Its former green is blue and thin,
And its once firm legs sink in and in;
Soon it will break down unaware,
Soon it will break down unaware.

At night when reddest flowers are black
Those who once sat thereon come back;
Quite a row of them sitting there,
Quite a row of them sitting there.

With them the seat does not break down,
Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown,
For they are as light as upper air,
They are as light as upper air!

François Hippolite Barthélémon, first-fiddler at Vauxhall Gardens, composed what was probably the most popular morning hymn-tune ever written.  It was formerly sung, full-voiced, every Sunday in most churches, to Bishop Ken’s words, but is now seldom heard.

He said: “Awake my soul, and with the sun,” . . .
And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east,
Where was emerging like a full-robed priest
The irradiate globe that vouched the dark as done.

It lit his face—the weary face of one
Who in the adjacent gardens charged his string,
Nightly, with many a tuneful tender thing,
Till stars were weak, and dancing hours outrun.

And count it did; till, caught by echoing lyres,
It spread to galleried naves and mighty quires.

I sometimes think as here I sit
   Of things I have done,
Which seemed in doing not unfit
   To face the sun:
Yet never a soul has paused a whit
   On such—not one.

There was that eager strenuous press
   To sow good seed;
There was that saving from distress
   In the nick of need;
There were those words in the wilderness:
   Who cared to heed?

Yet can this be full true, or no? 
   For one did care,
And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,
   Like wind on the stair,
Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though
   I may despair.

Did they catch as it were in a Vision at shut of the day—
When their cavalry smote through the ancient Esdraelon Plain,
And they crossed where the Tishbite stood forth in his enemy’s way—
His gaunt mournful Shade as he bade the King haste off amain?

On war-men at this end of time—even on Englishmen’s eyes—
Who slay with their arms of new might in that long-ago place,
Flashed he who drove furiously? . . . Ah, did the phantom arise
Of that queen, of that proud Tyrian woman who painted her face?

Could such be the hauntings of men of to-day, at the cease
Of pursuit, at the dusk-hour, ere slumber their senses could seal?
Enghosted seers, kings—one on horseback who asked “Is it peace?” . . .
Yea, strange things and spectral may men have beheld in Jezreel!

September 24, 1918.

   Who were the twain that trod this track
      So many times together
         Hither and back,
In spells of certain and uncertain weather?

   Commonplace in conduct they
      Who wandered to and fro here
         Day by day:
Two that few dwellers troubled themselves to know here.

   The very gravel-path was prim
      That daily they would follow:
         Borders trim:
Never a wayward sprout, or hump, or hollow.

   And petty seemed the happenings
      That ministered to their joyance:
         Simple things,
Onerous to satiate souls, increased their buoyance.

   Who could those common people be,
      Of days the plainest, barest?
         They were we;
Yes; happier than the cleverest, smartest, rarest.

I

   The curtains now are drawn,
   And the spindrift strikes the glass,
   Blown up the jagged pass
   By the surly salt sou’-west,
   And the sneering glare is gone
   Behind the yonder crest,
      While she sings to me:
“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,
And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,
And death may come, but loving is divine.”

   I stand here in the rain,
   With its smite upon her stone,
   And the grasses that have grown
   Over women, children, men,
   And their texts that “Life is vain”;
   But I hear the notes as when
      Once she sang to me:
“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,
And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,
And death may come, but loving is divine.”

1913.

I

When moiling seems at cease
   In the vague void of night-time,
   And heaven’s wide roomage stormless
   Between the dusk and light-time,
   And fear at last is formless,
We call the allurement Peace.

II

Peace, this hid riot, Change,
   This revel of quick-cued mumming,
   This never truly being,
   This evermore becoming,
   This spinner’s wheel onfleeing
Outside perception’s range.

1917.

   I was not he—the man
Who used to pilgrim to your gate,
At whose smart step you grew elate,
   And rosed, as maidens can,
      For a brief span.

   It was not I who sang
Beside the keys you touched so true
With note-bent eyes, as if with you
   It counted not whence sprang
      The voice that rang . . .

   Yet though my destiny
It was to miss your early sweet,
You still, when turned to you my feet,
   Had sweet enough to be
      A prize for me!

A very West-of-Wessex girl,
   As blithe as blithe could be,
   Was once well-known to me,
And she would laud her native town,
   And hope and hope that we
Might sometime study up and down
   Its charms in company.

But never I squired my Wessex girl
   In jaunts to Hoe or street
   When hearts were high in beat,
Nor saw her in the marbled ways
   Where market-people meet
That in her bounding early days
   Were friendly with her feet.

Begun in Plymouth, March 1913.

   To my native place
   Bent upon returning,
   Bosom all day burning
   To be where my race
Well were known, ’twas much with me
There to dwell in amity.

   Folk had sought their beds,
   But I hailed: to view me
   Under the moon, out to me
   Several pushed their heads,
And to each I told my name,
Plans, and that therefrom I came.

   “Did you? . . .  Ah, ’tis true
   I once heard, back a long time,
   Here had spent his young time,
   Some such man as you . . .
Good-night.”  The casement closed again,
And I was left in the frosty lane.

I

The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay;
   But they were going.

II

Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
   But they were staying.

III

Then we looked closelier at Time,
And saw his ghostly arms revolving
To sweep off woeful things with prime,
Things sinister with things sublime
   Alike dissolving.

I paused to read a letter of hers
   By the moon’s cold shine,
Eyeing it in the tenderest way,
And edging it up to catch each ray
   Upon her light-penned line.
I did not know what years would flow
   Of her life’s span and mine
Ere I read another letter of hers
   By the moon’s cold shine!

I chance now on the last of hers,
   By the moon’s cold shine;
It is the one remaining page
Out of the many shallow and sage
   Whereto she set her sign.
Who could foresee there were to be
   Such letters of pain and pine
Ere I should read this last of hers
   By the moon’s cold shine!

O poet, come you haunting here
Where streets have stolen up all around,
And never a nightingale pours one
   Full-throated sound?

Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,
Thought you to find all just the same
Here shining, as in hours of old,
   If you but came?

What will you do in your surprise
At seeing that changes wrought in Rome
Are wrought yet more on the misty slope
   One time your home?

Or will you, softening, the while
You further and yet further look,
Learn that a laggard few would fain
   Preserve your nook? . . .

—Where the Piazza steps incline,
And catch late light at eventide,
I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,
   “’Twas here he died.”

I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,
Where day and night a pyramid keeps
Uplifted its white hand, and said,
   “’Tis there he sleeps.”

Pleasanter now it is to hold
That here, where sang he, more of him
Remains than where he, tuneless, cold,
   Passed to the dim.

July 1920.

“Ah Madam; you’ve indeed come back here?
   ’Twas sad—your husband’s so swift death,
And you away!  You shouldn’t have left him:
      It hastened his last breath.”

“Dame, I am not the lady you think me;
   I know not her, nor know her name;
I’ve come to lodge here—a friendless woman;
      My health my only aim.”

She came; she lodged.  Wherever she rambled
   They held her as no other than
The lady named; and told how her husband
      Had died a forsaken man.

Grew on her, till she pitied his sorrow
   As if she truly had been the cause—
Yea, his deserter; and came to wonder
      What mould of man he was.

“Tell me my history!” would exclaim she;
   “Our history,” she said mournfully.
“But you know, surely, Ma’am?” they would answer,
      Much in perplexity.

Curious, she crept to his grave one evening,
   And a second time in the dusk of the morrow;
Then a third time, with crescent emotion
      Like a bereaved wife’s sorrow.

No gravestone rose by the rounded hillock;
   —“I marvel why this is?” she said.
—“He had no kindred, Ma’am, but you near.”
      —She set a stone at his head.

At length died too this kinless woman,
   As he had died she had grown to crave;
And at her dying she besought them
      To bury her in his grave.

Such said, she had paused; until she added:
   “Call me by his name on the stone,
As I were, first to last, his dearest,
      Not she who left him lone!”

And this they did.  And so it became there
   That, by the strength of a tender whim,
The stranger was she who bore his name there,
      Not she who wedded him.

I sang that song on Sunday,
   To witch an idle while,
I sang that song on Monday,
   As fittest to beguile;
I sang it as the year outwore,
      And the new slid in;
I thought not what might shape before
   Another would begin.

I sang that song in summer,
   All unforeknowingly,
To him as a new-comer
   From regions strange to me:
I sang it when in afteryears
      The shades stretched out,
And paths were faint; and flocking fears
   Brought cup-eyed care and doubt.

Nine drops of water bead the jessamine,
And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:
—’Twas not so in that August—full-rayed, fine—
When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.

Or was there then no noted radiancy
Of summer?  Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough,
Gilt over by the light I bore in me,
And was the waste world just the same as now?

It can have been so: yea, that threatenings
Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray,
By the then possibilities in things
Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.

1920.

“It was not you I came to please,
   Only myself,” flipped she;
“I like this spot of phantasies,
   And thought you far from me.”
But O, he was the secret spell
   That led her to the lea!

“It was not she who shaped my ways,
   Or works, or thoughts,” he said.
“I scarcely marked her living days,
   Or missed her much when dead.”
But O, his joyance knew its knell
   When daisies hid her head!

   Joyful lady, sing! 
And I will lurk here listening,
Though nought be done, and nought begun,
And work-hours swift are scurrying.

   Sing, O lady, still! 
Aye, I will wait each note you trill,
Though duties due that press to do
This whole day long I unfulfil.

   “—It is an evening tune;
One not designed to waste the noon,”
You say.  I know: time bids me go—
For daytide passes too, too soon!

   But let indulgence be,
This once, to my rash ecstasy:
When sounds nowhere that carolled air
My idled morn may comfort me!

On that gray night of mournful drone,
A part from aught to hear, to see,
I dreamt not that from shires unknown
   In gloom, alone,
   By Halworthy,
A man was drawing near to me.

I’d no concern at anything,
No sense of coming pull-heart play;
Yet, under the silent outspreading
   Of even’s wing
   Where Otterham lay,
A man was riding up my way.

I thought of nobody—not of one,
But only of trifles—legends, ghosts—
Though, on the moorland dim and dun
   That travellers shun
   About these coasts,
The man had passed Tresparret Posts.

There was a rumble at the door,
A draught disturbed the drapery,
And but a minute passed before,
   With gaze that bore
   My destiny,
The man revealed himself to me.

“I hear the piano playing—
   Just as a ghost might play.”
“—O, but what are you saying?
   There’s no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;
   Years past it went amiss.”
“—I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken:
      A strange house, this!

“I catch some undertone here,
   From some one out of sight.”
“—Impossible; we are alone here,
   And shall be through the night.”
“—The parlour-door—what stirred it?”
   “—No one: no soul’s in range.”
“—But, anyhow, I heard it,
      And it seems strange!

“—Ah, maybe you’ve some vision
   Of showings beyond our sphere;
Some sight, sense, intuition
   Of what once happened here?
The house is old; they’ve hinted
   It once held two love-thralls,
And they may have imprinted
      Their dreams on its walls?

“They were—I think ’twas told me—
   Queer in their works and ways;
The teller would often hold me
   With weird tales of those days.
Some folk can not abide here,
   But we—we do not care
Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,
      Knew joy, or despair.”

As ’twere to-night, in the brief space
   Of a far eventime,
   My spirit rang achime
At vision of a girl of grace;
As ’twere to-night, in the brief space
   Of a far eventime.

As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow
   I airily walked and talked,
   And wondered as I walked
What it could mean, this soar from sorrow;
As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow
   I airily walked and talked.

As ’twere at waning of this week
   Broke a new life on me;
   Trancings of bliss to be
In some dim dear land soon to seek;
As ’twere at waning of this week
   Broke a new life on me!

   A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,
      And we clasped, and almost kissed;
   But she was not the woman whom
   I had promised to meet in the thawing brume
On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.

   So loosening from me swift she said:
      “O why, why feign to be
   The one I had meant!—to whom I have sped
   To fly with, being so sorrily wed!”
—’Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me.

   My assignation had struck upon
      Some others’ like it, I found.
   And her lover rose on the night anon;
   And then her husband entered on
The lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around.

   And next the lover: “Little I knew,
      Madam, you had a third!
   Kissing here in my very view!”
   —Husband and lover then withdrew.
I let them; and I told them not they erred.

   Why not?  Well, there faced she and I—
      Two strangers who’d kissed, or near,
   Chancewise.  To see stand weeping by
   A woman once embraced, will try
The tension of a man the most austere.

   So it began; and I was young,
      She pretty, by the lamp,
   As flakes came waltzing down among
   The waves of her clinging hair, that hung
Heavily on her temples, dark and damp.

   And there alone still stood we two;
      She one cast off for me,
   Or so it seemed: while night ondrew,
   Forcing a parley what should do
We twain hearts caught in one catastrophe.

   “Is wary walking worth much pother?”
      It grunted, as still it stayed.
   “One pairing is as good as another
   Where all is venture!  Take each other,
And scrap the oaths that you have aforetime made.” . . .

   —Of the four involved there walks but one
      On earth at this late day.
   And what of the chapter so begun?
   In that odd complex what was done?
   Well; happiness comes in full to none:
Let peace lie on lulled lips: I will not say.

Weymouth.

I dwelt in the shade of a city,
   She far by the sea,
With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;
   But never with me.

She may have had lips like the coral,
   But I never kissed them,
Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel,
   Nor sought for, nor missed them.

Not a word passed of love all our lifetime,
   Between us, nor thrill;
We’d never a husband-and-wife time,
   For good or for ill.

Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal,
   Lie I and lies she,
This never-known lady, eternal
   Companion to me!

I have seen her in gowns the brightest,
   Of azure, green, and red,
And in the simplest, whitest,
   Muslined from heel to head;
I have watched her walking, riding,
   Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,
Or in fixed thought abiding
   By the foam-fingered sea.

In woodlands I have known her,
   When boughs were mourning loud,
In the rain-reek she has shown her
   Wild-haired and watery-browed.
And once or twice she has cast me
   As she pomped along the street
Court-clad, ere quite she had passed me,
   A glance from her chariot-seat.

I marked when the weather changed,
And the panes began to quake,
And the winds rose up and ranged,
That night, lying half-awake.

Dead leaves blew into my room,
And alighted upon my bed,
And a tree declared to the gloom
Its sorrow that they were shed.

One leaf of them touched my hand,
And I thought that it was you
There stood as you used to stand,
And saying at last you knew!

(?) 1913.

Since every sound moves memories,
   How can I play you
Just as I might if you raised no scene,
By your ivory rows, of a form between
My vision and your time-worn sheen,
      As when each day you
Answered our fingers with ecstasy?
So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!

I fain would second her, strike to her stroke,
   As when she was by,
Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “Fall
Of Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal,
To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call”
      Sung soft as a sigh:
But upping ghosts press achefully,
And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!

Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers
   Afresh on the air,
Too quick would the small white shapes be here
Of the fellow twain of hands so dear;
And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear;
      —Then how shall I bear
Such heavily-haunted harmony?
Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!

Where three roads joined it was green and fair,
And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,
And life laughed sweet when I halted there;
Yet there I never again would be.

I am sure those branchways are brooding now,
With a wistful blankness upon their face,
While the few mute passengers notice how
Spectre-beridden is the place;

Which nightly sighs like a laden soul,
And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell
Not far from thence, should have let it roll
Away from them down a plumbless well

Yes, I see those roads—now rutted and bare,
While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea;
And though life laughed when I halted there,
It is where I never again would be.

I

There had been years of Passion—scorching, cold,
And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,
Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,
Among the young, among the weak and old,
And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

II

III

The feeble folk at home had grown full-used
To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adept
In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;
To day—dreamt men in millions, when they mused—
To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

IV

Waking to wish existence timeless, null,
Sirius they watched above where armies fell;
He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull
Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull
Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly
Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!”
One morrow.  Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,
“Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,
And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?”

VI

Breathless they paused.  Out there men raised their glance
To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,
As they had raised it through the four years’ dance
Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;
And murmured, “Strange, this!  How?  All firing stopped?”

VII

VIII

Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,
No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,
No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;
Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”;
No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.

IX

Calm fell.  From Heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

         “Are you awake,
      Comrades, this silent night?
   Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey make
Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!”

         “O viol, my friend,
      I watch, though Phosphor nears,
   And I fain would drowse away to its utter end
This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!”

And they felt past handlers clutch them,
   Though none was in the room,
Old players’ dead fingers touch them,
      Shrunk in the tomb.

         “Once I could thrill
      The populace through and through,
   Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” . . .
(A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)

And they felt old muscles travel
   Over their tense contours,
And with long skill unravel
      Cunningest scores.

         “The tender pat
      Of her aery finger-tips
   Upon me daily—I rejoiced thereat!”
(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)

         “My keys’ white shine,
      Now sallow, met a hand
   Even whiter. . . .  Tones of hers fell forth with mine
In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!”

         “Gayer than most
      Was I,” reverbed a drum;
   “The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs!  What a host
I stirred—even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!”

         Trilled an aged viol:
      “Much tune have I set free
   To spur the dance, since my first timid trial
Where I had birth—far hence, in sun-swept Italy!”

And he feels apt touches on him
   From those that pressed him then;
Who seem with their glance to con him,
      Saying, “Not again!”

         “A holy calm,”
      Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued,
   “Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm
Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.”

Thus they, till each past player
   Stroked thinner and more thin,
And the morning sky grew grayer
      And day crawled in.

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted
      A lamp-lit crowd;
And anon there passed me a soul departed,
      Who mutely bowed.
In my far-off youthful years I had met her,
Full-pulsed; but now, no more life’s debtor,
      Onward she slid
   In a shroud that furs half-hid.

“Why do you trouble me, dead woman,
      Trouble me;
You whom I knew when warm and human?
      —How it be
That you quitted earth and are yet upon it
Is, to any who ponder on it,
      Past being read!”
   “Still, it is so,” she said.

“Well; your very simplicity made me love you
      Mid such town dross,
Till I set not Heaven itself above you,
      Who grew my Cross;
For you’d only nod, despite how I sighed for you;
So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!
      —What I suffered then
   Would have paid for the sins of ten!

“I said: ‘It is his mother’s spirit
      Hovering around
To shield him, maybe!’  I used to fear it,
      As still I found
My beauty left no least impression,
And remnants of pride withheld confession
      Of my true trade
   By speaking; so I delayed.

“I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flower
      He’ll be beguiled.’
I held it, in passing you one late hour,
      To your face: you smiled,
Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there
A single one that rivalled me there! . . .
      Well: it’s all past.
   I died in the Lock at last.”

She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,
      Guessing their lot;
She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,
      And that did not.
Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me,
Why asked you never, ere death befell me,
      To have my love,
   Much as I dreamt thereof?”

I could not answer.  And she, well weeting
      All in my heart,
Said: “God your guardian kept our fleeting
      Forms apart!”
Sighing and drawing her furs around her
Over the shroud that tightly bound her,
      With wafts as from clay
   She turned and thinned away.

London, 1918.

If it’s ever spring again,
   Spring again,
I shall go where went I when
Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen,
Seeing me not, amid their flounder,
Standing with my arm around her;
If it’s ever spring again,
   Spring again,
I shall go where went I then.

If it’s ever summer-time,
   Summer-time,
With the hay crop at the prime,
And the cuckoos—two—in rhyme,
As they used to be, or seemed to,
We shall do as long we’ve dreamed to,
If it’s ever summer-time,
   Summer-time,
With the hay, and bees achime.

         In the heart of night,
      When farers were not near,
   The left house said to the house on the right,
“I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.”

         Said the right, cold-eyed:
      “Newcomer here I am,
   Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,
Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.

         “Modern my wood,
      My hangings fair of hue;
   While my windows open as they should,
And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.

         “You have not known
      Men’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens;
   You are but a heap of stick and stone:
A new house has no sense of the have-beens.

         “Void as a drum
      You stand: I am packed with these,
   Though, strangely, living dwellers who come
See not the phantoms all my substance sees!

         “Visible in the morning
      Stand they, when dawn drags in;
   Visible at night; yet hint or warning
Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.

         “Babes new-brought-forth
      Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched
   Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth;
Yea, throng they as when first from the ’Byss upfetched.

         “Note here within
      The bridegroom and the bride,
   Who smile and greet their friends and kin,
And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.

         “Where such inbe,
      A dwelling’s character
   Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy
To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.

         “Yet the blind folk
      My tenants, who come and go
   In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke,
Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.”

         “—That will it, boy;
      Such shades will people thee,
   Each in his misery, irk, or joy,
And print on thee their presences as on me.”

I glimpsed a woman’s muslined form
   Sing-songing airily
Against the moon; and still she sang,
   And took no heed of me.

Another trice, and I beheld
   What first I had not scanned,
That now and then she tapped and shook
   A timbrel in her hand.

So late the hour, so white her drape,
   So strange the look it lent
To that blank hill, I could not guess
   What phantastry it meant.

Then burst I forth: “Why such from you?
   Are you so happy now?”
Her voice swam on; nor did she show
   Thought of me anyhow.

“What home is yours now?” then I said;
   “You seem to have no care.”
But the wild wavering tune went forth
   As if I had not been there.

“This world is dark, and where you are,”
   I said, “I cannot be!”
But still the happy one sang on,
   And had no heed of me.

One without looks in to-night
   Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
   As we sit and think
   By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
   Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
   Wondering, aglow,
   Fourfooted, tiptoe.

A bird bills the selfsame song,
With never a fault in its flow,
That we listened to here those long
   Long years ago.

A pleasing marvel is how
A strain of such rapturous rote
Should have gone on thus till now
   Unchanged in a note!

—But it’s not the selfsame bird.—
No: perished to dust is he . . .
As also are those who heard
   That song with me.

There is nobody on the road
   But I,
And no beseeming abode
   I can try
For shelter, so abroad
   I must lie.

The stars feel not far up,
   And to be
The lights by which I sup
   Glimmeringly,
Set out in a hollow cup
   Over me.

They wag as though they were
   Panting for joy
Where they shine, above all care,
   And annoy,
And demons of despair—
   Life’s alloy.

A wanderer, witch-drawn
   To and fro,
To-morrow, at the dawn,
   On I go,
And where I rest anon
   Do not know!

Yet it’s meet—this bed of hay
   And roofless plight;
For there’s a house of clay,
   My own, quite,
To roof me soon, all day
   And all night.

This is the story a man told me
   Of his life’s one day of dreamery.

   A woman came into his room
Between the dawn and the creeping day:
She was the years-wed wife from whom
He had parted, and who lived far away,
      As if strangers they.

   He wondered, and as she stood
She put on youth in her look and air,
And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed
Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair
      While he watched her there;

   And he stretched his arms: “Stay—rest!—”
He cried.  “Abide with me so, my own!”
But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;
She had vanished with all he had looked upon
      Of her beauty: gone.

   He clothed, and drew downstairs,
But she was not in the house, he found;
And he passed out under the leafy pairs
Of the avenue elms, and searched around
      To the park-pale bound.

   He mounted, and rode till night
To the city to which she had long withdrawn,
The vision he bore all day in his sight
Being her young self as pondered on
      In the dim of dawn.

   She received him—an ancient dame,
Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb,
“How strange!—I’d almost forgotten your name!—
A call just now—is troublesome;
      Why did you come?”

   Call off your eyes from care
By some determined deftness; put forth joys
Dear as excess without the core that cloys,
   And charm Life’s lourings fair.

   Exalt and crown the hour
That girdles us, and fill it full with glee,
Blind glee, excelling aught could ever be
   Were heedfulness in power.

   Send up such touching strains
That limitless recruits from Fancy’s pack
Shall rush upon your tongue, and tender back
   All that your soul contains.

   For what do we know best?
That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry,
And that men moment after moment die,
   Of all scope dispossest.

1867: Westbourne Park Villas.

Had I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:

“You see that man?”—I might have looked, and said,
“O yes: I see him.  One that boat has brought
Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban’s Head.
So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.”

“You see that man?”—“Nay, leave me!” then I plead,
“I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,
And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:
I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!

“Good.  That man goes to Rome—to death, despair;
And no one notes him now but you and I:
A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,
And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.”

September 1920.

Note.—In September 1820 Keats, on his way to Rome, landed one day on the Dorset coast, and composed the sonnet, “Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.”  The spot of his landing is judged to have been Lulworth Cove.

   That night, that night,
   That song, that song!
Will such again be evened quite
   Through lifetimes long?

   No mirth was shown
   To outer seers,
But mood to match has not been known
   In modern years.

   O eyes that smiled,
   O lips that lured;
That such would last was one beguiled
   To think ensured!

   That night, that night,
   That song, that song;
O drink to its recalled delight,
   Though tears may throng!

I
On Christmas Eve

Late on Christmas Eve, in the street alone,
Outside a house, on the pavement-stone,
I sang to her, as we’d sung together
On former eves ere I felt her tether.—
Above the door of green by me
Was she, her casement seen by me;
   But she would not heed
   What I melodied
   In my soul’s sore need—
   She would not heed.

II
A Year Later

I skimmed the strings; I sang quite low;
I hoped she would not come or know
That the house next door was the one now dittied,
Not hers, as when I had played unpitied;
—Next door, where dwelt a heart fresh stirred,
My new Love, of good will to me,
Unlike my old Love chill to me,
Who had not cared for my notes when heard:
   Yet that old Love came
   To the other’s name
   As hers were the claim;
   Yea, the old Love came

From an old copy.