Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses

THE REJECTED MEMBER’S WIFE

We shall see her no more   On the balcony,Smiling, while hurt, at the roar   As of surging seaFrom the stormy sturdy band   Who have doomed her lord’s cause,Though she waves her little hand   As it were applause.Here will be candidates yet,   And candidates’ wives,Fervid with zeal to set   Their ideals on our lives:Here will come market-men   On the market-days,Here will clash now and then   More such party assays.And the balcony will fill   When such times are renewed,And the throng in the street will thrill   With to-day’s mettled mood;But she will no more stand   In the sunshine there,With that wave of her white-gloved hand,   And that chestnut hair.January 1906.

THE FARM-WOMAN’S WINTER

IIf seasons all were summers,   And leaves would never fall,And hopping casement-comers   Were foodless not at all,And fragile folk might be here   That white winds bid depart;Then one I used to see here   Would warm my wasted heart!IIOne frail, who, bravely tilling   Long hours in gripping gusts,Was mastered by their chilling,   And now his ploughshare rusts.So savage winter catches   The breath of limber things,And what I love he snatches,   And what I love not, brings.

AUTUMN IN KING’S HINTOCK PARK

Here by the baring bough   Raking up leaves,Often I ponder how   Springtime deceives, —I, an old woman now,   Raking up leaves.Here in the avenue   Raking up leaves,Lords’ ladies pass in view,   Until one heavesSighs at life’s russet hue,   Raking up leaves!Just as my shape you see   Raking up leaves,I saw, when fresh and free,   Those memory weavesInto grey ghosts by me,   Raking up leaves.Yet, Dear, though one may sigh,   Raking up leaves,New leaves will dance on high —   Earth never grieves! —Will not, when missed am I   Raking up leaves.1901.

SHUT OUT THAT MOON

Close up the casement, draw the blind,   Shut out that stealing moon,She wears too much the guise she wore   Before our lutes were strewnWith years-deep dust, and names we read   On a white stone were hewn.Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn   To view the Lady’s Chair,Immense Orion’s glittering form,   The Less and Greater Bear:Stay in; to such sights we were drawn   When faded ones were fair.Brush not the bough for midnight scents   That come forth lingeringly,And wake the same sweet sentiments   They breathed to you and meWhen living seemed a laugh, and love   All it was said to be.Within the common lamp-lit room   Prison my eyes and thought;Let dingy details crudely loom,   Mechanic speech be wrought:Too fragrant was Life’s early bloom,   Too tart the fruit it brought!1904.

REMINISCENCES OF A DANCING MAN

IWho now remembers Almack’s balls —   Willis’s sometime named —In those two smooth-floored upper halls   For faded ones so famed?Where as we trod to trilling soundThe fancied phantoms stood around,   Or joined us in the maze,Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years,Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers,   The fairest of former days.IIWho now remembers gay Cremorne,   And all its jaunty jills,And those wild whirling figures born   Of Jullien’s grand quadrilles?With hats on head and morning coatsThere footed to his prancing notes   Our partner-girls and we;And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked,And the platform throbbed as with arms enlinked   We moved to the minstrelsy.IIIWho now recalls those crowded rooms   Of old yclept “The Argyle,”Where to the deep Drum-polka’s booms   We hopped in standard style?Whither have danced those damsels now!Is Death the partner who doth moue

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