“Love, while you were away there came to me—
   From whence I cannot tell—
A plaintive lady pale and passionless,
Who bent her eyes upon me critically,
And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness,
   As if she knew me well.”

“I saw no lady of that wistful sort
   As I came riding home.
Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrain
By memories sadder than she can support,
Or by unhappy vacancy of brain,
   To leave her roof and roam?”

“Ah, but she knew me.  And before this time
   I have seen her, lending ear
To my light outdoor words, and pondering each,
Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime,
As if she fain would close with me in speech,
   And yet would not come near.

Then thought I how my dead Love used to say,
   With a small smile, when she
Was waning wan, that she would hover round
And show herself after her passing day
To any newer Love I might have found,
   But show her not to me.

“Why do you stand in the dripping rye,
Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,
When there are firesides near?” said I.
“I told him I wished him dead,” said she.

“Yea, cried it in my haste to one
Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still;
And die he did.  And I hate the sun,
And stand here lonely, aching, chill;

“Stand waiting, waiting under skies
That blow reproach, the while I see
The rooks sheer off to where he lies
Wrapt in a peace withheld from me.”

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass
   Filling up your narrow room?
   You never preen or plume,
Or look in a week at your full-length figure—
   Picture of bachelor gloom!

“Well, when I dwelt in ancient England,
   Renting the valley farm,
   Thoughtless of all heart-harm,
I used to gaze at the parson’s daughter,
   A creature of nameless charm.

“Thither there came a lover and won her,
   Carried her off from my view.
   O it was then I knew
Misery of a cast undreamt of—
   More than, indeed, my due!

“Then far rumours of her ill-usage
   Came, like a chilling breath
   When a man languisheth;
Followed by news that her mind lost balance,
   And, in a space, of her death.

“Well, I awaited the sale and bought it . . .
   There by my bed it stands,
   And as the dawn expands
Often I see her pale-faced form there
   Brushing her hair’s bright bands.

“There, too, at pallid midnight moments
   Quick she will come to my call,
   Smile from the frame withal
Ponderingly, as she used to regard me
   Passing her father’s wall.

“So that it was for its revelations
   I brought it oversea,
   And drag it about with me . . .
Anon I shall break it and bury its fragments
   Where my grave is to be.”

   Between the folding sea-downs,
      In the gloom
   Of a wailful wintry nightfall,
      When the boom
Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,

   Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley
      From the shore
   To the chamber where I darkled,
      Sunk and sore
With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before

   To salute me in the dwelling
      That of late
   I had hired to waste a while in—
      Vague of date,
Quaint, and remote—wherein I now expectant sate;

   A stranger’s and no lover’s
      Eyes were these,
   Eyes of a man who measures
      What he sees
But vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies.

   Yea, his bearing was so absent
      As he stood,
   It bespoke a chord so plaintive
      In his mood,
That soon I judged he would not wrong my quietude.

   “Ah—the supper is just ready,”
      Then he said,
   “And the years’-long binned Madeira
      Flashes red!”
(There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.)

   “You will forgive my coming,
      Lady fair?
   I see you as at that time
      Rising there,
The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air.

   “And the place . . . But you seem other—
      Can it be?
   What’s this that Time is doing
      Unto me?
You dwell here, unknown woman? . . . Whereabouts, then, is she?

   “And the house—things are much shifted.—
      Put them where
   They stood on this night’s fellow;
      Shift her chair:
Here was the couch: and the piano should be there.”

   I indulged him, verily nerve-strained
      Being alone,
   And I moved the things as bidden,
      One by one,
And feigned to push the old piano where he had shown.

   “She serves me: now she rises,
      Goes to play . . .
   But you obstruct her, fill her
      With dismay,
And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!”

   And, as ’twere useless longer
      To persist,
   He sighed, and sought the entry
      Ere I wist,
And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist.

   That here some mighty passion
      Once had burned,
   Which still the walls enghosted,
      I discerned,
And that by its strong spell mine might be overturned.

   As if the intenser drama
      Shown me there
   Of what the walls had witnessed
      Filled the air,
And left no room for later passion anywhere.

   So came it that our fervours
      Did quite fail
   Of future consummation—
      Being made quail
By the weird witchery of the parlour’s hidden tale,

   Which I, as years passed, faintly
      Learnt to trace,—
   One of sad love, born full-winged
      In that place
Where the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face.

   And as that month of winter
      Circles round,
   And the evening of the date-day
      Grows embrowned,
I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound.

That love’s dull smart distressed my heart
   He shrewdly learnt to see,
But that I was in love with a dead man
   Never suspected he.

He searched for the trace of a pictured face,
   He watched each missive come,
And a note that seemed like a love-line
   Made him look frozen and glum.

He dogged my feet to the city street,
   He followed me to the sea,
But not to the neighbouring churchyard
   Did he dream of following me.

She charged me with having said this and that
To another woman long years before,
In the very parlour where we sat,—

Sat on a night when the endless pour
Of rain on the roof and the road below
Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . .

—So charged she me; and the Cupid’s bow
Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face,
And her white forefinger lifted slow.

Had she done it gently, or shown a trace
That not too curiously would she view
A folly passed ere her reign had place,

A kiss might have ended it.  But I knew
From the fall of each word, and the pause between,
That the curtain would drop upon us two
Ere long, in our play of slave and queen.

He paused on the sill of a door ajar
That screened a lively liquor-bar,
For the name had reached him through the door
Of her he had married the week before.

“We called her the Hack of the Parade;
But she was discreet in the games she played;
If slightly worn, she’s pretty yet,
And gossips, after all, forget.

“And he knows nothing of her past;
I am glad the girl’s in luck at last;
Such ones, though stale to native eyes,
Newcomers snatch at as a prize.”

“Yes, being a stranger he sees her blent
Of all that’s fresh and innocent,
Nor dreams how many a love-campaign
She had enjoyed before his reign!”

That night there was the splash of a fall
Over the slimy harbour-wall:
They searched, and at the deepest place
Found him with crabs upon his face.

He lay awake, with a harassed air,
And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair,
   Seemed trouble-tried
As the dawn drew in on their faces there.

The chamber looked far over the sea
From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay,
   And stepping a stride
He parted the window-drapery.

Above the level horizon spread
The sunrise, firing them foot to head
   From its smouldering lair,
And painting their pillows with dyes of red.

“What strange disquiets have stirred you, dear,
This dragging night, with starts in fear
   Of me, as it were,
Or of something evil hovering near?”

He watched her eyes in the heaving sun:
“Then what has kept, O reticent one,
   Those lids unlatched—
Anything promised I’ve not yet done?”

“O it’s not a broken promise of yours
(For what quite lightly your lip assures
   The due time brings)
That has troubled my sleep, and no waking cures!” . . .

“I have shaped my will; ’tis at hand,” said he;
“I subscribe it to-day, that no risk there be
   In the hap of things
Of my leaving you menaced by poverty.”

“That a boon provision I’m safe to get,
Signed, sealed by my lord as it were a debt,
   I cannot doubt,
Or ever this peering sun be set.”

“But you flung my arms away from your side,
And faced the wall.  No month-old bride
   Ere the tour be out
In an air so loth can be justified?

She lay impassive, and nothing broke
The stillness other than, stroke by stroke,
   The lazy lift
Of the tide below them; till she spoke:

“I once had a friend—a Love, if you will—
Whose wife forsook him, and sank until
   She was made a thrall
In a prison-cell for a deed of ill . . .

“He remained alone; and we met—to love,
But barring legitimate joy thereof
   Stood a doorless wall,
Though we prized each other all else above.

“And this was why, though I’d touched my prime,
I put off suitors from time to time—
   Yourself with the rest—
Till friends, who approved you, called it crime,

“And when misgivings weighed on me
In my lover’s absence, hurriedly,
   And much distrest,
I took you . . . Ah, that such could be! . . .

“Well, while you stood at the other end,
The loungers talked, and I could but lend
   A listening ear,
For they named the dead.  ’Twas the wife of my friend.

“He was there, but did not note me, veiled,
Yet I saw that a joy, as of one unjailed,
   Now shone in his gaze;
He knew not his hope of me just had failed!

“They had brought her home: she was born in this isle;
And he will return to his domicile,
   And pass his days
Alone, and not as he dreamt erstwhile!”

“—So you’ve lost a sprucer spouse than I!”
She held her peace, as if fain deny
   She would indeed
For his pleasure’s sake, but could lip no lie.

“One far less formal and plain and slow!”
She let the laconic assertion go
   As if of need
She held the conviction that it was so.

“And this fulfilment is now his aim,
For a letter, addressed in my maiden name,
   Has dogged me here,
Reminding me faithfully of his claim.

“And it started a hope like a lightning-streak
That I might go to him—say for a week—
   And afford you right
To put me away, and your vows unspeak.

“To be sure you have said, as of dim intent,
That marriage is a plain event
   Of black and white,
Without any ghost of sentiment,

“And my heart has quailed.—But deny it true
That you will never this lock undo!
   No God intends
To thwart the yearning He’s father to!”

The husband hemmed, then blandly bowed
In the light of the angry morning cloud.
   “So my idyll ends,
And a drama opens!” he mused aloud;

Said she: “I am sorry you see it so;
I had hoped you might have let me go,
   And thus been saved
The pain of learning there’s more to know.”

“More?  What may that be?  Gad, I think
You have told me enough to make me blink!
   Yet if more remain
Then own it to me.  I will not shrink!”

“Well, it is this.  As we could not see
That a legal marriage could ever be,
   To end our pain
We united ourselves informally;

“And vowed at a chancel-altar nigh,
With book and ring, a lifelong tie;
   A contract vain
To the world, but real to Him on High.”

“And you became as his wife?”—“I did.”—
He stood as stiff as a caryatid,
   And said, “Indeed! . . .
No matter.  You’re mine, whatever you ye hid!”

“To save your fame?  Your meaning is dim,
For nobody knew of your altar-whim?”
   “I mean—I feared
There might be fruit of my tie with him;

“And to cloak it by marriage I’m not the first,
Though, maybe, morally most accurst
   Through your unpeered
And strict uprightness.  That’s the worst!

“While yesterday his worn contours
Convinced me that love like his endures,
   And that my troth-plight
Had been his, in fact, and not truly yours.”

“So, my lady, you raise the veil by degrees . . .
I own this last is enough to freeze
   The warmest wight!
Now hear the other side, if you please:

“I did say once, though without intent,
That marriage is a plain event
   Of black and white,
Whatever may be its sentiment.

“But the thing is over, and no one knows,
And it’s nought to the future what you disclose.
   That you’ll be loosed
For such an episode, don’t suppose!

“No: I’ll not free you.  And if it appear
There was too good ground for your first fear
   From your amorous tricks,
I’ll father the child.  Yes, by God, my dear.

“Even should you fly to his arms, I’ll damn
Opinion, and fetch you; treat as sham
   Your mutinous kicks,
And whip you home.  That’s the sort I am!”

She whitened. “Enough . . . Since you disapprove
I’ll yield in silence, and never move
   Till my last pulse ticks
A footstep from the domestic groove.”

“Then swear it,” he said, “and your king uncrown.”
He drew her forth in her long white gown,
   And she knelt and swore.
“Good.  Now you may go and again lie down

“I’m a practical man, and want no tears;
You’ve made a fool of me, it appears;
   That you don’t again
Is a lesson I’ll teach you in future years.”

She answered not, but lay listlessly
With her dark dry eyes on the coppery sea,
   That now and then
Flung its lazy flounce at the neighbouring quay.

1910.

From the slow march and muffled drum
   And crowds distrest,
And book and bell, at length I have come
   To my full rest.

A ten years’ rule beneath the sun
   Is wound up here,
And what I have done, what left undone,
   Figures out clear.

Yet in the estimate of such
   It grieves me more
That I by some was loved so much
   Than that I bore,

From others, judgment of that hue
   Which over-hope
Breeds from a theoretic view
   Of regal scope.

For kingly opportunities
   Right many have sighed;
How best to bear its devilries
   Those learn who have tried!

What pleasure earth affords to kings
   I have enjoyed
Through its long vivid pulse-stirrings
   Even till it cloyed.

What days of drudgery, nights of stress
   Can cark a throne,
Even one maintained in peacefulness,
   I too have known.

And so, I think, could I step back
   To life again,
I should prefer the average track
   Of average men,

Since, as with them, what kingship would
   It cannot do,
Nor to first thoughts however good
   Hold itself true.

Something binds hard the royal hand,
   As all that be,
And it is That has shaped, has planned
   My acts and me.

May 1910.

At Westminster, hid from the light of day,
Many who once had shone as monarchs lay.

Edward the Pious, and two Edwards more,
The second Richard, Henrys three or four;

That is to say, those who were called the Third,
Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth (the much self-widowered),

And James the Scot, and near him Charles the Second,
And, too, the second George could there be reckoned.

Of women, Mary and Queen Elizabeth,
And Anne, all silent in a musing death;

And William’s Mary, and Mary, Queen of Scots,
And consort-queens whose names oblivion blots;

And several more whose chronicle one sees
Adorning ancient royal pedigrees.

Said one: “What means this throbbing thudding sound
That reaches to us here from overground;

“A sound of chisels, augers, planes, and saws,
Infringing all ecclesiastic laws?

“And these tons-weight of timber on us pressed,
Unfelt here since we entered into rest?

“Surely, at least to us, being corpses royal,
A meet repose is owing by the loyal?”

“—Perhaps a scaffold!” Mary Stuart sighed,
“If such still be.  It was that way I died.”

“—Ods!  Far more like,” said he the many-wived,
“That for a wedding ’tis this work’s contrived.

“Ha-ha!  I never would bow down to Rimmon,
But I had a rare time with those six women!”

“—They build a catafalque here, black and tall,
Perhaps,” mused Richard, “for some funeral?”

And Anne chimed in: “Ah, yes: it maybe so!”
“Nay!” squeaked Eliza.  “Little you seem to know—

“Clearly ’tis for some crowning here in state,
As they crowned us at our long bygone date;

“Though we’d no such a power of carpentry,
But let the ancient architecture be;

“If I were up there where the parsons sit,
In one of my gold robes, I’d see to it!”

“But you are not,” Charles chuckled.  “You are here,
And never will know the sun again, my dear!”

“Yea,” whispered those whom no one had addressed;
“With slow, sad march, amid a folk distressed,
We were brought here, to take our dusty rest.

“And here, alas, in darkness laid below,
We’ll wait and listen, and endure the show . . .
Clamour dogs kingship; afterwards not so!”

1911.

The chimes called midnight, just at interlune,
And the daytime talk of the Roman investigations
Was checked by silence, save for the husky tune
The bubbling waters played near the excavations.

And a warm air came up from underground,
And a flutter, as of a filmy shape unsepulchred,
That collected itself, and waited, and looked around:
Nothing was seen, but utterances could be heard:

Those of the goddess whose shrine was beneath the pile
Of the God with the baldachined altar overhead:
“And what did you get by raising this nave and aisle
Close on the site of the temple I tenanted?

“Your priests have trampled the dust of mine without rueing,
Despising the joys of man whom I so much loved,
Though my springs boil on by your Gothic arcades and pewing,
And sculptures crude . . . Would Jove they could be removed!”

“—Repress, O lady proud, your traditional ires;
You know not by what a frail thread we equally hang;
It is said we are images both—twitched by people’s desires;
And that I, like you, fail as a song men yesterday sang!”

* * * * *

Bath.

Here goes a man of seventy-four,
Who sees not what life means for him,
And here another in years a score
Who reads its very figure and trim.

The one who shall walk to-day with me
Is not the youth who gazes far,
But the breezy wight who cannot see
What Earth’s ingrained conditions are.

“A woman never agreed to it!” said my knowing friend to me.
“That one thing she’d refuse to do for Solomon’s mines in fee:
No woman ever will make herself look older than she is.”
I did not answer; but I thought, “you err there, ancient Quiz.”

It took a rare one, true, to do it; for she was surely rare—
As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair.
And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate case,
Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young face.

I said: “The only chance for us in a crisis of this kind
Is going it thorough!”—“Yes,” she calmly breathed.  “Well, I don’t mind.”
And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her brow;
Ay—she was a right rare woman then, whatever she may be now.

That night we heard a coach drive up, and questions asked below.
“A gent with an elderly wife, sir,” was returned from the bureau.
And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken
We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth again.

How many years ago it was!  Some fifty can it be
Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me?
But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last,
And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the past.

I rose up as my custom is
   On the eve of All-Souls’ day,
And left my grave for an hour or so
To call on those I used to know
   Before I passed away.

I visited my former Love
   As she lay by her husband’s side;
I asked her if life pleased her, now
She was rid of a poet wrung in brow,
   And crazed with the ills he eyed;

Who used to drag her here and there
   Wherever his fancies led,
And point out pale phantasmal things,
And talk of vain vague purposings
   That she discredited.

She was quite civil, and replied,
   “Old comrade, is that you?
Well, on the whole, I like my life.—
I know I swore I’d be no wife,
   But what was I to do?

“You were a poet—quite the ideal
   That we all love awhile:
But look at this man snoring here—
He’s no romantic chanticleer,
   Yet keeps me in good style.

“He makes no quest into my thoughts,
   But a poet wants to know
What one has felt from earliest days,
Why one thought not in other ways,
   And one’s Loves of long ago.”

Her words benumbed my fond frail ghost;
   The nightmares neighed from their stalls
The vampires screeched, the harpies flew,
And under the dim dawn I withdrew
   To Death’s inviolate halls.

On Monday night I closed my door,
And thought you were not as heretofore,
And little cared if we met no more.

I seemed on Tuesday night to trace
Something beyond mere commonplace
In your ideas, and heart, and face.

On Wednesday I did not opine
Your life would ever be one with mine,
Though if it were we should well combine.

On Thursday noon I liked you well,
And fondly felt that we must dwell
Not far apart, whatever befell.

On Friday it was with a thrill
In gazing towards your distant vill
I owned you were my dear one still.

As wing-clipt sea-gull for the sea
On Sunday night I longed for thee,
Without whom life were waste to me!

Had you wept; had you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray,
Dewy as the face of the dawn, in your large and luminous eye,
Then would have come back all the joys the tidings had slain that day,
And a new beginning, a fresh fair heaven, have smoothed the things awry.
But you were less feebly human, and no passionate need for clinging
Possessed your soul to overthrow reserve when I came near;
Ay, though you suffer as much as I from storms the hours are bringing
Upon your heart and mine, I never see you shed a tear.

I dream that the dearest I ever knew
   Has died and been entombed.
I am sure it’s a dream that cannot be true,
   But I am so overgloomed
By its persistence, that I would gladly
   Have quick death take me,
Rather than longer think thus sadly;
   So wake me, wake me!

It has lasted days, but minute and hour
   I expect to get aroused
And find him as usual in the bower
   Where we so happily housed.
Yet stays this nightmare too appalling,
   And like a web shakes me,
And piteously I keep on calling,
   And no one wakes me!

“What do you see in that time-touched stone,
   When nothing is there
But ashen blankness, although you give it
   A rigid stare?

“You look not quite as if you saw,
   But as if you heard,
Parting your lips, and treading softly
   As mouse or bird.

“It is only the base of a pillar, they’ll tell you,
   That came to us
From a far old hill men used to name
   Areopagus.”

—“I know no art, and I only view
   A stone from a wall,
But I am thinking that stone has echoed
   The voice of Paul,

“Words that in all their intimate accents
   Pattered upon
That marble front, and were far reflected,
   And then were gone.

“I’m a labouring man, and know but little,
   Or nothing at all;
But I can’t help thinking that stone once echoed
   The voice of Paul.”

“Man, you too, aren’t you, one of these rough followers of the criminal?
All hanging hereabout to gather how he’s going to bear
Examination in the hall.”  She flung disdainful glances on
The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there,
   Who warmed them by its flare.

“No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know nothing of the trial here,
Or criminal, if so he be.—I chanced to come this way,
And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold now;
I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play,
   That I see not every day.”

“Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I say!  You know you speak mistakenly.
Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar
Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble marketings,
Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are
   Afoot by morning star?”

“O, come, come!” laughed the constables.  “Why, man, you speak the dialect
He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs.
So own it.  We sha’n’t hurt ye.  There he’s speaking now!  His syllables
Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares,
   As this pretty girl declares.”

“No!  I’ll be damned in hell if I know anything about the man!
No single thing about him more than everybody knows!
Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with blasphemies?” . . .
—His face convulses as the morning cock that moment crows,
   And he stops, and turns, and goes.

   “More than half my life long
Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong,
But they all have shrunk away into the silence
   Like a lost song.

   “And the day has dawned and come
For forgiveness, when the past may hold it dumb
On the once reverberate words of hatred uttered
   Half in delirium . . .

   “With folded lips and hands
They lie and wait what next the Will commands,
And doubtless think, if think they can: ‘Let discord
   Sink with Life’s sands!’

   “By these late years their names,
Their virtues, their hereditary claims,
May be as near defacement at their grave-place
   As are their fames.”

   Who in their lifetime deemed
Him their chief enemy—one whose brain had schemed
To get their dingy greatness deeplier dingied
   And disesteemed.

   So, sojourning in their town,
He mused on them and on their once renown,
And said, “I’ll seek their resting-place to-morrow
   Ere I lie down,

   “And end, lest I forget,
Those ires of many years that I regret,
Renew their names, that men may see some liegeness
   Is left them yet.”

   Duly next day he went
And sought the church he had known them to frequent,
And wandered in the precincts, set on eyeing
   Where they lay pent,

   Till by remembrance led
He stood at length beside their slighted bed,
Above which, truly, scarce a line or letter
   Could now be read.

   “That still the sage may say
In pensive progress here where they decay,
‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents
   Told in their day.’”

   While speaking thus he turned,
For a form shadowed where they lay inurned,
And he beheld a stranger in foreign vesture,
   And tropic-burned.

   “Sir, I am right pleased to view
That ancestors of mine should interest you,
For I have come of purpose here to trace them . . .
   They are time-worn, true,

   “But that’s a fault, at most,
Sculptors can cure.  On the Pacific coast
I have vowed for long that relics of my forbears
   I’d trace ere lost,

   “Coincident design!
Though these my father’s enemies were and mine,
I nourished a like purpose—to restore them
   Each letter and line.”

   “Such magnanimity
Is now not needed, sir; for you will see
That since I am here, a thing like this is, plainly,
   Best done by me.”

   The other bowed, and left,
Crestfallen in sentiment, as one bereft
Of some fair object he had been moved to cherish,
   By hands more deft.

   And as he slept that night
The phantoms of the ensepulchred stood up-right
Before him, trembling that he had set him seeking
   Their charnel-site.

   “By stealth to obliterate
Our graven worth, our chronicle, our date,
That our descendant may not gild the record
   Of our past state,

   “And that no sage may say
In pensive progress near where we decay:
‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents
   Told in their day.’”

   Upon the morrow he went
And to that town and churchyard never bent
His ageing footsteps till, some twelvemonths onward,
   An accident

   Once more detained him there;
And, stirred by hauntings, he must needs repair
To where the tomb was.  Lo, it stood still wasting
   In no man’s care.

   “The architect was hired
And came here on smart summons as desired,
But never the descendant came to tell him
   What he required.”

   And so the tomb remained
Untouched, untended, crumbling, weather-stained,
And though the one-time foe was fain to right it
   He still refrained.

   “I’ll set about it when
I am sure he’ll come no more.  Best wait till then.”
But so it was that never the stranger entered
   That city again.

   And the well-meaner died
While waiting tremulously unsatisfied
That no return of the family’s foreign scion
   Would still betide.

   And when they had scraped each wall,
Pulled out the stately pews, and smartened all,
“It will be well,” declared the spruce church-warden,
   “To overhaul

   “And broaden this path where shown;
Nothing prevents it but an old tombstone
Pertaining to a family forgotten,
   Of deeds unknown.

   “Their names can scarce be read,
Depend on’t, all who care for them are dead.”
So went the tomb, whose shards were as path-paving
   Distributed.

   Over it and about
Men’s footsteps beat, and wind and water-spout,
Until the names, aforetime gnawed by weathers,
   Were quite worn out.

      Regret not me;
   Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

      Swift as the light
   I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.

      I did not know
   That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so.

      I skipped at morn
   Between the yellowing corn,
Thinking it good and glorious to be born.

      I ran at eves
   Among the piled-up sheaves,
Dreaming, “I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves.”

      Again you will fare
   To cider-makings rare,
And junketings; but I shall not be there.

      Yet gaily sing
   Until the pewter ring
Those songs we sang when we went gipsying.

      And lightly dance
   Some triple-timed romance
In coupled figures, and forget mischance;

      And mourn not me
   Beneath the yellowing tree;
For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully.

Let us off and search, and find a place
Where yours and mine can be natural lives,
Where no one comes who dissects and dives
And proclaims that ours is a curious case,
That its touch of romance can scarcely grace.

You would think it strange at first, but then
Everything has been strange in its time.
When some one said on a day of the prime
He would bow to no brazen god again
He doubtless dazed the mass of men.

None will recognize us as a pair whose claims
To righteous judgment we care not making;
Who have doubted if breath be worth the taking,
And have no respect for the current fames
Whence the savour has flown while abide the names.

We have found us already shunned, disdained,
And for re-acceptance have not once striven;
Whatever offence our course has given
The brunt thereof we have long sustained.
Well, let us away, scorned unexplained.

“No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot,
The people who lived here have left the spot,
And others are coming who knew them not.

“If you listen anon, with an ear intent,
The voices, you’ll find, will be different
From the well-known ones of those who went.”

“Why did they go?  Their tones so bland
Were quite familiar to our band;
The comers we shall not understand.”

“They look for a new life, rich and strange;
They do not know that, let them range
Wherever they may, they will get no change.

“They will drag their house-gear ever so far
In their search for a home no miseries mar;
They will find that as they were they are,

“That every hearth has a ghost, alack,
And can be but the scene of a bivouac
Till they move perforce—no time to pack!”

I

I have risen again,
And awhile survey
By my chilly ray
Through your window-pane
Your upturned face,
As you think, “Ah-she
Now dreams of me
In her distant place!”

II

I pierce her blind
In her far-off home:
She fixes a comb,
And says in her mind,
“I start in an hour;
Whom shall I meet?
Won’t the men be sweet,
And the women sour!”

In his early days he was quite surprised
When she told him she was compromised
By meetings and lingerings at his whim,
And thinking not of herself but him;
While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round
That scandal should so soon abound,
(As she had raised them to nine or ten
Of antecedent nice young men)
And in remorse he thought with a sigh,
How good she is, and how bad am I!—
It was years before he understood
That she was the wicked one—he the good.

“O he’s suffering—maybe dying—and I not there to aid,
And smooth his bed and whisper to him!  Can I nohow go?
Only the nurse’s brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed,
   As by stealth, to let me know.

“He was the best and brightest!—candour shone upon his brow,
And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he,
And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he’s sinking now,
   Far, far removed from me!”

—The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair,
And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade,
And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware
   That she lives no more a maid,

So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon,
And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace,
And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon
   At this idle watering-place . . .

What now I see before me is a long lane overhung
With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave.
And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young,
   Ere a woman held me slave.

“What are you still, still thinking,”
   He asked in vague surmise,
“That stare at the wick unblinking
   With those great lost luminous eyes?”

“O, I see a poor moth burning
   In the candle-flame,” said she,
“Its wings and legs are turning
   To a cinder rapidly.”

“Moths fly in from the heather,”
   He said, “now the days decline.”
“I know,” said she.  “The weather,
   I hope, will at last be fine.

“I think,” she added lightly,
   “I’ll look out at the door.
The ring the moon wears nightly
   May be visible now no more.”

Outside the house a figure
   Came from the tumulus near,
And speedily waxed bigger,
   And clasped and called her Dear.

“I saw the pale-winged token
   You sent through the crack,” sighed she.
“That moth is burnt and broken
   With which you lured out me.

“And were I as the moth is
   It might be better far
For one whose marriage troth is
   Shattered as potsherds are!”

Then grinned the Ancient Briton
   From the tumulus treed with pine:
“So, hearts are thwartly smitten
   In these days as in mine!”

Through snowy woods and shady
   We went to play a tune
To the lonely manor-lady
   By the light of the Christmas moon.

We violed till, upward glancing
   To where a mirror leaned,
We saw her airily dancing,
   Deeming her movements screened;

Dancing alone in the room there,
   Thin-draped in her robe of night;
Her postures, glassed in the gloom there,
   Were a strange phantasmal sight.

She had learnt (we heard when homing)
   That her roving spouse was dead;
Why she had danced in the gloaming
   We thought, but never said.

Just at the corner of the wall
   We met—yes, he and I—
Who had not faced in camp or hall
   Since we bade home good-bye,
And what once happened came back—all—
   Out of those years gone by.

And that strange woman whom we knew
   And loved—long dead and gone,
Whose poor half-perished residue,
   Tombless and trod, lay yon!
But at this moment to our view
   Rose like a phantom wan.

And in his fixed face I could see,
   Lit by a lurid shine,
The drama re-enact which she
   Had dyed incarnadine
For us, and more.  And doubtless he
   Beheld it too in mine.

A start, as at one slightly known,
   And with an indifferent air
We passed, without a sign being shown
   That, as it real were,
A memory-acted scene had thrown
   Its tragic shadow there.

I opened my shutter at sunrise,
   And looked at the hill hard by,
And I heartily grieved for the comrade
   Who wandered up there to die.

I let in the morn on the morrow,
   And failed not to think of him then,
As he trod up that rise in the twilight,
   And never came down again.

I undid the shutter a week thence,
   But not until after I’d turned
Did I call back his last departure
   By the upland there discerned.

Uncovering the casement long later,
   I bent to my toil till the gray,
When I said to myself, “Ah—what ails me,
   To forget him all the day!”

As daily I flung back the shutter
   In the same blank bald routine,
He scarcely once rose to remembrance
   Through a month of my facing the scene.

A plain tilt-bonnet on her head
She took the path across the leaze.
—Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said,
“Too dowdy that, for coquetries,
   So I can hoe at ease.”

But when she had passed into the heath,
And gained the wood beyond the flat,
She raised her skirts, and from beneath
Unpinned and drew as from a sheath
   An ostrich-feathered hat.

And where the hat had hung she now
Concealed and pinned the dowdy hood,
And set the hat upon her brow,
And thus emerging from the wood
   Tripped on in jaunty mood.

The sun was low and crimson-faced
As two came that way from the town,
And plunged into the wood untraced . . .
When separately therefrom they paced
   The sun had quite gone down.

“To-day,” he said, “you have shown good sense,
A dress so modest and so meek
Should always deck your goings hence
Alone.”  And as a recompense
   He kissed her on the cheek.

By Rome’s dim relics there walks a man,
Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade;
I guess what impels him to scrape and scan;
Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed.

“Vast was Rome,” he must muse, “in the world’s regard,
Vast it looms there still, vast it ever will be;”
And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard
Left by those who are held in such memory.

But no; in his basket, see, he has brought
A little white furred thing, stiff of limb,
Whose life never won from the world a thought;
It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him.

“Here say you that Cæsar’s warriors lie?—
But my little white cat was my only friend!
Could she but live, might the record die
Of Cæsar, his legions, his aims, his end!”

Well, Rome’s long rule here is oft and again
A theme for the sages of history,
And the small furred life was worth no one’s pen;
Yet its mourner’s mood has a charm for me.

November 1910.