In haste he’d flown there
      To his comely wife alone there,
   While marching south hard by, to still her fears,
For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there
      In these campaigning years.

      ’Twas time to be Good-bying,
      Since the assembly-hour was nighing
   In royal George’s town at six that morn;
And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were ten good miles of hieing
   Ere ring of bugle-horn.

      “As for Buonaparte, forget him;
      He’s not like to land!  But let him,
   Those strike with aim who strike for wives and sons!
And the war-boats built to float him; ’twere but wanted to upset him
      A slat from Nelson’s guns!

      “But, to assure thee,
      And of creeping fears to cure thee,
   If he should be rumoured anchoring in the Road,
Drive with the nurse to Kingsbere; and let nothing thence allure thee
      Till we’ve him safe-bestowed.

      —With breathings broken
      Farewell was kissed unspoken,
   And they parted there as morning stroked the panes;
And the Volunteer went on, and turned, and twirled his glove for token,
   And took the coastward lanes.

      When above He’th Hills he found him,
      He saw, on gazing round him,
   The Barrow-Beacon burning—burning low,
As if, perhaps, uplighted ever since he’d homeward bound him;
      And it meant: Expect the Foe!

      He slowed; he stopped; he paltered
      Awhile with self, and faltered,
   “Why courting misadventure shoreward roam?
To Molly, surely!  Seek the woods with her till times have altered;
      Charity favours home.

      “Else, my denying
      He would come she’ll read as lying—
   Think the Barrow-Beacon must have met my eyes—
That my words were not unwareness, but deceit of her, while trying
      My life to jeopardize.

      While thus he, thinking,
      A little bird, quick drinking
   Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore,
Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh sinking,
   Near him, upon the moor.

      He stepped in, reached, and seized it,
      And, preening, had released it
   But that a thought of Holy Writ occurred,
And Signs Divine ere battle, till it seemed him Heaven had pleased it
   As guide to send the bird.

      He loosed his clasp; when, rising,
      The bird—as if surmising—
   Bore due to southward, crossing by the Froom,
And Durnover Great-Field and Fort, the soldier clear advising—
      Prompted he wist by Whom.

      Then on he panted
      By grim Mai-Don, and slanted
   Up the steep Ridge-way, hearkening betwixt whiles;
Till, nearing coast and harbour, he beheld the shore-line planted
   With Foot and Horse for miles.

      Captain and Colonel,
      Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal,
   Were there; of neighbour-natives, Michel, Smith,
Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham, roused by the hued nocturnal
   Swoop on their land and kith.

      But Buonaparte still tarried;
      His project had miscarried;
   At the last hour, equipped for victory,
The fleet had paused; his subtle combinations had been parried
   By British strategy.

’Twas a death-bed summons, and forth I went
By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
On that winter night, and sought a gate—
      The home, by Fate,
   Of one I had long held dear.

And there, as I paused by her tenement,
And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,
I thought of the man who had left her lone—
      Him who made her his own
   When I loved her, long before.

Her life was the price she would pay for that whine—
For a child by the man she did not love.
“But let that rest for ever,” I said,
      And bent my tread
   To the chamber up above.

She took my hand in her thin white own,
And smiled her thanks—though nigh too weak—
And made them a sign to leave us there
      Then faltered, ere
   She could bring herself to speak.

“My husband is absent.  As heretofore
The City detains him.  But, in truth,
He has not been kind . . . I will speak no blame,
      But—the child is lame;
   O, I pray she may reach his ruth!

“Forgive past days—I can say no more—
Maybe if we’d wedded you’d now repine! . . .
But I treated you ill.  I was punished.  Farewell!
      —Truth shall I tell?
   Would the child were yours and mine!

“As a wife I was true.  But, such my unease
That, could I insert a deed back in Time,
I’d make her yours, to secure your care;
      And the scandal bear,
   And the penalty for the crime!”

Next night she died; and her obsequies
In the Field of Tombs, by the Via renowned,
Had her husband’s heed.  His tendance spent,
      I often went
   And pondered by her mound.

All that year and the next year whiled,
And I still went thitherward in the gloam;
But the Town forgot her and her nook,
      And her husband took
   Another Love to his home.

“It is noised that you visit my first wife’s tomb.
Now, I gave her an honoured name to bear
While living, when dead.  So I’ve claim to ask
      By what right you task
   My patience by vigiling there?

“There’s decency even in death, I assume;
Preserve it, sir, and keep away;
For the mother of my first-born you
      Show mind undue!
   —Sir, I’ve nothing more to say.”

“That you thought it yours is the way of men;
But I won her troth long ere your day:
You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me?
      ’Twas in fealty.
   —Sir, I’ve nothing more to say,

“Save that, if you’ll hand me my little maid,
I’ll take her, and rear her, and spare you toil.
Think it more than a friendly act none can;
      I’m a lonely man,
   While you’ve a large pot to boil.

“If not, and you’ll put it to ball or blade—
To-night, to-morrow night, anywhen—
I’ll meet you here . . . But think of it,
      And in season fit
   Let me hear from you again.”

“My father who’s not my own, sends word
I’m to stay here, sir, where I belong!”
Next a writing came: “Since the child was the fruit
      Of your lawless suit,
   Pray take her, to right a wrong.”

And I did.  And I gave the child my love,
And the child loved me, and estranged us none.
But compunctions loomed; for I’d harmed the dead
      By what I’d said
   For the good of the living one.

But each with charger, sword, and gun,
   Had bluffed the Biscay wave;
And Jenny prized her gentle one
   For all the love he gave.
She vowed to be, if they were wed,
His honest wife in heart and head
   From bride-ale hour to grave.

Wedded they were.  Her husband’s trust
   In Jenny knew no bound,
And Jenny kept her pure and just,
   Till even malice found
No sin or sign of ill to be
In one who walked so decently
   The duteous helpmate’s round.

She numbered near on sixty years,
   And passed as elderly,
When, in the street, with flush of fears,
   One day discovered she,
From shine of swords and thump of drum.
Her early loves from war had come,
   The King’s-Own Cavalry.

She turned aside, and bowed her head
   Anigh Saint Peter’s door;
“Alas for chastened thoughts!” she said;
   “I’m faded now, and hoar,
And yet those notes—they thrill me through,
And those gay forms move me anew
   As in the years of yore!” . . .

That night the throbbing “Soldier’s Joy,”
   The measured tread and sway
Of “Fancy-Lad” and “Maiden Coy,”
   Reached Jenny as she lay
Beside her spouse; till springtide blood
Seemed scouring through her like a flood
   That whisked the years away.

She rose, and rayed, and decked her head
   Where the bleached hairs ran thin;
Upon her cap two bows of red
   She fixed with hasty pin;
Unheard descending to the street,
She trod the flags with tune-led feet,
   And stood before the Inn.

She knocked, but found her further stride
   Checked by a sergeant tall:
“Gay Granny, whence come you?” he cried;
   “This is a private ball.”
—“No one has more right here than me!
Ere you were born, man,” answered she,
   “I knew the regiment all!”

“Take not the lady’s visit ill!”
   Upspoke the steward free;
“We lack sufficient partners still,
   So, prithee let her be!”
They seized and whirled her ’mid the maze,
And Jenny felt as in the days
   Of her immodesty.

The favourite Quick-step “Speed the Plough”—
   (Cross hands, cast off, and wheel)—
“The Triumph,” “Sylph,” “The Row-dow-dow,”
   Famed “Major Malley’s Reel,”
“The Duke of York’s,” “The Fairy Dance,”
“The Bridge of Lodi” (brought from France),
   She beat out, toe and heel.

The “Fall of Paris” clanged its close,
   And Peter’s chime told four,
When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose
   To seek her silent door.
They tiptoed in escorting her,
Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur
   Should break her goodman’s snore.

Their footsteps died as she leant there,
   Lit by the morning star
Hanging above the moorland, where
   The aged elm-rows are;
And, as o’ernight, from Pummery Ridge
To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge
   No life stirred, near or far.

Though inner mischief worked amain,
   She reached her husband’s side;
Where, toil-weary, as he had lain
   Beneath the patchwork pied
When yestereve she’d forthward crept,
And as unwitting, still he slept
   Who did in her confide.

Time wore to six.  Her husband rose
   And struck the steel and stone;
He glanced at Jenny, whose repose
   Seemed deeper than his own.
With dumb dismay, on closer sight,
He gathered sense that in the night,
   Or morn, her soul had flown.

When told that some too mighty strain
   For one so many-yeared
Had burst her bosom’s master-vein,
   His doubts remained unstirred.
His Jenny had not left his side
Betwixt the eve and morning-tide:
   —The King’s said not a word.

The names, rough-hewn, of equal size,
   Stood on the panel still;
Unequal since.—“’Twas theirs to aim,
   Mine was it to fulfil!”

—“Who saves his life shall lose it, friends!”
   Outspake the preacher then,
Unweeting he his listener, who
   Looked at the names again.

That he had come and they’d been stayed,
   ’Twas but the chance of war:
Another chance, and they’d sat here,
   And he had lain afar.

Transcendent triumph in return
   No longer lit his brain;
Transcendence rayed the distant urn
   Where slept the fallen twain.

I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,
   The coming of eccentric orbs;
   To mete the dust the sky absorbs,
To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.

I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;
   Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;
   Death’s soothing finger, sorrow’s smart;
—All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.

But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense—
   Those sights of which old prophets tell,
   Those signs the general word so well,
Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my long suspense.

Or, if a dead Love’s lips, whom dreams reveal
   When midnight imps of King Decay
   Delve sly to solve me back to clay,
Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;

Or, when Earth’s Frail lie bleeding of her Strong,
   If some Recorder, as in Writ,
   Near to the weary scene should flit
And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.

—There are who, rapt to heights of trancéd trust,
   These tokens claim to feel and see,
   Read radiant hints of times to be—
Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.

And panted for response.  But none replies;
   No warnings loom, nor whisperings
   To open out my limitings,
And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.

To Baals illusive and specious,
   Till chance had there voiced me
That one I loved vainly in nonage
   Had ceased her to be.

The passion the planets had scowled on,
   And change had let dwindle,
Her death-rumour smartly relifted
   To full apogee.

I mounted a steed in the dawning
   With acheful remembrance,
And made for the ancient West Highway
   To far Exonb’ry.

And, changing anew my onbearer,
   I traversed the downland
Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains
   Bulge barren of tree;

And still sadly onward I followed
   That Highway the Icen,
Which trails its pale riband down Wessex
   O’er lynchet and lea.

Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,
   Where Legions had wayfared,
And where the slow river upglasses
   Its green canopy,

And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefrom
   Through Casterbridge held I
Still on, to entomb her my vision
   Saw stretched pallidly.

Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly
   Above me from southward,
And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,
   And square Pummerie.

The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,
   The Axe, and the Otter
I passed, to the gate of the city
   Where Exe scents the sea;

Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,
   I learnt ’twas not my Love
To whom Mother Church had just murmured
   A last lullaby.

“She wedded.”—“Ah!”—“Wedded beneath her—
   She keeps the stage-hostel
Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway—
   The famed Lions-Three.

“Her spouse was her lackey—no option
   ’Twixt wedlock and worse things;
A lapse over-sad for a lady
   Of her pedigree!”

I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered
   To shades of green laurel:
Too ghastly had grown those first tidings
   So brightsome of blee!

For, on my ride hither, I’d halted
   Awhile at the Lions,
And her—her whose name had once opened
   My heart as a key—

“O God, why this seeming derision!”
   I cried in my anguish:
“O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten—
   That Thing—meant it thee!

“Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,
   Were grief I could compass;
Depraved—’tis for Christ’s poor dependent
   A cruel decree!”

I backed on the Highway; but passed not
   The hostel.  Within there
Too mocking to Love’s re-expression
   Was Time’s repartee!

Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,
   By cromlechs unstoried,
And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,
   In self-colloquy,

And thence till to-day I persuade me
   That this was the true one;
That Death stole intact her young dearness
   And innocency.

Frail-witted, illuded they call me;
   I may be.  ’Tis better
To dream than to own the debasement
   Of sweet Cicely.

Moreover I rate it unseemly
   To hold that kind Heaven
Could work such device—to her ruin
   And my misery.

So, lest I disturb my choice vision,
   I shun the West Highway,
Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms
   From blackbird and bee;

Upon a noon I pilgrimed through
   A pasture, mile by mile,
Unto the place where I last saw
   My dead Love’s living smile.

And sorrowing I lay me down
   Upon the heated sod:
It seemed as if my body pressed
   The very ground she trod.

“You draw me, and I come to you,
   My faithful one,” she said,
In voice that had the moving tone
   It bore ere breath had fled.

She said: “’Tis seven years since I died:
   Few now remember me;
My husband clasps another bride;
   My children’s love has she.

“My brethren, sisters, and my friends
   Care not to meet my sprite:
Who prized me most I did not know
   Till I passed down from sight.”

I said: “My days are lonely here;
   I need thy smile alway:
I’ll use this night my ball or blade,
   And join thee ere the day.”

“A Shade but in its mindful ones
   Has immortality;
By living, me you keep alive,
   By dying you slay me.

“In you resides my single power
   Of sweet continuance here;
On your fidelity I count
   Through many a coming year.”

—I started through me at her plight,
   So suddenly confessed:
Dismissing late distaste for life,
   I craved its bleak unrest.

“I will not die, my One of all!—
   To lengthen out thy days
I’ll guard me from minutest harms
   That may invest my ways!”

But grows my grief.  When I surcease,
   Through whom alone lives she,
Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,
   Never again to be!

I longed to love a full-boughed beech
   And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
   And signalled unity.
But with his drip he forced a breach,
   And tried to poison me.

In new affection next I strove
   To coll an ash I saw,
And he in trust received my love;
   Till with my soft green claw
I cramped and bound him as I wove . . .
   Such was my love: ha-ha!

By this I gained his strength and height
   Without his rivalry.
But in my triumph I lost sight
   Of afterhaps.  Soon he,
Being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright,
   And in his fall felled me!

As evening shaped I found me on a moor
   Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
   Was like a tract in pain.

“This scene, like my own life,” I said, “is one
   Where many glooms abide;
Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun—
   Lightless on every side.

Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood
   I dealt me silently
As one perverse—misrepresenting Good
   In graceless mutiny.

Against the horizon’s dim-discernèd wheel
   A form rose, strange of mould:
That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel
   Rather than could behold.

“’Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent
   To darkness!” croaked the Thing.
“Not if you look aloft!” said I, intent
   On my new reasoning.

When, soul in soul reflected,
We breathed an æthered air,
   When we neglected
   All things elsewhere,
And left the friendly friendless
To keep our love aglow,
   We deemed it endless . . .
   —We did not know!

When I found you, helpless lying,
And you waived my deep misprise,
   And swore me, dying,
   In phantom-guise
To wing to me when grieving,
And touch away my woe,
   We kissed, believing . . .
   —We did not know!

But though, your powers outreckoning,
You hold you dead and dumb,
   Or scorn my beckoning,
   And will not come;
And I say, “’Twere mood ungainly
To store her memory so:”
   I say it vainly—
   I feel and know!

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
   Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

“Gone,” I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads;
   Yet at mothy curfew-tide,
And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads,

“We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,
   Unsuccesses to success,
—Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.

“No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;
   Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess.”

W. D.—“Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by.”
   Squire.—“You may hold the manse in fee,
You may wed my spouse, my children’s memory of me may decry.”

Far.—“Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,
   Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.”
Wife.—“If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan’t care or ho.”

All. —“We’ve no wish to hear the tidings, how the people’s fortunes shift;
   What your daily doings are;
Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.

“Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,
   If you quire to our old tune,
If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar.”

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
   Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.

O for but a moment
Of that old endowment—
   Light to gaily
   See thy daily
Irisèd embowment!

But such re-adorning
Time forbids with scorning—
   Makes me see things
   Cease to be things
They were in my morning.

Fad’st thou, glow-forsaken,
Darkness-overtaken!
   Thy first sweetness,
   Radiance, meetness,
None shall re-awaken.

      Not a line of her writing have I,
         Not a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
      I may picture her there;
   And in vain do I urge my unsight
      To conceive my lost prize
At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,
      And with laughter her eyes.

      Thus I do but the phantom retain
         Of the maiden of yore
As my relic; yet haply the best of her—fined in my brain
      It maybe the more
   That no line of her writing have I,
      Nor a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
      I may picture her there.

March 1890.

   We passed where flag and flower
   Signalled a jocund throng;
   We said: “Go to, the hour
   Is apt!”—and joined the song;
And, kindling, laughed at life and care,
Although we knew no laugh lay there.

   We joyed to see strange sheens
   Leap from quaint leaves in shade;
   A secret light of greens
   They’d for their pleasure made.
We said: “We’ll set such sorts as these!”
—We knew with night the wish would cease.

   “So sweet the place,” we said,
   “Its tacit tales so dear,
   Our thoughts, when breath has sped,
   Will meet and mingle here!” . . .
“Words!” mused we.  “Passed the mortal door,
Our thoughts will reach this nook no more.”

Pale beech and pine-tree blue,
   Set in one clay,
Bough to bough cannot you
   Bide out your day?
When the rains skim and skip,
Why mar sweet comradeship,
Blighting with poison-drip
   Neighbourly spray?

But, having entered in,
   Great growths and small
Show them to men akin—
   Combatants all!
Sycamore shoulders oak,
Bines the slim sapling yoke,
Ivy-spun halters choke
   Elms stout and tall.

Touches from ash, O wych,
   Sting you like scorn!
You, too, brave hollies, twitch
   Sidelong from thorn.
Even the rank poplars bear
Illy a rival’s air,
Cankering in black despair
   If overborne.

1887: 1896.

Now that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe,
Never to press thy cosy cushions more,
Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,
Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:

Knowing thy natural receptivity,
I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve,
My sombre image, warped by insidious heave
Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee.

Ah, child, thou art but half thy darling mother’s;
   Hers couldst thou wholly be,
My light in thee would outglow all in others;
   She would relive to me.
But niggard Nature’s trick of birth
   Bars, lest she overjoy,
Renewal of the loved on earth
      Save with alloy.

   “Has some Vast Imbecility,
      Mighty to build and blend,
      But impotent to tend,
Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

   “Or come we of an Automaton
      Unconscious of our pains? . . .
      Or are we live remains
Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?

   “Or is it that some high Plan betides,
      As yet not understood,
      Of Evil stormed by Good,
We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?”

That from this bright believing band
   An outcast I should be,
That faiths by which my comrades stand
   Seem fantasies to me,
And mirage-mists their Shining Land,
   Is a drear destiny.

Since heart of mine knows not that ease
   Which they know; since it be
That He who breathes All’s Well to these
   Breathes no All’s-Well to me,
My lack might move their sympathies
   And Christian charity!

I am like a gazer who should mark
   An inland company
Standing upfingered, with, “Hark! hark!
   The glorious distant sea!”
And feel, “Alas, ’tis but yon dark
   And wind-swept pine to me!”

* * * * *

Enough.  As yet disquiet clings
   About us.  Rest shall we.

When we as strangers sought
   Their catering care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
   Of what we were.
They warmed as they opined
   Us more than friends—
That we had all resigned
   For love’s dear ends.

And we were left alone
   As Love’s own pair;
Yet never the love-light shone
   Between us there!
But that which chilled the breath
   Of afternoon,
And palsied unto death
   The pane-fly’s tune.

The kiss their zeal foretold,
   And now deemed come,
Came not: within his hold
   Love lingered-numb.
Why cast he on our port
   A bloom not ours?
Why shaped us for his sport
   In after-hours?

“Thy husband—poor, poor Heart!—is dead—
   Dead, out by Moreford Rise;
A bull escaped the barton-shed,
   Gored him, and there he lies!”

—“Ha, ha—go away!  ’Tis a tale, methink,
   Thou joker Kit!” laughed she.
“I’ve known thee many a year, Kit Twink,
   And ever hast thou fooled me!”

So unwontedly sad was the merry man’s face—
   That face which had long deceived—
That she gazed and gazed; and then could trace
   The truth there; and she believed.

She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,
   And scanned far Egdon-side;
And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge
   And the rippling Froom; till she cried:

“O my chamber’s untidied, unmade my bed
   Though the day has begun to wear!
‘What a slovenly hussif!’ it will be said,
   When they all go up my stair!”

But a fortnight thence she could take no food,
   And she pined in a slow decay;
While Kit soon lost his mournful mood
   And laughed in his ancient way.

1894.

The years have gathered grayly
   Since I danced upon this leaze
With one who kindled gaily
   Love’s fitful ecstasies!
But despite the term as teacher,
   I remain what I was then
In each essential feature
   Of the fantasies of men.

Still, I’d go the world with Beauty,
   I would laugh with her and sing,
I would shun divinest duty
   To resume her worshipping.
But she’d scorn my brave endeavour,
   She would not balm the breeze
By murmuring “Thine for ever!”
   As she did upon this leaze.

1890.