loud,

In the rain-reek she has shown her

Wild-haired and water-browed.

And once or twice she has cast me

As she pomped along the street

Court-clad, ere quite she has passed me,

A glance from her chariot seat.

But in my memoried passion

For evermore stands she

In the gown of fading fashion

She wore that night when we,

Doomed long to part, assembled

In the snug, small room; yea, when

She sang with lips that trembled,

"Shall I see his face again?"

113

-o0o-

THE DREAM IS - WHICH?

I am laughing by the brook with her,

Splashed in its tumbling stir;

And then it is a blankness looms

As if I walked not there,

Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,

And treading a lonely stair.

With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes

We sit where none espies;

Till a harsh change comes edging in

As no such scene were there,

But winter, and I were bent and thin,

And cinder-grey 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 green

To find her, I knew where.

112

-o0o-

BEREFT

In the black winter morning

No light will be struck near my eyes

While the clock in the stairway is warning

For five, when he used to rise.

Leave the door unbarred,

The clock unwound,

Make my lone bed hard -

Would 'twere underground!

When the summer dawns clearly,

And the appletree-tops seem alight,

Who will undraw the curtain and cheerly

Call out that the morning is bright?

When I tarry at market

No form will cross Durnover Lea

In the gathering darkness, to hark at

Grey's Bridge for the pit-pat o' me.

When the supper crock's steaming,

And the time is the time of his tread,

I shall sit by the fire and wait dreaming

In a silence as of the dead.

Leave the door unbarred,

The clock unwound,

Make my lone bed hard -

Would 'twere underground!

111

-o0o-

LAMENT

How she would have loved

A party to-day! -

Bright-hatted and gloved,

With table and tray

And chairs on the lawn

Her smiles would have shone

With welcomings . . . But

She is shut, she is shut

From friendship's spell

In the jailing shell

Of her tiny cell.

Or she would have reigned

At a dinner to-night

With ardours unfeigned,

And a generous delight;

All in her abode

She'd have freely bestowed

On her guests . . . But alas,

She is shut under grass

Where no cups flow,

Powerless to know

That it might be so.

And she would have sought

With a child's eager glance

The shy snowdrops brought

By the new year's advance,

And peered in the rime

Of Candlemas-time

For crocuses . . . chanced

It that she were not tranced

From sights she loved best;

Wholly possessed

By an infinite rest!

And we are here staying

Amid these stale things

Who care not for gaying,

And those junketings

That used so to joy her,

And never to cloy her

As us they cloy! . . . But

She is shut, she is shut

From the cheer of them, dead

To all done and said

In a yew-arched bed.

110

-o0o-

SILENCES

There is the silence of a copse or croft

When the wind sinks dumb,

And of a belfry-loft

When the tenor after tolling stops its hum.

And there's the silence of a lonely pond

Where a man was drowned,

Nor nigh nor yond

A newt, frog, toad, to make the merest sound.

But the rapt silence of an empty house

Where oneself was born,

Dwelt, held carouse

With friends, is of all silences most forlorn!

Past are remembered songs and music-strains

Once audible there:

Roof rafters, panes

Look absent-thoughted, tranced, or locked in prayer.

It seems no power on earth can waken it

Or rouse its rooms,

Or its past permit

The present to stir a torpor like a tomb's.

109

-o0o-

THE SECOND VISIT

Clack, clack, clack, went the mill-wheel as I came,
And she was on the bridge with the thin hand-rail,
And the miller at the door, and the ducks at mill-tail;
I come again years after, and all there seems the same.

And so indeed it is: the apple-tree'd old house,
And the deep mill-pond, and the wet wheel clacking,
And a woman on the bridge, and white ducks quacking,
And the miller at the door, powdered pale from boots to brows.

But it's not the same miller whom long ago I knew,
Nor are they the same apples, nor the same drops that dash
Over the wet wheel, nor the ducks below that splash,
Nor the woman who to fond plaints replied, " You know I do!"

-o0o-

108

PROUD SONGSTERS

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,

And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,

And as it gets dark loud nightingales

In bushes

Pipe, as they can when April wears,

As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand new birds of twelvemonths' growing,

Which a year ago, or less than twain,

No finches were, nor nightingales,

Nor thrushes,

But only particles of grain,

And earth, and air, and rain.

 107

-o0o-

HER SECRET

That love's dull smart distressed my heart

He shrewdly learnt to see,

But that I was in love with a dead man

Never suspected he.

He searched for the trace of a pictured face,

He watched each missive come,

And a note that seemed like a love-line

Made him look frozen and glum.

He dogged my feet to the city street,

He followed me to the sea,

But not to the neighbouring churchyard

Did he dream of following me. 

106

-o0o-

90PLUS AND STILL BLOGGING was updated today

-o=0=o-

BEENY CLIFF

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, 

And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free –

The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away

In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,

As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.

A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, 

And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, 

And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.

- Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, 

And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, 

And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by? 

What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,

The woman now is - elsewhere - whom the ambling pony bore, 

And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.

105

-o0o-

WHERE THE PICNIC WAS

Where we made the fire

In the summer time

Of branch and briar

On the hill to the sea,

I slowly climb

Through winter mire,

And scan and trace

The forsaken place

Quite readily.

Now a cold wind blows,

And the grass is grey,

But the spot still shows

As a burnt circle - aye,

And stick-ends, charred,

Still strew the sward

Whereon I stand,

Last relic of the band

Who came that day!

Yes, I am here

Just as last year,

And the sea breathes brine

From its strange straight line

Up hither, the same

As when we four came.

– But two have wandered far

From this grassy rise

Into urban roar

Where no picnics are,

And one - has shut her eyes

For evermore.

104

-o0o-

THE MAN HE KILLED

“Had he and I but met

  By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

  Right many a nipperkin!

  “But ranged as infantry,

  And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

  And killed him in his place.

  “I shot him dead because -

  Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

    That’s clear enough; although

    “He thought he’d ’list, perhaps,

    Off-hand like - just as I -

Was out of work - had sold his traps -

    No other reason why.

    “Yes; quaint and curious war is!

    You shoot a fellow down

You’d treat if met where any bar is.

    Or help to half-a-crown.”

103

-o0o-

THE IMPERCIPIENT

(at a Cathedral Service)

That from this bright believing band

An outcast I should be,

That faiths by which my comrades stand

Seem fantasies to me,

And mirage-mists their Shining Land,

Is a drear destiny.

Why thus my soul should be consigned

To infelicity,

Why always I must feel as blind

To sights my brethren see,

Why joys they've found I cannot find,

Abides a mystery.

Since heart of mine knows not that ease

Which they know; since it be

That He who breathes All's Well to these

Breathes no All's Well to me,

My lack might move their sympathies

And Christian charity!

I am like a gazer who should mark

An inland company

Standing upfingered, with, "Hark! hark!

The glorious distant sea!"

And feel, "Alas, 'tis but yon dark

And wind-swept pine to me!"

Yet I would bear my shortcomings

With meet tranquillity,

But for the charge that blessed things

I'd liefer have unbe.

O, doth a bird deprived of wings

Go earth-bound wilfully!

. . . .

Enough. As yet disquiet clings

About us. Rest shall we. 

102

-o0o-

FAINTHEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN

At nine in the morning there passed a church, 

At ten there passed me by the sea, 

At twelve a town of smoke and smirch, 

At two a forest of oak and birch, 

And then, on a platform, she. 

A radiant stranger, who saw not me, 

I said, “Get out to her do I dare?” 

But I kept my seat in my search for a plea, 

And the wheels moved on. O could it but be 

That I had alighted there!

101

-o0o-

TO A WELL-NAMED DWELLING

Glad old 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 you

Knowing 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.

100

-o0o-

SNOW IN THE SUBURBS

Every branch big with it,

Bent every twig with it;

Every fork like a white web-foot;

Every street and pavement mute:

Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when

Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.

The palings are glued together like a wall,

And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,

Whereon immediately

A snow-lump thrice his own slight size

Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,

And overturns him,

And near inurns him,

And lights on a nether twig, when its brush

Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,

Up which, with feeble hope,

A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;

And we take him in.

99

-o0o-

I WAS THE MIDMOST

I was the midmost of my world

When first I frisked me free,

For though within its circuit gleamed

But a small company,

And I was immature, they seemed

To bend their looks on me.

She was the midmost of my world

When I went further forth,

And hence it was that, whether I turned

To south, east, west, or north,

Beams of an all-day Polestar burned

From 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 everywhere

On Earth's bewildering ball!

98

-o0o-

ON THE DEPARTURE PLATFORM

We kissed at the barrier ; and passing through

She left me, and moment by moment got

Smaller and smaller, until to my view

                She was but a spot ;

A wee white spot of muslin fluff

That down the diminishing platform bore

Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough

               To the carriage door.

Under the lamplight’s fitful glowers,

Behind dark groups from far and near,

Whose interests were apart from ours,

                 She would disappear,

Then show again, till I ceased to see

That flexible form, that nebulous white ;

And she who was more than my life to me

                 Had vanished quite.

We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,

And in season she will appear again -

Perhaps in the same soft white array -

                 But never as then !

- "And why, young man, must eternally fly

A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well ?"

- O friend, nought happens twice thus ; why,

                 I cannot tell !

97

-o0o-

MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,

And the roof-lamp's oily flame

Played down on his listless form and face,

Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,

Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy

Had a ticket stuck; and a string

Around his neck bore the key of his box,

That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams

Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy

Towards a world unknown,

Who calmly, as if incurious quite

On all at stake, can undertake

This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,

Our rude realms far above,

Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete

This region of sin that you find you in,

But are not of?

96

-o0o-

I KNEW A LADY

I knew a lady when the days

Grew long, and evenings goldened;

But I was not emboldened

By her prompt eyes and winning ways.

And when old Winter nipt the haws,

"Another's wife I'll be,

And then you'll care for me,"

She said, "and think how sweet I was!"

And soon she shone as another's wife:

As such I often met her,

And sighed, "How I regret her!

My folly cuts me like a knife!"

And then, today, her husband came,

And moaned, "Why did you flout her?

Well could I do without her!

For both our burdens you are to blame!"

95

-o0o-

AMABEL

I marked her ruined hues,
Her custom-straitened views,
And asked, "Can there indwell
My Amabel?"

I looked upon her gown,
Once rose, now earthen brown;
The change was like the knell
Of Amabel.

Her step's mechanic ways
Had lost the life of May's;
Her laugh, once sweet in swell,
Spoilt Amabel.

I mused: "Who sings the strain
I sang ere warmth did wane?
Who thinks its numbers spell
His Amabel?"

Knowing that, though Love cease,
Love's race shows undecrease;
All find in dorp or dell
An Amabel.

I felt that I could creep
To some housetop and weep,
That Time the tyrant fell
Ruled Amabel!

I said (the while I sighed
That love like ours had died)
"Fond things I'll no more tell
To Amabel.

"But leave her to her fate,
And fling across the gate,
Till the Last Trump, farewell,
O Amabel!"

-o0o-

94

BEST TIMES

We went a day's excursion to the stream,

Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,

And I did not know

That life would show,

However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road

That wound towards the wicket of your abode,

And I did not think

That life would shrink

To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,

And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,

And I full forgot

That life might not

Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,

After a gaiety prolonged and rare,

No thought soever

That you might never

Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

-o0o-

93

IN THE SMALL HOURS

I lay in my bed and fiddled

With a dreamland viol and bow,

And the tunes flew back to my fingers

I had melodied years ago.

It was two or three in the morning

When I fancy-fiddled so

Long reels and country-dances,

And hornpipes swift and slow.

And soon anon came crossing

The chamber in the grey

Figures 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 middle

In windless whirls went they!

There danced the bride and bridegroom,

And couples in a train,

Gay partners time and travail

Had longwhiles stilled amain! . . .

It seemed a thing for weeping

To find, at slumber's wane

And morning's sly increeping,

That Now, not Then, held reign.

92

-o0o-

TESS'S LAMENT

I would that folk forgot me quite, 

   Forgot me quite! 

I would that I could shrink from sight, 

   And no more see the sun. 

Would it were time to say farewell, 

To claim my nook, to need my knell, 

Time for them all to stand and tell 

   Of my day's work as done. 

Ah! dairy where I lived so long, 

   I lived so long; 

Where I would rise up stanch and strong, 

   And lie down hopefully. 

'Twas there within the chimney-seat 

He watched me to the clock's slow beat - 

Loved me, and learnt to call me sweet, 

   And whispered words to me. 

And now he's gone; and now he's gone; . . . 

   And now he's gone! 

The flowers we potted p'rhaps are thrown 

   To rot upon the farm. 

And where we had our supper-fire 

May now grow nettle, dock, and briar, 

And all the place be mould and mire 

   So cozy once and warm. 

And it was I who did it all, 

   Who did it all; 

'Twas I who made the blow to fall 

   On him who thought no guile. 

Well, it is finished - past, and he 

Has left me to my misery, 

And I must take my Cross on me 

   For wronging him awhile. 

How gay we looked that day we wed, 

   That day we wed! 

"May joy be with ye!" all o'm said 

   A standing by the durn. 

I wonder what they say o's now, 

And if they know my lot; and how 

She feels who milks my favourite cow, 

   And takes my place at churn! 

It wears me out to think of it, 

   To think of it; 

I cannot bear my fate as writ, 

   I'd have my life unbe; 

Would turn my memory to a blot, 

Make every relic of me rot, 

My doings be as they were not, 

   And what they've brought to me! 

-o0o-

SHELLEY'S SKYLARK

Somewhere afield here something lies 

In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust 

That moved a poet to prophecies - 

A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust,

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, 

And made immortal through times to be; - 

Though it only lived like another bird, 

And knew not its immortality. 

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell - 

A little ball of feather and bone; 

And how it perished, when piped farewell, 

And where it wastes, are alike unknown. 

Maybe it rests in the loam I view, 

Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green, 

Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue 

Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene. 

Go find it, faeries, go and find 

That tiny pinch of priceless dust, 

And bring a casket silver-lined, 

And framed of gold that gems encrust; 

And we will lay it safe therein, 

And consecrate it to endless time; 

For it inspired a bard to win 

Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme. 

-o0o-

90

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-

89