Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

SAYING GOOD-BYE

(SONG)

We are always saying   “Good-bye, good-bye!”In work, in playing,In gloom, in gaying:   At many a stage   Of pilgrimage   From youth to age   We say, “Good-bye,      Good-bye!”We are undiscerning   Which go to sigh,Which will be yearningFor soon returning;   And which no more   Will dark our door,   Or tread our shore,   But go to die,      To die.Some come from roaming   With joy again;Some, who come homingBy stealth at gloaming,   Had better have stopped   Till death, and dropped   By strange hands propped,   Than come so fain,      So fain.So, with this saying,   “Good-bye, good-bye,”We speed their wayingWithout betraying   Our grief, our fear   No more to hear   From them, close, clear,   Again: “Good-bye,      Good-bye!”

ON THE TUNE CALLED THE OLD-HUNDRED-AND-FOURTH

We never sang together   Ravenscroft’s terse old tuneOn Sundays or on weekdays,In sharp or summer weather,   At night-time or at noon.Why did we never sing it,   Why never so inclineOn Sundays or on weekdays,Even when soft wafts would wing it   From your far floor to mine?Shall we that tune, then, never   Stand voicing side by sideOn Sundays or on weekdays?.Or shall we, when for ever   In Sheol we abide,Sing it in desolation,   As we might long have doneOn Sundays or on weekdaysWith love and exultation   Before our sands had run?

THE OPPORTUNITY

(FOR H. P.)

Forty springs back, I recall,   We met at this phase of the Maytime:We might have clung close through all,   But we parted when died that daytime.We parted with smallest regret;   Perhaps should have cared but slightly,Just then, if we never had met:   Strange, strange that we lived so lightly!Had we mused a little space   At that critical date in the Maytime,One life had been ours, one place,   Perhaps, till our long cold daytime.– This is a bitter thing   For thee, O man: what ails it?The tide of chance may bring   Its offer; but nought avails it!

EVELYN G. OF CHRISTMINSTER

I can see the towersIn mind quite clearNot many hours’Faring from here;But how up and go,And briskly bearThither, and knowThat are not there?Though the birds sing small,And apple and pearOn your trees by the wallAre ripe and rare,Though none excel them,I have no careTo taste them or smell themAnd you not there.Though the College stonesAre smit with the sun,And the graduates and DonsWho held you as oneOf brightest browStill think as they did,Why haunt with them nowYour candle is hid?Towards the riverA pealing swells:They cost me a quiver —Those prayerful bells!How go to God,Who can reproveWith so heavy a rodAs your swift remove!The chorded keysWait all in a row,And the bellows wheezeAs long ago.And the psalter lingers,And organist’s chair;But where are your fingersThat once wagged there?Shall I then seekThat desert placeThis or next week,And those tracks traceThat fill me with carkAnd cloy; nowhereBeing movement or markOf you now there!

THE RIFT

(Song: Minor Mode)

’Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time,When yellow begins to show in the leaf,That your old gamut changed its chimeFrom those true tones – of span so brief! —That met my beats of joy, of grief,   As rhyme meets rhyme.So sank I from my high sublime!We faced but chancewise after that,And never I knew or guessed my crime..Yes; ’twas the date – or nigh thereat —Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat   And cobweb-time.

VOICES FROM THINGS GROWING IN A CHURCHYARD

These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd,   Sir or Madam,A little girl here sepultured.Once I flit-fluttered like a birdAbove the grass, as now I waveIn daisy shapes above my grave,   All day cheerily,   All night eerily!– I am one Bachelor Bowring, “Gent,”   Sir or Madam;In shingled oak my bones were pent;Hence more than a hundred years I spentIn my feat of change from a coffin-thrallTo a dancer in green as leaves on a wall.   All day cheerily,   All night eerily!– I, these berries of juice and gloss,   Sir or Madam,Am clean forgotten as Thomas Voss;Thin-urned, I have burrowed away from the mossThat covers my sod, and have entered this yew,And turned to clusters ruddy of view,   All day cheerily,   All night eerily!– The Lady Gertrude, proud, high-bred,   Sir or Madam,Am I – this laurel that shades your head;Into its veins I have stilly sped,And made them of me; and my leaves now shine,As did my satins superfine,   All day cheerily,   All night eerily!– I, who as innocent withwind climb,   Sir or Madam.Am one Eve Greensleeves, in olden timeKissed by men from many a clime,Beneath sun, stars, in blaze, in breeze,As now by glowworms and by bees,   All day cheerily,   All night eerily! 2– I’m old Squire Audeley Grey, who grew,   Sir or Madam,Aweary of life, and in scorn withdrew;Till anon I clambered up anewAs ivy-green, when my ache was stayed,And in that attire I have longtime gayed   All day cheerily,   All night eerily!– And so they breathe, these masks, to each   Sir or MadamWho lingers there, and their lively speechAffords an interpreter much to teach,As their murmurous accents seem to comeThence hitheraround in a radiant hum,   All day cheerily,   All night eerily!

ON THE WAY

   The trees fret fitfully and twist,   Shutters rattle and carpets heave,   Slime is the dust of yestereve,      And in the streaming mistFishes might seem to fin a passage if they list.         But to his feet,         Drawing nigh and nigher         A hidden seat,         The fog is sweet         And the wind a lyre.   A vacant sameness grays the sky,   A moisture gathers on each knop   Of the bramble, rounding to a drop,      That greets the goer-byWith the cold listless lustre of a dead man’s eye.         But to her sight,         Drawing nigh and nigher         Its deep delight,         The fog is bright         And the wind a lyre.

“SHE DID NOT TURN”

   She did not turn,But passed foot-faint with averted headIn her gown of green, by the bobbing fern,Though I leaned over the gate that ledFrom where we waited with table spread;      But she did not turn:Why was she near there if love had fled?   She did not turn,Though the gate was whence I had often spedIn the mists of morning to meet her, and learnHer heart, when its moving moods I readAs a book – she mine, as she sometimes said;      But she did not turn,And passed foot-faint with averted head.

GROWTH IN MAY

I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,   And thence thread a jungle of grass:Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand   Above the lush stems as I pass.Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,   And seem to reveal a dim senseThat amid such ambitious and elbow-high green   They make a mean show as a fence.Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,   That range not greatly aboveThe rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,And her gown, as she waits for her Love.Near Chard.

THE CHILDREN AND SIR NAMELESS

Sir Nameless, once of Athelhall, declared:“These wretched children romping in my parkTrample the herbage till the soil is bared,And yap and yell from early morn till dark!Go keep them harnessed to their set routines:Thank God I’ve none to hasten my decay;For green remembrance there are better meansThan offspring, who but wish their sires away.”Sir Nameless of that mansion said anon:“To be perpetuate for my mightinessSculpture must image me when I am gone.”– He forthwith summoned carvers there expressTo shape a figure stretching seven-odd feet(For he was tall) in alabaster stone,With shield, and crest, and casque, and word complete:When done a statelier work was never known.Three hundred years hied; Church-restorers came,And, no one of his lineage being traced,They thought an effigy so large in frameBest fitted for the floor.  There it was placed,Under the seats for schoolchildren.  And theyKicked out his name, and hobnailed off his nose;And, as they yawn through sermon-time, they say,“Who was this old stone man beneath our toes?”

AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

These summer landscapes – clump, and copse, and croft —Woodland and meadowland – here hung aloft,Gay with limp grass and leafery new and soft,Seem caught from the immediate season’s yieldI saw last noonday shining over the field,By rapid snatch, while still are uncongealedThe saps that in their live originals climb;Yester’s quick greenage here set forth in mimeJust as it stands, now, at our breathing-time.But these young foils so fresh upon each tree,Soft verdures spread in sprouting novelty,Are not this summer’s, though they feign to be.Last year their May to Michaelmas term was run,Last autumn browned and buried every one,And no more know they sight of any sun.

HER TEMPLE

Dear, think not that they will forget you:   – If craftsmanly art should be mineI will build up a temple, and set you      Therein as its shrine.They may say: “Why a woman such honour?”   – Be told, “O, so sweet was her fame,That a man heaped this splendour upon her;      None now knows his name.”

A TWO-YEARS’ IDYLL

      Yes; such it was;   Just those two seasons unsought,Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;      Moving, as straws,   Hearts quick as ours in those days;Going like wind, too, and rated as nought   Save as the prelude to plays   Soon to come – larger, life-fraught:      Yes; such it was.      “Nought” it was called,   Even by ourselves – that which springsOut of the years for all flesh, first or last,      Commonplace, scrawled   Dully on days that go past.Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings   Even in hours overcast:   Aye, though this best thing of things,      “Nought” it was called!      What seems it now?   Lost: such beginning was all;Nothing came after: romance straight forsook      Quickly somehow   Life when we sped from our nook,Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall.   – A preface without any book,   A trumpet uplipped, but no call;      That seems it now.

BY HENSTRIDGE CROSS AT THE YEAR’S END

(From this centuries-old cross-road the highway leads east to London, north to Bristol and Bath, west to Exeter and the Land’s End, and south to the Channel coast.)

Why go the east road now?.That way a youth went on a morrowAfter mirth, and he brought back sorrow   Painted upon his brow   Why go the east road now?   Why go the north road now?Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen,Once edging fiefs of my forefolk yeomen,   Fallows fat to the plough:   Why go the north road now?   Why go the west road now?Thence to us came she, bosom-burning,Welcome with joyousness returning.   – She sleeps under the bough:   Why go the west road now?   Why go the south road now?That way marched they some are forgetting,Stark to the moon left, past regretting   Loves who have falsed their vow.   Why go the south road now?   Why go any road now?White stands the handpost for brisk on-bearers,“Halt!” is the word for wan-cheeked farers   Musing on Whither, and How.   Why go any road now?   “Yea: we want new feet now”Answer the stones.  “Want chit-chat, laughter:Plenty of such to go hereafter   By our tracks, we trow!   We are for new feet now.”During the War.

PENANCE

“Why do you sit, O pale thin man,   At the end of the roomBy that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?   – It is cold as a tomb,And there’s not a spark within the grate;   And the jingling wires   Are as vain desires   That have lagged too late.”“Why do I?  Alas, far times ago   A woman lyred hereIn the evenfall; one who fain did so   From year to year;And, in loneliness bending wistfully,   Would wake each note   In sick sad rote,   None to listen or see!“I would not join.  I would not stay,   But drew away,Though the winter fire beamed brightly.. Aye!   I do to-dayWhat I would not then; and the chill old keys,   Like a skull’s brown teeth   Loose in their sheath,   Freeze my touch; yes, freeze.”

“I LOOK IN HER FACE”

(Song: Minor)

I look in her face and say,“Sing as you used to singAbout Love’s blossoming”;But she hints not Yea or Nay.“Sing, then, that Love’s a pain,If, Dear, you think it so,Whether it be or no;”But dumb her lips remain.I go to a far-off room,A faint song ghosts my ear;Which song I cannot hear,But it seems to come from a tomb.

AFTER THE WAR

Last Post soundedAcross the meadTo where he loiteredWith absent heed.Five years beforeIn the evening thereHad flown that callTo him and his Dear.“You’ll never come back;Good-bye!” she had said;“Here I’ll be living,And my Love dead!”Those closing minimsHad been as shafts dartingThrough him and her pressedIn that last parting;They thrilled him not now,In the selfsame placeWith the selfsame sunOn his war-seamed face.“Lurks a god’s laughterIn this?” he said,“That I am the livingAnd she the dead!”

“IF YOU HAD KNOWN”

   If you had knownWhen listening with her to the far-down moanOf the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,And rain came on that did not hinder talk,Or damp your flashing facile gaietyIn turning home, despite the slow wet walkBy crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;   If you had known   You would lay roses,Fifty years thence, on her monument, that disclosesIts graying shape upon the luxuriant green;Fifty years thence to an hour, by chance led there,What might have moved you? – yea, had you foreseenThat on the tomb of the selfsame one, gone whereThe dawn of every day is as the close is,   You would lay roses!1920.

THE CHAPEL-ORGANIST

(A.D. 185–)

I’ve been thinking it through, as I play here to-night, to play never again,By the light of that lowering sun peering in at the window-pane,And over the back-street roofs, throwing shades from the boys of the choreIn the gallery, right upon me, sitting up to these keys once more…How I used to hear tongues ask, as I sat here when I was new:“Who is she playing the organ?  She touches it mightily true!”“She travels from Havenpool Town,” the deacon would softly speak,“The stipend can hardly cover her fare hither twice in the week.”(It fell far short of doing, indeed; but I never told,For I have craved minstrelsy more than lovers, or beauty, or gold.)’Twas so he answered at first, but the story grew different later:“It cannot go on much longer, from what we hear of her now!”At the meaning wheeze in the words the inquirer would shift his placeTill he could see round the curtain that screened me from people below.“A handsome girl,” he would murmur, upstaring, (and so I am).“But – too much sex in her build; fine eyes, but eyelids too heavy;A bosom too full for her age; in her lips too voluptuous a look.”(It may be.  But who put it there?  Assuredly it was not I.)I went on playing and singing when this I had heard, and more,Though tears half-blinded me; yes, I remained going on and on,Just as I used me to chord and to sing at the selfsame time!.For it’s a contralto – my voice is; they’ll hear it again here to-nightIn the psalmody notes that I love more than world or than flesh or than life.Well, the deacon, in fact, that day had learnt new tidings about me;They troubled his mind not a little, for he was a worthy man.(He trades as a chemist in High Street, and during the week he had soughtHis fellow-deacon, who throve as a book-binder over the way.)“These are strange rumours,” he said.  “We must guard the good name of the chapel.If, sooth, she’s of evil report, what else can we do but dismiss her?”“ – But get such another to play here we cannot for double the price!”It settled the point for the time, and I triumphed awhile in their strait,And my much-beloved grand semibreves went living on under my fingers.At length in the congregation more head-shakes and murmurs were rife,And my dismissal was ruled, though I was not warned of it then.But a day came when they declared it.  The news entered me as a sword;I was broken; so pallid of face that they thought I should faint, they said.I rallied.  “O, rather than go, I will play you for nothing!” said I.’Twas in much desperation I spoke it, for bring me to forfeit I could notThose melodies chorded so richly for which I had laboured and lived.They paused.  And for nothing I played at the chapel through Sundays anon,Upheld by that art which I loved more than blandishments lavished of men.But it fell that murmurs again from the flock broke the pastor’s peace.Some member had seen me at Havenpool, comrading close a sea-captain.(Yes; I was thereto constrained, lacking means for the fare to and fro.)Yet God knows, if aught He knows ever, I loved the Old-Hundredth, Saint Stephen’s,Mount Zion, New Sabbath, Miles-Lane, Holy Rest, and Arabia, and Eaton,Above all embraces of body by wooers who sought me and won!.Next week ’twas declared I was seen coming home with a lover at dawn.The deacons insisted then, strong; and forgiveness I did not implore.I saw all was lost for me, quite, but I made a last bid in my throbs.High love had been beaten by lust; and the senses had conquered the soul,But the soul should die game, if I knew it!  I turned to my masters and said:“I yield, Gentlemen, without parlance.  But – let me just hymn you once more!It’s a little thing, Sirs, that I ask; and a passion is music with me!”They saw that consent would cost nothing, and show as good grace, as knew I,Though tremble I did, and feel sick, as I paused thereat, dumb for their words.They gloomily nodded assent, saying, “Yes, if you care to. Once more,And only once more, understand.” To that with a bend I agreed.– “You’ve a fixed and a far-reaching look,” spoke one who had eyed me awhile.“I’ve a fixed and a far-reaching plan, and my look only showed it,” said I.This evening of Sunday is come – the last of my functioning here.“She plays as if she were possessed!” they exclaim, glancing upward and round.“Such harmonies I never dreamt the old instrument capable of!”Meantime the sun lowers and goes; shades deepen; the lights are turned up,And the people voice out the last singing: tune Tallis: the Evening Hymn.(I wonder Dissenters sing Ken: it shows them more liberal in spiritAt this little chapel down here than at certain new others I know.)I sing as I play.  Murmurs some one: “No woman’s throat richer than hers!”“True: in these parts, at least,” ponder I.  “But, my man, you will hear it no more.”And I sing with them onward: “The grave dread as little do I as my bed.”I lift up my feet from the pedals; and then, while my eyes are still wetFrom the symphonies born of my fingers, I do that whereon I am set,And draw from my “full round bosom,” (their words; how can I help its heave?)A bottle blue-coloured and fluted – a vinaigrette, they may conceive —And before the choir measures my meaning, reads aught in my moves to and fro,I drink from the phial at a draught, and they think it a pick-me-up; so.Then I gather my books as to leave, bend over the keys as to pray.When they come to me motionless, stooping, quick death will have whisked me away.“Sure, nobody meant her to poison herself in her haste, after all!”The deacons will say as they carry me down and the night shadows fall,“Though the charges were true,” they will add.  “It’s a case red as scarlet withal!”I have never once minced it.  Lived chaste I have not.  Heaven knows it above!.But past all the heavings of passion – it’s music has been my life-love!.That tune did go well – this last playing!.. I reckon they’ll bury me here.Not a soul from the seaport my birthplace – will come, or bestow me.. a tear.

FETCHING HER

   An hour before the dawn,         My friend,You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,   Your breakfast-fire anon,And outing into the dark and damp   You saddled, and set on.   Thuswise, before the day,         My friend,You sought her on her surfy shore,   To fetch her thence awayUnto your own new-builded door   For a staunch lifelong stay.   You said: “It seems to be,         My friend,That I were bringing to my place   The pure brine breeze, the sea,The mews – all her old sky and space,   In bringing her with me!”   – But time is prompt to expugn,         My friend,Such magic-minted conjurings:   The brought breeze fainted soon,And then the sense of seamews’ wings,   And the shore’s sibilant tune.   So, it had been more due,         My friend,Perhaps, had you not pulled this flower   From the craggy nook it knew,And set it in an alien bower;   But left it where it grew!

“COULD I BUT WILL”

(Song: Verses 1, 3, key major; verse 2, key minor)

      Could I but will,      Will to my bent,I’d have afar ones near me still,And music of rare ravishment,In strains that move the toes and heels!And when the sweethearts sat for restThe unbetrothed should foot with zest      Ecstatic reels.      Could I be head,      Head-god, “Come, now,Dear girl,” I’d say, “whose flame is fled,Who liest with linen-banded brow,Stirred but by shakes from Earth’s deep core – ”I’d say to her: “Unshroud and meetThat Love who kissed and called thee Sweet! —      Yea, come once more!”      Even half-god power      In spinning doomsHad I, this frozen scene should flower,And sand-swept plains and Arctic gloomsShould green them gay with waving leaves,Mid which old friends and I would walkWith weightless feet and magic talk      Uncounted eves.

SHE REVISITS ALONE THE CHURCH OF HER MARRIAGE

I have come to the church and chancel,   Where all’s the same!– Brighter and larger in my dreamsTruly it shaped than now, meseems,   Is its substantial frame.But, anyhow, I made my vow,   Whether for praise or blame,Here in this church and chancel   Where all’s the same.Where touched the check-floored chancel   My knees and his?The step looks shyly at the sun,And says, “’Twas here the thing was done,   For bale or else for bliss!”Of all those there I least was ware   Would it be that or thisWhen touched the check-floored chancel   My knees and his!Here in this fateful chancel   Where all’s the same,I thought the culminant crest of lifeWas reached when I went forth the wife   I was not when I came.Each commonplace one of my race,   Some say, has such an aim —To go from a fateful chancel   As not the same.Here, through this hoary chancel   Where all’s the same,A thrill, a gaiety even, rangedThat morning when it seemed I changed   My nature with my name.Though now not fair, though gray my hair,   He loved me, past proclaim,Here in this hoary chancel,   Where all’s the same.

AT THE ENTERING OF THE NEW YEAR

I(OLD STYLE)Our songs went up and out the chimney,And roused the home-gone husbandmen;Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,Our hands-across and back again,Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements   On to the white highway,Where nighted farers paused and muttered,   “Keep it up well, do they!”The contrabasso’s measured boomingSped at each bar to the parish bounds,To shepherds at their midnight lambings,To stealthy poachers on their rounds;And everybody caught full duly   The notes of our delight,As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise   Hailed by our sanguine sight.II(NEW STYLE)   We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,   As if to give ear to the muffled peal,   Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim;   But our truest heed is to words that steal   From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,   And seems, so far as our sense can see,   To feature bereaved Humanity,   As it sighs to the imminent year its say: —   “O stay without, O stay without,   Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;   Though stars irradiate thee about   Thy entrance here is undesired.   Open the gate not, mystic one;Must we avow what we would close confine?With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,Albeit the fault may not be thine.” December 31. During the War.

THEY WOULD NOT COME

I travelled to where in her lifetime   She’d knelt at morning prayer,   To call her up as if there;But she paid no heed to my suing,As though her old haunt could win not   A thought from her spirit, or care.I went where my friend had lectioned   The prophets in high declaim,   That my soul’s ear the sameFull tones should catch as aforetime;But silenced by gear of the Present   Was the voice that once there came!Where the ocean had sprayed our banquet   I stood, to recall it as then:   The same eluding again!No vision.  Shows contingentAffrighted it further from me   Even than from my home-den.When I found them no responders,   But fugitives prone to flee   From where they had used to be,It vouched I had been led hitherAs by night wisps in bogland,   And bruised the heart of me!

AFTER A ROMANTIC DAY

   The railway bore him through      An earthen cutting out from a city:   There was no scope for view,Though the frail light shed by a slim young moon   Fell like a friendly tune.   Fell like a liquid ditty,And the blank lack of any charm   Of landscape did no harm.The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,   And moon-lit, was enoughFor poetry of place: its weathered faceFormed a convenient sheet whereonThe visions of his mind were drawn.