Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

A BACKWARD SPRING

The trees are afraid to put forth buds,And there is timidity in the grass;The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds,   And whether next week will passFree of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush   Of barberry waiting to bloom.Yet the snowdrop’s face betrays no gloom,And the primrose pants in its heedless push,Though the myrtle asks if it’s worth the fight   This year with frost and rime   To venture one more timeOn delicate leaves and buttons of whiteFrom the selfsame bough as at last year’s prime,And never to ruminate on or rememberWhat happened to it in mid-December.

April 1917.

LOOKING ACROSS

IIt is dark in the sky,And silence is whereOur laughs rang high;And recall do IThat One is out there.IIThe dawn is not nigh,And the trees are bare,And the waterways sighThat a year has drawn by,And Two are out there.IIIThe wind drops to dieLike the phantom of CareToo frail for a cry,And heart brings to eyeThat Three are out there.IVThis Life runs dryThat once ran rareAnd rosy in dye,And fleet the days fly,And Four are out there.VTired, tired am IOf this earthly air,And my wraith asks: Why,Since these calm lie,Are not Five out there?

December 1915.

AT A SEASIDE TOWN IN 1869

(Young Lover’s Reverie)

I went and stood outside myself,   Spelled the dark sky   And ship-lights nigh,And grumbling winds that passed thereby.Then next inside myself I looked,   And there, above   All, shone my Love,That nothing matched the image of.Beyond myself again I ranged;   And saw the free   Life by the sea,And folk indifferent to me.O ’twas a charm to draw within   Thereafter, where   But she was; careFor one thing only, her hid there!But so it chanced, without myself   I had to look,   And then I tookMore heed of what I had long forsook:The boats, the sands, the esplanade,   The laughing crowd;   Light-hearted, loudGreetings from some not ill-endowed;The evening sunlit cliffs, the talk,   Hailings and halts,   The keen sea-salts,The band, the Morgenblätter Waltz.Still, when at night I drew inside   Forward she came,   Sad, but the sameAs when I first had known her name.Then rose a time when, as by force,   Outwardly wooed   By contacts crude,Her image in abeyance stood.At last I said: This outside life   Shall not endure;   I’ll seek the pureThought-world, and bask in her allure.Myself again I crept within,   Scanned with keen care   The temple whereShe’d shone, but could not find her there.I sought and sought.  But O her soul   Has not since thrown   Upon my ownOne beam!  Yea, she is gone, is gone.

From an old note.

THE GLIMPSE

She sped through the doorAnd, following in haste,And stirred to the core,I entered hot-faced;But I could not find her,No sign was behind her.“Where is she?” I said:– “Who?” they asked that sat there;“Not a soul’s come in sight.”– “A maid with red hair.”– “Ah.”  They paled.  “She is dead.People see her at night,But you are the firstOn whom she has burstIn the keen common light.”It was ages ago,When I was quite strong:I have waited since, – O,I have waited so long!– Yea, I set me to ownThe house, where now loneI dwell in void roomsBooming hollow as tombs!But I never come near her,Though nightly I hear her.And my cheek has grown thinAnd my hair has grown grayWith this waiting therein;But she still keeps away!

THE PEDESTRIAN

AN INCIDENT OF 1883

“Sir, will you let me give you a ride?Nox Venit, and the heath is wide.”– My phaeton-lantern shone on one   Young, fair, even fresh,   But burdened with flesh:A leathern satchel at his side,His breathings short, his coat undone.’Twas as if his corpulent figure sloppedWith the shake of his walking when he stopped,And, though the night’s pinch grew acute,   He wore but a thin   Wind-thridded suit,Yet well-shaped shoes for walking in,Artistic beaver, cane gold-topped.“Alas, my friend,” he said with a smile,“I am daily bound to foot ten mile —Wet, dry, or dark – before I rest.   Six months to live   My doctors giveMe as my prospect here, at best,Unless I vamp my sturdiest!”His voice was that of a man refined,A man, one well could feel, of mind,Quite winning in its musical ease;   But in mould maligned   By some disease;And I asked again.  But he shook his head;Then, as if more were due, he said: —“A student was I – of Schopenhauer,Kant, Hegel, – and the fountained bowerOf the Muses, too, knew my regard:   But ah – I fear me   The grave gapes near me!.Would I could this gross sheath discard,And rise an ethereal shape, unmarred!”How I remember him! – his short breath,His aspect, marked for early death,As he dropped into the night for ever;   One caught in his prime   Of high endeavour;From all philosophies soon to severThrough an unconscienced trick of Time!

“WHO’S IN THE NEXT ROOM?”

   “Who’s in the next room? – who?      I seemed to seeSomebody in the dawning passing through,      Unknown to me.”“Nay: you saw nought.  He passed invisibly.”   “Who’s in the next room? – who?      I seem to hearSomebody muttering firm in a language new      That chills the ear.”“No: you catch not his tongue who has entered there.”   “Who’s in the next room? – who?      I seem to feelHis breath like a clammy draught, as if it drew      From the Polar Wheel.”“No: none who breathes at all does the door conceal.”   “Who’s in the next room? – who?      A figure wanWith a message to one in there of something due?      Shall I know him anon?”“Yea he; and he brought such; and you’ll know him anon.”

AT A COUNTRY FAIR

At a bygone Western country fairI saw a giant led by a dwarfWith a red string like a long thin scarf;How much he was the stronger there   The giant seemed unaware.And then I saw that the giant was blind,And the dwarf a shrewd-eyed little thing;The giant, mild, timid, obeyed the stringAs if he had no independent mind,   Or will of any kind.Wherever the dwarf decided to goAt his heels the other trotted meekly,(Perhaps – I know not – reproaching weakly)Like one Fate bade that it must be so,   Whether he wished or no.Various sights in various climesI have seen, and more I may see yet,But that sight never shall I forget,And have thought it the sorriest of pantomimes,   If once, a hundred times!

THE MEMORIAL BRASS: 186–

   “Why do you weep there, O sweet lady,   Why do you weep before that brass? —(I’m a mere student sketching the mediaeval)   Is some late death lined there, alas? —Your father’s?.. Well, all pay the debt that paid he!”   “Young man, O must I tell! – My husband’s!  And under   His name I set mine, and my death! —Its date left vacant till my heirs should fill it,   Stating me faithful till my last breath.”– “Madam, that you are a widow wakes my wonder!”   “O wait!  For last month I – remarried!   And now I fear ’twas a deed amiss.We’ve just come home.  And I am sick and saddened   At what the new one will say to this;And will he think – think that I should have tarried?   “I may add, surely, – with no wish to harm him —   That he’s a temper – yes, I fear!And when he comes to church next Sunday morning,   And sees that written.. O dear, O dear!”– “Madam, I swear your beauty will disarm him!”

HER LOVE-BIRDS

When I looked up at my love-birds   That Sunday afternoon,   There was in their tiny tuneA dying fetch like broken words,When I looked up at my love-birds   That Sunday afternoon.When he, too, scanned the love-birds   On entering there that day,   ’Twas as if he had nought to sayOf his long journey citywards,When he, too, scanned the love-birds,   On entering there that day.And billed and billed the love-birds,   As ’twere in fond despair   At the stress of silence whereHad once been tones in tenor thirds,And billed and billed the love-birds   As ’twere in fond despair.O, his speech that chilled the love-birds,   And smote like death on me,   As I learnt what was to be,And knew my life was broke in sherds!O, his speech that chilled the love-birds,   And smote like death on me!

PAYING CALLS

I went by footpath and by stile   Beyond where bustle ends,Strayed here a mile and there a mile   And called upon some friends.On certain ones I had not seen   For years past did I call,And then on others who had been   The oldest friends of all.It was the time of midsummer   When they had used to roam;But now, though tempting was the air,   I found them all at home.I spoke to one and other of them   By mound and stone and treeOf things we had done ere days were dim,   But they spoke not to me.

THE UPPER BIRCH-LEAVES

Warm yellowy-greenIn the blue serene,How they skip and swayOn this autumn day!They cannot knowWhat has happened below, —That their boughs down thereAre already quite bare,That their own will beWhen a week has passed, —For they jig as in gleeTo this very last.But no; there liesAt times in their tuneA note that criesWhat at first I fearI did not hear:“O we rememberAt each wind’s hollo —Though life holds yet —We go hence soon,For ’tis November;– But that you followYou may forget!”

“IT NEVER LOOKS LIKE SUMMER”

“It never looks like summer here   On Beeny by the sea.”But though she saw its look as drear,   Summer it seemed to me.It never looks like summer now   Whatever weather’s there;But ah, it cannot anyhow,   On Beeny or elsewhere!

Boscastle,

March 8, 1913.

EVERYTHING COMES

“The house is bleak and cold   Built so new for me!All the winds upon the wold   Search it through for me;No screening trees abound,And the curious eyes around   Keep on view for me.”“My Love, I am planting trees   As a screen for youBoth from winds, and eyes that tease   And peer in for you.Only wait till they have grown,No such bower will be known   As I mean for you.”“Then I will bear it, Love,   And will wait,” she said.– So, with years, there grew a grove.   “Skill how great!” she said.“As you wished, Dear?” – “Yes, I see!But – I’m dying; and for me   ’Tis too late,” she said.

THE MAN WITH A PAST

   There was merry-making   When the first dart fell   As a heralding, —Till grinned the fully bared thing,   And froze like a spell —      Like a spell.   Innocent was she,   Innocent was I,   Too simple we!Before us we did not see,   Nearing, aught wry —      Aught wry!   I can tell it not now,   It was long ago;   And such things cow;But that is why and how   Two lives were so —      Were so.   Yes, the years matured,   And the blows were three   That time ensuredOn her, which she dumbly endured;   And one on me —      One on me.

HE FEARS HIS GOOD FORTUNE

There was a glorious timeAt an epoch of my prime;Mornings beryl-bespread,And evenings golden-red;   Nothing gray:And in my heart I said,“However this chanced to be,It is too full for me,Too rare, too rapturous, rash,Its spell must close with a crash   Some day!”The radiance went onAnon and yet anon,And sweetness fell aroundLike manna on the ground.   “I’ve no claim,”Said I, “to be thus crowned:I am not worthy this: —Must it not go amiss? —Well.. let the end foreseenCome duly! – I am serene.”   – And it came.

HE WONDERS ABOUT HIMSELF

No use hoping, or feeling vext,Tugged by a force above or underLike some fantocine, much I wonderWhat I shall find me doing next!Shall I be rushing where bright eyes be?Shall I be suffering sorrows seven?Shall I be watching the stars of heaven,Thinking one of them looks like thee?Part is mine of the general Will,Cannot my share in the sum of sourcesBend a digit the poise of forces,And a fair desire fulfil?

Nov. 1893.

JUBILATE

“The very last time I ever was here,” he said,“I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead.”– He was a man I had met with somewhere before,But how or when I now could recall no more.“The hazy mazy moonlight at one in the morningSpread out as a sea across the frozen snow,Glazed to live sparkles like the great breastplate adorningThe priest of the Temple, with Urim and Thummim aglow.“The yew-tree arms, glued hard to the stiff stark air,Hung still in the village sky as theatre-scenesWhen I came by the churchyard wall, and halted thereAt a shut-in sound of fiddles and tambourines.“And as I stood hearkening, dulcimers, haut-boys, and shawms,And violoncellos, and a three-stringed double-bass,Joined in, and were intermixed with a singing of psalms;And I looked over at the dead men’s dwelling-place.“Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see,As it were through a crystal roof, a great companyOf the dead minueting in stately step undergroundTo the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound.“It was ‘Eden New,’ and dancing they sang in a chore,‘We are out of it all! – yea, in Little-Ease cramped no more!’And their shrouded figures pacing with joy I could seeAs you see the stage from the gallery.  And they had no heed of me.“And I lifted my head quite dazed from the churchyard wallAnd I doubted not that it warned I should soon have my call.But – ”.. Then in the ashes he emptied the dregs of his cup,And onward he went, and the darkness swallowed him up.

HE REVISITS HIS FIRST SCHOOL

I should not have shown in the flesh,I ought to have gone as a ghost;It was awkward, unseemly almost,Standing solidly there as when fresh,   Pink, tiny, crisp-curled,   My pinions yet furled   From the winds of the world.After waiting so many a yearTo wait longer, and go as a spriteFrom the tomb at the mid of some nightWas the right, radiant way to appear;   Not as one wanzing weak   From life’s roar and reek,   His rest still to seek:Yea, beglimpsed through the quaint quarried glassOf green moonlight, by me greener made,When they’d cry, perhaps, “There sits his shadeIn his olden haunt – just as he was   When in Walkingame he   Conned the grand Rule-of-Three   With the bent of a bee.”But to show in the afternoon sun,With an aspect of hollow-eyed care,When none wished to see me come there,Was a garish thing, better undone.   Yes; wrong was the way;   But yet, let me say,   I may right it – some day.

“I THOUGHT, MY HEART”

I thought, my Heart, that you had healedOf those sore smartings of the past,And that the summers had oversealed   All mark of them at last.But closely scanning in the nightI saw them standing crimson-bright      Just as she made them:      Nothing could fade them;      Yea, I can swear      That there they were —      They still were there!Then the Vision of her who cut them came,And looking over my shoulder said,“I am sure you deal me all the blame   For those sharp smarts and red;But meet me, dearest, to-morrow night,In the churchyard at the moon’s half-height,      And so strange a kiss      Shall be mine, I wis,      That you’ll cease to know      If the wounds you show      Be there or no!”

FRAGMENT

At last I entered a long dark gallery,   Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side   Were the bodies of men from far and wideWho, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.“The sense of waiting here strikes strong;   Everyone’s waiting, waiting, it seems to me;   What are you waiting for so long? —What is to happen?” I said.“O we are waiting for one called God,” said they,   “(Though by some the Will, or Force, or Laws;   And, vaguely, by some, the Ultimate Cause;)Waiting for him to see us before we are clay.Yes; waiting, waiting, for God to know it”.   “To know what?” questioned I.“To know how things have been going on earth and below it:   It is clear he must know some day.”   I thereon asked them why.“Since he made us humble pioneersOf himself in consciousness of Life’s tears,It needs no mighty prophecyTo tell that what he could mindlessly showHis creatures, he himself will know.“By some still close-cowled mysteryWe have reached feeling faster than he,But he will overtake us anon,   If the world goes on.”

MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,   And the roof-lamp’s oily flamePlayed down on his listless form and face,Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,      Or whence he came.In the band of his hat the journeying boy   Had a ticket stuck; and a stringAround his neck bore the key of his box,That twinkled gleams of the lamp’s sad beams      Like a living thing.What past can be yours, O journeying boy   Towards a world unknown,Who calmly, as if incurious quiteOn all at stake, can undertake      This plunge alone?Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,   Our rude realms far above,Whence with spacious vision you mark and meteThis region of sin that you find you in,      But are not of?

HONEYMOON TIME AT AN INN

At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn,      The moon was at the window-square,   Deedily brooding in deformed decay —   The curve hewn off her cheek as by an adze;At the shiver of morning a little before the false dawn   So the moon looked in there.Her speechless eyeing reached across the chamber,      Where lay two souls opprest,   One a white lady sighing, “Why am I sad!”   To him who sighed back, “Sad, my Love, am I!”And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber,   And these two reft of rest.While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there,      Nought seeming imminent,   Something fell sheer, and crashed, and from the floor   Lay glittering at the pair with a shattered gaze,While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there,   And the many-eyed thing outleant.With a start they saw that it was an old-time pier-glass      Which had stood on the mantel near,   Its silvering blemished, – yes, as if worn away   By the eyes of the countless dead who had smirked at itEre these two ever knew that old-time pier-glass   And its vague and vacant leer.As he looked, his bride like a moth skimmed forth, and kneeling      Quick, with quivering sighs,   Gathered the pieces under the moon’s sly ray,   Unwitting as an automaton what she did;Till he entreated, hasting to where she was kneeling,   “Let it stay where it lies!”“Long years of sorrow this means!” breathed the lady      As they retired.  “Alas!”   And she lifted one pale hand across her eyes.   “Don’t trouble, Love; it’s nothing,” the bridegroom said.“Long years of sorrow for us!” murmured the lady,   “Or ever this evil pass!”And the Spirits Ironic laughed behind the wainscot,      And the Spirits of Pity sighed.   “It’s good,” said the Spirits Ironic, “to tickle their minds   With a portent of their wedlock’s after-grinds.”And the Spirits of Pity sighed behind the wainscot,   “It’s a portent we cannot abide!“More, what shall happen to prove the truth of the portent?”      – “Oh; in brief, they will fade till old,   And their loves grow numbed ere death, by the cark of care.”– “But nought see we that asks for portents there? —’Tis the lot of all.” – “Well, no less true is a portent   That it fits all mortal mould.”

THE ROBIN

When up aloftI fly and fly,I see in poolsThe shining sky,And a happy birdAm I, am I!When I descendTowards their brinkI stand, and look,And stoop, and drink,And bathe my wings,And chink and prink.When winter frostMakes earth as steelI search and searchBut find no meal,And most unhappyThen I feel.But when it lasts,And snows still fall,I get to feelNo grief at all,For I turn to a cold stiffFeathery ball!

“I ROSE AND WENT TO ROU’TOR TOWN”

(She, alone)

I rose and went to Rou’tor Town   With gaiety and good heart,   And ardour for the start,That morning ere the moon was downThat lit me off to Rou’tor Town   With gaiety and good heart.When sojourn soon at Rou’tor Town   Wrote sorrows on my face,   I strove that none should traceThe pale and gray, once pink and brown,When sojourn soon at Rou’tor Town   Wrote sorrows on my face.The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town   On him I’d loved so true   I cannot tell anew:But nought can quench, but nought can drownThe evil wrought at Rou’tor Town   On him I’d loved so true!

THE NETTLES

   This, then, is the grave of my son,   Whose heart she won!  And nettles growUpon his mound; and she lives just below.   How he upbraided me, and left,   And our lives were cleft, because I saidShe was hard, unfeeling, caring but to wed.   Well, to see this sight I have fared these miles,   And her firelight smiles from her window there,Whom he left his mother to cherish with tender care!   It is enough.  I’ll turn and go;   Yes, nettles grow where lone lies he,Who spurned me for seeing what he could not see.

IN A WAITING-ROOM

On a morning sick as the day of doom   With the drizzling gray   Of an English May,There were few in the railway waiting-room.About its walls were framed and varnishedPictures of liners, fly-blown, tarnished.The table bore a TestamentFor travellers’ reading, if suchwise bent.      I read it on and on,   And, thronging the Gospel of Saint John,   Were figures – additions, multiplications —By some one scrawled, with sundry emendations;      Not scoffingly designed,      But with an absent mind, —   Plainly a bagman’s counts of cost,   What he had profited, what lost;And whilst I wondered if there could have been      Any particle of a soul      In that poor man at all,   To cypher rates of wage   Upon that printed page,   There joined in the charmless sceneAnd stood over me and the scribbled book   (To lend the hour’s mean hue   A smear of tragedy too)A soldier and wife, with haggard lookSubdued to stone by strong endeavour;   And then I heard   From a casual wordThey were parting as they believed for ever.   But next there came   Like the eastern flameOf some high altar, children – a pair —Who laughed at the fly-blown pictures there.“Here are the lovely ships that we,Mother, are by and by going to see!When we get there it’s ’most sure to be fine,And the band will play, and the sun will shine!”It rained on the skylight with a dinAs we waited and still no train came in;But the words of the child in the squalid roomHad spread a glory through the gloom.

THE CLOCK-WINDER

It is dark as a cave,Or a vault in the naveWhen the iron doorIs closed, and the floorOf the church relaidWith trowel and spade.But the parish-clerkCares not for the darkAs he winds in the towerAt a regular hourThe rheumatic clock,Whose dilatory knockYou can hear when prayingAt the day’s decaying,Or at any lone whileFrom a pew in the aisle.Up, up from the groundAround and aroundIn the turret stairHe clambers, to whereThe wheelwork is,With its tick, click, whizz,Reposefully measuringEach day to its endThat mortal men spendIn sorrowing and pleasuringNightly thus does he climbTo the trackway of Time.Him I followed one nightTo this place without light,And, ere I spoke, heardHim say, word by word,At the end of his winding,The darkness unminding: —“So I wipe out one more,My Dear, of the soreSad days that still be,Like a drying Dead Sea,Between you and me!”Who she was no man knew:He had long borne him blindTo all womankind;And was ever one whoKept his past out of view.

OLD EXCURSIONS

“What’s the good of going to Ridgeway,   Cerne, or Sydling Mill,   Or to Yell’ham Hill,Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way   As we used to do?She will no more climb up there,Or be visible anywhere   In those haunts we knew.”But to-night, while walking weary,   Near me seemed her shade,   Come as ’twere to upbraidThis my mood in deeming dreary   Scenes that used to please;And, if she did come to me,Still solicitous, there may be   Good in going to these.So, I’ll care to roam to Ridgeway,   Cerne, or Sydling Mill,   Or to Yell’ham Hill,Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way   As we used to do,Since her phasm may flit out there,And may greet me anywhere   In those haunts we knew.

April 1913.

THE MASKED FACE

I found me in a great surging space,   At either end a door,And I said: “What is this giddying place,   With no firm-fixéd floor,   That I knew not of before?”   “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face.I asked: “But how do I come here,   Who never wished to come;Can the light and air be made more clear,   The floor more quietsome,   And the doors set wide?  They numb   Fast-locked, and fill with fear.”The mask put on a bleak smile then,   And said, “O vassal-wight,There once complained a goosequill pen   To the scribe of the Infinite   Of the words it had to write   Because they were past its ken.”

IN A WHISPERING GALLERY

That whisper takes the voiceOf a Spirit’s compassioningsClose, but invisible,And throws me under a spellAt the kindling vision it brings;And for a moment I rejoice,And believe in transcendent thingsThat would mould from this muddy earthA spot for the splendid birthOf everlasting lives,Whereto no night arrives;And this gaunt gray galleryA tabernacle of worthOn this drab-aired afternoon,When you can barely seeAcross its hazed lacuneIf opposite aught there beOf fleshed humanityWherewith I may commune;Or if the voice so nearBe a soul’s voice floating here.