Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

   This, then, is the grave of my son,
   Whose heart she won!  And nettles grow
Upon his mound; and she lives just below.

   How he upbraided me, and left,
   And our lives were cleft, because I said
She was hard, unfeeling, caring but to wed.

   Well, to see this sight I have fared these miles,
   And her firelight smiles from her window there,
Whom he left his mother to cherish with tender care!

   It is enough.  I’ll turn and go;
   Yes, nettles grow where lone lies he,
Who spurned me for seeing what he could not see.

On a morning sick as the day of doom
   With the drizzling gray
   Of an English May,
There were few in the railway waiting-room.
About its walls were framed and varnished
Pictures of liners, fly-blown, tarnished.
The table bore a Testament
For travellers’ reading, if suchwise bent.

      I read it on and on,
   And, thronging the Gospel of Saint John,
   Were figures—additions, multiplications—
By some one scrawled, with sundry emendations;
      Not scoffingly designed,
      But with an absent mind,—
   Plainly a bagman’s counts of cost,
   What he had profited, what lost;
And whilst I wondered if there could have been
      Any particle of a soul
      In that poor man at all,

   But next there came
   Like the eastern flame
Of some high altar, children—a pair—
Who laughed at the fly-blown pictures there.
“Here are the lovely ships that we,
Mother, are by and by going to see!
When we get there it’s ’most sure to be fine,
And the band will play, and the sun will shine!”

It rained on the skylight with a din
As we waited and still no train came in;
But the words of the child in the squalid room
Had spread a glory through the gloom.

It is dark as a cave,
Or a vault in the nave
When the iron door
Is closed, and the floor
Of the church relaid
With trowel and spade.

But the parish-clerk
Cares not for the dark
As he winds in the tower
At a regular hour
The rheumatic clock,
Whose dilatory knock
You can hear when praying
At the day’s decaying,
Or at any lone while
From a pew in the aisle.

Him I followed one night
To this place without light,
And, ere I spoke, heard
Him say, word by word,
At the end of his winding,
The darkness unminding:—

“So I wipe out one more,
My Dear, of the sore
Sad days that still be,
Like a drying Dead Sea,
Between you and me!”

Who she was no man knew:
He had long borne him blind
To all womankind;
And was ever one who
Kept his past out of view.

“What’s the good of going to Ridgeway,
   Cerne, or Sydling Mill,
   Or to Yell’ham Hill,
Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way
   As we used to do?
She will no more climb up there,
Or be visible anywhere
   In those haunts we knew.”

But to-night, while walking weary,
   Near me seemed her shade,
   Come as ’twere to upbraid
This my mood in deeming dreary
   Scenes that used to please;
And, if she did come to me,
Still solicitous, there may be
   Good in going to these.

April 1913.

I found me in a great surging space,
   At either end a door,
And I said: “What is this giddying place,
   With no firm-fixéd floor,
   That I knew not of before?”
   “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face.

I asked: “But how do I come here,
   Who never wished to come;
Can the light and air be made more clear,
   The floor more quietsome,
   And the doors set wide?  They numb
   Fast-locked, and fill with fear.”

The mask put on a bleak smile then,
   And said, “O vassal-wight,
There once complained a goosequill pen
   To the scribe of the Infinite
   Of the words it had to write
   Because they were past its ken.”

That whisper takes the voice
Of a Spirit’s compassionings
Close, but invisible,
And throws me under a spell
At the kindling vision it brings;
And for a moment I rejoice,
And believe in transcendent things
That would mould from this muddy earth
A spot for the splendid birth
Of everlasting lives,
Whereto no night arrives;
And this gaunt gray gallery
A tabernacle of worth
On this drab-aired afternoon,
When you can barely see
Across its hazed lacune
If opposite aught there be
Of fleshed humanity
Wherewith I may commune;
Or if the voice so near
Be a soul’s voice floating here.

   It was when
Whirls of thick waters laved me
   Again and again,
That something arose and saved me;
   Yea, it was then.

   In that day
Unseeing the azure went I
   On my way,
And to white winter bent I,
   Knowing no May.

   Reft of renown,
Under the night clouds beating
   Up and down,
In my needfulness greeting
   Cit and clown.

   Long there had been
Much of a murky colour
   In the scene,
Dull prospects meeting duller;
   Nought between.

   The clock rang;
The hour brought a hand to deliver;
   I upsprang,
And looked back at den, ditch and river,
   And sang.

He saw the portrait of his enemy, offered
At auction in a street he journeyed nigh,
That enemy, now late dead, who in his life-time
Had injured deeply him the passer-by.
“To get that picture, pleased be God, I’ll try,
And utterly destroy it; and no more
Shall be inflicted on man’s mortal eye
A countenance so sinister and sore!”

And so he bought the painting.  Driving homeward,
“The frame will come in useful,” he declared,
“The rest is fuel.”  On his arrival, weary,
Asked what he bore with him, and how he fared,
He said he had bid for a picture, though he cared
For the frame only: on the morrow he
Would burn the canvas, which could well be spared,
Seeing that it portrayed his enemy.

And then upon a morn he found it shifted,
Hung in a corner by a servitor.
“Why did you take on you to hang that picture?
You know it was the frame I bought it for.”
“It stood in the way of every visitor,
And I just hitched it there.”—“Well, it must go:
I don’t commemorate men whom I abhor.
Remind me ’tis to do.  The frame I’ll stow.”

But things become forgotten.  In the shadow
Of the dark corner hung it by its string,
And there it stayed—once noticed by its owner,
Who said, “Ah me—I must destroy that thing!”
But when he died, there, none remembering,
It hung, till moved to prominence, as one sees;
And comers pause and say, examining,
“I thought they were the bitterest enemies?”

   She saw herself a lady
      With fifty frocks in wear,
And rolling wheels, and rooms the best,
      And faithful maidens’ care,
   And open lawns and shady
      For weathers warm or drear.

   She found herself a striver,
      All liberal gifts debarred,
With days of gloom, and movements stressed,
      And early visions marred,
   And got no man to wive her
      But one whose lot was hard.

   Yet in the moony night-time
      She steals to stile and lea
During his heavy slumberous rest
      When homecome wearily,
   And dreams of some blest bright-time
      She knows can never be.

The rain imprinted the step’s wet shine
With target-circles that quivered and crossed
As I was leaving this porch of mine;
When from within there swelled and paused
      A song’s sweet note;
   And back I turned, and thought,
      “Here I’ll abide.”

The step shines wet beneath the rain,
Which prints its circles as heretofore;
I watch them from the porch again,
But no song-notes within the door
      Now call to me
   To shun the dripping lea
      And forth I stride.

Jan. 1914.

Said the red-cloaked crone
In a whispered moan:

“The dead man was limp
When laid in his chest;
Yea, limp; and why
But to signify
That the grave will crimp
Ere next year’s sun
Yet another one
Of those in that house—
It may be the best—
For its endless drowse!”

Said the brown-shawled dame
To confirm the same:

Said the third in plaid,
Each word being weighed:

“And trotting does
In the park, in the lane,
And just outside
The shuttered pane,
Have also been heard—
Quick feet as light
As the feet of a sprite—
And the wise mind knows
What things may betide
When such has occurred.”

Cried the black-craped fourth,
Cold faced as the north:

“O, though giving such
Some head-room, I smile
At your falterings
When noting those things
Round your domicile!
For what, what can touch
One whom, riven of all
That makes life gay,
No hints can appal
Of more takings away!”

      No; no;
   It must not be so:
They are the ways we do not go.

      Still chew
   The kine, and moo
In the meadows we used to wander through;

      Still purl
   The rivulets and curl
Towards the weirs with a musical swirl;

      Haymakers
   As in former years
Rake rolls into heaps that the pitchfork rears;

      Wheels crack
   On the turfy track
The waggon pursues with its toppling pack.

      Had you been
   Sharer of that scene
You would not ask while it bites in keen

      Why it is so
   We can no more go
By the summer paths we used to know!

1913.

“A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.”

   And the Spirit said,
“I can make the clock of the years go backward,
But am loth to stop it where you will.”
   And I cried, “Agreed
   To that.  Proceed:
   It’s better than dead!”

   He answered, “Peace”;
And called her up—as last before me;
Then younger, younger she freshed, to the year
   I first had known
   Her woman-grown,
   And I cried, “Cease!—

   Still less in mien
To my great sorrow became she slowly,
And smalled till she was nought at all
   In his checkless griff;
   And it was as if
   She had never been.

   “Better,” I plained,
“She were dead as before!  The memory of her
Had lived in me; but it cannot now!”
   And coldly his voice:
   “It was your choice
   To mar the ordained.”

1916.

A woman was playing,
   A man looking on;
   And the mould of her face,
   And her neck, and her hair,
   Which the rays fell upon
   Of the two candles there,
Sent him mentally straying
   In some fancy-place
   Where pain had no trace.

A cowled Apparition
   Came pushing between;
   And her notes seemed to sigh,
   And the lights to burn pale,
   As a spell numbed the scene.
   But the maid saw no bale,
And the man no monition;
   And Time laughed awry,
   And the Phantom hid nigh.

      I went by the Druid stone
   That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
   That at some moments fall thereon
   From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
   And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
   Threw there when she was gardening.

      I thought her behind my back,
   Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: “I am sure you are standing behind me,
   Though how do you get into this old track?”
   And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
   As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
   That there was nothing in my belief.

Begun 1913: finished 1916.

We waited for the sun
To break its cloudy prison
(For day was not yet done,
And night still unbegun)
Leaning by the dial.

After many a trial—
We all silent there—
It burst as new-arisen,
Throwing a shade to where
Time travelled at that minute.

Little saw we in it,
But this much I know,
Of lookers on that shade,
Her towards whom it made
Soonest had to go.

1915.

      I have done all I could
For that lady I knew!  Through the heats I have shaded her,
Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her,
   Home from the heath or the wood.

      At the mirth-time of May,
When my shadow first lured her, I’d donned my new bravery
Of greenth: ’twas my all.  Now I shiver in slavery,
   Icicles grieving me gray.

      Plumed to every twig’s end
I could tempt her chair under me.  Much did I treasure her
During those days she had nothing to pleasure her;
   Mutely she used me as friend.

Now I am dead you sing to me
   The songs we used to know,
But while I lived you had no wish
   Or care for doing so.

Now I am dead you come to me
   In the moonlight, comfortless;
Ah, what would I have given alive
   To win such tenderness!

When you are dead, and stand to me
   Not differenced, as now,
But like again, will you be cold
   As when we lived, or how?

“These Gothic windows, how they wear me out
With cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square,
Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout,
And fitting in Peter here, and Matthew there!

“What a vocation!  Here do I draw now
The abnormal, loving the Hellenic norm;
Martha I paint, and dream of Hera’s brow,
Mary, and think of Aphrodite’s form.”

Nov. 1893.

But don’t you know it, my dear,
   Don’t you know it,
That this day of the year
(What rainbow-rays embow it!)
We met, strangers confessed,
   But parted—blest?

Though at this query, my dear,
   There in your frame
Unmoved you still appear,
You must be thinking the same,
But keep that look demure
   Just to allure.

And now at length a trace
   I surely vision
Upon that wistful face
Of old-time recognition,
Smiling forth, “Yes, as you say,
   It is the day.”

But if this face I con
   Does not declare
Consciousness living on
Still in it, little I care
To live myself, my dear,
   Lone-labouring here!

Spring 1913.

He often would ask us
That, when he died,
After playing so many
To their last rest,
If out of us any
Should here abide,
And it would not task us,
We would with our lutes
Play over him
By his grave-brim
The psalm he liked best—
The one whose sense suits
“Mount Ephraim”—
And perhaps we should seem
To him, in Death’s dream,
Like the seraphim.

Hence, that afternoon,
Though never knew he
That his wish could not be,
To get through it faster
They buried the master
Without any tune.

But ’twas said that, when
At the dead of next night
The vicar looked out,
There struck on his ken
Thronged roundabout,
Where the frost was graying
The headstoned grass,
A band all in white
Like the saints in church-glass,
Singing and playing
The ancient stave
By the choirmaster’s grave.

Such the tenor man told
When he had grown old.

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met
   I sat upon a gate;
I saw the sun decline and set,
   And still was fain to wait.

A trotting boy passed up the way
   And roused me from my thought;
I called to him, and showed where lay
   A spot I shyly sought.

“A summer-house fair stands hidden where
   You see the moonlight thrown;
Go, tell me if within it there
   A lady sits alone.”

He half demurred, but took the track,
   And silence held the scene;
I saw his figure rambling back;
   I asked him if he had been.

“A man asked what my brains were worth;
   The house, he said, grew rotten,
And was pulled down before my birth,
   And is almost forgotten!”

My right mind woke, and I stood dumb;
   Forty years’ frost and flower
Had fleeted since I’d used to come
   To meet her in that bower.

   “It is sad that so many of worth,
   Still in the flesh,” soughed the yew,
“Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth
      Secludes from view.

   “They ride their diurnal round
   Each day-span’s sum of hours
In peerless ease, without jolt or bound
      Or ache like ours.

   “If the living could but hear
   What is heard by my roots as they creep
Round the restful flock, and the things said there,
      No one would weep.”

   “‘Now set among the wise,’
   They say: ‘Enlarged in scope,
That no God trumpet us to rise
      We truly hope.’”

   For Life I had never cared greatly,
      As worth a man’s while;
      Peradventures unsought,
   Peradventures that finished in nought,
Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately
      Unwon by its style.

   In earliest years—why I know not—
      I viewed it askance;
      Conditions of doubt,
   Conditions that leaked slowly out,
May haply have bent me to stand and to show not
      Much zest for its dance.

   Anew I found nought to set eyes on,
      When, lifting its hand,
      It uncloaked a star,
   Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar,
And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon
      As bright as a brand.

   And so, the rough highway forgetting,
      I pace hill and dale
      Regarding the sky,
   Regarding the vision on high,
And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting
      My pilgrimage fail.

What of the faith and fire within us
   Men who march away
   Ere the barn-cocks say
   Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
   Men who march away?

Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
   Friend with the musing eye,
   Who watch us stepping by
   With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
   Friend with the musing eye?

Nay.  We well see what we are doing,
   Though some may not see—
   Dalliers as they be—
   England’s need are we;
Her distress would leave us rueing:
Nay.  We well see what we are doing,
   Though some may not see!

Hence the faith and fire within us
   Men who march away
   Ere the barn-cocks say
   Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
Hence the faith and fire within us
   Men who march away.

September 5, 1914.

[He travels southward, and looks around;]
I journeyed from my native spot
   Across the south sea shine,
And found that people in hall and cot
Laboured and suffered each his lot
   Even as I did mine.

[and cannot discern the boundary]
Thus noting them in meads and marts
   It did not seem to me
That my dear country with its hearts,
Minds, yearnings, worse and better parts
   Had ended with the sea.

[of his native country;]
I further and further went anon,
   As such I still surveyed,
And further yet—yea, on and on,
And all the men I looked upon
   Had heart-strings fellow-made.

[or where his duties to his fellow-creatures end;]
I traced the whole terrestrial round,
   Homing the other side;
Then said I, “What is there to bound
My denizenship?  It seems I have found
   Its scope to be world-wide.”

1913.

“O England, may God punish thee!”
—Is it that Teuton genius flowers
Only to breathe malignity
Upon its friend of earlier hours?
—We have eaten your bread, you have eaten ours,
We have loved your burgs, your pines’ green moan,
Fair Rhine-stream, and its storied towers;
Your shining souls of deathless dowers
Have won us as they were our own:

We have nursed no dreams to shed your blood,
We have matched your might not rancorously,
Save a flushed few whose blatant mood
You heard and marked as well as we
To tongue not in their country’s key;
But yet you cry with face aflame,
“O England, may God punish thee!”
And foul in onward history,
And present sight, your ancient name.

Autumn 1914.

I dreamt that people from the Land of Chimes
Arrived one autumn morning with their bells,
To hoist them on the towers and citadels
Of my own country, that the musical rhymes

Rung by them into space at meted times
Amid the market’s daily stir and stress,
And the night’s empty star-lit silentness,
Might solace souls of this and kindred climes.

Then I awoke; and lo, before me stood
The visioned ones, but pale and full of fear;
From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend,

No carillons in their train.  Foes of mad mood
Had shattered these to shards amid the gear
Of ravaged roof, and smouldering gable-end.

October 18, 1914.

   Seven millions stand
Emaciate, in that ancient Delta-land:—
We here, full-charged with our own maimed and dead,
And coiled in throbbing conflicts slow and sore,
Can poorly soothe these ails unmerited
Of souls forlorn upon the facing shore!—
Where naked, gaunt, in endless band on band
   Seven millions stand.

   No man can say
To your great country that, with scant delay,
You must, perforce, ease them in their loud need:
We know that nearer first your duty lies;
But—is it much to ask that you let plead
Your lovingkindness with you—wooing-wise—
Albeit that aught you owe, and must repay,
   No man can say?

December 1914.

I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like “Thu bist,” “Er war,”

“Ich woll,” “Er sholl,” and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month’s moon gird
At England’s very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.

Then seemed a Heart crying: “Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,

“Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly.”

April 1915.

“Would that I’d not drawn breath here!” some one said,
“To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds,
Where purposelessly month by month proceeds
A play so sorely shaped and blood-bespread.”

Yet had his spark not quickened, but lain dead
To the gross spectacles of this our day,
And never put on the proffered cloak of clay,
He had but known not things now manifested;

Life would have swirled the same.  Morns would have dawned
On the uprooting by the night-gun’s stroke
Of what the yester noonshine brought to flower;

Brown martial brows in dying throes have wanned
Despite his absence; hearts no fewer been broke
By Empery’s insatiate lust of power.

1915.

“Instigator of the ruin—
   Whichsoever thou mayst be
Of the masterful of Europe
   That contrived our misery—
Hear the wormwood-worded greeting
   From each city, shore, and lea
      Of thy victims:
   “Conqueror, all hail to thee!”

“Yea: ‘All hail!’ we grimly shout thee
   That wast author, fount, and head
Of these wounds, whoever proven
   When our times are throughly read.
‘May thy loved be slighted, blighted,
   And forsaken,’ be it said
      By thy victims,
   ‘And thy children beg their bread!’

August 1915.

   Orion swung southward aslant
   Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned,
   The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant
   With the heather that twitched in the wind;
But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these,
Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow,
And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.

   When the heath wore the robe of late summer,
   And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the sun,
   Hung red by the door, a quick comer
   Brought tidings that marching was done
For him who had joined in that game overseas
Where Death stood to win, though his name was to borrow
A brightness therefrom not to fade on the morrow.

September 1915.

Often when warring for he wist not what,
An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak,
Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,
And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot;

Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgot
The deed of grace amid the roar and reek;
Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeak
He there has reached, although he has known it not.

For natural mindsight, triumphing in the act
Over the throes of artificial rage,
Has thuswise muffled victory’s peal of pride,
Rended to ribands policy’s specious page
That deals but with evasion, code, and pact,
And war’s apology wholly stultified.

1915.

   When battles were fought
With a chivalrous sense of Should and Ought,
   In spirit men said,
   “End we quick or dead,
   Honour is some reward!
Let us fight fair—for our own best or worst;
   So, Gentlemen of the Guard,
      Fire first!”

   In the open they stood,
Man to man in his knightlihood:
   They would not deign
   To profit by a stain
   On the honourable rules,
Knowing that practise perfidy no man durst
   Who in the heroic schools
      Was nurst.

1915.

Up and be doing, all who have a hand
To lift, a back to bend.  It must not be
In times like these that vaguely linger we
To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land

Untended as a wild of weeds and sand.
—Say, then, “I come!” and go, O women and men
Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen;
That scareless, scathless, England still may stand.

Would years but let me stir as once I stirred
At many a dawn to take the forward track,
And with a stride plunged on to enterprize,

I now would speed like yester wind that whirred
Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack,
So loud for promptness all around outcries!

March 1917.

The dead woman lay in her first night’s grave,
And twilight fell from the clouds’ concave,
And those she had asked to forgive forgave.

The woman passing came to a pause
By the heaped white shapes of wreath and cross,
And looked upon where the other was.

And as she mused there thus spoke she:
“Never your countenance did I see,
But you’ve been a good good friend to me!”

Rose a plaintive voice from the sod below:
“O woman whose accents I do not know,
What is it that makes you approve me so?”

“O dead one, ere my soldier went,
I heard him saying, with warm intent,
To his friend, when won by your blandishment:

“‘To call my own this new-found pearl,
Whose eyes have the light, whose lips the curl,
I always have looked for in a girl!’

“—And this is why that by ceasing to be—
Though never your countenance did I see—
You prove you a good good friend to me;

“And I pray each hour for your soul’s repose
In gratitude for your joining those
No lover will clasp when his campaigns close.”

Away she turned, when arose to her eye
A martial phantom of gory dye,
That said, with a thin and far-off sigh:

“O sweetheart, neither shall I clasp you,
For the foe this day has pierced me through,
And sent me to where she is.  Adieu!—

“And forget not when the night-wind’s whine
Calls over this turf where her limbs recline,
That it travels on to lament by mine.”

1915.

I

   Phantasmal fears,
   And the flap of the flame,
   And the throb of the clock,
   And a loosened slate,
   And the blind night’s drone,
Which tiredly the spectral pines intone!

II

And the blood in my ears
Strumming always the same,
And the gable-cock
With its fitful grate,
And myself, alone.

III

The twelfth hour nears
Hand-hid, as in shame;
I undo the lock,
And listen, and wait
For the Young Unknown.

In the dark there careers—
As if Death astride came
To numb all with his knock—
A horse at mad rate
Over rut and stone.

V

No figure appears,
No call of my name,
No sound but “Tic-toc”
Without check.  Past the gate
It clatters—is gone.

VI

What rider it bears
There is none to proclaim;
And the Old Year has struck,
And, scarce animate,
The New makes moan.

VII

   Maybe that “More Tears!—
   More Famine and Flame—
   More Severance and Shock!”
   Is the order from Fate
   That the Rider speeds on
To pale Europe; and tiredly the pines intone.

1915–1916.

   I met a man when night was nigh,
   Who said, with shining face and eye
   Like Moses’ after Sinai:—

   “I have seen the Moulder of Monarchies,
      Realms, peoples, plains and hills,
   Sitting upon the sunlit seas!—
   And, as He sat, soliloquies
Fell from Him like an antiphonic breeze
      That pricks the waves to thrills.

   “Meseemed that of the maimed and dead
      Mown down upon the globe,—
   Their plenteous blooms of promise shed
   Ere fruiting-time—His words were said,
Sitting against the western web of red
      Wrapt in His crimson robe.

   “And I could catch them now and then:
      —‘Why let these gambling clans
   Of human Cockers, pit liege men
   From mart and city, dale and glen,
In death-mains, but to swell and swell again
      Their swollen All-Empery plans,

   “‘With violence the lands are spread
      Even as in Israel’s day,
   And it repenteth me I bred
   Chartered armipotents lust-led
To feuds . . . Yea, grieves my heart, as then I said,
      To see their evil way!’

   —“The utterance grew, and flapped like flame,
      And further speech I feared;
   But no Celestial tongued acclaim,
   And no huzzas from earthlings came,
And the heavens mutely masked as ’twere in shame
      Till daylight disappeared.”

Thus ended he as night rode high—
The man of shining face and eye,
Like Moses’ after Sinai.

1916.

I looked up from my writing,
   And gave a start to see,
As if rapt in my inditing,
   The moon’s full gaze on me.

Her meditative misty head
   Was spectral in its air,
And I involuntarily said,
   “What are you doing there?”

“Oh, I’ve been scanning pond and hole
   And waterway hereabout
For the body of one with a sunken soul
   Who has put his life-light out.

“Did you hear his frenzied tattle?
   It was sorrow for his son
Who is slain in brutish battle,
   Though he has injured none.

Her temper overwrought me,
   And I edged to shun her view,
For I felt assured she thought me
   One who should drown him too.

   How it came to an end!
The meeting afar from the crowd,
And the love-looks and laughters unpenned,
The parting when much was avowed,
   How it came to an end!

   It came to an end;
Yes, the outgazing over the stream,
With the sun on each serpentine bend,
Or, later, the luring moon-gleam;
   It came to an end.

   It came to an end,
The housebuilding, furnishing, planting,
As if there were ages to spend
In welcoming, feasting, and jaunting;
   It came to an end.

   It came to an end,
That journey of one day a week:
(“It always goes on,” said a friend,
“Just the same in bright weathers or bleak;”)
   But it came to an end.

   Well, it came to an end
Quite silently—stopped without jerk;
Better close no prevision could lend;
Working out as One planned it should work
   Ere it came to an end.

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
   And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
   “He was a man who used to notice such things”?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
   The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
   “To him this must have been a familiar sight.”

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
   Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
   “He was one who had an eye for such mysteries”?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
   And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
   “He hears it not now, but used to notice such things”?

FOOTNOTES