Poems of the Past and the Present

Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,
And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon
Thou watch’dst each night the planets lift and lower;
Thou gleam’dst to Joshua’s pausing sun and moon,
And brav’dst the tokening sky when Cæsar’s power
Approached its bloody end: yea, saw’st that Noon
When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

In the battle-breathing jingle
   Of its forward-footing tune
I could see the armies mingle,
   And the columns cleft and hewn

III

On that far-famed spot by Lodi
   Where Napoleon clove his way
To his fame, when like a god he
   Bent the nations to his sway.

IV

Hence the tune came capering to me
   While I traced the Rhone and Po;
Nor could Milan’s Marvel woo me
   From the spot englamoured so.

V

And to-day, sunlit and smiling,
   Here I stand upon the scene,
With its saffron walls, dun tiling,
   And its meads of maiden green,

Even as when the trackway thundered
   With the charge of grenadiers,
And the blood of forty hundred
   Splashed its parapets and piers . . .

VII

Any ancient crone I’d toady
   Like a lass in young-eyed prime,
Could she tell some tale of Lodi
   At that moving mighty time.

VIII

So, I ask the wives of Lodi
   For traditions of that day;
But alas! not anybody
   Seems to know of such a fray.

IX

And they heed but transitory
   Marketings in cheese and meat,
Till I judge that Lodi’s story
   Is extinct in Lodi’s street.

Yet while here and there they thrid them
   In their zest to sell and buy,
Let me sit me down amid them
   And behold those thousands die . . .

XI

—Not a creature cares in Lodi
   How Napoleon swept each arch,
Or where up and downward trod he,
   Or for his memorial March!

XII

So that wherefore should I be here,
   Watching Adda lip the lea,
When the whole romance to see here
   Is the dream I bring with me?

XIII

And why sing “The Bridge of Lodi”
   As I sit thereon and swing,
When none shows by smile or nod he
   Guesses why or what I sing? . . .

Since all Lodi, low and head ones,
   Seem to pass that story by,
It may be the Lodi-bred ones
   Rate it truly, and not I.

XV

Once engrossing Bridge of Lodi,
   Is thy claim to glory gone?
Must I pipe a palinody,
   Or be silent thereupon?

XVI

And if here, from strand to steeple,
   Be no stone to fame the fight,
Must I say the Lodi people
   Are but viewing crime aright?

XVII

Nay; I’ll sing “The Bridge of Lodi”—
   That long-loved, romantic thing,
Though none show by smile or nod he
   Guesses why and what I sing!

I

My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy
Have left upon the centuried years.

For, wonning in these ancient lands,
Enchased and lettered as a tomb,
And scored with prints of perished hands,
And chronicled with dates of doom,
Though my own Being bear no bloom
I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,
Give past exemplars present room,
And their experience count as mine.

When mid-autumn’s moan shook the night-time,
   And sedges were horny,
And summer’s green wonderwork faltered
   On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell’ham-Firs way, where dimly
   Came wheeling around me
Those phantoms obscure and insistent
   That shadows unchain.

And, heeding, it awed me to gather
   That Nature herself there
Was breathing in aërie accents,
   With dirgeful refrain,

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,
   Had grieved her by holding
Her ancient high fame of perfection
   In doubt and disdain . . .

—“I had not proposed me a Creature
   (She soughed) so excelling
All else of my kingdom in compass
   And brightness of brain

“As to read my defects with a god-glance,
   Uncover each vestige
Of old inadvertence, annunciate
   Each flaw and each stain!

“Why loosened I olden control here
   To mechanize skywards,
Undeeming great scope could outshape in
   A globe of such grain?

“Man’s mountings of mind-sight I checked not,
   Till range of his vision
Has topped my intent, and found blemish
   Throughout my domain.

“He holds as inept his own soul-shell—
   My deftest achievement—
Contemns me for fitful inventions
   Ill-timed and inane:

“No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape,
   My moon as the Night-queen,
My stars as august and sublime ones
   That influences rain:

“‘Give me,’ he has said, ‘but the matter
   And means the gods lot her,
My brain could evolve a creation
   More seemly, more sane.’

—“If ever a naughtiness seized me
   To woo adulation
From creatures more keen than those crude ones
   That first formed my train—

“If inly a moment I murmured,
   ‘The simple praise sweetly,
But sweetlier the sage’—and did rashly
   Man’s vision unrein,

“From them my waste aimings and futile
   I subtly could cover;
‘Every best thing,’ said they, ‘to best purpose
   Her powers preordain.’—

“No more such! . . . My species are dwindling,
   My forests grow barren,
My popinjays fail from their tappings,
   My larks from their strain.

“My leopardine beauties are rarer,
   My tusky ones vanish,
My children have aped mine own slaughters
   To quicken my wane.

“Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes,
   And slimy distortions,
Let nevermore things good and lovely
   To me appertain;

      I said to Love,
“It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
      All else above;
Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One
Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,”
      I said to Love.

      I said to Love,
“Thou art not young, thou art not fair,
No faery darts, no cherub air,
      Nor swan, nor dove
Are thine; but features pitiless,
And iron daggers of distress,”
      I said to Love.

      “Depart then, Love! . . .
—Man’s race shall end, dost threaten thou?
The age to come the man of now
      Know nothing of?—
We fear not such a threat from thee;
We are too old in apathy!
Mankind shall cease.—So let it be,”
      I said to Love.

   The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
   To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
   To one of like degree.

   Nothing of tiniest worth
Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,
   Since the pale corpse-like birth
Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays—
   Dullest of dull-hued Days!

   Wanly upon the panes
The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yet
   Here, while Day’s presence wanes,
And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,
   He wakens my regret.

   —Yet, maybe, in some soul,
In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose,
   Or some intent upstole
Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows
   The world’s amendment flows;

   But which, benumbed at birth
By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be
   Embodied on the earth;
And undervoicings of this loss to man’s futurity
   May wake regret in me.

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven’s high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

Scene.—A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale

I

“O Time, whence comes the Mother’s moody look amid her labours,
   As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
   Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
      As of angel fallen from grace?”

—“Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:
   In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.
   The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly,
Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun
      Such deeds her hands have done.”

III

—“And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,
   These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves,
   Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features
Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,
      Distress into delights?”

—“Ah! know’st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,
   Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves?
   That sightless are those orbs of hers?—which bar to her omniscience
Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones
      Whereat all creation groans.

V

“She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,
   When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;
   Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;
Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch
      That the seers marvel much.

“Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;
   Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves;
   And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,
Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,
      For thou art of her clay.”

   O life with the sad seared face,
      I weary of seeing thee,
And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,
      And thy too-forced pleasantry!

   I know what thou would’st tell
      Of Death, Time, Destiny—
I have known it long, and know, too, well
      What it all means for me.

   I’ll tune me to the mood,
      And mumm with thee till eve;
And maybe what as interlude
      I feign, I shall believe!

I

   There dwells a mighty pair—
   Slow, statuesque, intense—
   Amid the vague Immense:
None can their chronicle declare,
   Nor why they be, nor whence.

   Mother of all things made,
   Matchless in artistry,
   Unlit with sight is she.—
And though her ever well-obeyed
   Vacant of feeling he.

III

   The Matron mildly asks—
   A throb in every word—
   “Our clay-made creatures, lord,
How fare they in their mortal tasks
   Upon Earth’s bounded bord?

IV

   “The fate of those I bear,
   Dear lord, pray turn and view,
   And notify me true;
Shapings that eyelessly I dare
   Maybe I would undo.

V

VI

   “World-weaver!” he replies,
   “I scan all thy domain;
   But since nor joy nor pain
Doth my clear substance recognize,
   I read thy realms in vain.

VII

   “World-weaver! what is Grief?
   And what are Right, and Wrong,
   And Feeling, that belong
To creatures all who owe thee fief?
   What worse is Weak than Strong?” . . .

VIII

   —Unlightened, curious, meek,
   She broods in sad surmise . . .
   —Some say they have heard her sighs
On Alpine height or Polar peak
   When the night tempests rise.

   Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it—
      We who believe the evidence?
   Here and there the watch-towers knell it
      With a sullen significance,
Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained sense.

I

“Poor wanderer,” said the leaden sky,
   “I fain would lighten thee,
But there be laws in force on high
   Which say it must not be.”

II

III

—“To-morrow I attack thee, wight,”
   Said Sickness.  “Yet I swear
I bear thy little ark no spite,
   But am bid enter there.”

IV

—“Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say;
   “I did not will a grave
Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
   But I, too, am a slave!”

V

We smiled upon each other then,
   And life to me wore less
That fell contour it wore ere when
   They owned their passiveness.

When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see—
As one who, held in trance, has laboured long
By vacant rote and prepossession strong—
The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;

Wherein have place, unrealized by thee,
Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong,
Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song,
And curious blends of ache and ecstasy?—

Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,
Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame,
Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?

   Brother Bulleys, let us sing
   From the dawn till evening!—
For we know not that we go not
   When the day’s pale pinions fold
   Unto those who sang of old.

   When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,
   Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,
Roosting near them I could hear them
   Speak of queenly Nature’s ways,
   Means, and moods,—well known to fays.

   Busy in her handsome house
   Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;
Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,
   While beneath her groping hands
   Fiends make havoc in her bands.

   How her hussif’ry succeeds
   She unknows or she unheeds,
All things making for Death’s taking!
   —So the green-gowned faeries say
   Living over Blackmoor way.

   Come then, brethren, let us sing,
   From the dawn till evening!—
For we know not that we go not
   When the day’s pale pinions fold
   Unto those who sang of old.

   I towered far, and lo!  I stood within
   The presence of the Lord Most High,
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win
      Some answer to their cry.

   —“The Earth, say’st thou?  The Human race?
   By Me created?  Sad its lot?
Nay: I have no remembrance of such place:
      Such world I fashioned not.”—

   “Some tiny sphere I built long back
   (Mid millions of such shapes of mine)
So named . . . It perished, surely—not a wrack
      Remaining, or a sign?

   “It lost my interest from the first,
   My aims therefor succeeding ill;
Haply it died of doing as it durst?”—
      “Lord, it existeth still.”—

   “Dark, then, its life!  For not a cry
   Of aught it bears do I now hear;
Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby
      Its plaints had reached mine ear.

   “All other orbs have kept in touch;
   Their voicings reach me speedily:
Thy people took upon them overmuch
      In sundering them from me!

   “And it is strange—though sad enough—
   Earth’s race should think that one whose call
Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff
      Must heed their tainted ball! . . .

   “But say’st thou ’tis by pangs distraught,
   And strife, and silent suffering?—
Deep grieved am I that injury should be wrought
      Even on so poor a thing!

   “Thou should’st have learnt that Not to Mend
   For Me could mean but Not to Know:
Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end
      To what men undergo.” . . .

Much wonder I—here long low-laid—
   That this dead wall should be
Betwixt the Maker and the made,
   Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse,
   He eyes it now and then
To know if better ’tis, or worse,
   And if it mourn, and when.

That some disaster cleft Thy scheme
   And tore us wide apart,
So that no cry can cross, I deem;
   For Thou art mild of heart,

And would’st not shape and shut us in
   Where voice can not he heard:
’Tis plain Thou meant’st that we should win
   Thy succour by a word.

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies
   Like man’s from clime to clime,
Thou would’st not let me agonize
   Through my remaining time;

But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear—
   Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind—
Thou’dst heal the ills with quickest care
   Of me and all my kind.

I

   “O Lord, why grievest Thou?—
   Since Life has ceased to be
   Upon this globe, now cold
   As lunar land and sea,
And humankind, and fowl, and fur
   Are gone eternally,
All is the same to Thee as ere
   They knew mortality.”

“O Time,” replied the Lord,
   “Thou read’st me ill, I ween;
Were all the same, I should not grieve
   At that late earthly scene,
Now blestly past—though planned by me
   With interest close and keen!—
Nay, nay: things now are not the same
   As they have earlier been.

III

   “Written indelibly
   On my eternal mind
   Are all the wrongs endured
   By Earth’s poor patient kind,
Which my too oft unconscious hand
   Let enter undesigned.
No god can cancel deeds foredone,
   Or thy old coils unwind!

IV

I

I traversed a dominion
Whose spokesmen spake out strong
Their purpose and opinion
Through pulpit, press, and song.
I scarce had means to note there
A large-eyed few, and dumb,
Who thought not as those thought there
That stirred the heat and hum.

When, grown a Shade, beholding
That land in lifetime trode,
To learn if its unfolding
Fulfilled its clamoured code,
I saw, in web unbroken,
Its history outwrought
Not as the loud had spoken,
But as the mute had thought.

I

   Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
   And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
      Sleep the long sleep:
      The Doomsters heap
   Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

   Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,
   And laughters fail, and greetings die:
      Hopes dwindle; yea,
      Faiths waste away,
   Affections and enthusiasms numb;
Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

   Had I the ear of wombèd souls
   Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
      And thou wert free
      To cease, or be,
   Then would I tell thee all I know,
And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

IV

   Vain vow!  No hint of mine may hence
   To theeward fly: to thy locked sense
      Explain none can
      Life’s pending plan:
   Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make
Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.

   Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot
   Of earth’s wide wold for thee, where not
      One tear, one qualm,
      Should break the calm.
   But I am weak as thou and bare;
No man can change the common lot to rare.

VI

   Must come and bide.  And such are we—
   Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary—
      That I can hope
      Health, love, friends, scope
   In full for thee; can dream thou’lt find
Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;
   —If all organic things
Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,
   What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite
   From this bleak spot of thorn,
And birch, and fir, and frozen white
   Expanse of the forlorn?

But mix with alien earth, be lit
   With frigid Boreal flame,
And not a sign remain in it
   To tell men whence you came.

Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
   But in cleaving to the Dream,
   And in gazing at the gleam
   Whereby gray things golden seem.

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irisèd embowment;
   But as nothing other than
   Part of a benignant plan;
   Proof that earth was made for man.

February 1899.

I

Dear Lizbie Browne,
Where are you now?
In sun, in rain?—
Or is your brow
Past joy, past pain,
Dear Lizbie Browne?

Sweet Lizbie Browne
How you could smile,
How you could sing!—
How archly wile
In glance-giving,
Sweet Lizbie Browne!

III

And, Lizbie Browne,
Who else had hair
Bay-red as yours,
Or flesh so fair
Bred out of doors,
Sweet Lizbie Browne?

IV

When, Lizbie Browne,
You had just begun
To be endeared
By stealth to one,
You disappeared
My Lizbie Browne!

Ay, Lizbie Browne,
So swift your life,
And mine so slow,
You were a wife
Ere I could show
Love, Lizbie Browne.

VI

Still, Lizbie Browne,
You won, they said,
The best of men
When you were wed . . .
Where went you then,
O Lizbie Browne?

VII

Dear Lizbie Browne,
I should have thought,
“Girls ripen fast,”
And coaxed and caught
You ere you passed,
Dear Lizbie Browne!

But, Lizbie Browne,
I let you slip;
Shaped not a sign;
Touched never your lip
With lip of mine,
Lost Lizbie Browne!

IX

So, Lizbie Browne,
When on a day
Men speak of me
As not, you’ll say,
“And who was he?”—
Yes, Lizbie Browne!

O sweet To-morrow!—
   After to-day
   There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
   Dimmed by no gray—
      No gray!

Doff the black token,
   Don the red shoon,
   Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
   To-morrow shines soon—
      Shines soon!

I wayed by star and planet shine
   Towards the dear one’s home
At Kingsbere, there to make her mine
   When the next sun upclomb.

I edged the ancient hill and wood
   Beside the Ikling Way,
Nigh where the Pagan temple stood
   In the world’s earlier day.

—“O faultless is her dainty form,
   And luminous her mind;
She is the God-created norm
   Of perfect womankind!”

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed
   Glode softly by my side,
A woman’s; and her motion seemed
   The motion of my bride.

And yet methought she’d drawn erstwhile
   Adown the ancient leaze,
Where once were pile and peristyle
   For men’s idolatries.

—“O maiden lithe and lone, what may
   Thy name and lineage be,
Who so resemblest by this ray
   My darling?—Art thou she?”

—“Nay: though thy bride remains inside
   Her father’s walls,” said she,
“The one most dear is with thee here,
   For thou dost love but me.”

Then I: “But she, my only choice,
   Is now at Kingsbere Grove?”
Again her soft mysterious voice:
   “I am thy only Love.”

Thus still she vouched, and still I said,
   “O sprite, that cannot be!” . . .
It was as if my bosom bled,
   So much she troubled me.

The sprite resumed: “Thou hast transferred
   To her dull form awhile
My beauty, fame, and deed, and word,
   My gestures and my smile.

—“O then,” I answered miserably,
   Speaking as scarce I knew,
“My loved one, I must wed with thee
   If what thou say’st be true!”

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom:
   “Though, since troth-plight began,
I’ve ever stood as bride to groom,
   I wed no mortal man!”

Thereat she vanished by the Cross
   That, entering Kingsbere town,
The two long lanes form, near the fosse
   Below the faneless Down.

—When I arrived and met my bride,
   Her look was pinched and thin,
As if her soul had shrunk and died,
   And left a waste within.

Con the dead page as ’twere live love: press on!
Cold wisdom’s words will ease thy track for thee;
Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan
To biting blasts that are intent on me.

It surely is far sweeter and more wise
To water love, than toil to leave anon
A name whose glory-gleam will but advise
Invidious minds to quench it with their own,

And over which the kindliest will but stay
A moment, musing, “He, too, had his day!”

Westbourne Park Villas,
         1867.

I say, “She was as good as fair,”
   When standing by her mound;
“Such passing sweetness,” I declare,
   “No longer treads the ground.”
I say, “What living Love can catch
   Her bloom and bonhomie,
And what in newer maidens match
   Her olden warmth to me!”

      You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
      You did not come.

Between us now and here—
   Two thrown together
Who are not wont to wear
   Life’s flushest feather—
Who see the scenes slide past,
The daytimes dimming fast,
Let there be truth at last,
   Even if despair.

Face unto face, then, say,
   Eyes mine own meeting,
Is your heart far away,
   Or with mine beating?
When false things are brought low,
And swift things have grown slow,
Feigning like froth shall go,
   Faith be for aye.

How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee!
—Have the slow years not brought to view
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Nor memory shaped old times anew,
   Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee
How great my grief, my joys how few,
   Since first it was my fate to know thee?

I need not go
Through sleet and snow
To where I know
She waits for me;
She will wait me there
Till I find it fair,
And have time to spare
From company.

And if some day,
When none cries nay,
I still delay
To seek her side,
(Though ample measure
Of fitting leisure
Await my pleasure)
She will riot chide.

What—not upbraid me
That I delayed me,
Nor ask what stayed me
So long?  Ah, no!—
New cares may claim me,
New loves inflame me,
She will not blame me,
But suffer it so.

I

For long the cruel wish I knew
That your free heart should ache for me
While mine should bear no ache for you;
For, long—the cruel wish!—I knew
How men can feel, and craved to view
My triumph—fated not to be
For long! . . . The cruel wish I knew
That your free heart should ache for me!

At last one pays the penalty—
The woman—women always do.
My farce, I found, was tragedy
At last!—One pays the penalty
With interest when one, fancy-free,
Learns love, learns shame . . . Of sinners two
At last one pays the penalty—
The woman—women always do!

   In years defaced and lost,
   Two sat here, transport-tossed,
   Lit by a living love
The wilted world knew nothing of:
      Scared momently
      By gaingivings,
      Then hoping things
      That could not be.

   But lonely shepherd souls
   Who bask amid these knolls
   May catch a faery sound
On sleepy noontides from the ground:
      “O not again
      Till Earth outwears
      Shall love like theirs
      Suffuse this glen!”

      Is it worth while, dear, now,
To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed
For marriage-rites—discussed, decried, delayed
         So many years?

      Is it worth while, dear, now,
To stir desire for old fond purposings,
By feints that Time still serves for dallyings,
         Though quittance nears?

      Is it worth while, dear, when
Our cheeks are worn, our early brown is gray;
When, meet or part we, none says yea or nay,
      Or heeds, or cares?

      Is it worth while, dear, since
We still can climb old Yell’ham’s wooded mounds
Together, as each season steals its rounds
      And disappears?

      Is it worth while, dear, since
As mates in Mellstock churchyard we can lie,
Till the last crash of all things low and high
      Shall end the spheres?

By Mellstock Lodge and Avenue
   Towards her door I went,
And sunset on her window-panes
   Reflected our intent.

The creeper on the gable nigh
   Was fired to more than red
And when I came to halt thereby
   “Bright as my joy!” I said.

Again I knocked; and tardily
   An inner step was heard,
And I was shown her presence then
   With scarce an answering word.

She met me, and but barely took
   My proffered warm embrace;
Preoccupation weighed her look,
   And hardened her sweet face.

“To-morrow—could you—would you call?
   Make brief your present stay?
My child is ill—my one, my all!—
   And can’t be left to-day.”

And then she turns, and gives commands
   As I were out of sound,
Or were no more to her and hers
   Than any neighbour round . . .

He won, I lost her; and my loss
   I bore I know not how;
But I do think I suffered then
   Less wretchedness than now.

For Time, in taking him, had oped
   An unexpected door
Of bliss for me, which grew to seem
   Far surer than before . . .

Her word is steadfast, and I know
   That plighted firm are we:
But she has caught new love-calls since
   She smiled as maid on me!

If hours be years the twain are blest,
For now they solace swift desire
By bonds of every bond the best,
If hours be years.  The twain are blest
Do eastern stars slope never west,
Nor pallid ashes follow fire:
If hours be years the twain are blest,
For now they solace swift desire.

A dream of mine flew over the mead
   To the halls where my old Love reigns;
And it drew me on to follow its lead:
   And I stood at her window-panes;

And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone
   Speeding on to its cleft in the clay;
And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan,
   And I whitely hastened away.

I

   I saw a dead man’s finer part
Shining within each faithful heart
Of those bereft.  Then said I: “This must be
      His immortality.”

II

   I looked there as the seasons wore,
And still his soul continuously upbore
Its life in theirs.  But less its shine excelled
      Than when I first beheld.

   His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then
In later hearts I looked for him again;
And found him—shrunk, alas! into a thin
      And spectral mannikin.

IV

   Lastly I ask—now old and chill—
If aught of him remain unperished still;
And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,
      Dying amid the dark.

February 1899.

I

   I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile amid the tombs around:
“Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are ye distrest,
   Now, screened from life’s unrest?”

   —“O not at being here;
But that our future second death is drear;
When, with the living, memory of us numbs,
   And blank oblivion comes!

III

   “Those who our grandsires be
Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;
Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descry
   With keenest backward eye.

IV

   “They bide as quite forgot;
They are as men who have existed not;
Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;
   It is the second death.

V

   “We here, as yet, each day
Are blest with dear recall; as yet, alway
In some soul hold a loved continuance
   Of shape and voice and glance.

   “But what has been will be—
First memory, then oblivion’s turbid sea;
Like men foregone, shall we merge into those
   Whose story no one knows.

VII

   “For which of us could hope
To show in life that world-awakening scope
Granted the few whose memory none lets die,
   But all men magnify?

VIII

   “We were but Fortune’s sport;
Things true, things lovely, things of good report
We neither shunned nor sought . . . We see our bourne,
   And seeing it we mourn.”

I

Never a careworn wife but shows,
   If a joy suffuse her,
Something beautiful to those
   Patient to peruse her,
Some one charm the world unknows
   Precious to a muser,
Haply what, ere years were foes,
   Moved her mate to choose her.

But, be it a hint of rose
   That an instant hues her,
Or some early light or pose
   Wherewith thought renews her—
Seen by him at full, ere woes
   Practised to abuse her—
Sparely comes it, swiftly goes,
   Time again subdues her.

I

As newer comers crowd the fore,
   We drop behind.
—We who have laboured long and sore
   Times out of mind,
And keen are yet, must not regret
   To drop behind.

Yet there are of us some who grieve
   To go behind;
Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe
   Their fires declined,
And know none cares, remembers, spares
   Who go behind.

III

’Tis not that we have unforetold
   The drop behind;
We feel the new must oust the old
   In every kind;
But yet we think, must we, must we,
   Too, drop behind?

I

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined—
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While ’mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
—My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
“God’s humblest, they!” I muse.  Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

Max Gate, 1899.