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.

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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. 

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THE SUPERSEDED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?

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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