WHO'S IN THE NEXT ROOM?

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to see

Somebody in the dawning passing through,

Unknown to me."

"Nay: you saw nought. He passed invisibly."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to hear

Somebody muttering firm in a language new

That chills my ear."

"No: you catch not his tongue who has entered there."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to feel

His breath like a clammy draught, as if it drew

From the Polar Wheel."

"No: none who breathes at all does the door conceal."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

A figure wan

With a message to one in there of something due?

Shall I know him anon?"

"Yea he; and he brought such; and you'll know him anon."

The new blog which began last week

90plus AND STILL BLOGGING

will be updated tomorrow

http://90plusandstillblogging.blogspot.com

-o0o-

GREAT THINGS

Sweet cyder is a great thing,

     A great thing to me,

Spinning down to Weymouth town

     By Ridgway thirstily,

And maid and mistress summoning

     Who tend the hostelry:

O cyder is a great thing,

     A great thing to me!

The dance it is a great thing,

     A great thing to me,

With candles lit and partners fit

     For night-long revelry;

And going home when day-dawning

     Peeps pale upon the lea:

O dancing is a great thing,

     A great thing to me!

Love is, yea, a great thing,

     A great thing to me,

When, having drawn across the lawn

     In darkness silently,

A figure flits like one a-wing

     Out from the nearest tree:

O love is, yes, a great thing,

     A great thing to me!

Will these be always great things,

     Great things to me? . . .

Let it befall that One will call,

     "Soul, I have need of thee":

What then?  Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings,

     Love, and its ecstasy,

Will always have been great things,

     Great things to me!

-o0o-

JOYS OF MEMORY

   

When the spring comes round, and a certain day

Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees

          And says, Remember,

     I begin again, as if it were new,

     A day of like date I once lived through,

     Whiling it hour by hour away;

          So shall I do till my December,

               When spring comes round.

   I take my holiday then and my rest

Away from the dun life here about me,

          Old hours re-greeting

     With the quiet sense that bring they must

     Such throbs as at first, till I house with dust,

     And in the numbness my heartsome zest

          For things that were, be past repeating

               When spring comes round.

-o0o-

WHEN I SET OUT FOR LYONNESS

When I set out for Lyonnesse,

A hundred miles away,

The rime was on the spray,

And starlight lit my lonesomeness

When I set out for Lyonnesse

A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there

No prophet durst declare,

Nor did the wisest wizard guess

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes,

All marked with mute surmise

My radiance rare and fathomless,

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes! 

-o0o-

 I SAY  I'LL SEEK HER

 I say, "I'll seek her side

     Ere hindrance interposes;"

     But eve in midnight closes,

    And here I still abide.

    When darkness wears I see

     Her sad eyes in a vision;

     They ask, "What indecision

    Detains you, Love, from me? -

    "The creaking hinge is oiled,

     I have unbarred the backway,

     But you tread not the trackway;

    And shall the thing be spoiled?

    "Far cockcrows echo shrill,

     The shadows are abating,

     And I am waiting, waiting;

    But O, you tarry still!"

-o0o-

THE FARM WOMAN'S WINTER

If seasons all were summers, 

And leaves would never fall, 

And hopping casement-comers 

Were foodless not at all, 

And fragile folk might be here 

That white winds bid depart; 

Then one I used to see here 

Would warm my wasted heart!

One frail, who, bravely tilling 

Long hours in gripping gusts, 

Was mastered by their chilling, 

And now his ploughshare rusts. 

So savage winter catches 

The breath of limber things, 

And what I love he snatches, 

And what I love not, brings. 

-o0o-

THE SIGH

Little head against my shoulder,

Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,

And up-eyed;

Till she, with a timid quaver,

Yielded to the kiss I gave her;

But, she sighed.

That there mingled with her feeling

Some sad thought she was concealing

It implied.

- Not that she had ceased to love me,

None on earth she set above me;

But she sighed.

She could not disguise a passion,

Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion

If she tried:

Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,

Hearts were victors; so I wondered

Why she sighed.

Afterwards I knew her throughly,

And she loved me staunchly, truly,

Till she died;

But she never made confession

Why, at that first sweet concession,

She had sighed.

It was in our May, remember;

And though now I near November,

And abide

Till my appointed change, unfretting,

Sometimes I sit half regretting

That she sighed.

-o0o-

A PARTING SCENE

The two pale women cried,

But the man seemed to suffer more,

Which he strove hard to hide.

They stayed in the waiting-room, behind the door,

Till startled by the entering engine-roar,

As if they could not bear to have unfurled

Their misery to the eyes of all the world.

A soldier and his young wife

Were the couple; his mother the third,

Who had seen the seams of life.

He was sailing for the East I later heard.

— They kissed long, but they did not speak a word;

Then, strained, he went. To the elder the wife in tears

" Too long; too long!" burst out. ('Twas for five years.)

The new blog

90PLUS AND STILL BLOGGING 

begins tomorrow

http://90plusandstillblogging.blogspot.com

-o0o-

WAITING BOTH

A star looks down at me,

And says: “Here I and you

Stand, each in our degree:

What do you mean to do, -

Mean to do?”

I say: “For all I know,

Wait, and let Time go by,

Till my change come.” - “Just so,”

The star says, “So mean I,

So mean I.”

-o0o-

THE WORKBOX

"See, here's the workbox, little wife,

 That I made of polished oak."

He was a joiner, of village life;

 She came of borough folk.

He holds the present up to her

 As with a smile she nears

And answers to the profferer,

 ''Twill last all my sewing years!"

"I warrant it will. And longer too.

 'Tis a scantling that I got

Off poor John Wayward's coffin, who

 Died of they knew not what.

"The shingled pattern that seems to cease

 Against your box's rim

Continues right on in the piece

 That's underground with him.

"And while I worked it made me think

 Of timber's varied doom;

One inch where people eat and drink,

 The next inch in a tomb.

"But why do you look so white, my dear,

 And turn aside your face?

You knew not that good lad, I fear,

 Though he came from your native place?'

"How could I know that good young man,

 Though he came from my native town,

When he must have left there earlier than

 I was a woman grown?"

"Ah, no. I should have understood!

 It shocked you that I gave

To you one end of a piece of wood

 Whose other is in a grave?"

"Don't, dear, despise my intellect,

 Mere accidental things

Of that sort never have effect

 On my imaginings."

Yet still her lips were limp and wan,

 Her face still held aside,

As if she had known not only John,

 But known of what he died.

-o0o-

THE RAMBLER

I do not see the hills around,

Nor mark the tints the copses wear;

I do not note the grassy ground

And constellated daisies there.

I hear not the contralto note

Of cuckoos hid on either hand,

The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat

When eve's brown awning hoods the land.

Some say each songster, tree, and mead -

All eloquent of love divine -

Receives their constant careful heed:

Such keen appraisement is not mine.

The tones around me that I hear,

The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,

Are those far back ones missed when near,

And now perceived too late by me!

-o0o-

THE RUINED MAID

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! 

Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? 

And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" — 

"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she. 

— "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, 

Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks; 

And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" — 

"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she. 

— "At home in the barton you said thee and thou, 

And thik oon, and theäs oon, and t'othero; but now 

Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!" — 

"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she. 

— "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak 

But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek, 

And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!" — 

"We never do work when we're ruined," said she. 

— "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, 

And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem 

To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!" — 

"True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she. 

— "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, 

And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" — 

"My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be, 

Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she. 

-o0o-

DRAWING DETAILS IN AN OLD CHURCH

I hear the bell-rope sawing,

And the oil-less axle grind,

As I sit alone here drawing

What some Gothic brain designed;

And I catch the toll that follows

From the lagging bell,

Ere it spreads to hills and hollows

Where the parish people dwell.

I ask not whom it tolls for,

Incurious who he be;

So, some morrow, when those knolls for

One unguessed, sound out for me,

A stranger, loitering under

In nave or choir,

May think, too, "Whose, I wonder?"

But care not to inquire.

-o0o-

WAGTAIL AND BABY

A baby watched a ford, whereto

A wagtail came for drinking;

A blaring bull went wading through,

The wagtail showed no shrinking.

A stallion splashed his way across,

The birdie nearly sinking;

He gave his plumes a twitch and toss,

And held his own unblinking.

Next saw the baby round the spot

A mongrel slowly slinking;

The wagtail gazed, but faltered not

In dip and sip and prinking.

A perfect gentleman then neared;

The wagtail, in a winking,

With terror rose and disappeared;

The baby fell a-thinking.

A PERSONAL SCRAPBLOG No.10 

WAS POSTED TODAY

-o0o-

THE DARKLING THRUSH

I leant upon a coppice gate 

      When Frost was spectre-grey, 

And Winter's dregs made desolate 

      The weakening eye of day. 

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky 

      Like strings of broken lyres, 

And all mankind that haunted nigh 

      Had sought their household fires. 

The land's sharp features seemed to be 

      The Century's corpse outleant, 

His crypt the cloudy canopy, 

      The wind his death-lament. 

The ancient pulse of germ and birth 

      Was shrunken hard and dry, 

And every spirit upon earth 

      Seemed fervourless as I. 

At once a voice arose among 

      The bleak twigs overhead 

In a full-hearted evensong 

      Of joy illimited; 

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, 

      In blast-beruffled plume, 

Had chosen thus to fling his soul 

      Upon the growing gloom. 

So little cause for carolings 

      Of such ecstatic sound 

Was written on terrestrial things 

      Afar or nigh around, 

That I could think there trembled through 

      His happy good-night air 

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew 

      And I was unaware. 

A PERSONAL SCRAPBLOG No.10

WILL BE POSTED TOMORROW

-o0o-

TO THE MOON

What have you looked at, Moon,

     In your time,

   Now long past your prime?"

"O, I have looked at, often looked at

     Sweet, sublime,

Sore things, shudderful, night and noon

     In my time."

"What have you mused on, Moon,

     In your day,

   So aloof, so far away?"

"O, I have mused on, often mused on

     Growth, decay,

Nations alive, dead, mad, aswoon,

     In my day!"

"Have you much wondered, Moon,

     On your rounds,

   Self-wrapt, beyond Earth's bounds?"

"Yea, I have wondered, often wondered

     At the sounds

Reaching me of the human tune

     On my rounds."

"What do you think of it, Moon,

     As you go?

   Is Life much, or no?"

"O, I think of it, often think of it

     As a show

God ought surely to shut up soon,

     As I go."

-o0o-

I LOOKED UP FROM MY WRITING

I looked up from my writing,

And gave a start to see,

As if rapt in my inditing,

The moon's full gaze on me.

Her meditative misty head

Was spectral in its air,

And I involuntarily said,

"What are you doing there?"

"Oh, I've been scanning pond and hole

And waterway hereabout

For the body of one with a sunken soul

Who has put his life-light out.

"Did you hear his frenzied tattle?

It was sorrow for his son

Who is slain in brutish battle,

Though he has injured none.

"And now I am curious to look

Into the blinkered mind

Of one who wants to write a book

In a world of such a kind."

Her temper overwrought me,

And I edged to shun her view,

For I felt assured she thought me

One who should drown him too.

-o0o-

ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?

"Ah, are you digging on my grave,

My loved one? -- planting rue?"

-- "No: yesterday he went to wed

One of the brightest wealth has bred.

'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,

'That I should not be true.'" 

"Then who is digging on my grave,

My nearest dearest kin?"

-- "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use!

What good will planting flowers produce?

No tendance of her mound can loose

Her spirit from Death's gin.'" 

"But someone digs upon my grave?

My enemy? -- prodding sly?"

-- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate

That shuts on all flesh soon or late,

She thought you no more worth her hate,

And cares not where you lie."

"Then, who is digging on my grave?

Say -- since I have not guessed!"

-- "O it is I, my mistress dear,

Your little dog , who still lives near,

And much I hope my movements here

Have not disturbed your rest?" 

"Ah yes! You dig upon my grave -

Why flashed it not to me

That one true heart was left behind!

What feeling do we ever find

To equal among human kind

A dog's fidelity!" 

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave

To bury a bone, in case

I should be hungry near this spot

When passing on my daily trot.

I am sorry, but I quite forgot

It was your resting place." 

-o0o-

PAYING CALLS

I went by footpath and by stile

    Beyond where bustle ends,

Strayed here a mile and there a mile

    And called upon some friends.

On certain ones I had not seen

    For years past did I call,

And then on others who had been

    The oldest friends of all.

It was the time of midsummer

    When they had used to roam;

But now, though tempting was the air,

    I found them all at home.

I spoke to one and other of them

    By mound and stone and tree

Of things we had done ere days were dim,

    But they spoke not to me.

-o0o-

THE WIND BLEW WORDS

The wind blew words along the skies,

And these it blew to me

Through the wide dusk: "Lift up your eyes,

Behold this troubled tree,

Complaining as it sways and plies;

It is a limb of thee.

"Yea, too, the creatures sheltering round -

Dumb figures, wild and tame,

Yea, too, thy fellows who abound -

Either of speech the same

Or far and strange - black, dwarfed, and browned,

They are stuff of thy own frame."

I moved on in a surging awe

Of inarticulateness

At the pathetic Me I saw

In all his huge distress,

Making self-slaughter of the law

To kill, break, or suppress.

-o0o-

TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE

Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,

Or whether to stay

And see thee not! How vast the difference seems

Of Yea from Nay

Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams

At no far day

On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh!

Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make

The most I can

Of what remains to us amid this brake

Cimmerian*

Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache,

While still we scan

Round 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 terrene

Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.

So, to the one long-sweeping symphony

From times remote

Till now, of human tenderness, shall we

Supply one note,

Small and untraced, yet that will ever be

Somewhere afloat

Amid the spheres, as part of sick Life's antidote. 

* cimmerian - a member of a mythical people living in perpetual mist and darkness near the land of the dead.

-o0o-

ON A FINE MORNING

Whence comes Solace? - Not from seeing

What is doing, suffering, being,

Not from noting Life's conditions,

Nor from heeding Time's monitions;

    But in cleaving to the Dream,

    And in gazing at the gleam

    Whereby gray things golden seem.

Thus do I this heyday, holding

Shadows but as lights unfolding,

As no specious show this moment

With its irised embowment;

    But as nothing other than

    Part of a benignant plan;

    Proof that earth was made for man.

-o0o-

THE WHITEWASHED WALL

Why does she turn in that shy soft way

Whenever she stirs the fire,

And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,

As if entranced to admire

Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight

Of a rose in richest green?

I have known her long, but this raptured rite

I never before have seen.

- Well, once when her son cast his shadow there,

A friend took a pencil and drew him

Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines

Had a lifelike semblance to him.

And there long stayed his familiar look;

But one day, ere she knew,

The whitener came to cleanse the nook,

And covered the face from view.

"Yes," he said: "My brush goes on with a rush,

And the draught is buried under;

When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,

What else can you do, I wonder?"

But she knows he's there. And when she yearns

For him, deep in the labouring night,

She sees him as close at hand, and turns

To him under his sheet of white.

-o0o-

ON A MIDSUMMER EVE

I idly cut a parsley stalk,

And blew therein towards the moon;

I had not thought what ghosts would walk

With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand

As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand

Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,

I thought not what my words might be;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.

-o0o-

WEATHERS

This is the weather the cuckoo likes, 

And so do I; 

When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, 

And nestlings fly; 

And the little brown nightingale bills his best, 

And they sit outside at 'The Traveller's Rest,' 

And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, 

And citizens dream of the south and west, 

And so do I. 

This is the weather the shepherd shuns, 

And so do I; 

When beeches drip in browns and duns, 

And thresh and ply; 

And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe, 

And meadow rivulets overflow, 

And drops on gate bars hang in a row, 

And rooks in families homeward go, 

And so do I. 

-o0o-

THE SUPERSEDED

As newer comers crowd the fore, 

   We drop behind. 

- We who have laboured long and sore 

   Times out of mind, 

And keen are yet, must not regret 

   To drop behind. 

Yet there are of us some who grieve 

   To go behind; 

Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe 

   Their fires declined, 

And know none cares, remembers, spares 

   Who go behind. 

'Tis not that we have unforetold 

   The drop behind; 

We feel the new must oust the old 

   In every kind; 

But yet we think, must we, must WE, 

   Too, drop behind?

-o0o-

ON A DISCOVERED CURL OF HAIR

When your soft welcomings were said,

This curl was waving on your head,

And when we walked where breakers dinned

It sported in the sun and wind,

And when I had won your words of grace

It brushed and clung about my face.

Then, to abate the misery

Of absentness, you gave it me.

Where are its fellows now?  Ah, they

For brightest brown have donned a grey,

And gone into a caverned ark,

Ever unopened, always dark!

Yet this one curl, untouched of time,

Beams with live brown as in its prime,

So that it seems I even could now

Restore it to the living brow

By bearing down the western road

Till I had reached your old abode.

-o0o-

THE WOOD FIRE

This is a brightsome blaze you've lit good friend, to-night!"

" Aye, it has been the bleakest spring I have felt for years,

And nought compares with cloven logs to keep alight:

I buy them bargain-cheap of the executioners,

As I dwell near; and they wanted the crosses out of sight

By Passover, not to affront the eyes of visitors.

"Yes, they're from the crucifixions last week-ending

At Kranion.  We can sometimes use the poles again,

But they get split by the nails, and 'tis quicker work than mending

To knock together new; though the uprights now and then

Serve twice when they're let stand.  But if a feast's impending,

As lately, you've to tidy up for the corners' ken.

"Though only three were impaled, you may know it didn't pass off

So quietly as was wont?  That Galilee carpenter's son

Who boasted he was king, incensed the rabble to scoff:

I heard the noise from my garden.  This piece is the one he was on.

Yes, it blazes up well if lit with a few dry chips and shroff;

And it's worthless for much else, what with cuts and stains thereon."

A Personal Scrapblog No.9 was updated today

-o0o-

OUTSIDE THE WINDOW

‘My stick!’ he says, and turns in the lane

To the house just left, whence a vixen voice

Comes out with the firelight through the pane,

And he sees within that the girl of his choice

Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare

For something said while he was there.

‘At last I behold her soul undraped!’

Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;

‘My God! - 'tis but narrowly I have escaped. -

My precious porcelain proves it delf.’

His face has reddened like one ashamed,

And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

A PERSONAL SCRAPBLOG WILL BE UPDATED TOMORROW

-o0o-

AFTER THE FAIR

The singers are gone from the Cornmarket-place

With their broadsheets of rhymes,

The street rings no longer in treble and bass

With their skits on the times,

And the Cross, lately thronged, is a dim naked space

That but echoes the stammering chimes.

From Clock-corner steps, as each quarter ding-dongs,

Away the folk roam

By the "Hart" and Grey's Bridge into byways and drongs,*

Or across the ridged loam;

The younger ones shrilling the lately heard songs,

The old saying, "Would we were home."

The shy-seeming maiden so mute in the fair

Now rattles and talks,

And that one who looked the most swaggering there

Grows sad as she walks,

And she who seemed eaten by cankering care

In statuesque sturdiness stalks.

And midnight clears High Street of all but the ghosts

Of its buried burghees,

From the latest far back to those old Roman hosts

Whose remains one yet sees,

Who loved, laughed, and fought, hailed their friends, drank their toasts

At their meeting-times here, just as these!

*drong = a passageway or lane especially between walls or hedges

A PERSONAL SCRAPBLOG No.9 

WILL BE POSTED ON SATURDAY

-o0o-