Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

“IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN”

(SONG)

If it’s ever spring again,   Spring again,I shall go where went I whenDown the moor-cock splashed, and hen,Seeing me not, amid their flounder,Standing with my arm around her;If it’s ever spring again,   Spring again,I shall go where went I then.If it’s ever summer-time,   Summer-time,With the hay crop at the prime,And the cuckoos – two – in rhyme,As they used to be, or seemed to,We shall do as long we’ve dreamed to,If it’s ever summer-time,   Summer-time,With the hay, and bees achime.

THE TWO HOUSES

         In the heart of night,      When farers were not near,   The left house said to the house on the right,“I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.”         Said the right, cold-eyed:      “Newcomer here I am,   Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.         “Modern my wood,      My hangings fair of hue;   While my windows open as they should,And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.         “Your gear is gray,      Your face wears furrows untold.”   “ – Yours might,” mourned the other, “if you held, brother,The Presences from aforetime that I hold.         “You have not known      Men’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens;   You are but a heap of stick and stone:A new house has no sense of the have-beens.         “Void as a drum      You stand: I am packed with these,   Though, strangely, living dwellers who comeSee not the phantoms all my substance sees!         “Visible in the morning      Stand they, when dawn drags in;   Visible at night; yet hint or warningOf these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.         “Babes new-brought-forth      Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched   Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth;Yea, throng they as when first from the ’Byss upfetched.         “Dancers and singers      Throb in me now as once;   Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingersOf heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce.         “Note here within      The bridegroom and the bride,   Who smile and greet their friends and kin,And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.         “Where such inbe,      A dwelling’s character   Takes theirs, and a vague semblancyTo them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.         “Yet the blind folk      My tenants, who come and go   In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke,Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.”         “ – Will the day come,”      Said the new one, awestruck, faint,   “When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb —And with such spectral guests become acquaint?”         “ – That will it, boy;      Such shades will people thee,   Each in his misery, irk, or joy,And print on thee their presences as on me.”

ON STINSFORD HILL AT MIDNIGHT

I glimpsed a woman’s muslined form   Sing-songing airilyAgainst the moon; and still she sang,   And took no heed of me.Another trice, and I beheld   What first I had not scanned,That now and then she tapped and shook   A timbrel in her hand.So late the hour, so white her drape,   So strange the look it lentTo that blank hill, I could not guess   What phantastry it meant.Then burst I forth: “Why such from you?   Are you so happy now?”Her voice swam on; nor did she show   Thought of me anyhow.I called again: “Come nearer; much   That kind of note I need!”The song kept softening, loudening on,   In placid calm unheed.“What home is yours now?” then I said;   “You seem to have no care.”But the wild wavering tune went forth   As if I had not been there.“This world is dark, and where you are,”   I said, “I cannot be!”But still the happy one sang on,   And had no heed of me.

THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE

One without looks in to-night   Through the curtain-chinkFrom the sheet of glistening white;One without looks in to-night   As we sit and think   By the fender-brink.We do not discern those eyes   Watching in the snow;Lit by lamps of rosy dyesWe do not discern those eyes   Wondering, aglow,   Fourfooted, tiptoe.

THE SELFSAME SONG

A bird bills the selfsame song,With never a fault in its flow,That we listened to here those long   Long years ago.A pleasing marvel is howA strain of such rapturous roteShould have gone on thus till now   Unchanged in a note!– But it’s not the selfsame bird. —No: perished to dust is he.As also are those who heard   That song with me.

THE WANDERER

There is nobody on the road   But I,And no beseeming abode   I can tryFor shelter, so abroad   I must lie.The stars feel not far up,   And to beThe lights by which I sup   Glimmeringly,Set out in a hollow cup   Over me.They wag as though they were   Panting for joyWhere they shine, above all care,   And annoy,And demons of despair —   Life’s alloy.Sometimes outside the fence   Feet swing past,Clock-like, and then go hence,   Till at lastThere is a silence, dense,   Deep, and vast.A wanderer, witch-drawn   To and fro,To-morrow, at the dawn,   On I go,And where I rest anon   Do not know!Yet it’s meet – this bed of hay   And roofless plight;For there’s a house of clay,   My own, quite,To roof me soon, all day   And all night.

A WIFE COMES BACK

This is the story a man told meOf his life’s one day of dreamery.   A woman came into his roomBetween the dawn and the creeping day:She was the years-wed wife from whomHe had parted, and who lived far away,      As if strangers they.   He wondered, and as she stoodShe put on youth in her look and air,And more was he wonderstruck as he viewedHer form and flesh bloom yet more fair      While he watched her there;   Till she freshed to the pink and brownThat were hers on the night when first they met,When she was the charm of the idle townAnd he the pick of the club-fire set.      His eyes grew wet,   And he stretched his arms: “Stay – rest! – ”He cried.  “Abide with me so, my own!”But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;She had vanished with all he had looked upon      Of her beauty: gone.   He clothed, and drew downstairs,But she was not in the house, he found;And he passed out under the leafy pairsOf the avenue elms, and searched around      To the park-pale bound.   He mounted, and rode till nightTo the city to which she had long withdrawn,The vision he bore all day in his sightBeing her young self as pondered on      In the dim of dawn.   “ – The lady here long ago —Is she now here? – young – or such age as she is?”“ – She is still here.” – “Thank God.  Let her know;She’ll pardon a comer so late as this   Whom she’d fain not miss.”   She received him – an ancient dame,Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb,“How strange! – I’d almost forgotten your name! —A call just now – is troublesome;      Why did you come?”

A YOUNG MAN’S EXHORTATION

   Call off your eyes from careBy some determined deftness; put forth joysDear as excess without the core that cloys,   And charm Life’s lourings fair.   Exalt and crown the hourThat girdles us, and fill it full with glee,Blind glee, excelling aught could ever be   Were heedfulness in power.   Send up such touching strainsThat limitless recruits from Fancy’s packShall rush upon your tongue, and tender back   All that your soul contains.   For what do we know best?That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry,And that men moment after moment die,   Of all scope dispossest.   If I have seen one thingIt is the passing preciousness of dreams;That aspects are within us; and who seems   Most kingly is the King.1867: Westbourne Park Villas.

AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK

Had I but lived a hundred years agoI might have gone, as I have gone this year,By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,And Time have placed his finger on me there:“You see that man?” – I might have looked, and said,“O yes: I see him. One that boat has broughtWhich dropped down Channel round Saint Alban’s Head.So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.”“You see that man?” – “Why yes; I told you; yes:Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;And as the evening light scants less and lessHe looks up at a star, as many do.”“You see that man?” – “Nay, leave me!” then I plead,“I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!“Good. That man goes to Rome – to death, despair;And no one notes him now but you and I:A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.” September 1920.

Note. – In September 1820 Keats, on his way to Rome, landed one day on the Dorset coast, and composed the sonnet, “Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.” The spot of his landing is judged to have been Lulworth Cove.

A BYGONE OCCASION

(SONG)

   That night, that night,   That song, that song!Will such again be evened quite   Through lifetimes long?   No mirth was shown   To outer seers,But mood to match has not been known   In modern years.   O eyes that smiled,   O lips that lured;That such would last was one beguiled   To think ensured!   That night, that night,   That song, that song;O drink to its recalled delight,   Though tears may throng!

TWO SERENADES

IOn Christmas EveLate on Christmas Eve, in the street alone,Outside a house, on the pavement-stone,I sang to her, as we’d sung togetherOn former eves ere I felt her tether. —Above the door of green by meWas she, her casement seen by me;   But she would not heed   What I melodied   In my soul’s sore need —   She would not heed.Cassiopeia overhead,And the Seven of the Wain, heard what I saidAs I bent me there, and voiced, and fingeredUpon the strings… Long, long I lingered:Only the curtains hid from herOne whom caprice had bid from her;   But she did not come,   And my heart grew numb   And dull my strum;   She did not come.IIA Year LaterI skimmed the strings; I sang quite low;I hoped she would not come or knowThat the house next door was the one now dittied,Not hers, as when I had played unpitied;– Next door, where dwelt a heart fresh stirred,My new Love, of good will to me,Unlike my old Love chill to me,Who had not cared for my notes when heard:   Yet that old Love came   To the other’s name   As hers were the claim;   Yea, the old Love cameMy viol sank mute, my tongue stood still,I tried to sing on, but vain my will:I prayed she would guess of the later, and leave me;She stayed, as though, were she slain by the smart,She would bear love’s burn for a newer heart.The tense-drawn moment wrought to bereave meOf voice, and I turned in a dumb despairAt her finding I’d come to another there.   Sick I withdrew   At love’s grim hue   Ere my last Love knew;   Sick I withdrew.From an old copy.

THE WEDDING MORNING

   Tabitha dressed for her wedding: —   “Tabby, why look so sad?”“ – O I feel a great gloominess spreading, spreading,   Instead of supremely glad!.   “I called on Carry last night,   And he came whilst I was there,Not knowing I’d called.  So I kept out of sight,   And I heard what he said to her:   “‘ – Ah, I’d far liefer marry   You, Dear, to-morrow!’ he said,‘But that cannot be.’ – O I’d give him to Carry,And willingly see them wed,   “But how can I do it when   His baby will soon be born?After that I hope I may die.  And then   She can have him.  I shall not mourn!”

END OF THE YEAR 1912

You were here at his young beginning,   You are not here at his agèd end;Off he coaxed you from Life’s mad spinning,   Lest you should see his form extend      Shivering, sighing,      Slowly dying,   And a tear on him expend.So it comes that we stand lonely   In the star-lit avenue,Dropping broken lipwords only,   For we hear no songs from you,      Such as flew here      For the new year   Once, while six bells swung thereto.

THE CHIMES PLAY “LIFE’S A BUMPER!”

“Awake!  I’m off to cities far away,”I said; and rose, on peradventures bent.The chimes played “Life’s a Bumper!” on that dayTo the measure of my walking as I went:Their sweetness frisked and floated on the lea,As they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.“Awake!” I said.  “I go to take a bride!”– The sun arose behind me ruby-redAs I journeyed townwards from the countryside,The chiming bells saluting near ahead.Their sweetness swelled in tripping tings of gleeAs they played out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.“Again arise.”  I seek a turfy slope,And go forth slowly on an autumn noon,And there I lay her who has been my hope,And think, “O may I follow hither soon!”While on the wind the chimes come cheerily,Playing out “Life’s a Bumper!” there to me.1913.

“I WORKED NO WILE TO MEET YOU”

(SONG)

I worked no wile to meet you,   My sight was set elsewhere,I sheered about to shun you,   And lent your life no care.I was unprimed to greet you   At such a date and place,Constraint alone had won you   Vision of my strange face!You did not seek to see me   Then or at all, you said,– Meant passing when you neared me,   But stumblingblocks forbade.You even had thought to flee me,   By other mindings moved;No influent star endeared me,   Unknown, unrecked, unproved!What, then, was there to tell us   The flux of flustering hoursOf their own tide would bring us   By no device of oursTo where the daysprings well us   Heart-hydromels that cheer,Till Time enearth and swing us   Round with the turning sphere.

AT THE RAILWAY STATION, UPWAY

   “There is not much that I can do,For I’ve no money that’s quite my own!”   Spoke up the pitying child —A little boy with a violinAt the station before the train came in, —“But I can play my fiddle to you,And a nice one ’tis, and good in tone!”   The man in the handcuffs smiled;The constable looked, and he smiled, too,   As the fiddle began to twang;And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang      Uproariously:      “This life so free      Is the thing for me!”And the constable smiled, and said no word,As if unconscious of what he heard;And so they went on till the train came in —The convict, and boy with the violin.

SIDE BY SIDE

So there sat they,The estranged two,Thrust in one pewBy chance that day;Placed so, breath-nigh,Each comer unwittingWho was to be sittingIn touch close by.Thus side by sideBlindly alighted,They seemed unitedAs groom and bride,Who’d not communedFor many years —Lives from twain spheresWith hearts distuned.Her fringes brushedHis garment’s hemAs the harmonies rushedThrough each of them:Her lips could be heardIn the creed and psalms,And their fingers nearedAt the giving of alms.And women and men,The matins ended,By looks commendedThem, joined again.Quickly said she,“Don’t undeceive them —Better thus leave them:”“Quite so,” said he.Slight words! – the lastBetween them said,Those two, once wed,Who had not stood fast.Diverse their waysFrom the western door,To meet no moreIn their span of days.

DREAM OF THE CITY SHOPWOMAN

’Twere sweet to have a comrade here,Who’d vow to love this garreteer,By city people’s snap and sneer      Tried oft and hard!We’d rove a truant cock and henTo some snug solitary glen,And never be seen to haunt again      This teeming yard.Within a cot of thatch and clayWe’d list the flitting pipers play,Our lives a twine of good and gay      Enwreathed discreetly;Our blithest deeds so neighbouring wiseThat doves should coo in soft surprise,“These must belong to Paradise      Who live so sweetly.”Our clock should be the closing flowers,Our sprinkle-bath the passing showers,Our church the alleyed willow bowers,      The truth our theme;And infant shapes might soon abound:Their shining heads would dot us roundLike mushroom balls on grassy ground.      – But all is dream!O God, that creatures framed to feelA yearning nature’s strong appealShould writhe on this eternal wheel      In rayless grime;And vainly note, with wan regret,Each star of early promise set;Till Death relieves, and they forget      Their one Life’s time!Westbourne Park Villas, 1866.

A MAIDEN’S PLEDGE

(SONG)

I do not wish to win your vowTo take me soon or late as bride,And lift me from the nook where nowI tarry your farings to my side.I am blissful ever to abideIn this green labyrinth – let all be,If but, whatever may betide,You do not leave off loving me!Your comet-comings I will waitWith patience time shall not wear through;The yellowing years will not abateMy largened love and truth to you,Nor drive me to complaint undueOf absence, much as I may pine,If never another ’twixt us twoShall come, and you stand wholly mine.

THE CHILD AND THE SAGE

You say, O Sage, when weather-checked,   “I have been favoured soWith cloudless skies, I must expect   This dash of rain or snow.”“Since health has been my lot,” you say,   “So many months of late,I must not chafe that one short day   Of sickness mars my state.”You say, “Such bliss has been my share   From Love’s unbroken smile,It is but reason I should bear   A cross therein awhile.”And thus you do not count upon   Continuance of joy;But, when at ease, expect anon   A burden of annoy.But, Sage – this Earth – why not a place   Where no reprisals reign,Where never a spell of pleasantness   Makes reasonable a pain? December 21, 1908.

MISMET

I   He was leaning by a face,   He was looking into eyes,   And he knew a trysting-place,   And he heard seductive sighs;      But the face,      And the eyes,      And the place,      And the sighs,Were not, alas, the right ones – the ones meet for him —Though fine and sweet the features, and the feelings all abrim.II   She was looking at a form,   She was listening for a tread,   She could feel a waft of charm   When a certain name was said;      But the form,      And the tread,      And the charm      Of name said,Were the wrong ones for her, and ever would be so,While the heritor of the right it would have saved her soul to know!

AN AUTUMN RAIN-SCENE

There trudges one to a merry-making      With a sturdy swing,   On whom the rain comes down.To fetch the saving medicament      Is another bent,   On whom the rain comes down.One slowly drives his herd to the stall      Ere ill befall,   On whom the rain comes down.This bears his missives of life and death      With quickening breath,   On whom the rain comes down.One watches for signals of wreck or war      From the hill afar,   On whom the rain comes down.No care if he gain a shelter or none,      Unhired moves one,   On whom the rain comes down.And another knows nought of its chilling fall      Upon him at all,   On whom the rain comes down. October 1904.

MEDITATIONS ON A HOLIDAY

(A NEW THEME TO AN OLD FOLK-JINGLE)

’Tis May morning,All-adorning,No cloud warning   Of rain to-day.Where shall I go to,Go to, go to? —Can I say No to   Lyonnesse-way?Well – what reasonNow at this seasonIs there for treason   To other shrines?Tristram is not there,Isolt forgot there,New eras blot there   Sought-for signs!Stratford-on-Avon —Poesy-paven —I’ll find a haven   There, somehow! —Nay – I’m but caught ofDreams long thought of,The Swan knows nought of   His Avon now!What shall it be, then,I go to see, then,Under the plea, then,   Of votary?I’ll go to Lakeland,Lakeland, Lakeland,Certainly Lakeland   Let it be.But – why to that place,That place, that place,Such a hard come-at place   Need I fare?When its bard cheers no more,Loves no more, fears no more,Sees no more, hears no more   Anything there!Ah, there is Scotland,Burns’s Scotland,And Waverley’s.  To what land   Better can I hie? —Yet – if no whit nowFeel those of it now —Care not a bit now   For it – why I?I’ll seek a town street,Aye, a brick-brown street,Quite a tumbledown street,   Drawing no eyes.For a Mary dwelt there,And a Percy felt thereHeart of him melt there,   A Claire likewise.Why incline to that city,Such a city, that city,Now a mud-bespat city! —Care the lovers whoNow live and walk there,Sit there and talk there,Buy there, or hawk there,Or wed, or woo?Laughters in a volleyGreet so fond a follyAs nursing melancholy   In this and that spot,Which, with most endeavour,Those can visit never,But for ever and ever   Will now know not!If, on lawns Elysian,With a broadened visionAnd a faint derision   Conscious be they,How they might reprove meThat these fancies move me,Think they ill behoove me,   Smile, and say:“What! – our hoar old houses,Where the past dead-drowses,Nor a child nor spouse is   Of our name at all?Such abodes to care for,Inquire about and bear for,And suffer wear and tear for —   How weak of you and small!” May 1921.

AN EXPERIENCE

Wit, weight, or wealth there was not   In anything that was said,   In anything that was done;All was of scope to cause not   A triumph, dazzle, or dread   To even the subtlest one,      My friend,   To even the subtlest one.But there was a new afflation —   An aura zephyring round,   That care infected not:It came as a salutation,   And, in my sweet astound,   I scarcely witted what      Might pend,   I scarcely witted what.The hills in samewise to me   Spoke, as they grayly gazed,   – First hills to speak so yet!The thin-edged breezes blew me   What I, though cobwebbed, crazed,   Was never to forget,      My friend,   Was never to forget!

THE BEAUTY

O do not praise my beauty more,   In such word-wild degree,And say I am one all eyes adore;   For these things harass me!But do for ever softly say:   “From now unto the endCome weal, come wanzing, come what may,   Dear, I will be your friend.”I hate my beauty in the glass:   My beauty is not I:I wear it: none cares whether, alas,   Its wearer live or die!The inner I O care for, then,   Yea, me and what I am,And shall be at the gray hour when   My cheek begins to clam.

Note. – “The Regent Street beauty, Miss Verrey, the Swiss confectioner’s daughter, whose personal attractions have been so mischievously exaggerated, died of fever on Monday evening, brought on by the annoyance she had been for some time subject to.” – London paper, October 1828.

THE COLLECTOR CLEANS HIS PICTURE

Fili hominis, ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in plaga. – Ezech. xxiv. 16   How I remember cleaning that strange picture!I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour —His besides my own – over several Sundays,Often, too, in the week; so with parish pressures,Baptisms, burials, doctorings, conjugal counsel —All the whatnots asked of a rural parson —Faith, I was well-nigh broken, should have been fullySaving for one small secret relaxation,One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby.   This was to delve at whiles for easel-lumber,Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city,Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas,Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure,Yet under all concealing a precious art-feat.Such I had found not yet.  My latest captureCame from the rooms of a trader in ancient house-gearWho had no scent of beauty or soul for brushcraft.Only a tittle cost it – murked with grime-films,Gatherings of slow years, thick-varnished over,Never a feature manifest of man’s painting.   So, one Saturday, time ticking hard on midnightEre an hour subserved, I set me upon it.Long with coiled-up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned,Till a first fresh spot, a high light, looked forth,Then another, like fair flesh, and another;Then a curve, a nostril, and next a finger,Tapering, shapely, significantly pointing slantwise.“Flemish?” I said. “Nay, Spanish.. But, nay, Italian!”– Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus,Named of some Astarte, of some Cotytto.Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel,Drunk with the lure of love’s inhibited dreamings.   Till the dawn I rubbed, when there gazed up at meA hag, that had slowly emerged from under my hands there,Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosomEaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime.– I could have ended myself in heart-shook horror.Stunned I sat till roused by a clear-voiced bell-chime,Fresh and sweet as the dew-fleece under my luthern.It was the matin service calling to meFrom the adjacent steeple.

THE WOOD FIRE

(A FRAGMENT)

“This is a brightsome blaze you’ve lit good friend, to-night!”“ – Aye, it has been the bleakest spring I have felt for years,And nought compares with cloven logs to keep alight:I buy them bargain-cheap of the executioners,As I dwell near; and they wanted the crosses out of sightBy Passover, not to affront the eyes of visitors.“Yes, they’re from the crucifixions last week-endingAt Kranion.  We can sometimes use the poles again,But they get split by the nails, and ’tis quicker work than mendingTo knock together new; though the uprights now and thenServe twice when they’re let stand.  But if a feast’s impending,As lately, you’ve to tidy up for the corners’ ken.“Though only three were impaled, you may know it didn’t pass offSo quietly as was wont?  That Galilee carpenter’s sonWho boasted he was king, incensed the rabble to scoff:I heard the noise from my garden.  This piece is the one he was on.Yes, it blazes up well if lit with a few dry chips and shroff;And it’s worthless for much else, what with cuts and stains thereon.”