Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

THE CHIMES

That morning when I trod the townThe twitching chimes of long renown   Played out to meThe sweet Sicilian sailors’ tune,And I knew not if late or soon   My day would be:A day of sunshine beryl-brightAnd windless; yea, think as I might,   I could not say,Even to within years’ measure, whenOne would be at my side who then   Was far away.When hard utilitarian timesHad stilled the sweet Saint-Peter’s chimes   I learnt to seeThat bale may spring where blisses are,And one desired might be afar   Though near to me.

THE FIGURE IN THE SCENE

   It pleased her to step in front and sit      Where the cragged slope was green,While I stood back that I might pencil it      With her amid the scene;         Till it gloomed and rained;But I kept on, despite the drifting wet         That fell and stainedMy draught, leaving for curious quizzings yet         The blots engrained.   And thus I drew her there alone,      Seated amid the gauzeOf moisture, hooded, only her outline shown,      With rainfall marked across.         – Soon passed our stay;Yet her rainy form is the Genius still of the spot,         Immutable, yea,Though the place now knows her no more, and has known her not         Ever since that day.

From an old note.

“WHY DID I SKETCH”

Why did I sketch an upland green,   And put the figure in   Of one on the spot with me? —For now that one has ceased to be seen   The picture waxes akin   To a wordless irony.If you go drawing on down or cliff   Let no soft curves intrude   Of a woman’s silhouette,But show the escarpments stark and stiff   As in utter solitude;   So shall you half forget.Let me sooner pass from sight of the sky   Than again on a thoughtless day   Limn, laugh, and sing, and rhymeWith a woman sitting near, whom I   Paint in for love, and who may   Be called hence in my time!

From an old note.

CONJECTURE

If there were in my kalendar   No Emma, Florence, Mary,What would be my existence now —   A hermit’s? – wanderer’s weary? —      How should I live, and how      Near would be death, or far?Could it have been that other eyes   Might have uplit my highway?That fond, sad, retrospective sight   Would catch from this dim byway      Prized figures different quite      From those that now arise?With how strange aspect would there creep   The dawn, the night, the daytime,If memory were not what it is   In song-time, toil, or pray-time. —      O were it else than this,      I’d pass to pulseless sleep!

THE BLOW

That no man schemed it is my hope —Yea, that it fell by will and scope   Of That Which some enthrone,And for whose meaning myriads grope.For I would not that of my kindThere should, of his unbiassed mind,   Have been one knownWho such a stroke could have designed;Since it would augur works and waysBelow the lowest that man assays   To have hurled that stoneInto the sunshine of our days!And if it prove that no man did,And that the Inscrutable, the Hid,   Was cause aloneOf this foul crash our lives amid,I’ll go in due time, and forgetIn some deep graveyard’s oubliette   The thing whereof I groan,And cease from troubling; thankful yetTime’s finger should have stretched to showNo aimful author’s was the blow   That swept us prone,But the Immanent Doer’s That doth not know,Which in some age unguessed of usMay lift Its blinding incubus,   And see, and own:“It grieves me I did thus and thus!”

LOVE THE MONOPOLIST

(Young Lover’s Reverie)

The train draws forth from the station-yard,   And with it carries me.I rise, and stretch out, and regard   The platform left, and seeAn airy slim blue form there standing,   And know that it is she.While with strained vision I watch on,   The figure turns round quiteTo greet friends gaily; then is gone.   The import may be slight,But why remained she not hard gazing   Till I was out of sight?“O do not chat with others there,”   I brood.  “They are not I.O strain your thoughts as if they were   Gold bands between us; eyeAll neighbour scenes as so much blankness   Till I again am by!“A troubled soughing in the breeze   And the sky overheadLet yourself feel; and shadeful trees,   Ripe corn, and apples red,Read as things barren and distasteful   While we are separated!“When I come back uncloak your gloom,   And let in lovely day;Then the long dark as of the tomb   Can well be thrust awayWith sweet things I shall have to practise,   And you will have to say!”

Begun 1871: finished—

AT MIDDLE-FIELD GATE IN FEBRUARY

The bars are thick with drops that show   As they gather themselves from the fogLike silver buttons ranged in a row,And as evenly spaced as if measured, although   They fall at the feeblest jog.They load the leafless hedge hard by,   And the blades of last year’s grass,While the fallow ploughland turned up nighIn raw rolls, clammy and clogging lie —   Too clogging for feet to pass.How dry it was on a far-back day   When straws hung the hedge and around,When amid the sheaves in amorous playIn curtained bonnets and light array   Bloomed a bevy now underground!

Bockhampton Lane.

THE YOUTH WHO CARRIED A LIGHT

I saw him pass as the new day dawned,   Murmuring some musical phrase;Horses were drinking and floundering in the pond,   And the tired stars thinned their gaze;Yet these were not the spectacles at all that he conned,   But an inner one, giving out rays.Such was the thing in his eye, walking there,   The very and visible thing,A close light, displacing the gray of the morning air,   And the tokens that the dark was taking wing;And was it not the radiance of a purpose rare   That might ripe to its accomplishing?What became of that light?  I wonder still its fate!   Was it quenched ere its full apogee?Did it struggle frail and frailer to a beam emaciate?   Did it thrive till matured in verity?Or did it travel on, to be a new young dreamer’s freight,   And thence on infinitely?

1915.

THE HEAD ABOVE THE FOG

   Something do I seeAbove the fog that sheets the mead,A figure like to life indeed,Moving along with spectre-speed,   Seen by none but me.   O the vision keen! —Tripping along to me for loveAs in the flesh it used to move,Only its hat and plume above   The evening fog-fleece seen.   In the day-fall wan,When nighted birds break off their song,Mere ghostly head it skims along,Just as it did when warm and strong,   Body seeming gone.   Such it is I seeAbove the fog that sheets the mead —Yea, that which once could breathe and plead! —Skimming along with spectre-speed   To a last tryst with me.

OVERLOOKING THE RIVER STOUR

The swallows flew in the curves of an eight   Above the river-gleam   In the wet June’s last beam:Like little crossbows animateThe swallows flew in the curves of an eight   Above the river-gleam.Planing up shavings of crystal spray   A moor-hen darted out   From the bank thereabout,And through the stream-shine ripped his way;Planing up shavings of crystal spray   A moor-hen darted out.Closed were the kingcups; and the mead   Dripped in monotonous green,   Though the day’s morning sheenHad shown it golden and honeybee’d;Closed were the kingcups; and the mead   Dripped in monotonous green.And never I turned my head, alack,   While these things met my gaze   Through the pane’s drop-drenched glaze,To see the more behind my back.O never I turned, but let, alack,   These less things hold my gaze!

THE MUSICAL BOX

   Lifelong to beSeemed the fair colour of the time;That there was standing shadowed nearA spirit who sang to the gentle chimeOf the self-struck notes, I did not hear,   I did not see.   Thus did it singTo the mindless lyre that played indoorsAs she came to listen for me without:“O value what the nonce outpours —This best of life – that shines about   Your welcoming!”   I had slowed alongAfter the torrid hours were done,Though still the posts and walls and roadFlung back their sense of the hot-faced sun,And had walked by Stourside Mill, where broad   Stream-lilies throng.   And I descriedThe dusky house that stood apart,And her, white-muslined, waiting thereIn the porch with high-expectant heart,While still the thin mechanic air   Went on inside.   At whiles would flitSwart bats, whose wings, be-webbed and tanned,Whirred like the wheels of ancient clocks:She laughed a hailing as she scannedMe in the gloom, the tuneful box   Intoning it.   Lifelong to beI thought it.  That there watched hard byA spirit who sang to the indoor tune,“O make the most of what is nigh!”I did not hear in my dull soul-swoon —   I did not see.

ON STURMINSTER FOOT-BRIDGE

(ONOMATOPOEIC)

Reticulations creep upon the slack stream’s face   When the wind skims irritably past,The current clucks smartly into each hollow placeThat years of flood have scrabbled in the pier’s sodden base;   The floating-lily leaves rot fast.On a roof stand the swallows ranged in wistful waiting rows,   Till they arrow off and drop like stonesAmong the eyot-withies at whose foot the river flows;And beneath the roof is she who in the dark world shows   As a lattice-gleam when midnight moans.

ROYAL SPONSORS

“The king and the queen will stand to the child;   ’Twill be handed down in song;And it’s no more than their deserving,With my lord so faithful at Court so long,      And so staunch and strong.“O never before was known such a thing!   ’Twill be a grand time for all;And the beef will be a whole-roast bullock,And the servants will have a feast in the hall,      And the ladies a ball.“While from Jordan’s stream by a traveller,   In a flagon of silver wrought,And by caravan, stage-coach, wain, and waggonA precious trickle has been brought,      Clear as when caught.”The morning came.  To the park of the peer   The royal couple bore;And the font was filled with the Jordan water,And the household awaited their guests before      The carpeted door.But when they went to the silk-lined cot   The child was found to have died.“What’s now to be done?  We can disappoint notThe king and queen!” the family cried      With eyes spread wide.“Even now they approach the chestnut-drive!   The service must be read.”“Well, since we can’t christen the child alive,By God we shall have to christen him dead!”      The marquis said.Thus, breath-forsaken, a corpse was taken   To the private chapel – yea —And the king knew not, nor the queen, God wot,That they answered for one returned to clay      At the font that day.

OLD FURNITURE

I know not how it may be with others   Who sit amid relics of householdryThat date from the days of their mothers’ mothers,   But well I know how it is with me      Continually.I see the hands of the generations   That owned each shiny familiar thingIn play on its knobs and indentations,   And with its ancient fashioning      Still dallying:Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,   As in a mirror a candle-flameShows images of itself, each frailer   As it recedes, though the eye may frame      Its shape the same.On the clock’s dull dial a foggy finger,   Moving to set the minutes rightWith tentative touches that lift and linger   In the wont of a moth on a summer night,      Creeps to my sight.On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing —   As whilom – just over the strings by the nut,The tip of a bow receding, advancing   In airy quivers, as if it would cut      The plaintive gut.And I see a face by that box for tinder,   Glowing forth in fits from the dark,And fading again, as the linten cinder   Kindles to red at the flinty spark,      Or goes out stark.Well, well.  It is best to be up and doing,   The world has no use for one to-dayWho eyes things thus – no aim pursuing!   He should not continue in this stay,      But sink away.

A THOUGHT IN TWO MOODS

I saw it – pink and white – revealed   Upon the white and green;The white and green was a daisied field,   The pink and white Ethleen.And as I looked it seemed in kind   That difference they had none;The two fair bodiments combined   As varied miens of one.A sense that, in some mouldering year,   As one they both would lie,Made me move quickly on to her   To pass the pale thought by.She laughed and said: “Out there, to me,   You looked so weather-browned,And brown in clothes, you seemed to be   Made of the dusty ground!”

THE LAST PERFORMANCE

“I am playing my oldest tunes,” declared she,   “All the old tunes I know, —Those I learnt ever so long ago.”– Why she should think just then she’d play them   Silence cloaks like snow.When I returned from the town at nightfall   Notes continued to pourAs when I had left two hours before:“It’s the very last time,” she said in closing;   “From now I play no more.”A few morns onward found her fading,   And, as her life outflew,I thought of her playing her tunes right through;And I felt she had known of what was coming,   And wondered how she knew.

1912.

“YOU ON THE TOWER”

I“You on the tower of my factory —   What do you see up there?Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings   Advancing to reach me here?”– “Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings   Advancing to reach you here.”II“Good.  Soon I’ll come and ask you   To tell me again thereon.Well, what is he doing now?  Hoi, there!”   – “He still is flying on.”“Ah, waiting till I have full-finished.   Good.  Tell me again anon.III“Hoi, Watchman!  I’m here.  When comes he?   Between my sweats I am chill.”   – “Oh, you there, working still?Why, surely he reached you a time back,   And took you miles from your mill?He duly came in his winging,   And now he has passed out of view.How can it be that you missed him?   He brushed you by as he flew.”

THE INTERLOPER

“And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home.”There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;I view them talking in quiet gleeAs they drop down towards the puffins’ lairBy the roughest of ways;But another with the three rides on, I see,   Whom I like not to be there!No: it’s not anybody you think of.  NextA dwelling appears by a slow sweet streamWhere two sit happy and half in the dark:They read, helped out by a frail-wick’d gleam,Some rhythmic text;But one sits with them whom they don’t mark,   One I’m wishing could not be there.No: not whom you knew and name.  And nowI discern gay diners in a mansion-place,And the guests dropping wit – pert, prim, or choice,And the hostess’s tender and laughing face,And the host’s bland brow;I cannot help hearing a hollow voice,   And I’d fain not hear it there.No: it’s not from the stranger you met once.  Ah,Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;People on a lawn – quite a crowd of them.  Yes,And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;And they say, “Hurrah!”To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless,   Who ought not to be there.Nay: it’s not the pale Form your imagings raise,That waits on us all at a destined time,It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed,O that it were such a shape sublime;In these latter days!It is that under which best lives corrode;   Would, would it could not be there!

LOGS ON THE HEARTH

A MEMORY OF A SISTER

   The fire advances along the log      Of the tree we felled,Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck   Till its last hour of bearing knelled.   The fork that first my hand would reach      And then my footIn climbings upward inch by inch, lies now   Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.   Where the bark chars is where, one year,      It was pruned, and bled —Then overgrew the wound.  But now, at last,   Its growings all have stagnated.   My fellow-climber rises dim      From her chilly grave —Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,   Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

December 1915.

THE SUNSHADE

Ah – it’s the skeleton of a lady’s sunshade,   Here at my feet in the hard rock’s chink,   Merely a naked sheaf of wires! —   Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers   Since it was silked in its white or pink.Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade,   No more a screen from the weakest ray;   Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes,   Nothing but rusty bones as it lies   In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade   Up and down this seaside place? —   Little thumb standing against its stem,   Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem,   Softening yet more the already soft face!Is the fair woman who carried that sunshade   A skeleton just as her property is,   Laid in the chink that none may scan?   And does she regret – if regret dust can —   The vain things thought when she flourished this?

Swanage Cliffs.

THE AGEING HOUSE

   When the walls were red   That now are seen   To be overspread   With a mouldy green,   A fresh fair head   Would often lean   From the sunny casement   And scan the scene,While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.   But storms have raged   Those walls about,   And the head has aged   That once looked out;   And zest is suaged   And trust is doubt,   And slow effacement   Is rife throughout,While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!

THE CAGED GOLDFINCH

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,   I saw a little cageThat jailed a goldfinch.  All was silence save   Its hops from stage to stage.There was inquiry in its wistful eye,   And once it tried to sing;Of him or her who placed it there, and why,   No one knew anything.

AT MADAME TUSSAUD’S IN VICTORIAN YEARS

“That same first fiddler who leads the orchéstra to-night   Here fiddled four decades of years ago;He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight,Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.“But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier,   And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre,In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.“Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem   That to do but a little thing counts a great deal;To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him —With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal.”* * *Ah, but he played staunchly – that fiddler – whoever he was,   With the innocent heart and the soul-touching string:May he find the Fair Haven!  For did he not smile with good cause?Yes; gamuts that graced forty years’-flight were not a small thing!

THE BALLET

They crush together – a rustling heap of flesh —Of more than flesh, a heap of souls; and then      They part, enmesh,   And crush together again,Like the pink petals of a too sanguine rose   Frightened shut just when it blows.Though all alike in their tinsel livery,And indistinguishable at a sweeping glance,      They muster, maybe,   As lives wide in irrelevance;A world of her own has each one underneath,   Detached as a sword from its sheath.Daughters, wives, mistresses; honest or false, sold, bought;Hearts of all sizes; gay, fond, gushing, or penned,      Various in thought      Of lover, rival, friend;Links in a one-pulsed chain, all showing one smile,   Yet severed so many a mile!

THE FIVE STUDENTS

      The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,         The sun grows passionate-eyed,   And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;         As strenuously we stride, —Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,            All beating by.      The air is shaken, the high-road hot,         Shadowless swoons the day,   The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not         We on our urgent way, —Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,            But one – elsewhere.      Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,         And forward still we press   Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,         As in the spring hours – yes,Three of us: fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,            But – fallen one more.      The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in         At night-time noiselessly,   The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin,            And yet on the beat are we, —Two of us; fair She, I.  But no more left to go               The track we know.      Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,         The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,   The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,            Yet I still stalk the course, —One of us.. Dark and fair He, dark and fair She, gone:               The rest – anon.

THE WIND’S PROPHECY

I travel on by barren farms,And gulls glint out like silver flecksAgainst a cloud that speaks of wrecks,And bellies down with black alarms.I say: “Thus from my lady’s armsI go; those arms I love the best!”The wind replies from dip and rise,“Nay; toward her arms thou journeyest.”A distant verge morosely grayAppears, while clots of flying foamBreak from its muddy monochrome,And a light blinks up far away.I sigh: “My eyes now as all dayBehold her ebon loops of hair!”Like bursting bonds the wind responds,“Nay, wait for tresses flashing fair!”From tides the lofty coastlands screenCome smitings like the slam of doors,Or hammerings on hollow floors,As the swell cleaves through caves unseen.Say I: “Though broad this wild terrene,Her city home is matched of none!”From the hoarse skies the wind replies:“Thou shouldst have said her sea-bord one.”The all-prevailing clouds excludeThe one quick timorous transient star;The waves outside where breakers areHuzza like a mad multitude.“Where the sun ups it, mist-imbued,”I cry, “there reigns the star for me!”The wind outshrieks from points and peaks:“Here, westward, where it downs, mean ye!”Yonder the headland, vulturine,Snores like old Skrymer in his sleep,And every chasm and every steepBlackens as wakes each pharos-shine.“I roam, but one is safely mine,”I say.  “God grant she stay my own!”Low laughs the wind as if it grinned:“Thy Love is one thou’st not yet known.”

Rewritten from an old copy.

DURING WIND AND RAIN

   They sing their dearest songs —   He, she, all of them – yea,   Treble and tenor and bass,      And one to play;   With the candles mooning each face.      Ah, no; the years O!How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!   They clear the creeping moss —   Elders and juniors – aye,   Making the pathways neat      And the garden gay;   And they build a shady seat.      Ah, no; the years, the years;See, the white storm-birds wing across!   They are blithely breakfasting all —   Men and maidens – yea,   Under the summer tree,      With a glimpse of the bay,   While pet fowl come to the knee.      Ah, no; the years O!And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.   They change to a high new house,   He, she, all of them – aye,   Clocks and carpets and chairs      On the lawn all day,   And brightest things that are theirs.      Ah, no; the years, the years;Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

HE PREFERS HER EARTHLY

This after-sunset is a sight for seeing,Cliff-heads of craggy cloud surrounding it.   – And dwell you in that glory-show?You may; for there are strange strange things in being,      Stranger than I know.Yet if that chasm of splendour claim your presenceWhich glows between the ash cloud and the dun,   How changed must be your mortal mould!Changed to a firmament-riding earthless essence      From what you were of old:All too unlike the fond and fragile creatureThen known to me.. Well, shall I say it plain?   I would not have you thus and there,But still would grieve on, missing you, still feature      You as the one you were.

THE DOLLS

“Whenever you dress me dolls, mammy,   Why do you dress them so,And make them gallant soldiers,   When never a one I know;And not as gentle ladies   With frills and frocks and curls,As people dress the dollies   Of other little girls?”Ah – why did she not answer: —   “Because your mammy’s heedIs always gallant soldiers,   As well may be, indeed.One of them was your daddy,   His name I must not tell;He’s not the dad who lives here,   But one I love too well.”

MOLLY GONE

   No more summer for Molly and me;      There is snow on the tree,   And the blackbirds plump large as the rooks are, almost,      And the water is hardWhere they used to dip bills at the dawn ere her figure was lost      To these coasts, now my prison close-barred.   No more planting by Molly and me      Where the beds used to be   Of sweet-william; no training the clambering rose      By the framework of firNow bowering the pathway, whereon it swings gaily and blows      As if calling commendment from her.   No more jauntings by Molly and me      To the town by the sea,   Or along over Whitesheet to Wynyard’s green Gap,      Catching Montacute CrestTo the right against Sedgmoor, and Corton-Hill’s far-distant cap,      And Pilsdon and Lewsdon to west.   No more singing by Molly to me      In the evenings when she   Was in mood and in voice, and the candles were lit,      And past the porch-quoinThe rays would spring out on the laurels; and dumbledores hit      On the pane, as if wishing to join.   Where, then, is Molly, who’s no more with me?      – As I stand on this lea,   Thinking thus, there’s a many-flamed star in the air,      That tosses a signThat her glance is regarding its face from her home, so that there      Her eyes may have meetings with mine.