第8章
I sang of her in a dim old hall Dream-built too fancifully, (Have your way, my heart, O!)But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead My feet to such a hall indeed, Where stood the very She.
Strange, startling, was it then to learn I had glanced down unborn time, (Have your way, my heart, O!)And prophesied, whereby I knew That which the years had planned to do In warranty of my rhyme.
BY RUSHY-POND.
A JANUARY NIGHT
(1879)
The rain smites more and more, The east wind snarls and sneezes;Through the joints of the quivering door The water wheezes.
The tip of each ivy-shoot Writhes on its neighbour's face;There is some hid dread afoot That we cannot trace.
Is it the spirit astray Of the man at the house below Whose coffin they took in to-day?
We do not know.
A KISS
By a wall the stranger now calls his, Was born of old a particular kiss, Without forethought in its genesis;Which in a trice took wing on the air.
And where that spot is nothing shows:
There ivy calmly grows, And no one knows What a birth was there!
That kiss is gone where none can tell -
Not even those who felt its spell:
It cannot have died; that know we well.
Somewhere it pursues its flight, One of a long procession of sounds Travelling aethereal rounds Far from earth's bounds In the infinite.
THE ANNOUNCEMENT
They came, the brothers, and took two chairs In their usual quiet way;And for a time we did not think They had much to say.
And they began and talked awhile Of ordinary things, Till spread that silence in the room A pent thought brings.
And then they said: "The end has come.
Yes: it has come at last."
And we looked down, and knew that day A spirit had passed.
THE OXEN
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel "In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,"I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.
1915.
THE TRESSES
"When the air was damp It made my curls hang slack As they kissed my neck and back While I footed the salt-aired track I loved to tramp.
"When it was dry They would roll up crisp and tight As I went on in the light Of the sun, which my own sprite Seemed to outvie.
"Now I am old;
And have not one gay curl As I had when a girl For dampness to unfurl Or sun uphold!"THE PHOTOGRAPH
The flame crept up the portrait line by line As it lay on the coals in the silence of night's profound, And over the arm's incline, And along the marge of the silkwork superfine, And gnawed at the delicate bosom's defenceless round.
Then I vented a cry of hurt, and averted my eyes;The spectacle was one that I could not bear, To my deep and sad surprise;But, compelled to heed, I again looked furtive-wise Till the flame had eaten her breasts, and mouth, and hair.
"Thank God, she is out of it now!" I said at last, In a great relief of heart when the thing was done That had set my soul aghast, And nothing was left of the picture unsheathed from the past But the ashen ghost of the card it had figured on.
She was a woman long hid amid packs of years, She might have been living or dead; she was lost to my sight, And the deed that had nigh drawn tears Was done in a casual clearance of life's arrears;But I felt as if I had put her to death that night! . . .
* * *
- Well; she knew nothing thereof did she survive, And suffered nothing if numbered among the dead;Yet--yet--if on earth alive Did she feel a smart, and with vague strange anguish strive?
If in heaven, did she smile at me sadly and shake her head?
ON A HEATH
I could hear a gown-skirt rustling Before I could see her shape, Rustling through the heather That wove the common's drape, On that evening of dark weather When I hearkened, lips agape.
And the town-shine in the distance Did but baffle here the sight, And then a voice flew forward:
Dear, is't you? I fear the night!"
And the herons flapped to norward In the firs upon my right.
There was another looming Whose life we did not see;There was one stilly blooming Full nigh to where walked we;There was a shade entombing All that was bright of me.
AN ANNIVERSARY
It was at the very date to which we have come, In the month of the matching name, When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum, Its couch-time at night being the same.
And the same path stretched here that people now follow, And the same stile crossed their way, And beyond the same green hillock and hollow The same horizon lay;And the same man pilgrims now hereby who pilgrimed here that day.
Let so much be said of the date-day's sameness;But the tree that neighbours the track, And stoops like a pedlar afflicted with lameness, Knew of no sogged wound or windcrack.
And the joints of that wall were not enshrouded With mosses of many tones, And the garth up afar was not overcrowded With a multitude of white stones, And the man's eyes then were not so sunk that you saw the socket-bones.
KINGSTON-MAURWARD EWELEASE.
"BY THE RUNIC STONE"
(Two who became a story)
By the Runic Stone They sat, where the grass sloped down, And chattered, he white-hatted, she in brown, Pink-faced, breeze-blown.
Rapt there alone In the transport of talking so In such a place, there was nothing to let them know What hours had flown.
And the die thrown By them heedlessly there, the dent It was to cut in their encompassment, Were, too, unknown.
It might have strown Their zest with qualms to see, As in a glass, Time toss their history From zone to zone!
THE PINK FROCK
"O my pretty pink frock, I sha'n't be able to wear it!
Why is he dying just now?
I hardly can bear it!
"He might have contrived to live on;
But they say there's no hope whatever:
And must I shut myself up, And go out never?
"O my pretty pink frock, Puff-sleeved and accordion-pleated!
He might have passed in July, And not so cheated!"TRANSFORMATIONS
Portion of this yew Is a man my grandsire knew, Bosomed here at its foot: