Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

The bars are thick with drops that show
   As they gather themselves from the fog
Like silver buttons ranged in a row,
And as evenly spaced as if measured, although
   They fall at the feeblest jog.

They load the leafless hedge hard by,
   And the blades of last year’s grass,
While the fallow ploughland turned up nigh
In raw rolls, clammy and clogging lie—
   Too clogging for feet to pass.

How dry it was on a far-back day
   When straws hung the hedge and around,
When amid the sheaves in amorous play
In curtained bonnets and light array
   Bloomed a bevy now underground!

Bockhampton Lane.

I saw him pass as the new day dawned,
   Murmuring some musical phrase;
Horses were drinking and floundering in the pond,
   And the tired stars thinned their gaze;
Yet these were not the spectacles at all that he conned,
   But an inner one, giving out rays.

Such was the thing in his eye, walking there,
   The very and visible thing,
A close light, displacing the gray of the morning air,
   And the tokens that the dark was taking wing;
And was it not the radiance of a purpose rare
   That might ripe to its accomplishing?

1915.

   Something do I see
Above the fog that sheets the mead,
A figure like to life indeed,
Moving along with spectre-speed,
   Seen by none but me.

   O the vision keen!—
Tripping along to me for love
As in the flesh it used to move,
Only its hat and plume above
   The evening fog-fleece seen.

   In the day-fall wan,
When nighted birds break off their song,
Mere ghostly head it skims along,
Just as it did when warm and strong,
   Body seeming gone.

   Such it is I see
Above the fog that sheets the mead—
Yea, that which once could breathe and plead!—
Skimming along with spectre-speed
   To a last tryst with me.

The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
   Above the river-gleam
   In the wet June’s last beam:
Like little crossbows animate
The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
   Above the river-gleam.

Planing up shavings of crystal spray
   A moor-hen darted out
   From the bank thereabout,
And through the stream-shine ripped his way;
Planing up shavings of crystal spray
   A moor-hen darted out.

Closed were the kingcups; and the mead
   Dripped in monotonous green,
   Though the day’s morning sheen
Had shown it golden and honeybee’d;
Closed were the kingcups; and the mead
   Dripped in monotonous green.

   Lifelong to be
Seemed the fair colour of the time;
That there was standing shadowed near
A spirit who sang to the gentle chime
Of the self-struck notes, I did not hear,
   I did not see.

   Thus did it sing
To the mindless lyre that played indoors
As she came to listen for me without:
“O value what the nonce outpours—
This best of life—that shines about
   Your welcoming!”

   I had slowed along
After the torrid hours were done,
Though still the posts and walls and road
Flung back their sense of the hot-faced sun,
And had walked by Stourside Mill, where broad
   Stream-lilies throng.

   At whiles would flit
Swart bats, whose wings, be-webbed and tanned,
Whirred like the wheels of ancient clocks:
She laughed a hailing as she scanned
Me in the gloom, the tuneful box
   Intoning it.

   Lifelong to be
I thought it.  That there watched hard by
A spirit who sang to the indoor tune,
“O make the most of what is nigh!”
I did not hear in my dull soul-swoon—
   I did not see.

Reticulations creep upon the slack stream’s face
   When the wind skims irritably past,
The current clucks smartly into each hollow place
That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier’s sodden base;
   The floating-lily leaves rot fast.

On a roof stand the swallows ranged in wistful waiting rows,
   Till they arrow off and drop like stones
Among the eyot-withies at whose foot the river flows;
And beneath the roof is she who in the dark world shows
   As a lattice-gleam when midnight moans.

“The king and the queen will stand to the child;
   ’Twill be handed down in song;
And it’s no more than their deserving,
With my lord so faithful at Court so long,
      And so staunch and strong.

“O never before was known such a thing!
   ’Twill be a grand time for all;
And the beef will be a whole-roast bullock,
And the servants will have a feast in the hall,
      And the ladies a ball.

“While from Jordan’s stream by a traveller,
   In a flagon of silver wrought,
And by caravan, stage-coach, wain, and waggon
A precious trickle has been brought,
      Clear as when caught.”

But when they went to the silk-lined cot
   The child was found to have died.
“What’s now to be done?  We can disappoint not
The king and queen!” the family cried
      With eyes spread wide.

“Even now they approach the chestnut-drive!
   The service must be read.”
“Well, since we can’t christen the child alive,
By God we shall have to christen him dead!”
      The marquis said.

Thus, breath-forsaken, a corpse was taken
   To the private chapel—yea—
And the king knew not, nor the queen, God wot,
That they answered for one returned to clay
      At the font that day.

I know not how it may be with others
   Who sit amid relics of householdry
That date from the days of their mothers’ mothers,
   But well I know how it is with me
      Continually.

I see the hands of the generations
   That owned each shiny familiar thing
In play on its knobs and indentations,
   And with its ancient fashioning
      Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,
   As in a mirror a candle-flame
Shows images of itself, each frailer
   As it recedes, though the eye may frame
      Its shape the same.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing—
   As whilom—just over the strings by the nut,
The tip of a bow receding, advancing
   In airy quivers, as if it would cut
      The plaintive gut.

And I see a face by that box for tinder,
   Glowing forth in fits from the dark,
And fading again, as the linten cinder
   Kindles to red at the flinty spark,
      Or goes out stark.

Well, well.  It is best to be up and doing,
   The world has no use for one to-day
Who eyes things thus—no aim pursuing!
   He should not continue in this stay,
      But sink away.

I saw it—pink and white—revealed
   Upon the white and green;
The white and green was a daisied field,
   The pink and white Ethleen.

And as I looked it seemed in kind
   That difference they had none;
The two fair bodiments combined
   As varied miens of one.

A sense that, in some mouldering year,
   As one they both would lie,
Made me move quickly on to her
   To pass the pale thought by.

She laughed and said: “Out there, to me,
   You looked so weather-browned,
And brown in clothes, you seemed to be
   Made of the dusty ground!”

“I am playing my oldest tunes,” declared she,
   “All the old tunes I know,—
Those I learnt ever so long ago.”
—Why she should think just then she’d play them
   Silence cloaks like snow.

When I returned from the town at nightfall
   Notes continued to pour
As when I had left two hours before:
“It’s the very last time,” she said in closing;
   “From now I play no more.”

A few morns onward found her fading,
   And, as her life outflew,
I thought of her playing her tunes right through;
And I felt she had known of what was coming,
   And wondered how she knew.

1912.

I

“You on the tower of my factory—
   What do you see up there?
Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings
   Advancing to reach me here?”
—“Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings
   Advancing to reach you here.”

II

“Good.  Soon I’ll come and ask you
   To tell me again thereon . . .
Well, what is he doing now?  Hoi, there!”
   —“He still is flying on.”
“Ah, waiting till I have full-finished.
   Good.  Tell me again anon . . .

III

“And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home.”

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,
And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;
I view them talking in quiet glee
As they drop down towards the puffins’ lair
By the roughest of ways;
But another with the three rides on, I see,
   Whom I like not to be there!

No: it’s not anybody you think of.  Next
A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream
Where two sit happy and half in the dark:
They read, helped out by a frail-wick’d gleam,
Some rhythmic text;
But one sits with them whom they don’t mark,
   One I’m wishing could not be there.

No: it’s not from the stranger you met once.  Ah,
Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;
People on a lawn—quite a crowd of them.  Yes,
And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;
And they say, “Hurrah!”
To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless,
   Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it’s not the pale Form your imagings raise,
That waits on us all at a destined time,
It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed,
O that it were such a shape sublime;
In these latter days!
It is that under which best lives corrode;
   Would, would it could not be there!

   The fire advances along the log
      Of the tree we felled,
Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck
   Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

   The fork that first my hand would reach
      And then my foot
In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now
   Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

   Where the bark chars is where, one year,
      It was pruned, and bled—
Then overgrew the wound.  But now, at last,
   Its growings all have stagnated.

December 1915.

Ah—it’s the skeleton of a lady’s sunshade,
   Here at my feet in the hard rock’s chink,
   Merely a naked sheaf of wires!—
   Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers
   Since it was silked in its white or pink.

Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade,
   No more a screen from the weakest ray;
   Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes,
   Nothing but rusty bones as it lies
   In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.

Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade
   Up and down this seaside place?—
   Little thumb standing against its stem,
   Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem,
   Softening yet more the already soft face!

Swanage Cliffs.

   When the walls were red
   That now are seen
   To be overspread
   With a mouldy green,
   A fresh fair head
   Would often lean
   From the sunny casement
   And scan the scene,
While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.

   But storms have raged
   Those walls about,
   And the head has aged
   That once looked out;
   And zest is suaged
   And trust is doubt,
   And slow effacement
   Is rife throughout,
While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,
   I saw a little cage
That jailed a goldfinch.  All was silence save
   Its hops from stage to stage.

There was inquiry in its wistful eye,
   And once it tried to sing;
Of him or her who placed it there, and why,
   No one knew anything.

“That same first fiddler who leads the orchéstra to-night
   Here fiddled four decades of years ago;
He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight,
Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.

“But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier,
   And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;
Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre,
In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.

* * *

Ah, but he played staunchly—that fiddler—whoever he was,
   With the innocent heart and the soul-touching string:
May he find the Fair Haven!  For did he not smile with good cause?
Yes; gamuts that graced forty years’-flight were not a small thing!

They crush together—a rustling heap of flesh—
Of more than flesh, a heap of souls; and then
      They part, enmesh,
   And crush together again,
Like the pink petals of a too sanguine rose
   Frightened shut just when it blows.

Though all alike in their tinsel livery,
And indistinguishable at a sweeping glance,
      They muster, maybe,
   As lives wide in irrelevance;
A world of her own has each one underneath,
   Detached as a sword from its sheath.

Daughters, wives, mistresses; honest or false, sold, bought;
Hearts of all sizes; gay, fond, gushing, or penned,
      Various in thought
      Of lover, rival, friend;
Links in a one-pulsed chain, all showing one smile,
   Yet severed so many a mile!

      The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,
         The sun grows passionate-eyed,
   And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;
         As strenuously we stride,—
Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,
            All beating by.

      The air is shaken, the high-road hot,
         Shadowless swoons the day,
   The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not
         We on our urgent way,—
Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,
            But one—elsewhere.

      The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in
         At night-time noiselessly,
   The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin,
            And yet on the beat are we,—
Two of us; fair She, I.  But no more left to go
               The track we know.

      Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,
         The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,
   The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,
            Yet I still stalk the course,—
One of us . . . Dark and fair He, dark and fair She, gone:
               The rest—anon.

I travel on by barren farms,
And gulls glint out like silver flecks
Against a cloud that speaks of wrecks,
And bellies down with black alarms.
I say: “Thus from my lady’s arms
I go; those arms I love the best!”
The wind replies from dip and rise,
“Nay; toward her arms thou journeyest.”

A distant verge morosely gray
Appears, while clots of flying foam
Break from its muddy monochrome,
And a light blinks up far away.
I sigh: “My eyes now as all day
Behold her ebon loops of hair!”
Like bursting bonds the wind responds,
“Nay, wait for tresses flashing fair!”

The all-prevailing clouds exclude
The one quick timorous transient star;
The waves outside where breakers are
Huzza like a mad multitude.
“Where the sun ups it, mist-imbued,”
I cry, “there reigns the star for me!”
The wind outshrieks from points and peaks:
“Here, westward, where it downs, mean ye!”

Yonder the headland, vulturine,
Snores like old Skrymer in his sleep,
And every chasm and every steep
Blackens as wakes each pharos-shine.
“I roam, but one is safely mine,”
I say.  “God grant she stay my own!”
Low laughs the wind as if it grinned:
“Thy Love is one thou’st not yet known.”

Rewritten from an old copy.

   They sing their dearest songs—
   He, she, all of them—yea,
   Treble and tenor and bass,
      And one to play;
   With the candles mooning each face . . .
      Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

   They clear the creeping moss—
   Elders and juniors—aye,
   Making the pathways neat
      And the garden gay;
   And they build a shady seat . . .
      Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white storm-birds wing across!

   They change to a high new house,
   He, she, all of them—aye,
   Clocks and carpets and chairs
      On the lawn all day,
   And brightest things that are theirs . . .
      Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

This after-sunset is a sight for seeing,
Cliff-heads of craggy cloud surrounding it.
   —And dwell you in that glory-show?
You may; for there are strange strange things in being,
      Stranger than I know.

Yet if that chasm of splendour claim your presence
Which glows between the ash cloud and the dun,
   How changed must be your mortal mould!
Changed to a firmament-riding earthless essence
      From what you were of old:

All too unlike the fond and fragile creature
Then known to me . . . Well, shall I say it plain?
   I would not have you thus and there,
But still would grieve on, missing you, still feature
      You as the one you were.

“Whenever you dress me dolls, mammy,
   Why do you dress them so,
And make them gallant soldiers,
   When never a one I know;
And not as gentle ladies
   With frills and frocks and curls,
As people dress the dollies
   Of other little girls?”

Ah—why did she not answer:—
   “Because your mammy’s heed
Is always gallant soldiers,
   As well may be, indeed.
One of them was your daddy,
   His name I must not tell;
He’s not the dad who lives here,
   But one I love too well.”

   No more summer for Molly and me;
      There is snow on the tree,
   And the blackbirds plump large as the rooks are, almost,
      And the water is hard
Where they used to dip bills at the dawn ere her figure was lost
      To these coasts, now my prison close-barred.

   No more planting by Molly and me
      Where the beds used to be
   Of sweet-william; no training the clambering rose
      By the framework of fir
Now bowering the pathway, whereon it swings gaily and blows
      As if calling commendment from her.

   No more singing by Molly to me
      In the evenings when she
   Was in mood and in voice, and the candles were lit,
      And past the porch-quoin
The rays would spring out on the laurels; and dumbledores hit
      On the pane, as if wishing to join.

   Where, then, is Molly, who’s no more with me?
      —As I stand on this lea,
   Thinking thus, there’s a many-flamed star in the air,
      That tosses a sign
That her glance is regarding its face from her home, so that there
      Her eyes may have meetings with mine.

The trees are afraid to put forth buds,
And there is timidity in the grass;
The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds,
   And whether next week will pass
Free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush
   Of barberry waiting to bloom.

Yet the snowdrop’s face betrays no gloom,
And the primrose pants in its heedless push,
Though the myrtle asks if it’s worth the fight
   This year with frost and rime
   To venture one more time
On delicate leaves and buttons of white
From the selfsame bough as at last year’s prime,
And never to ruminate on or remember
What happened to it in mid-December.

April 1917.

I

It is dark in the sky,
And silence is where
Our laughs rang high;
And recall do I
That One is out there.

II

The dawn is not nigh,
And the trees are bare,
And the waterways sigh
That a year has drawn by,
And Two are out there.

III

The wind drops to die
Like the phantom of Care
Too frail for a cry,
And heart brings to eye
That Three are out there.

This Life runs dry
That once ran rare
And rosy in dye,
And fleet the days fly,
And Four are out there.

V

Tired, tired am I
Of this earthly air,
And my wraith asks: Why,
Since these calm lie,
Are not Five out there?

December 1915.

I went and stood outside myself,
   Spelled the dark sky
   And ship-lights nigh,
And grumbling winds that passed thereby.

Then next inside myself I looked,
   And there, above
   All, shone my Love,
That nothing matched the image of.

Beyond myself again I ranged;
   And saw the free
   Life by the sea,
And folk indifferent to me.

O ’twas a charm to draw within
   Thereafter, where
   But she was; care
For one thing only, her hid there!

The boats, the sands, the esplanade,
   The laughing crowd;
   Light-hearted, loud
Greetings from some not ill-endowed;

The evening sunlit cliffs, the talk,
   Hailings and halts,
   The keen sea-salts,
The band, the Morgenblätter Waltz.

Still, when at night I drew inside
   Forward she came,
   Sad, but the same
As when I first had known her name.

Then rose a time when, as by force,
   Outwardly wooed
   By contacts crude,
Her image in abeyance stood . . .

At last I said: This outside life
   Shall not endure;
   I’ll seek the pure
Thought-world, and bask in her allure.

I sought and sought.  But O her soul
   Has not since thrown
   Upon my own
One beam!  Yea, she is gone, is gone.

From an old note.

She sped through the door
And, following in haste,
And stirred to the core,
I entered hot-faced;
But I could not find her,
No sign was behind her.
“Where is she?” I said:
—“Who?” they asked that sat there;
“Not a soul’s come in sight.”
—“A maid with red hair.”
—“Ah.”  They paled.  “She is dead.
People see her at night,
But you are the first
On whom she has burst
In the keen common light.”

“Sir, will you let me give you a ride?
Nox Venit, and the heath is wide.”
—My phaeton-lantern shone on one
   Young, fair, even fresh,
   But burdened with flesh:
A leathern satchel at his side,
His breathings short, his coat undone.

’Twas as if his corpulent figure slopped
With the shake of his walking when he stopped,
And, though the night’s pinch grew acute,
   He wore but a thin
   Wind-thridded suit,
Yet well-shaped shoes for walking in,
Artistic beaver, cane gold-topped.

His voice was that of a man refined,
A man, one well could feel, of mind,
Quite winning in its musical ease;
   But in mould maligned
   By some disease;
And I asked again.  But he shook his head;
Then, as if more were due, he said:—

“A student was I—of Schopenhauer,
Kant, Hegel,—and the fountained bower
Of the Muses, too, knew my regard:
   But ah—I fear me
   The grave gapes near me! . . .
Would I could this gross sheath discard,
And rise an ethereal shape, unmarred!”

How I remember him!—his short breath,
His aspect, marked for early death,
As he dropped into the night for ever;
   One caught in his prime
   Of high endeavour;
From all philosophies soon to sever
Through an unconscienced trick of Time!

   “Who’s in the next room?—who?
      I seemed to see
Somebody in the dawning passing through,
      Unknown to me.”
“Nay: you saw nought.  He passed invisibly.”

   “Who’s in the next room?—who?
      I seem to hear
Somebody muttering firm in a language new
      That chills the ear.”
“No: you catch not his tongue who has entered there.”

   “Who’s in the next room?—who?
      I seem to feel
His breath like a clammy draught, as if it drew
      From the Polar Wheel.”
“No: none who breathes at all does the door conceal.”

At a bygone Western country fair
I saw a giant led by a dwarf
With a red string like a long thin scarf;
How much he was the stronger there
   The giant seemed unaware.

And then I saw that the giant was blind,
And the dwarf a shrewd-eyed little thing;
The giant, mild, timid, obeyed the string
As if he had no independent mind,
   Or will of any kind.

Wherever the dwarf decided to go
At his heels the other trotted meekly,
(Perhaps—I know not—reproaching weakly)
Like one Fate bade that it must be so,
   Whether he wished or no.

Various sights in various climes
I have seen, and more I may see yet,
But that sight never shall I forget,
And have thought it the sorriest of pantomimes,
   If once, a hundred times!

   “Why do you weep there, O sweet lady,
   Why do you weep before that brass?—
(I’m a mere student sketching the mediaeval)
   Is some late death lined there, alas?—
Your father’s? . . . Well, all pay the debt that paid he!”

   “Young man, O must I tell!—My husband’s!  And under
   His name I set mine, and my death!—
Its date left vacant till my heirs should fill it,
   Stating me faithful till my last breath.”
—“Madam, that you are a widow wakes my wonder!”

   “O wait!  For last month I—remarried!
   And now I fear ’twas a deed amiss.
We’ve just come home.  And I am sick and saddened
   At what the new one will say to this;
And will he think—think that I should have tarried?

When I looked up at my love-birds
   That Sunday afternoon,
   There was in their tiny tune
A dying fetch like broken words,
When I looked up at my love-birds
   That Sunday afternoon.

When he, too, scanned the love-birds
   On entering there that day,
   ’Twas as if he had nought to say
Of his long journey citywards,
When he, too, scanned the love-birds,
   On entering there that day.

And billed and billed the love-birds,
   As ’twere in fond despair
   At the stress of silence where
Had once been tones in tenor thirds,
And billed and billed the love-birds
   As ’twere in fond despair.

I went by footpath and by stile
   Beyond where bustle ends,
Strayed here a mile and there a mile
   And called upon some friends.

On certain ones I had not seen
   For years past did I call,
And then on others who had been
   The oldest friends of all.

It was the time of midsummer
   When they had used to roam;
But now, though tempting was the air,
   I found them all at home.

I spoke to one and other of them
   By mound and stone and tree
Of things we had done ere days were dim,
   But they spoke not to me.

Warm yellowy-green
In the blue serene,
How they skip and sway
On this autumn day!
They cannot know
What has happened below,—
That their boughs down there
Are already quite bare,
That their own will be
When a week has passed,—
For they jig as in glee
To this very last.

But no; there lies
At times in their tune
A note that cries
What at first I fear
I did not hear:
“O we remember
At each wind’s hollo—
Though life holds yet—
We go hence soon,
For ’tis November;
—But that you follow
You may forget!”

“It never looks like summer here
   On Beeny by the sea.”
But though she saw its look as drear,
   Summer it seemed to me.

It never looks like summer now
   Whatever weather’s there;
But ah, it cannot anyhow,
   On Beeny or elsewhere!

   Boscastle,
March 8, 1913.

“The house is bleak and cold
   Built so new for me!
All the winds upon the wold
   Search it through for me;
No screening trees abound,
And the curious eyes around
   Keep on view for me.”

“My Love, I am planting trees
   As a screen for you
Both from winds, and eyes that tease
   And peer in for you.
Only wait till they have grown,
No such bower will be known
   As I mean for you.”

“Then I will bear it, Love,
   And will wait,” she said.
—So, with years, there grew a grove.
   “Skill how great!” she said.
“As you wished, Dear?”—“Yes, I see!
But—I’m dying; and for me
   ’Tis too late,” she said.

   There was merry-making
   When the first dart fell
   As a heralding,—
Till grinned the fully bared thing,
   And froze like a spell—
      Like a spell.

   Innocent was she,
   Innocent was I,
   Too simple we!
Before us we did not see,
   Nearing, aught wry—
      Aught wry!

   I can tell it not now,
   It was long ago;
   And such things cow;
But that is why and how
   Two lives were so—
      Were so.

There was a glorious time
At an epoch of my prime;
Mornings beryl-bespread,
And evenings golden-red;
   Nothing gray:
And in my heart I said,
“However this chanced to be,
It is too full for me,
Too rare, too rapturous, rash,
Its spell must close with a crash
   Some day!”

The radiance went on
Anon and yet anon,
And sweetness fell around
Like manna on the ground.
   “I’ve no claim,”
Said I, “to be thus crowned:
I am not worthy this:—
Must it not go amiss?—
Well . . . let the end foreseen
Come duly!—I am serene.”
   —And it came.

No use hoping, or feeling vext,
Tugged by a force above or under
Like some fantocine, much I wonder
What I shall find me doing next!

Shall I be rushing where bright eyes be?
Shall I be suffering sorrows seven?
Shall I be watching the stars of heaven,
Thinking one of them looks like thee?

Part is mine of the general Will,
Cannot my share in the sum of sources
Bend a digit the poise of forces,
And a fair desire fulfil?

Nov. 1893.

“The very last time I ever was here,” he said,
“I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead.”
—He was a man I had met with somewhere before,
But how or when I now could recall no more.

“The hazy mazy moonlight at one in the morning
Spread out as a sea across the frozen snow,
Glazed to live sparkles like the great breastplate adorning
The priest of the Temple, with Urim and Thummim aglow.

“The yew-tree arms, glued hard to the stiff stark air,
Hung still in the village sky as theatre-scenes
When I came by the churchyard wall, and halted there
At a shut-in sound of fiddles and tambourines.

“Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see,
As it were through a crystal roof, a great company
Of the dead minueting in stately step underground
To the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound.

“It was ‘Eden New,’ and dancing they sang in a chore,
‘We are out of it all!—yea, in Little-Ease cramped no more!’
And their shrouded figures pacing with joy I could see
As you see the stage from the gallery.  And they had no heed of me.

I should not have shown in the flesh,
I ought to have gone as a ghost;
It was awkward, unseemly almost,
Standing solidly there as when fresh,
   Pink, tiny, crisp-curled,
   My pinions yet furled
   From the winds of the world.

After waiting so many a year
To wait longer, and go as a sprite
From the tomb at the mid of some night
Was the right, radiant way to appear;
   Not as one wanzing weak
   From life’s roar and reek,
   His rest still to seek:

But to show in the afternoon sun,
With an aspect of hollow-eyed care,
When none wished to see me come there,
Was a garish thing, better undone.
   Yes; wrong was the way;
   But yet, let me say,
   I may right it—some day.

I thought, my Heart, that you had healed
Of those sore smartings of the past,
And that the summers had oversealed
   All mark of them at last.
But closely scanning in the night
I saw them standing crimson-bright
      Just as she made them:
      Nothing could fade them;
      Yea, I can swear
      That there they were—
      They still were there!

Then the Vision of her who cut them came,
And looking over my shoulder said,
“I am sure you deal me all the blame
   For those sharp smarts and red;
But meet me, dearest, to-morrow night,
In the churchyard at the moon’s half-height,
      And so strange a kiss
      Shall be mine, I wis,
      That you’ll cease to know
      If the wounds you show
      Be there or no!”

At last I entered a long dark gallery,
   Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side
   Were the bodies of men from far and wide
Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.

“The sense of waiting here strikes strong;
   Everyone’s waiting, waiting, it seems to me;
   What are you waiting for so long?—
What is to happen?” I said.

“O we are waiting for one called God,” said they,
   “(Though by some the Will, or Force, or Laws;
   And, vaguely, by some, the Ultimate Cause;)
Waiting for him to see us before we are clay.
Yes; waiting, waiting, for God to know it” . . .

“Since he made us humble pioneers
Of himself in consciousness of Life’s tears,
It needs no mighty prophecy
To tell that what he could mindlessly show
His creatures, he himself will know.

“By some still close-cowled mystery
We have reached feeling faster than he,
But he will overtake us anon,
   If the world goes on.”

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,
   And the roof-lamp’s oily flame
Played down on his listless form and face,
Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,
      Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy
   Had a ticket stuck; and a string
Around his neck bore the key of his box,
That twinkled gleams of the lamp’s sad beams
      Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy
   Towards a world unknown,
Who calmly, as if incurious quite
On all at stake, can undertake
      This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,
   Our rude realms far above,
Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete
This region of sin that you find you in,
      But are not of?

At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn,
      The moon was at the window-square,
   Deedily brooding in deformed decay—
   The curve hewn off her cheek as by an adze;
At the shiver of morning a little before the false dawn
   So the moon looked in there.

Her speechless eyeing reached across the chamber,
      Where lay two souls opprest,
   One a white lady sighing, “Why am I sad!”
   To him who sighed back, “Sad, my Love, am I!”
And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber,
   And these two reft of rest.

With a start they saw that it was an old-time pier-glass
      Which had stood on the mantel near,
   Its silvering blemished,—yes, as if worn away
   By the eyes of the countless dead who had smirked at it
Ere these two ever knew that old-time pier-glass
   And its vague and vacant leer.

“Long years of sorrow this means!” breathed the lady
      As they retired.  “Alas!”
   And she lifted one pale hand across her eyes.
   “Don’t trouble, Love; it’s nothing,” the bridegroom said.
“Long years of sorrow for us!” murmured the lady,
   “Or ever this evil pass!”

And the Spirits Ironic laughed behind the wainscot,
      And the Spirits of Pity sighed.
   “It’s good,” said the Spirits Ironic, “to tickle their minds
   With a portent of their wedlock’s after-grinds.”
And the Spirits of Pity sighed behind the wainscot,
   “It’s a portent we cannot abide!

When up aloft
I fly and fly,
I see in pools
The shining sky,
And a happy bird
Am I, am I!

When I descend
Towards their brink
I stand, and look,
And stoop, and drink,
And bathe my wings,
And chink and prink.

When winter frost
Makes earth as steel
I search and search
But find no meal,
And most unhappy
Then I feel.

I rose and went to Rou’tor Town
   With gaiety and good heart,
   And ardour for the start,
That morning ere the moon was down
That lit me off to Rou’tor Town
   With gaiety and good heart.

When sojourn soon at Rou’tor Town
   Wrote sorrows on my face,
   I strove that none should trace
The pale and gray, once pink and brown,
When sojourn soon at Rou’tor Town
   Wrote sorrows on my face.

The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town
   On him I’d loved so true
   I cannot tell anew:
But nought can quench, but nought can drown
The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town
   On him I’d loved so true!