Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

   Tabitha dressed for her wedding:—
   “Tabby, why look so sad?”
“—O I feel a great gloominess spreading, spreading,
   Instead of supremely glad! . . .

   “I called on Carry last night,
   And he came whilst I was there,
Not knowing I’d called.  So I kept out of sight,
   And I heard what he said to her:

   “‘—Ah, I’d far liefer marry
   You, Dear, to-morrow!’ he said,
‘But that cannot be.’—O I’d give him to Carry,
   And willingly see them wed,

   “But how can I do it when
   His baby will soon be born?
After that I hope I may die.  And then
   She can have him.  I shall not mourn!”

You were here at his young beginning,
   You are not here at his agèd end;
Off he coaxed you from Life’s mad spinning,
   Lest you should see his form extend
      Shivering, sighing,
      Slowly dying,
   And a tear on him expend.

So it comes that we stand lonely
   In the star-lit avenue,
Dropping broken lipwords only,
   For we hear no songs from you,
      Such as flew here
      For the new year
   Once, while six bells swung thereto.

“Awake!  I’m off to cities far away,”
I said; and rose, on peradventures bent.
The chimes played “Life’s a Bumper!” on that day
To the measure of my walking as I went:
Their sweetness frisked and floated on the lea,
As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.

“Awake!” I said.  “I go to take a bride!”
—The sun arose behind me ruby-red
As I journeyed townwards from the countryside,
The chiming bells saluting near ahead.
Their sweetness swelled in tripping tings of glee
As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.

1913.

I worked no wile to meet you,
   My sight was set elsewhere,
I sheered about to shun you,
   And lent your life no care.
I was unprimed to greet you
   At such a date and place,
Constraint alone had won you
   Vision of my strange face!

You did not seek to see me
   Then or at all, you said,
—Meant passing when you neared me,
   But stumblingblocks forbade.
You even had thought to flee me,
   By other mindings moved;
No influent star endeared me,
   Unknown, unrecked, unproved!

   “There is not much that I can do,
For I’ve no money that’s quite my own!”
   Spoke up the pitying child—
A little boy with a violin
At the station before the train came in,—
“But I can play my fiddle to you,
And a nice one ’tis, and good in tone!”

   The man in the handcuffs smiled;
The constable looked, and he smiled, too,
   As the fiddle began to twang;
And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang
      Uproariously:
      “This life so free
      Is the thing for me!”
And the constable smiled, and said no word,
As if unconscious of what he heard;
And so they went on till the train came in—
The convict, and boy with the violin.

So there sat they,
The estranged two,
Thrust in one pew
By chance that day;
Placed so, breath-nigh,
Each comer unwitting
Who was to be sitting
In touch close by.

Thus side by side
Blindly alighted,
They seemed united
As groom and bride,
Who’d not communed
For many years—
Lives from twain spheres
With hearts distuned.

And women and men,
The matins ended,
By looks commended
Them, joined again.
Quickly said she,
“Don’t undeceive them—
Better thus leave them:”
“Quite so,” said he.

Slight words!—the last
Between them said,
Those two, once wed,
Who had not stood fast.
Diverse their ways
From the western door,
To meet no more
In their span of days.

’Twere sweet to have a comrade here,
Who’d vow to love this garreteer,
By city people’s snap and sneer
      Tried oft and hard!

We’d rove a truant cock and hen
To some snug solitary glen,
And never be seen to haunt again
      This teeming yard.

Within a cot of thatch and clay
We’d list the flitting pipers play,
Our lives a twine of good and gay
      Enwreathed discreetly;

Our blithest deeds so neighbouring wise
That doves should coo in soft surprise,
“These must belong to Paradise
      Who live so sweetly.”

And infant shapes might soon abound:
Their shining heads would dot us round
Like mushroom balls on grassy ground . . .
      —But all is dream!

O God, that creatures framed to feel
A yearning nature’s strong appeal
Should writhe on this eternal wheel
      In rayless grime;

And vainly note, with wan regret,
Each star of early promise set;
Till Death relieves, and they forget
      Their one Life’s time!

Westbourne Park Villas, 1866.

I do not wish to win your vow
To take me soon or late as bride,
And lift me from the nook where now
I tarry your farings to my side.
I am blissful ever to abide
In this green labyrinth—let all be,
If but, whatever may betide,
You do not leave off loving me!

Your comet-comings I will wait
With patience time shall not wear through;
The yellowing years will not abate
My largened love and truth to you,
Nor drive me to complaint undue
Of absence, much as I may pine,
If never another ’twixt us two
Shall come, and you stand wholly mine.

You say, O Sage, when weather-checked,
   “I have been favoured so
With cloudless skies, I must expect
   This dash of rain or snow.”

“Since health has been my lot,” you say,
   “So many months of late,
I must not chafe that one short day
   Of sickness mars my state.”

You say, “Such bliss has been my share
   From Love’s unbroken smile,
It is but reason I should bear
   A cross therein awhile.”

And thus you do not count upon
   Continuance of joy;
But, when at ease, expect anon
   A burden of annoy.

December 21, 1908.

I

   He was leaning by a face,
   He was looking into eyes,
   And he knew a trysting-place,
   And he heard seductive sighs;
      But the face,
      And the eyes,
      And the place,
      And the sighs,
Were not, alas, the right ones—the ones meet for him—
Though fine and sweet the features, and the feelings all abrim.

II

There trudges one to a merry-making
      With a sturdy swing,
   On whom the rain comes down.

To fetch the saving medicament
      Is another bent,
   On whom the rain comes down.

One slowly drives his herd to the stall
      Ere ill befall,
   On whom the rain comes down.

This bears his missives of life and death
      With quickening breath,
   On whom the rain comes down.

One watches for signals of wreck or war
      From the hill afar,
   On whom the rain comes down.

And another knows nought of its chilling fall
      Upon him at all,
   On whom the rain comes down.

October 1904.

’Tis May morning,
All-adorning,
No cloud warning
   Of rain to-day.
Where shall I go to,
Go to, go to?—
Can I say No to
   Lyonnesse-way?

Well—what reason
Now at this season
Is there for treason
   To other shrines?
Tristram is not there,
Isolt forgot there,
New eras blot there
   Sought-for signs!

What shall it be, then,
I go to see, then,
Under the plea, then,
   Of votary?
I’ll go to Lakeland,
Lakeland, Lakeland,
Certainly Lakeland
   Let it be.

But—why to that place,
That place, that place,
Such a hard come-at place
   Need I fare?
When its bard cheers no more,
Loves no more, fears no more,
Sees no more, hears no more
   Anything there!

I’ll seek a town street,
Aye, a brick-brown street,
Quite a tumbledown street,
   Drawing no eyes.
For a Mary dwelt there,
And a Percy felt there
Heart of him melt there,
   A Claire likewise.

Why incline to that city,
Such a city, that city,
Now a mud-bespat city!—
   Care the lovers who
Now live and walk there,
Sit there and talk there,
Buy there, or hawk there,
   Or wed, or woo?

Laughters in a volley
Greet so fond a folly
As nursing melancholy
   In this and that spot,
Which, with most endeavour,
Those can visit never,
But for ever and ever
   Will now know not!

“What!—our hoar old houses,
Where the past dead-drowses,
Nor a child nor spouse is
   Of our name at all?
Such abodes to care for,
Inquire about and bear for,
And suffer wear and tear for—
   How weak of you and small!”

May 1921.

Wit, weight, or wealth there was not
   In anything that was said,
   In anything that was done;
All was of scope to cause not
   A triumph, dazzle, or dread
   To even the subtlest one,
      My friend,
   To even the subtlest one.

But there was a new afflation—
   An aura zephyring round,
   That care infected not:
It came as a salutation,
   And, in my sweet astound,
   I scarcely witted what
      Might pend,
   I scarcely witted what.

O do not praise my beauty more,
   In such word-wild degree,
And say I am one all eyes adore;
   For these things harass me!

But do for ever softly say:
   “From now unto the end
Come weal, come wanzing, come what may,
   Dear, I will be your friend.”

I hate my beauty in the glass:
   My beauty is not I:
I wear it: none cares whether, alas,
   Its wearer live or die!

The inner I O care for, then,
   Yea, me and what I am,
And shall be at the gray hour when
   My cheek begins to clam.

Note.—“The Regent Street beauty, Miss Verrey, the Swiss confectioner’s daughter, whose personal attractions have been so mischievously exaggerated, died of fever on Monday evening, brought on by the annoyance she had been for some time subject to.”—London paper, October 1828.

Fili hominis, ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in plaga.—Ezech. xxiv. 16.

   How I remember cleaning that strange picture!
I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour—
His besides my own—over several Sundays,
Often, too, in the week; so with parish pressures,
Baptisms, burials, doctorings, conjugal counsel—
All the whatnots asked of a rural parson—
Faith, I was well-nigh broken, should have been fully
Saving for one small secret relaxation,
One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby.

   Till the dawn I rubbed, when there gazed up at me
A hag, that had slowly emerged from under my hands there,
Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosom
Eaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime . . .
—I could have ended myself in heart-shook horror.
Stunned I sat till roused by a clear-voiced bell-chime,
Fresh and sweet as the dew-fleece under my luthern.
It was the matin service calling to me
From the adjacent steeple.

“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.

“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.”

We are always saying
   “Good-bye, good-bye!”
In work, in playing,
In gloom, in gaying:
   At many a stage
   Of pilgrimage
   From youth to age
   We say, “Good-bye,
      Good-bye!”

We are undiscerning
   Which go to sigh,
Which will be yearning
For soon returning;
   And which no more
   Will dark our door,
   Or tread our shore,
   But go to die,
      To die.

So, with this saying,
   “Good-bye, good-bye,”
We speed their waying
Without betraying
   Our grief, our fear
   No more to hear
   From them, close, clear,
   Again: “Good-bye,
      Good-bye!”

We never sang together
   Ravenscroft’s terse old tune
On Sundays or on weekdays,
In sharp or summer weather,
   At night-time or at noon.

Why did we never sing it,
   Why never so incline
On Sundays or on weekdays,
Even when soft wafts would wing it
   From your far floor to mine?

Shall we that tune, then, never
   Stand voicing side by side
On Sundays or on weekdays? . . .
Or shall we, when for ever
   In Sheol we abide,

Forty springs back, I recall,
   We met at this phase of the Maytime:
We might have clung close through all,
   But we parted when died that daytime.

We parted with smallest regret;
   Perhaps should have cared but slightly,
Just then, if we never had met:
   Strange, strange that we lived so lightly!

Had we mused a little space
   At that critical date in the Maytime,
One life had been ours, one place,
   Perhaps, till our long cold daytime.

—This is a bitter thing
   For thee, O man: what ails it?
The tide of chance may bring
   Its offer; but nought avails it!

I can see the towers
In mind quite clear
Not many hours’
Faring from here;
But how up and go,
And briskly bear
Thither, and know
That are not there?

Though the birds sing small,
And apple and pear
On your trees by the wall
Are ripe and rare,
Though none excel them,
I have no care
To taste them or smell them
And you not there.

Towards the river
A pealing swells:
They cost me a quiver—
Those prayerful bells!
How go to God,
Who can reprove
With so heavy a rod
As your swift remove!

The chorded keys
Wait all in a row,
And the bellows wheeze
As long ago.
And the psalter lingers,
And organist’s chair;
But where are your fingers
That once wagged there?

Shall I then seek
That desert place
This or next week,
And those tracks trace
That fill me with cark
And cloy; nowhere
Being movement or mark
Of you now there!

’Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time,
When yellow begins to show in the leaf,
That your old gamut changed its chime
From those true tones—of span so brief!—
That met my beats of joy, of grief,
   As rhyme meets rhyme.

So sank I from my high sublime!
We faced but chancewise after that,
And never I knew or guessed my crime. . .
Yes; ’twas the date—or nigh thereat—
Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat
   And cobweb-time.

These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd,
   Sir or Madam,
A little girl here sepultured.
Once I flit-fluttered like a bird
Above the grass, as now I wave
In daisy shapes above my grave,
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

—I am one Bachelor Bowring, “Gent,”
   Sir or Madam;
In shingled oak my bones were pent;
Hence more than a hundred years I spent
In my feat of change from a coffin-thrall
To a dancer in green as leaves on a wall.
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

—The Lady Gertrude, proud, high-bred,
   Sir or Madam,
Am I—this laurel that shades your head;
Into its veins I have stilly sped,
And made them of me; and my leaves now shine,
As did my satins superfine,
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

—And so they breathe, these masks, to each
   Sir or Madam
Who lingers there, and their lively speech
Affords an interpreter much to teach,
As their murmurous accents seem to come
Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum,
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

   The trees fret fitfully and twist,
   Shutters rattle and carpets heave,
   Slime is the dust of yestereve,
      And in the streaming mist
Fishes might seem to fin a passage if they list.

         But to his feet,
         Drawing nigh and nigher
         A hidden seat,
         The fog is sweet
         And the wind a lyre.

   A vacant sameness grays the sky,
   A moisture gathers on each knop
   Of the bramble, rounding to a drop,
      That greets the goer-by
With the cold listless lustre of a dead man’s eye.

   She did not turn,
But passed foot-faint with averted head
In her gown of green, by the bobbing fern,
Though I leaned over the gate that led
From where we waited with table spread;
      But she did not turn:
Why was she near there if love had fled?

   She did not turn,
Though the gate was whence I had often sped
In the mists of morning to meet her, and learn
Her heart, when its moving moods I read
As a book—she mine, as she sometimes said;
      But she did not turn,
And passed foot-faint with averted head.

I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,
   And thence thread a jungle of grass:
Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand
   Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,
   And seem to reveal a dim sense
That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green
   They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,
   That range not greatly above
The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,
   And her gown, as she waits for her Love.

Near Chard.

Sir Nameless, once of Athelhall, declared:
“These wretched children romping in my park
Trample the herbage till the soil is bared,
And yap and yell from early morn till dark!
Go keep them harnessed to their set routines:
Thank God I’ve none to hasten my decay;
For green remembrance there are better means
Than offspring, who but wish their sires away.”

Three hundred years hied; Church-restorers came,
And, no one of his lineage being traced,
They thought an effigy so large in frame
Best fitted for the floor.  There it was placed,
Under the seats for schoolchildren.  And they
Kicked out his name, and hobnailed off his nose;
And, as they yawn through sermon-time, they say,
“Who was this old stone man beneath our toes?”

These summer landscapes—clump, and copse, and croft—
Woodland and meadowland—here hung aloft,
Gay with limp grass and leafery new and soft,

Seem caught from the immediate season’s yield
I saw last noonday shining over the field,
By rapid snatch, while still are uncongealed

The saps that in their live originals climb;
Yester’s quick greenage here set forth in mime
Just as it stands, now, at our breathing-time.

But these young foils so fresh upon each tree,
Soft verdures spread in sprouting novelty,
Are not this summer’s, though they feign to be.

Dear, think not that they will forget you:
   —If craftsmanly art should be mine
I will build up a temple, and set you
      Therein as its shrine.

They may say: “Why a woman such honour?”
   —Be told, “O, so sweet was her fame,
That a man heaped this splendour upon her;
      None now knows his name.”

      Yes; such it was;
   Just those two seasons unsought,
Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;
      Moving, as straws,
   Hearts quick as ours in those days;
Going like wind, too, and rated as nought
   Save as the prelude to plays
   Soon to come—larger, life-fraught:
      Yes; such it was.

      “Nought” it was called,
   Even by ourselves—that which springs
Out of the years for all flesh, first or last,
      Commonplace, scrawled
   Dully on days that go past.
Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings
   Even in hours overcast:
   Aye, though this best thing of things,
      “Nought” it was called!

(From this centuries-old cross-road the highway leads east to London, north to Bristol and Bath, west to Exeter and the Land’s End, and south to the Channel coast.)

   Why go the east road now? . . .
That way a youth went on a morrow
After mirth, and he brought back sorrow
   Painted upon his brow
   Why go the east road now?

   Why go the north road now?
Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen,
Once edging fiefs of my forefolk yeomen,
   Fallows fat to the plough:
   Why go the north road now?

   Why go the west road now?
Thence to us came she, bosom-burning,
Welcome with joyousness returning . . .
   —She sleeps under the bough:
   Why go the west road now?

   Why go any road now?
White stands the handpost for brisk on-bearers,
“Halt!” is the word for wan-cheeked farers
   Musing on Whither, and How . . .
   Why go any road now?

   “Yea: we want new feet now”
Answer the stones.  “Want chit-chat, laughter:
Plenty of such to go hereafter
   By our tracks, we trow!
   We are for new feet now.”

During the War.

“Why do you sit, O pale thin man,
   At the end of the room
By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?
   —It is cold as a tomb,
And there’s not a spark within the grate;
   And the jingling wires
   Are as vain desires
   That have lagged too late.”

“Why do I?  Alas, far times ago
   A woman lyred here
In the evenfall; one who fain did so
   From year to year;
And, in loneliness bending wistfully,
   Would wake each note
   In sick sad rote,
   None to listen or see!

I look in her face and say,
“Sing as you used to sing
About Love’s blossoming”;
But she hints not Yea or Nay.

“Sing, then, that Love’s a pain,
If, Dear, you think it so,
Whether it be or no;”
But dumb her lips remain.

I go to a far-off room,
A faint song ghosts my ear;
Which song I cannot hear,
But it seems to come from a tomb.

Last Post sounded
Across the mead
To where he loitered
With absent heed.
Five years before
In the evening there
Had flown that call
To him and his Dear.
“You’ll never come back;
Good-bye!” she had said;
“Here I’ll be living,
And my Love dead!”

   If you had known
When listening with her to the far-down moan
Of the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,
And rain came on that did not hinder talk,
Or damp your flashing facile gaiety
In turning home, despite the slow wet walk
By crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;
   If you had known

1920.

I’ve been thinking it through, as I play here to-night, to play never again,
By the light of that lowering sun peering in at the window-pane,
And over the back-street roofs, throwing shades from the boys of the chore
In the gallery, right upon me, sitting up to these keys once more . . .

’Twas so he answered at first, but the story grew different later:
“It cannot go on much longer, from what we hear of her now!”
At the meaning wheeze in the words the inquirer would shift his place
Till he could see round the curtain that screened me from people below.
“A handsome girl,” he would murmur, upstaring, (and so I am).
“But—too much sex in her build; fine eyes, but eyelids too heavy;
A bosom too full for her age; in her lips too voluptuous a look.”
(It may be.  But who put it there?  Assuredly it was not I.)

Well, the deacon, in fact, that day had learnt new tidings about me;
They troubled his mind not a little, for he was a worthy man.
(He trades as a chemist in High Street, and during the week he had sought
His fellow-deacon, who throve as a book-binder over the way.)
“These are strange rumours,” he said.  “We must guard the good name of the chapel.
If, sooth, she’s of evil report, what else can we do but dismiss her?”
“—But get such another to play here we cannot for double the price!”
It settled the point for the time, and I triumphed awhile in their strait,
And my much-beloved grand semibreves went living on under my fingers.

“Sure, nobody meant her to poison herself in her haste, after all!”
The deacons will say as they carry me down and the night shadows fall,
“Though the charges were true,” they will add.  “It’s a case red as scarlet withal!”
I have never once minced it.  Lived chaste I have not.  Heaven knows it above! . . .
But past all the heavings of passion—it’s music has been my life-love! . . .
That tune did go well—this last playing! . . . I reckon they’ll bury me here . . .
Not a soul from the seaport my birthplace—will come, or bestow me . . . a tear.

   An hour before the dawn,
         My friend,
You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,
   Your breakfast-fire anon,
And outing into the dark and damp
   You saddled, and set on.

   Thuswise, before the day,
         My friend,
You sought her on her surfy shore,
   To fetch her thence away
Unto your own new-builded door
   For a staunch lifelong stay.

   You said: “It seems to be,
         My friend,
That I were bringing to my place
   The pure brine breeze, the sea,
The mews—all her old sky and space,
   In bringing her with me!”

   So, it had been more due,
         My friend,
Perhaps, had you not pulled this flower
   From the craggy nook it knew,
And set it in an alien bower;
   But left it where it grew!

      Could I but will,
      Will to my bent,
I’d have afar ones near me still,
And music of rare ravishment,
In strains that move the toes and heels!
And when the sweethearts sat for rest
The unbetrothed should foot with zest
      Ecstatic reels.

      Could I be head,
      Head-god, “Come, now,
Dear girl,” I’d say, “whose flame is fled,
Who liest with linen-banded brow,
Stirred but by shakes from Earth’s deep core—”
I’d say to her: “Unshroud and meet
That Love who kissed and called thee Sweet!—
      Yea, come once more!”

I have come to the church and chancel,
   Where all’s the same!
—Brighter and larger in my dreams
Truly it shaped than now, meseems,
   Is its substantial frame.
But, anyhow, I made my vow,
   Whether for praise or blame,
Here in this church and chancel
   Where all’s the same.

Where touched the check-floored chancel
   My knees and his?
The step looks shyly at the sun,
And says, “’Twas here the thing was done,
   For bale or else for bliss!”
Of all those there I least was ware
   Would it be that or this
When touched the check-floored chancel
   My knees and his!

Here, through this hoary chancel
   Where all’s the same,
A thrill, a gaiety even, ranged
That morning when it seemed I changed
   My nature with my name.
Though now not fair, though gray my hair,
   He loved me, past proclaim,
Here in this hoary chancel,
   Where all’s the same.

I
(OLD STYLE)

Our songs went up and out the chimney,
And roused the home-gone husbandmen;
Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,
Our hands-across and back again,
Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements
   On to the white highway,
Where nighted farers paused and muttered,
   “Keep it up well, do they!”

The contrabasso’s measured booming
Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,
To shepherds at their midnight lambings,
To stealthy poachers on their rounds;
And everybody caught full duly
   The notes of our delight,
As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise
   Hailed by our sanguine sight.

   We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,
   As if to give ear to the muffled peal,
   Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim;
   But our truest heed is to words that steal
   From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,
   And seems, so far as our sense can see,
   To feature bereaved Humanity,
   As it sighs to the imminent year its say:—

   “O stay without, O stay without,
   Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;
   Though stars irradiate thee about
   Thy entrance here is undesired.
   Open the gate not, mystic one;
Must we avow what we would close confine?
With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,
   Albeit the fault may not be thine.”

December 31.  During the War.

I travelled to where in her lifetime
   She’d knelt at morning prayer,
   To call her up as if there;
But she paid no heed to my suing,
As though her old haunt could win not
   A thought from her spirit, or care.

I went where my friend had lectioned
   The prophets in high declaim,
   That my soul’s ear the same
Full tones should catch as aforetime;
But silenced by gear of the Present
   Was the voice that once there came!

Where the ocean had sprayed our banquet
   I stood, to recall it as then:
   The same eluding again!
No vision.  Shows contingent
Affrighted it further from me
   Even than from my home-den.

   The railway bore him through
      An earthen cutting out from a city:
   There was no scope for view,
Though the frail light shed by a slim young moon
   Fell like a friendly tune.

   Fell like a liquid ditty,
And the blank lack of any charm
   Of landscape did no harm.
The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,
   And moon-lit, was enough
For poetry of place: its weathered face
Formed a convenient sheet whereon
The visions of his mind were drawn.

I waited at home all the while they were boating together—
      My wife and my near neighbour’s wife:
   Till there entered a woman I loved more than life,
And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather,
      With a sense that some mischief was rife.

Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies
      Was drowned—which of them was unknown:
   And I marvelled—my friend’s wife?—or was it my own
Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is?
      —We learnt it was his had so gone.

I knew a lady when the days
   Grew long, and evenings goldened;
   But I was not emboldened
By her prompt eyes and winning ways.

And when old Winter nipt the haws,
   “Another’s wife I’ll be,
   And then you’ll care for me,”
She said, “and think how sweet I was!”

And soon she shone as another’s wife:
   As such I often met her,
   And sighed, “How I regret her!
My folly cuts me like a knife!”

And then, to-day, her husband came,
   And moaned, “Why did you flout her?
   Well could I do without her!
For both our burdens you are to blame!”

There is a house in a city street
   Some past ones made their own;
Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,
      And their babblings beat
   From ceiling to white hearth-stone.

And who are peopling its parlours now?
   Who talk across its floor?
Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow,
      Who read not how
   Its prime had passed before

Their raw equipments, scenes, and says
   Afflicted its memoried face,
That had seen every larger phase
      Of human ways
   Before these filled the place.