Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

I see the ghost of a perished day;
I know his face, and the feel of his dawn:
’Twas he who took me far away
   To a spot strange and gray:
Look at me, Day, and then pass on,
But come again: yes, come anon!

Enters another into view;
His features are not cold or white,
But rosy as a vein seen through:
   Too soon he smiles adieu.
Adieu, O ghost-day of delight;
But come and grace my dying sight.

Enters the day that brought the kiss:
He brought it in his foggy hand
To where the mumbling river is,
   And the high clematis;
It lent new colour to the land,
And all the boy within me manned.

The next stands forth in his morning clothes,
And yet, despite their misty blue,
They mark no sombre custom-growths
   That joyous living loathes,
But a meteor act, that left in its queue
A train of sparks my lifetime through.

I almost tremble at his nod—
This next in train—who looks at me
As I were slave, and he were god
   Wielding an iron rod.
I close my eyes; yet still is he
In front there, looking mastery.

In the similitude of a nurse
The phantom of the next one comes:
I did not know what better or worse
   Chancings might bless or curse
When his original glossed the thrums
Of ivy, bringing that which numbs.

In a heavy time I dogged myself
   Along a louring way,
Till my leading self to my following self
   Said: “Why do you hang on me
      So harassingly?”

“I have watched you, Heart of mine,” I cried,
   “So often going astray
And leaving me, that I have pursued,
   Feeling such truancy
      Ought not to be.”

He said no more, and I dogged him on
   From noon to the dun of day
By prowling paths, until anew
   He begged: “Please turn and flee!—
      What do you see?”

“I go to my old friend’s house,” he urged,
   “So do not watch me, pray!”
“Well, I will leave you in peace,” said I,
   “Though of this poignancy
      You should fight free:

“Your friend, O other me, is dead;
   You know not what you say.”
—“That do I!  And at his green-grassed door
   By night’s bright galaxy
      I bend a knee.”

—The yew-plumes moved like mockers’ beards,
   Though only boughs were they,
And I seemed to go; yet still was there,
   And am, and there haunt we
      Thus bootlessly.

   There was a singing woman
      Came riding across the mead
   At the time of the mild May weather,
         Tameless, tireless;
This song she sung: “I am fair, I am young!”
      And many turned to heed.

   And the same singing woman
      Sat crooning in her need
   At the time of the winter weather;
         Friendless, fireless,
She sang this song: “Life, thou’rt too long!”
      And there was none to heed.

It was what you bore with you, Woman,
   Not inly were,
That throned you from all else human,
   However fair!

It was that strange freshness you carried
   Into a soul
Whereon no thought of yours tarried
   Two moments at all.

And out from his spirit flew death,
   And bale, and ban,
Like the corn-chaff under the breath
   Of the winnowing-fan.

“O I won’t lead a homely life
As father’s Jack and mother’s Jill,
But I will be a fiddler’s wife,
   With music mine at will!
      Just a little tune,
      Another one soon,
   As I merrily fling my fill!”

And she became a fiddler’s Dear,
And merry all day she strove to be;
And he played and played afar and near,
   But never at home played he
      Any little tune
      Or late or soon;
   And sunk and sad was she!

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 gray
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!

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.

Vagg Hollow is a marshy spot on the old Roman Road near Ilchester, where “things” are seen.  Merchandise was formerly fetched inland from the canal-boats at Load-Bridge by waggons this way.

“What do you see in Vagg Hollow,
Little boy, when you go
In the morning at five on your lonely drive?”
“—I see men’s souls, who follow
Till we’ve passed where the road lies low,
When they vanish at our creaking!

“They are like white faces speaking
Beside and behind the waggon—
One just as father’s was when here.
The waggoner drinks from his flagon,
(Or he’d flinch when the Hollow is near)
But he does not give me any.

“Sometimes the faces are many;
But I walk along by the horses,
He asleep on the straw as we jog;
And I hear the loud water-courses,
And the drops from the trees in the fog,
And watch till the day is breaking.

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-gray 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.

March 1913.

Little fogs were gathered in every hollow,
But the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather
As we marched with our fiddles over the heather
—How it comes back!—to their wedding that day.

Our getting there brought our neighbours and all, O!
Till, two and two, the couples stood ready.
And her father said: “Souls, for God’s sake, be steady!”
And we strung up our fiddles, and sounded out “A.”

Yes, from their door by Mill-tail-Shallow,
And up Styles-Lane, and by Front-Street houses,
Where stood maids, bachelors, and spouses,
Who cheered the songs that we knew how to play.

I bowed the treble before her father,
Michael the tenor in front of the lady,
The bass-viol Reub—and right well played he!—
The serpent Jim; ay, to church and back.

I thought the bridegroom was flurried rather,
As we kept up the tune outside the chancel,
While they were swearing things none can cancel
Inside the walls to our drumstick’s whack.

A grand wedding ’twas!  And what would follow
We never thought.  Or that we should have buried her
On the same day with the man that married her,
A day like the first, half hazy, half clear.

Yes: little fogs were in every hollow,
Though the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather,
When we went to play ’em to church together,
And carried ’em there in an after year.

   If grief come early
   Joy comes late,
   If joy come early
   Grief will wait;
      Aye, my dear and tender!

Wise ones joy them early
While the cheeks are red,
Banish grief till surly
Time has dulled their dread.

   And joy being ours
   Ere youth has flown,
   The later hours
   May find us gone;
      Aye, my dear and tender!

Lonely her fate was,
Environed from sight
In the house where the gate was
Past finding at night.
None there to share it,
No one to tell:
Long she’d to bear it,
And bore it well.

Versified from a Diary.

What did it mean that noontide, when
You bade me pluck the flower
Within the other woman’s bower,
   Whom I knew nought of then?

I thought the flower blushed deeplier—aye,
And as I drew its stalk to me
It seemed to breathe: “I am, I see,
Made use of in a human play.”

And while I plucked, upstarted sheer
As phantom from the pane thereby
A corpse-like countenance, with eye
That iced me by its baleful peer—
   Silent, as from a bier . . .

When I came back your face had changed,
   It was no face for me;
O did it speak of hearts estranged,
   And deadly rivalry

I sat at dinner in my prime,
And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,
And started as if I had seen a crime,
And prayed the ghastly show might pass.

Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,
Grinning back to me as my own;
I well-nigh fainted with affright
At finding me a haggard crone.

My husband laughed.  He had slily set
A warping mirror there, in whim
To startle me.  My eyes grew wet;
I spoke not all the eve to him.

He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,
And took away the distorting glass,
Uncovering the accustomed one;
And so it ended?  No, alas,

And from its mirror looked the lean
Thing I’d become, each wrinkle and score
The image of me that I had seen
In jest there fifty years before.

There it stands, though alas, what a little of her
   Shows in its cold white look!
Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of her
   Voice like the purl of a brook;
   Not her thoughts, that you read like a book.

It may stand for her once in November
   When first she breathed, witless of all;
Or in heavy years she would remember
   When circumstance held her in thrall;
   Or at last, when she answered her call!

Nothing more.  The still marble, date-graven,
   Gives all that it can, tersely lined;
That one has at length found the haven
   Which every one other will find;
   With silence on what shone behind.

St. Juliot: September 8, 1916.

I

We are budding, Master, budding,
   We of your favourite tree;
March drought and April flooding
   Arouse us merrily,
Our stemlets newly studding;
   And yet you do not see!

II

We are fully woven for summer
   In stuff of limpest green,
The twitterer and the hummer
   Here rest of nights, unseen,
While like a long-roll drummer
   The nightjar thrills the treen.

We are turning yellow, Master,
   And next we are turning red,
And faster then and faster
   Shall seek our rooty bed,
All wasted in disaster!
   But you lift not your head.

IV

—“I mark your early going,
   And that you’ll soon be clay,
I have seen your summer showing
   As in my youthful day;
But why I seem unknowing
   Is too sunk in to say!”

1917.

Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our queer ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall—
Foot suspended in its fall—
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.

From the chair whereon he sat
Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat;
Rake his little pathways out
Mid the bushes roundabout;
Smooth away his talons’ mark
From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,
Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,
Waiting us who loitered round.

Strange it is this speechless thing,
Subject to our mastering,
Subject for his life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;
Timid pensioner of us Powers,
His existence ruled by ours,
Should—by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded death,
By the merely taking hence
Of his insignificance—
Loom as largened to the sense,
Shape as part, above man’s will,
Of the Imperturbable.

Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.

October 2, 1904.

And he is risen?  Well, be it so . . .
And still the pensive lands complain,
And dead men wait as long ago,
As if, much doubting, they would know
What they are ransomed from, before
They pass again their sheltering door.

I stand amid them in the rain,
While blusters vex the yew and vane;
And on the road the weary wain
Plods forward, laden heavily;
And toilers with their aches are fain
For endless rest—though risen is he.

When a night in November
   Blew forth its bleared airs
An infant descended
   His birth-chamber stairs
   For the very first time,
   At the still, midnight chime;
All unapprehended
   His mission, his aim.—
Thus, first, one November,
An infant descended
   The stairs.

On those nights in November—
   Apart eighty years—
The babe and the bent one
   Who traversed those stairs
   From the early first time
   To the last feeble climb—
That fresh and that spent one—
   Were even the same:
Yea, who passed in November
As infant, as bent one,
      Those stairs.

Wise child of November!
   From birth to blanched hairs
Descending, ascending,
   Wealth-wantless, those stairs;
   Who saw quick in time
   As a vain pantomime
Life’s tending, its ending,
   The worth of its fame.
Wise child of November,
Descending, ascending
      Those stairs!

I missed one night, but the next I went;
   It was gusty above, and clear;
She was there, with the look of one ill-content,
   And said: “Do not come near!”

—“I am sorry last night to have failed you here,
   And now I have travelled all day;
And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier,
   So brief must be my stay.”

—“O man of mystery, why not say
   Out plain to me all you mean?
Why you missed last night, and must now away
   Is—another has come between!”

“’Tis that, unresting, to wander wide
   Has ever been my plight,
And at least I have met you at Cremyll side
   If not last eve, to-night.”

—“You get small rest—that read I quite;
   And so do I, maybe;
Though there’s a rest hid safe from sight
   Elsewhere awaiting me!”

A mad star crossed the sky to the sea,
   Wasting in sparks as it streamed,
And when I looked to where stood she
   She had changed, much changed, it seemed:

The sparks of the star in her pupils gleamed,
   She was vague as a vapour now,
And ere of its meaning I had dreamed
   She’d vanished—I knew not how.

Still stood I, wholly unaware
   Of what had come to pass,
Or had brought the secret of my new Fair
   To my old Love, alas!

I went down then by crag and grass
   To the boat wherein I had come.
Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lass
   Of Edgcumbe, is sharp for some!

“Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numb
   On the shore here, whither she’d sped
To meet her lover last night in the glum,
   And he came not, ’tis said.

“And she leapt down, heart-hit.  Pity she’s dead:
   So much for the faithful-bent!” . . .
I looked, and again a star overhead
   Shot through the firmament.

   “Did you see something within the house
That made me call you before the red sunsetting?
Something that all this common scene endows
With a richened impress there can be no forgetting?”

   “—I have found nothing to see therein,
O Sage, that should have made you urge me to enter,
Nothing to fire the soul, or the sense to win:
I rate you as a rare misrepresenter!”

   “—Go yet once more, pray.  Look on a seat.”
“—I go . . . O Sage, it’s only a man that sits there
With eyes on the sun.  Mute,—average head to feet.”
“—No more?”—“No more.  Just one the place befits there,

   “As the rays reach in through the open door,
And he looks at his hand, and the sun glows through his fingers,
While he’s thinking thoughts whose tenour is no more
To me than the swaying rose-tree shade that lingers.”

   No more.  And years drew on and on
Till no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding;
And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone,
As a vision what she had missed when the real beholding.

“Why are you so bent down before your time,
Old mason?  Many have not left their prime
So far behind at your age, and can still
   Stand full upright at will.”

He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,
And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;
“Those upper blocks,” he said, “that there you see,
   It was that ruined me.”

There stood in the air up to the parapet
Crowning the corner height, the stones as set
By him—ashlar whereon the gales might drum
   For centuries to come.

“So I got crookt.  I never lost that sprain;
And those who live there, walled from wind and rain
By freestone that I lifted, do not know
   That my life’s ache came so.

“They don’t know me, or even know my name,
But good I think it, somehow, all the same
To have kept ’em safe from harm, and right and tight,
   Though it has broke me quite.

“Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud,
Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud,
And to stand storms for ages, beating round
   When I lie underground.”

   “O whence do you come,
Figure in the night-fog that chills me numb?”

“I come to you across from my house up there,
And I don’t mind the brine-mist clinging to me
   That blows from the quay,
For I heard him in my chamber, and thought you unaware.”

   “But what did you hear,
That brought you blindly knocking in this middle-watch so drear?”

   “Nobody’s nigh,
Woman like a skeleton, with socket-sunk eye.”

“Ah—nobody’s nigh!  And my life is drearisome,
And this is the old home we loved in many a day
   Before he went away;
And the salt fog mops me.  And nobody’s come!”

From “To Please his Wife.”

   We sat in the room
   And praised her whom
We saw in the portico-shade outside:
   She could not hear
   What was said of her,
But smiled, for its purport we did not hide.

   Then in was brought
   That message, fraught
With evil fortune for her out there,
   Whom we loved that day
   More than any could say,
And would fain have fenced from a waft of care.

   Yea, spirit failed us
   At what assailed us;
How long, while seeing what soon must come,
   Should we counterfeit
   No knowledge of it,
And stay the stroke that would blanch and numb?

   And thus, before
   For evermore
Joy left her, we practised to beguile
   Her innocence when
   She now and again
Looked in, and smiled us another smile.

He used to pass, well-trimmed and brushed,
   My window every day,
And when I smiled on him he blushed,
That youth, quite as a girl might; aye,
   In the shyest way.

Thus often did he pass hereby,
   That youth of bounding gait,
Until the one who blushed was I,
And he became, as here I sate,
   My joy, my fate.

And now he passes by no more,
   That youth I loved too true!
I grieve should he, as here of yore,
Pass elsewhere, seated in his view,
   Some maiden new!

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!

“What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband?—
What is it sounds in this house so eerily?
It seems to be a woman’s voice: each little while I hear it,
   And it much troubles me!”

“’Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:
Letting fancies worry thee!—sure ’tis a foolish thing,
When we were on’y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,
   And now it’s but evening.”

“Yet seems it still a woman’s voice outside the castle, husband,
And ’tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.
Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure
   Ere ever thou sawest my face?”

“Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,
And it saddens me much that so piteous a sound
On this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrow
   Should so ghost-like wander round!”

“To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,
And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,
And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,
   And throw the light over the moor.”

She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,
And his voice as he unclothed him: “’Twas nothing, as I said,
But the nor’-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath’art the river,
   And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head.”

“Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,
Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,
The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,
   Why is it silent now?

“And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,
And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,
And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,
   And thy breath as if hard to get?”

“There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:
She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,
As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e’en the cry you heard, wife,
   But she will cry no more!

“And now I can’t abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on’t,
This farmstead once a castle: I’ll get me straight away!”
He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,
   And went ere the dawn turned day.

And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,
And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,
And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,
   And sometimes an infant’s moan.

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 gray,
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.

February 1913.

Who would have thought
That, not having missed her
Talks, tears, laughter
In absence, or sought
To recall for so long
Her gamut of song;
Or ever to waft her
Signal of aught
That she, fancy-fanned,
Would well understand,
I should have kissed her
Picture when scanned
Yawning years after!

And thus it arose
That, yawning years after
Our early flows
Of wit and laughter,
And framing of rhymes
At idle times,
At sight of her painting,
Though she lies cold
In churchyard mould,
I took its feinting
As real, and kissed it,
As if I had wist it
Herself of old.

There was a spell of leisure,
   No record vouches when;
With honours, praises, pleasure
   To womankind from men.

But no such lures bewitched me,
   No hand was stretched to raise,
No gracious gifts enriched me,
   No voices sang my praise.

Yet an iris at that season
   Amid the accustomed slight
From denseness, dull unreason,
   Ringed me with living light.

That “Sacred to the Memory”
Is clearly carven there I own,
And all may think that on the stone
The words have been inscribed by me
In bare conventionality.

They know not and will never know
That my full script is not confined
To that stone space, but stands deep lined
Upon the landscape high and low
Wherein she made such worthy show.

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.

My father was the whipper-in,—
   Is still—if I’m not misled?
And now I see, where the hedge is thin,
   A little spot of red;
   Surely it is my father
   Going to the kennel-shed!

“I cursed and fought my father—aye,
   And sailed to a foreign land;
And feeling sorry, I’m back, to stay,
   Please God, as his helping hand.
   Surely it is my father
   Near where the kennels stand?”

“—True.  Whipper-in he used to be
   For twenty years or more;
And you did go away to sea
   As youths have done before.
   Yes, oddly enough that red there
   Is the very coat he wore.

“You see, when all had settled down
   Your mother’s things were sold,
And she went back to her own town,
   And the coat, ate out with mould,
   Is now used by the farmer
   For scaring, as ’tis old.”

“So back you have come from the town, Nan, dear!
And have you seen him there, or near—
   That soldier of mine—
Who long since promised to meet me here?”

“—O yes, Nell: from the town I come,
And have seen your lover on sick-leave home—
   That soldier of yours—
Who swore to meet you, or Strike-him-dumb;

“But has kept himself of late away;
Yet,—in short, he’s coming, I heard him say—
   That lover of yours—
To this very spot on this very day.”

“—Nell, him I have chanced so much to see,
That—he has grown the lover of me!—
   That lover of yours—
And it’s here our meeting is planned to be.”

In my loamy nook
As I dig my hole
I observe men look
At a stone, and sigh
As they pass it by
To some far goal.

Something it says
To their glancing eyes
That must distress
The frail and lame,
And the strong of frame
Gladden or surprise.

Do signs on its face
Declare how far
Feet have to trace
Before they gain
Some blest champaign
Where no gins are?

Words from the mirror softly pass
   To the curtains with a sigh:
“Why should I trouble again to glass
   These smileless things hard by,
Since she I pleasured once, alas,
   Is now no longer nigh!”

“I’ve imaged shadows of coursing cloud,
   And of the plying limb
On the pensive pine when the air is loud
   With its aerial hymn;
But never do they make me proud
   To catch them within my rim!

“I flash back phantoms of the night
   That sometimes flit by me,
I echo roses red and white—
   The loveliest blooms that be—
But now I never hold to sight
   So sweet a flower as she.”

They parted—a pallid, trembling I pair,
   And rushing down the lane
He left her lonely near me there;
   —I asked her of their pain.

“It is for ever,” at length she said,
   “His friends have schemed it so,
That the long-purposed day to wed
   Never shall we two know.”

“In such a cruel case,” said I,
   “Love will contrive a course?”
“—Well, no . . . A thing may underlie,
   Which robs that of its force;

“A thing I could not tell him of,
   Though all the year I have tried;
This: never could I have given him love,
   Even had I been his bride.

“Yet hear—no doubt to your surprise—
   I am sorry, for his sake,
That I have escaped the sacrifice
   I was prepared to make!”

’Twas to greet the new rector I called I here,
   But in the arm-chair I see
My old friend, for long years installed here,
   Who palely nods to me.

The new man explains what he’s planning
   In a smart and cheerful tone,
And I listen, the while that I’m scanning
   The figure behind his own.

The newcomer urges things on me;
   I return a vague smile thereto,
The olden face gazing upon me
   Just as it used to do!

And on leaving I scarcely remember
   Which neighbour to-day I have seen,
The one carried out in September,
   Or him who but entered yestreen.

“Ατιυά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμενα

“A woman for whom great gods might strive!”
   I said, and kissed her there:
And then I thought of the other five,
   And of how charms outwear.

I thought of the first with her eating eyes,
And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,
And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,
And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.

And I thought of the fifth, whom I’d called a jade,
   And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;
And that each had shown her a passable maid,
   Yet not of the favour sought.

“—I feel a strange benumbing spell,
   As one ill-wished!” said she.
And soon it seemed that something fell
   Was starving her love for me.

“I feel some curse.  O, five were there?”
And wanly she swerved, and went away.
I followed sick: night numbed the air,
And dark the mournful moorland lay.

I cried: “O darling, turn your head!”
   But never her face I viewed;
“O turn, O turn!” again I said,
   And miserably pursued.

At length I came to a Christ-cross stone
Which she had passed without discern;
And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,
And prayed aloud that she might turn.

I rose, and looked; and turn she did;
   I cried, “My heart revives!”
“Look more,” she said.  I looked as bid;
   Her face was all the five’s.

She’d half forgot me in her change;
   “Who are you?  Won’t you say
Who you may be, you man so strange,
   Following since yesterday?”

I took the composite form she was,
And carried her to an arbour small,
Not passion-moved, but even because
In one I could atone to all.

And there she lies, and there I tend,
   Till my life’s threads unwind,
A various womanhood in blend—
   Not one, but all combined.

Sir John was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she,
Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun,
Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually,
   As his widowed one.

And to pleasure her in her sorrow, and fix his name
As a memory Time’s fierce frost should never kill,
She caused to be richly chased a brass to his fame,
   Which should link them still;

And implored good people to pray “Of their Charytie
For these twaine Soules,”—yea, she who did last remain
Forgoing Heaven’s bliss if ever with spouse should she
   Again have lain.

Even there, as it first was set, you may see it now,
Writ in quaint Church text, with the date of her death left bare,
In the aged Estminster aisle, where the folk yet bow
   Themselves in prayer.

Thereafter some years slid, till there came a day
When it slowly began to be marked of the standers-by
That she would regard the brass, and would bend away
   With a drooping sigh.

And her heart was stirred with a lightning love to its pith
For a newcomer who, while less in years, was one
Full eager and able to make her his own forthwith,
   Restrained of none.

But she answered Nay, death-white; and still as he urged
She adversely spake, overmuch as she loved the while,
Till he pressed for why, and she led with the face of one scourged
   To the neighbouring aisle,

And showed him the words, ever gleaming upon her pew,
Memorizing her there as the knight’s eternal wife,
Or falsing such, debarred inheritance due
   Of celestial life.

Of her wedding in face of the record.  Her lover agreed,
And they parted before the brass with a shudderful kiss,
For it seemed to flash out on their impulse of passionate need,
   “Mock ye not this!”

Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one,
Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were dead
Her name and adjuration; but since it was done
   Nought could be said

Save that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul,
And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good,
If she wished anon to reach the coveted goal
   Of beatitude.

Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibe
That would rise at her back in the nave when she should pass
As another’s avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribe
   On the changeless brass.

And so for months she replied to her Love: “No, no”;
While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more,
Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to show
   Less warmth than before.

And, after an absence, wrote words absolute:
That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear;
And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit,
   He should wed elsewhere.

She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowers
As summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed,
When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours,
   She was missed from her bed.

“The church!” they whispered with qualms; “where often she sits.”
They found her: facing the brass there, else seeing none,
But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits;
   And she knew them not one.

And, as talebearers tell, thence on to her last-taken breath
Was unseen, save as wraith that in front of the brass made moan;
So that ever the way of her life and the time of her death
   Remained unknown.

And hence, as indited above, you may read even now
The quaint church-text, with the date of her death left bare,
In the aged Estminster aisle, where folk yet bow
   Themselves in prayer.

October 30, 1907.

I reach the marble-streeted town,
   Whose “Sound” outbreathes its air
      Of sharp sea-salts;
I see the movement up and down
      As when she was there.
Ships of all countries come and go,
   The bandsmen boom in the sun
      A throbbing waltz;
The schoolgirls laugh along the Hoe
      As when she was one.

I move away as the music rolls:
   The place seems not to mind
      That she—of old
The brightest of its native souls—
      Left it behind!
Over this green aforedays she
   On light treads went and came,
      Yea, times untold;
Yet none here knows her history—
      Has heard her name.

Plymouth (1914?).