Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces

GOD’S FUNERAL

I   I saw a slowly-stepping train —Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar —Following in files across a twilit plainA strange and mystic form the foremost bore.II   And by contagious throbs of thoughtOr latent knowledge that within me layAnd had already stirred me, I was wroughtTo consciousness of sorrow even as they.III   The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,At first seemed man-like, and anon to changeTo an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,At times endowed with wings of glorious range.IV   And this phantasmal variousnessEver possessed it as they drew along:Yet throughout all it symboled none the lessPotency vast and loving-kindness strong.V   Almost before I knew I bentTowards the moving columns without a word;They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: —VI   “O man-projected Figure, of lateImaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?Whence came it we were tempted to createOne whom we can no longer keep alive?VII   “Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,We gave him justice as the ages rolled,Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.VIII   “And, tricked by our own early dreamAnd need of solace, we grew self-deceived,Our making soon our maker did we deem,And what we had imagined we believed.IX   “Till, in Time’s stayless stealthy swing,Uncompromising rude realityMangled the Monarch of our fashioning,Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.X   “So, toward our myth’s oblivion,Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and gropeSadlier than those who wept in Babylon,Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.XI   “How sweet it was in years far hiedTo start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,To lie down liegely at the eventideAnd feel a blest assurance he was there!XII   “And who or what shall fill his place?Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyesFor some fixed star to stimulate their paceTowards the goal of their enterprise?”.XIII   Some in the background then I saw,Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,Who chimed as one: “This figure is of straw,This requiem mockery!  Still he lives to us!”XIV   I could not prop their faith: and yetMany I had known: with all I sympathized;And though struck speechless, I did not forgetThat what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.XV   Still, how to bear such loss I deemedThe insistent question for each animate mind,And gazing, to my growing sight there seemedA pale yet positive gleam low down behind,XVI   Whereof to lift the general night,A certain few who stood aloof had said,“See you upon the horizon that small light —Swelling somewhat?”  Each mourner shook his head.XVII   And they composed a crowd of whomSome were right good, and many nigh the best.Thus dazed and puzzled ’twixt the gleam and gloomMechanically I followed with the rest.1908–10.

SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE

“It is not death that harrows us,” they lipped,“The soundless cell is in itself relief,For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nippedAt unawares, and at its best but brief.”The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,As if the palest of sheet lightnings shoneFrom the sward near me, as from a nether sky.And much surprised was I that, spent and dead,They should not, like the many, be at rest,But stray as apparitions; hence I said,“Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?“We are among the few death sets not free,The hurt, misrepresented names, who comeAt each year’s brink, and cry to HistoryTo do them justice, or go past them dumb.“We are stript of rights; our shames lie unredressed,Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown,Our words in morsels merely are expressedOn the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown.”Then all these shaken slighted visitants spedInto the vague, and left me musing thereOn fames that well might instance what they had said,Until the New-Year’s dawn strode up the air.

“AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?”

“Ah, are you digging on my grave   My loved one? – planting rue?”– “No: yesterday he went to wedOne of the brightest wealth has bred.‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,   ‘That I should not be true.’”“Then who is digging on my grave?   My nearest dearest kin?”– “Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use!What good will planting flowers produce?No tendance of her mound can loose   Her spirit from Death’s gin.’”“But some one digs upon my grave?   My enemy? – prodding sly?”– “Nay: when she heard you had passed the GateThat shuts on all flesh soon or late,She thought you no more worth her hate,   And cares not where you lie.”“Then, who is digging on my grave?   Say – since I have not guessed!”– “O it is I, my mistress dear,Your little dog, who still lives near,And much I hope my movements here   Have not disturbed your rest?”“Ah, yes!  You dig upon my grave.   Why flashed it not on meThat one true heart was left behind!What feeling do we ever findTo equal among human kind   A dog’s fidelity!”“Mistress, I dug upon your grave   To bury a bone, in caseI should be hungry near this spotWhen passing on my daily trot.I am sorry, but I quite forgot   It was your resting-place.”

SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES

I

AT TEA

The kettle descants in a cozy drone,And the young wife looks in her husband’s face,And then at her guest’s, and shows in her ownHer sense that she fills an envied place;And the visiting lady is all abloom,And says there was never so sweet a room.And the happy young housewife does not knowThat the woman beside her was first his choice,Till the fates ordained it could not be so.Betraying nothing in look or voiceThe guest sits smiling and sips her tea,And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

II

IN CHURCH

“And now to God the Father,” he ends,And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,And a pupil of his in the Bible class,Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smileAnd re-enact at the vestry-glassEach pulpit gesture in deft dumb-showThat had moved the congregation so.

III

BY HER AUNT’S GRAVE

“Sixpence a week,” says the girl to her lover,“Aunt used to bring me, for she could confideIn me alone, she vowed.  ’Twas to coverThe cost of her headstone when she died.And that was a year ago last June;I’ve not yet fixed it.  But I must soon.”“And where is the money now, my dear?”“O, snug in my purse.. Aunt was so slowIn saving it – eighty weeks, or near.”.“Let’s spend it,” he hints.  “For she won’t know.There’s a dance to-night at the Load of Hay.”She passively nods.  And they go that way.

IV

IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT

“Would it had been the man of our wish!”Sighs her mother.  To whom with vehemence sheIn the wedding-dress – the wife to be —“Then why were you so mollyishAs not to insist on him for me!”The mother, amazed: “Why, dearest one,Because you pleaded for this or none!”“But Father and you should have stood out strong!Since then, to my cost, I have lived to findThat you were right and that I was wrong;This man is a dolt to the one declined.Ah! – here he comes with his button-hole rose.Good God – I must marry him I suppose!”

V

AT A WATERING-PLACE

They sit and smoke on the esplanade,The man and his friend, and regard the bayWhere the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,Smile sallowly in the decline of day.And saunterers pass with laugh and jest —A handsome couple among the rest.“That smart proud pair,” says the man to his friend,“Are to marry next week.. How little he thinksThat dozens of days and nights on endI have stroked her neck, unhooked the linksOf her sleeve to get at her upper arm.Well, bliss is in ignorance: what’s the harm!”

VI

IN THE CEMETERY

“You see those mothers squabbling there?”Remarks the man of the cemetery.One says in tears, ‘’Tis mine lies here!’Another, ‘Nay, mine, you Pharisee!’Another, ‘How dare you move my flowersAnd put your own on this grave of ours!’But all their children were laid thereinAt different times, like sprats in a tin.“And then the main drain had to cross,And we moved the lot some nights ago,And packed them away in the general fossWith hundreds more.  But their folks don’t know,And as well cry over a new-laid drainAs anything else, to ease your pain!”

VII

OUTSIDE THE WINDOW

“My stick!” he says, and turns in the laneTo the house just left, whence a vixen voiceComes out with the firelight through the pane,And he sees within that the girl of his choiceStands rating her mother with eyes aglareFor something said while he was there.“At last I behold her soul undraped!”Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;“My God – ’tis but narrowly I have escaped. —My precious porcelain proves it delf.”His face has reddened like one ashamed,And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

VIII

IN THE STUDY

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chairSits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,A type of decayed gentility;And by some small signs he well can guessThat she comes to him almost breakfastless.“I have called – I hope I do not err —I am looking for a purchaserOf some score volumes of the worksOf eminent divines I own, —Left by my father – though it irksMy patience to offer them.”  And she smilesAs if necessity were unknown;“But the truth of it is that oftenwhilesI have wished, as I am fond of art,To make my rooms a little smart.”And lightly still she laughs to him,As if to sell were a mere gay whim,And that, to be frank, Life were indeedTo her not vinegar and gall,But fresh and honey-like; and NeedNo household skeleton at all.

IX

AT THE ALTAR-RAIL

“My bride is not coming, alas!” says the groom,And the telegram shakes in his hand.  “I ownIt was hurried!  We met at a dancing-roomWhen I went to the Cattle-Show alone,And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.“Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife —’Twas foolish perhaps! – to forsake the waysOf the flaring town for a farmer’s life.She agreed.  And we fixed it.  Now she says:‘It’s sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.What I really am you have never gleaned;I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned.’”

X

IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER

“O that mastering tune?”  And up in the bedLike a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;“And why?” asks the man she had that day wed,With a start, as the band plays on outside.“It’s the townsfolks’ cheery complimentBecause of our marriage, my Innocent.”“O but you don’t know!  ’Tis the passionate airTo which my old Love waltzed with me,And I swore as we spun that none should shareMy home, my kisses, till death, save he!And he dominates me and thrills me through,And it’s he I embrace while embracing you!”

XI

IN THE RESTAURANT

“But hear.  If you stay, and the child be born,It will pass as your husband’s with the rest,While, if we fly, the teeth of scornWill be gleaming at us from east to west;And the child will come as a life despised;I feel an elopement is ill-advised!”“O you realize not what it is, my dear,To a woman!  Daily and hourly alarmsLest the truth should out.  How can I stay here,And nightly take him into my arms!Come to the child no name or fame,Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.”

XII

AT THE DRAPER’S

“I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,   But you did not perceive me.Well, when they deliver what you were shown   I shall know nothing of it, believe me!”And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,   “O, I didn’t see you come in there —Why couldn’t you speak?” – “Well, I didn’t.  I left   That you should not notice I’d been there.“You were viewing some lovely things.  ‘Soon required   For a widow, of latest fashion’;And I knew ’twould upset you to meet the man   Who had to be cold and ashen“And screwed in a box before they could dress you   ‘In the last new note in mourning,’As they defined it.  So, not to distress you,   I left you to your adorning.”

XIII

ON THE DEATH-BED

“I’ll tell – being past all praying for —Then promptly die.. He was out at the war,And got some scent of the intimacyThat was under way between her and me;And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghostOne night, at the very time almostThat I reached her house.  Well, I shot him dead,And secretly buried him.  Nothing was said.“The news of the battle came next day;He was scheduled missing.  I hurried away,Got out there, visited the field,And sent home word that a search revealedHe was one of the slain; though, lying aloneAnd stript, his body had not been known.“But she suspected.  I lost her love,   Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;And my time’s now come, and I’ll pay the score,Though it be burning for evermore.”

XIV

OVER THE COFFIN

They stand confronting, the coffin between,His wife of old, and his wife of late,And the dead man whose they both had beenSeems listening aloof, as to things past date.– “I have called,” says the first.  “Do you marvel or not?”“In truth,” says the second, “I do – somewhat.”“Well, there was a word to be said by me!.I divorced that man because of you —It seemed I must do it, boundenly;But now I am older, and tell you true,For life is little, and dead lies he;I would I had let alone you two!And both of us, scorning parochial ways,Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs’ days.”

XV

IN THE MOONLIGHT

“O lonely workman, standing thereIn a dream, why do you stare and stareAt her grave, as no other grave there were?“If your great gaunt eyes so importuneHer soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”“Why, fool, it is what I would rather seeThan all the living folk there be;But alas, there is no such joy for me!”“Ah – she was one you loved, no doubt,Through good and evil, through rain and drought,And when she passed, all your sun went out?”“Nay: she was the woman I did not love,Whom all the others were ranked above,Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”

LYRICS AND REVERIES

(continued)

SELF-UNCONSCIOUS

   Along the way   He walked that day,Watching shapes that reveries limn,   And seldom he   Had eyes to seeThe moment that encompassed him.   Bright yellowhammers   Made mirthful clamours,And billed long straws with a bustling air,   And bearing their load   Flew up the roadThat he followed, alone, without interest there.   From bank to ground   And over and roundThey sidled along the adjoining hedge;   Sometimes to the gutter   Their yellow flutterWould dip from the nearest slatestone ledge.   The smooth sea-line   With a metal shine,And flashes of white, and a sail thereon,   He would also descry   With a half-wrapt eyeBetween the projects he mused upon.   Yes, round him were these   Earth’s artistries,But specious plans that came to his call   Did most engage   His pilgrimage,While himself he did not see at all.   Dead now as sherds   Are the yellow birds,And all that mattered has passed away;   Yet God, the Elf,   Now shows him that selfAs he was, and should have been shown, that day.   O it would have been good   Could he then have stoodAt a focussed distance, and conned the whole,   But now such vision   Is mere derision,Nor soothes his body nor saves his soul.   Not much, some may   Incline to say,To see therein, had it all been seen.   Nay! he is aware   A thing was thereThat loomed with an immortal mien.

THE DISCOVERY

   I wandered to a crude coast      Like a ghost;   Upon the hills I saw fires —      Funeral pyres   Seemingly – and heard breakingWaves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking.   And so I never once guessed      A Love-nest,   Bowered and candle-lit, lay      In my way,   Till I found a hid hollow,Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow.

TOLERANCE

“It is a foolish thing,” said I,“To bear with such, and pass it by;Yet so I do, I know not why!”And at each clash I would surmiseThat if I had acted otherwiseI might have saved me many sighs.But now the only happinessIn looking back that I possess —Whose lack would leave me comfortless —Is to remember I refrainedFrom masteries I might have gained,And for my tolerance was disdained;For see, a tomb.  And if it wereI had bent and broke, I should not dareTo linger in the shadows there.

BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER

ILooking forward to the springOne puts up with anything.On this February day,Though the winds leap down the street,Wintry scourgings seem but play,And these later shafts of sleet– Sharper pointed than the first —And these later snows – the worst —Are as a half-transparent blindRiddled by rays from sun behind.IIShadows of the October pineReach into this room of mine:On the pine there stands a bird;He is shadowed with the tree.Mutely perched he bills no word;Blank as I am even is he.For those happy suns are past,Fore-discerned in winter last.When went by their pleasure, then?I, alas, perceived not when.

AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER

The ten hours’ light is abating,   And a late bird flies across,Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,   Give their black heads a toss.Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,   Float past like specks in the eye;I set every tree in my June time,   And now they obscure the sky.And the children who ramble through here   Conceive that there never has beenA time when no tall trees grew here,   A time when none will be seen.

THE YEAR’S AWAKENING

How do you know that the pilgrim trackAlong the belting zodiacSwept by the sun in his seeming roundsIs traced by now to the Fishes’ boundsAnd into the Ram, when weeks of cloudHave wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,And never as yet a tinct of springHas shown in the Earth’s apparelling;   O vespering bird, how do you know,      How do you know?How do you know, deep underground,Hid in your bed from sight and sound,Without a turn in temperature,With weather life can scarce endure,That light has won a fraction’s strength,And day put on some moments’ length,Whereof in merest rote will come,Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;   O crocus root, how do you know,      How do you know? February 1910.

UNDER THE WATERFALL

“Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,In a basin of water, I never missThe sweet sharp sense of a fugitive dayFetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.   Hence the only prime   And real love-rhyme   That I know by heart,   And that leaves no smart,Is the purl of a little valley fallAbout three spans wide and two spans tallOver a table of solid rock,And into a scoop of the self-same block;The purl of a runlet that never ceasesIn stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;With a hollow boiling voice it speaksAnd has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.”“And why gives this the only primeIdea to you of a real love-rhyme?And why does plunging your arm in a bowlFull of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?”“Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,Though where precisely none ever has known,Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,And by now with its smoothness opalized,   Is a drinking-glass:   For, down that pass   My lover and I   Walked under a skyOf blue with a leaf-woven awning of green,In the burn of August, to paint the scene,And we placed our basket of fruit and wineBy the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;And when we had drunk from the glass together,Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall,Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyssWith long bared arms.  There the glass still is.And, as said, if I thrust my arm belowCold water in basin or bowl, a throeFrom the past awakens a sense of that time,And the glass both used, and the cascade’s rhyme.The basin seems the pool, and its edgeThe hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,And the leafy pattern of china-wareThe hanging plants that were bathing there.By night, by day, when it shines or lours,There lies intact that chalice of ours,And its presence adds to the rhyme of lovePersistently sung by the fall above.No lip has touched it since his and mineIn turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.”

THE SPELL OF THE ROSE

   “I mean to build a hall anon,      And shape two turrets there,      And a broad newelled stair,And a cool well for crystal water;   Yes; I will build a hall anon,   Plant roses love shall feed upon,      And apple trees and pear.”   He set to build the manor-hall,      And shaped the turrets there,      And the broad newelled stair,And the cool well for crystal water;   He built for me that manor-hall,   And planted many trees withal,      But no rose anywhere.   And as he planted never a rose      That bears the flower of love,      Though other flowers throveA frost-wind moved our souls to sever   Since he had planted never a rose;   And misconceits raised horrid shows,      And agonies came thereof.   “I’ll mend these miseries,” then said I,      And so, at dead of night,      I went and, screened from sight,That nought should keep our souls in severance,   I set a rose-bush.  “This,” said I,   “May end divisions dire and wry,      And long-drawn days of blight.”   But I was called from earth – yea, called      Before my rose-bush grew;      And would that now I knewWhat feels he of the tree I planted,   And whether, after I was called   To be a ghost, he, as of old,      Gave me his heart anew!   Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees      I set but saw not grow,      And he, beside its glow —Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me —   Ay, there beside that queen of trees   He sees me as I was, though sees      Too late to tell me so!

ST. LAUNCE’S REVISITED

   Slip back, Time!Yet again I am nearingCastle and keep, uprearing   Gray, as in my prime.   At the innSmiling close, why is itNot as on my visit   When hope and I were twin?   Groom and jadeWhom I found here, moulder;Strange the tavern-holder,   Strange the tap-maid.   Here I hiredHorse and man for bearingMe on my wayfaring   To the door desired.   Evening gloomedAs I journeyed forwardTo the faces shoreward,   Till their dwelling loomed.   If againTowards the Atlantic sea thereI should speed, they’d be there   Surely now as then?.   Why waste thought,When I know them vanishedUnder earth; yea, banished   Ever into nought.

POEMS OF 1912–13

Veteris vestigia flammae

THE GOING

Why did you give no hint that nightThat quickly after the morrow’s dawn,And calmly, as if indifferent quite,You would close your term here, up and be gone   Where I could not follow   With wing of swallowTo gain one glimpse of you ever anon!   Never to bid good-bye,   Or give me the softest call,Or utter a wish for a word, while ISaw morning harden upon the wall,   Unmoved, unknowing   That your great goingHad place that moment, and altered all.Why do you make me leave the houseAnd think for a breath it is you I seeAt the end of the alley of bending boughsWhere so often at dusk you used to be;   Till in darkening dankness   The yawning blanknessOf the perspective sickens me!   You were she who abode   By those red-veined rocks far West,You were the swan-necked one who rodeAlong the beetling Beeny Crest,   And, reining nigh me,   Would muse and eye me,While Life unrolled us its very best.Why, then, latterly did we not speak,Did we not think of those days long dead,And ere your vanishing strive to seekThat time’s renewal?  We might have said,   “In this bright spring weather   We’ll visit togetherThose places that once we visited.”   Well, well!  All’s past amend,   Unchangeable.  It must go.I seem but a dead man held on endTo sink down soon.. O you could not know   That such swift fleeing   No soul foreseeing —Not even I – would undo me so! December 1912.

YOUR LAST DRIVE

Here by the moorway you returned,And saw the borough lights aheadThat lit your face – all undiscernedTo be in a week the face of the dead,And you told of the charm of that haloed viewThat never again would beam on you.And on your left you passed the spotWhere eight days later you were to lie,And be spoken of as one who was not;Beholding it with a cursory eyeAs alien from you, though under its treeYou soon would halt everlastingly.I drove not with you.. Yet had I satAt your side that eve I should not have seenThat the countenance I was glancing atHad a last-time look in the flickering sheen,Nor have read the writing upon your face,“I go hence soon to my resting-place;“You may miss me then.  But I shall not knowHow many times you visit me there,Or what your thoughts are, or if you goThere never at all.  And I shall not care.Should you censure me I shall take no heedAnd even your praises I shall not need.”True: never you’ll know.  And you will not mind.But shall I then slight you because of such?Dear ghost, in the past did you ever findThe thought “What profit?” move me muchYet the fact indeed remains the same,You are past love, praise, indifference, blame. December 1912.