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-