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Thursday, August 31, 2017

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-

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

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-



Tuesday, August 29, 2017

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-

Monday, August 28, 2017

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-

Sunday, August 27, 2017

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-

Saturday, August 26, 2017

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-

Friday, August 25, 2017

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-

Thursday, August 24, 2017

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-

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

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-

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

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-

Monday, August 21, 2017

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



Sunday, August 20, 2017

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-

Saturday, August 19, 2017

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-

Friday, August 18, 2017

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-

Thursday, August 17, 2017

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-

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

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-

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

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-

Monday, August 14, 2017

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-

Sunday, August 13, 2017

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-

Saturday, August 12, 2017

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-

Friday, August 11, 2017

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-

Thursday, August 10, 2017

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-

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

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-

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

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-

Monday, August 7, 2017

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

Sunday, August 6, 2017

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

Saturday, August 5, 2017

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-

Friday, August 4, 2017

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-

Thursday, August 3, 2017

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

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

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