Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

How she held up the horses’ heads,
   Firm-lipped, with steady rein,
Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,
   Till all was safe again!

With form erect and keen contour
   She passed against the sea,
And, dipping into the chine’s obscure,
   Was seen no more by me.

To others she appeared anew
   At times of dusky light,
But always, so they told, withdrew
   From close and curious sight.

Some said her silent wheels would roll
   Rutless on softest loam,
And even that her steeds’ footfall
   Sank not upon the foam.

If he should live a thousand years
   He’d find it not again
   That scorn of him by men
Could less disturb a woman’s trust
In him as a steadfast star which must
Rise scathless from the nether spheres:
If he should live a thousand years
   He’d find it not again.

She waited like a little child,
   Unchilled by damps of doubt,
   While from her eyes looked out
A confidence sublime as Spring’s
When stressed by Winter’s loiterings.
Thus, howsoever the wicked wiled,
She waited like a little child
   Unchilled by damps of doubt.

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.

Rewritten from an old draft.

While he was here in breath and bone,
   To speak to and to see,
Would I had known—more clearly known—
   What that man did for me

When the wind scraped a minor lay,
   And the spent west from white
To gray turned tiredly, and from gray
   To broadest bands of night!

But I saw not, and he saw not
   What shining life-tides flowed
To me-ward from his casual jot
   Of service on that road.

He would have said: “’Twas nothing new;
   We all do what we can;
’Twas only what one man would do
   For any other man.”

   What curious things we said,
   What curious things we did
Up there in the world we walked till dead
   Our kith and kin amid!

   How we played at love,
   And its wildness, weakness, woe;
Yes, played thereat far more than enough
   As it turned out, I trow!

   Played at believing in gods
   And observing the ordinances,
I for your sake in impossible codes
   Right ready to acquiesce.

   Thinking our lives unique,
   Quite quainter than usual kinds,
We held that we could not abide a week
   The tether of typic minds.

   And feel, if anything,
   That none can be buried here
Removed from commonest fashioning,
   Or lending note to a bier:

   No twain who in heart-heaves proved
   Themselves at all adept,
Who more than many laughed and loved,
   Who more than many wept,

   Or were as sprites or elves
   Into blind matter hurled,
Or ever could have been to themselves
   The centre of the world.

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.

I sat.  It all was past;
Hope never would hail again;
Fair days had ceased at a blast,
The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone,
And the halo in which I had hied
So gaily gallantly on
Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither,
In a cloud too black for name:
—People frisked hither and thither;
The world was just the same.

The kiss had been given and taken,
   And gathered to many past:
It never could reawaken;
   But you heard none say: “It’s the last!”

The clock showed the hour and the minute,
   But you did not turn and look:
You read no finis in it,
   As at closing of a book.

But you read it all too rightly
   When, at a time anon,
A figure lay stretched out whitely,
   And you stood looking thereon.

The dark was thick.  A boy he seemed at that time
   Who trotted by me with uncertain air;
“I’ll tell my tale,” he murmured, “for I fancy
   A friend goes there? . . . ”

Then thus he told.  “I reached—’twas for the first time—
   A dwelling.  Life was clogged in me with care;
I thought not I should meet an eyesome maiden,
   But found one there.

“I entered on the precincts for the second time—
   ’Twas an adventure fit and fresh and fair—
I slackened in my footsteps at the porchway,
   And found her there.

“I journeyed to the place again the fourth time
   (The best and rarest visit of the rare,
As it seemed to me, engrossed about these goings),
   And found her there.

“When I bent me to my pilgrimage the fifth time
   (Soft-thinking as I journeyed I would dare
A certain word at token of good auspice),
   I found her there.

“That landscape did I traverse for the sixth time,
   And dreamed on what we purposed to prepare;
I reached a tryst before my journey’s end came,
   And found her there.

“And now I gad the globe—day, night, and any time,
   To light upon her hiding unaware,
And, maybe, I shall nigh me to some nymph-niche,
   And find her there!”

“But how,” said I, “has your so little lifetime
   Given roomage for such loving, loss, despair?
A boy so young!”  Forthwith I turned my lantern
   Upon him there.

His head was white.  His small form, fine aforetime,
   Was shrunken with old age and battering wear,
An eighty-years long plodder saw I pacing
   Beside me there.

The sun threw down a radiant spot
   On the face in the winding-sheet—
The face it had lit when a babe’s in its cot;
And the sun knew not, and the face knew not
   That soon they would no more meet.

Now that the grave has shut its door,
   And lets not in one ray,
Do they wonder that they meet no more—
That face and its beaming visitor—
   That met so many a day?

December 1915.

I

“You look like a widower,” she said
Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed,
As he sat by the fire in the outer room,
Reading late on a night of gloom,
And a cab-hack’s wheeze, and the clap of its feet
In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street,
Were all that came to them now and then . . .
“You really do!” she quizzed again.

II

III

But so it befell, whatever the cause,
That what she had called him he next year was;
And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere,
He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there,
And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores,
At the empty bed through the folding-doors
As he remembered her words; and wept
That she had forgotten them where she slept.

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.

Yes; since she knows not need,
   Nor walks in blindness,
I may without unkindness
   A true thing tell:

Which would be truth, indeed,
   Though worse in speaking,
Were her poor footsteps seeking
   A pauper’s cell.

I judge, then, better far
   She now have sorrow,
Than gladness that to-morrow
   Might know its knell.—

It may be men there are
   Could make of union
A lifelong sweet communion—
   A passioned spell;

I, by whose rash unshame
   These tears come to her:—
My faith would more undo her
   Than my farewell!

Chained to me, year by year
   My moody madness
Would wither her old gladness
   Like famine fell.

She’ll take the ill that’s near,
   And bear the blaming.
’Twill pass.  Full soon her shaming
   They’ll cease to yell.

Our unborn, first her moan,
   Will grow her guerdon,
Until from blot and burden
   A joyance swell;

In that therein she’ll own
   My good part wholly,
My evil staining solely
   My own vile vell.

The calumny, and prove
   This much about me,
That she lives best without me
   Who would live well.

That, this once, not self-love
   But good intention
Pleads that against convention
   We two rebel.

For, is one moonlight dance,
   One midnight passion,
A rock whereon to fashion
   Life’s citadel?

Prove they their power to prance
   Life’s miles together
From upper slope to nether
   Who trip an ell?

—Years hence, or now apace,
   May tongues be calling
News of my further falling
   Sinward pell-mell:

189–

(The following lines are partly made up, partly remembered from a Wessex folk-rhyme)

“What shall I bring you?
Please will white do
Best for your wearing
   The long day through?”
“—White is for weddings,
Weddings, weddings,
White is for weddings,
   And that won’t do.”

“What shall I bring you?
Please will red do
Best for your wearing
   The long day through?”
“ —Red is for soldiers,
Soldiers, soldiers,
Red is for soldiers,
   And that won’t do.”

“What shall I bring you?
Please will green do
Best for your wearing
   The long day through?”
“—Green is for mayings,
Mayings, mayings,
Green is for mayings,
   And that won’t do.”

“What shall I bring you
Then?  Will black do
Best for your wearing
   The long day through?”
“—Black is for mourning,
Mourning, mourning,
Black is for mourning,
   And black will do.”

I wayfared at the nadir of the sun
Where populations meet, though seen of none;
   And millions seemed to sigh around
   As though their haunts were nigh around,
   And unknown throngs to cry around
      Of things late done.

“O Seers, who well might high ensample show”
(Came throbbing past in plainsong small and slow),
   “Leaders who lead us aimlessly,
   Teachers who train us shamelessly,
   Why let ye smoulder flamelessly
      The truths ye trow?

“O Dynasties that sway and shake us so,
Why rank your magnanimities so low
   That grace can smooth no waters yet,
   But breathing threats and slaughters yet
   Ye grieve Earth’s sons and daughters yet
      As long ago?

“Live there no heedful ones of searching sight,
Whose accents might be oracles that smite
   To hinder those who frowardly
   Conduct us, and untowardly;
   To lead the nations vawardly
      From gloom to light?”

September 22, 1899.

I never cared for Life: Life cared for me,
And hence I owed it some fidelity.
It now says, “Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind
Sufficient toll for an unwilling mind,
And I dismiss thee—not without regard
That thou didst ask no ill-advised reward,
Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find.”

Where once we danced, where once sang,
      Gentlemen,
The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,
And cracks creep; worms have fed upon
The doors.  Yea, sprightlier times were then
Than now, with harps and tabrets gone,
      Gentlemen!

Where once we rowed, where once we sailed,
      Gentlemen,
And damsels took the tiller, veiled
Against too strong a stare (God wot
Their fancy, then or anywhen!)
Upon that shore we are clean forgot,
      Gentlemen!

We have lost somewhat, afar and near,
      Gentlemen,
The thinning of our ranks each year
Affords a hint we are nigh undone,
That we shall not be ever again
The marked of many, loved of one,
      Gentlemen.

This season’s paintings do not please,
      Gentlemen,
Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise;
Throbbing romance has waned and wanned;
No wizard wields the witching pen
Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, and Sand,
      Gentlemen.

The bower we shrined to Tennyson,
      Gentlemen,
Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon
Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust,
The spider is sole denizen;
Even she who read those rhymes is dust,
      Gentlemen!

And yet, though ours be failing frames,
      Gentlemen,
So were some others’ history names,
Who trode their track light-limbed and fast
As these youth, and not alien
From enterprise, to their long last,
      Gentlemen.

Sophocles, Plato, Socrates,
      Gentlemen,
Pythagoras, Thucydides,
Herodotus, and Homer,—yea,
Clement, Augustin, Origen,
Burnt brightlier towards their setting-day,
      Gentlemen.

And ye, red-lipped and smooth-browed; list,
      Gentlemen;
Much is there waits you we have missed;
Much lore we leave you worth the knowing,
Much, much has lain outside our ken:
Nay, rush not: time serves: we are going,
      Gentlemen.

Simple was I and was young;
   Kept no gallant tryst, I;
Even from good words held my tongue,
   Quoniam Tu fecisti!

Through my youth I stirred me not,
   High adventure missed I,
Left the shining shrines unsought;
   Yet—me deduxisti!

At my start by Helicon
   Love-lore little wist I,
Worldly less; but footed on;
   Why?  Me suscepisti!

When I failed at fervid rhymes,
   “Shall,” I said, “persist I?”
“Dies” (I would add at times)
   “Meos posuisti!”

And at dead of night I call:
   “Though to prophets list I,
Which hath understood at all?
   Yea: Quem elegisti?”

187–

A cry from the green-grained sticks of the fire
   Made me gaze where it seemed to be:
’Twas my own voice talking therefrom to me
On how I had walked when my sun was higher—
   My heart in its arrogancy.

“You held not to whatsoever was true,”
   Said my own voice talking to me:
“Whatsoever was just you were slack to see;
Kept not things lovely and pure in view,”
   Said my own voice talking to me.

“You slighted her that endureth all,”
   Said my own voice talking to me;
“Vaunteth not, trusteth hopefully;
That suffereth long and is kind withal,”
   Said my own voice talking to me.

FOOTNOTES