Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

“I WAS THE MIDMOST”

I was the midmost of my world   When first I frisked me free,For though within its circuit gleamed   But a small company,And I was immature, they seemed   To bend their looks on me.She was the midmost of my world   When I went further forth,And hence it was that, whether I turned   To south, east, west, or north,Beams of an all-day Polestar burned   From that new axe of earth.Where now is midmost in my world?   I trace it not at all:No midmost shows it here, or there,   When wistful voices call“We are fain!  We are fain!” from everywhere   On Earth’s bewildering ball!

A SOUND IN THE NIGHT

(WOODSFORD CASTLE: 17–)

“What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband? —What is it sounds in this house so eerily?It seems to be a woman’s voice: each little while I hear it,   And it much troubles me!”“’Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:Letting fancies worry thee! – sure ’tis a foolish thing,When we were on’y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,   And now it’s but evening.”“Yet seems it still a woman’s voice outside the castle, husband,And ’tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure   Ere ever thou sawest my face?”“It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatches   Like a creature that sighs and mopes.”“Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,And it saddens me much that so piteous a soundOn this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrow   Should so ghost-like wander round!”“To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,   And throw the light over the moor.”He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber,And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight,And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern,   And go out into the night.She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,And his voice as he unclothed him: “’Twas nothing, as I said,But the nor’-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath’art the river,   And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head.”“Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,   Why is it silent now?“And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,   And thy breath as if hard to get?”He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing,Then started up and walked about the room resentfully:“O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded,   Why castedst thou thy spells on me?“There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,As no woman.. Yea, and it was e’en the cry you heard, wife,   But she will cry no more!“And now I can’t abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on’t,This farmstead once a castle: I’ll get me straight away!”He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,   And went ere the dawn turned day.They found a woman’s body at a spot called Rocky Shallow,Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground,And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly known her,   But he could not be found.And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,   And sometimes an infant’s moan.

ON A DISCOVERED CURL OF HAIR

When your soft welcomings were said,This curl was waving on your head,And when we walked where breakers dinnedIt sported in the sun and wind,And when I had won your words of graceIt brushed and clung about my face.Then, to abate the miseryOf absentness, you gave it me.Where are its fellows now?  Ah, theyFor brightest brown have donned a gray,And gone into a caverned ark,Ever unopened, always dark!Yet this one curl, untouched of time,Beams with live brown as in its prime,So that it seems I even could nowRestore it to the living browBy bearing down the western roadTill I had reached your old abode. February 1913.

AN OLD LIKENESS

(RECALLING R. T.)

Who would have thoughtThat, not having missed herTalks, tears, laughterIn absence, or soughtTo recall for so longHer gamut of song;Or ever to waft herSignal of aughtThat she, fancy-fanned,Would well understand,I should have kissed herPicture when scannedYawning years after!Yet, seeing her poorDim-outlined formChancewise at night-time,Some old allureCame on me, warm,Fresh, pleadful, pure,As in that bright timeAt a far seasonOf love and unreason,And took me by stormHere in this blight-time!And thus it aroseThat, yawning years afterOur early flowsOf wit and laughter,And framing of rhymesAt idle times,At sight of her painting,Though she lies coldIn churchyard mould,I took its feintingAs real, and kissed it,As if I had wist itHerself of old.

HER APOTHEOSIS

“Secretum meum mihi”

(FADED WOMAN’S SONG)

There was a spell of leisure,   No record vouches when;With honours, praises, pleasure   To womankind from men.But no such lures bewitched me,   No hand was stretched to raise,No gracious gifts enriched me,   No voices sang my praise.Yet an iris at that season   Amid the accustomed slightFrom denseness, dull unreason,   Ringed me with living light.

“SACRED TO THE MEMORY”

(MARY H.)

That “Sacred to the Memory”Is clearly carven there I own,And all may think that on the stoneThe words have been inscribed by meIn bare conventionality.They know not and will never knowThat my full script is not confinedTo that stone space, but stands deep linedUpon the landscape high and lowWherein she made such worthy show.

TO A WELL-NAMED DWELLING

Glad old house of lichened stonework,What I owed you in my lone work,   Noon and night!Whensoever faint or ailing,Letting go my grasp and failing,   You lent light.How by that fair title came you?Did some forward eye so name you   Knowing that one,Sauntering down his century blindly,Would remark your sound, so kindly,   And be won?Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,Bask in April, May, and June-light,   Zephyr-fanned;Let your chambers show no sorrow,Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,   While they stand.

THE WHIPPER-IN

My father was the whipper-in, —   Is still – if I’m not misled?And now I see, where the hedge is thin,   A little spot of red;   Surely it is my father   Going to the kennel-shed!“I cursed and fought my father – aye,   And sailed to a foreign land;And feeling sorry, I’m back, to stay,   Please God, as his helping hand.   Surely it is my father   Near where the kennels stand?”“ – True.  Whipper-in he used to be   For twenty years or more;And you did go away to sea   As youths have done before.   Yes, oddly enough that red there   Is the very coat he wore.“But he – he’s dead; was thrown somehow,   And gave his back a crick,And though that is his coat, ’tis now   The scarecrow of a rick;   You’ll see when you get nearer —   ’Tis spread out on a stick.“You see, when all had settled down   Your mother’s things were sold,And she went back to her own town,   And the coat, ate out with mould,   Is now used by the farmer   For scaring, as ’tis old.”

A MILITARY APPOINTMENT

(SCHERZANDO)

“So back you have come from the town, Nan, dear!And have you seen him there, or near —   That soldier of mine —Who long since promised to meet me here?”“ – O yes, Nell: from the town I come,And have seen your lover on sick-leave home —   That soldier of yours —Who swore to meet you, or Strike-him-dumb;“But has kept himself of late away;Yet, – in short, he’s coming, I heard him say —   That lover of yours —To this very spot on this very day.”“ – Then I’ll wait, I’ll wait, through wet or dry!I’ll give him a goblet brimming high —   This lover of mine —And not of complaint one word or sigh!”“ – Nell, him I have chanced so much to see,That – he has grown the lover of me! —   That lover of yours —And it’s here our meeting is planned to be.”

THE MILESTONE BY THE RABBIT-BURROW

(ON YELL’HAM HILL)

In my loamy nookAs I dig my holeI observe men lookAt a stone, and sighAs they pass it byTo some far goal.Something it saysTo their glancing eyesThat must distressThe frail and lame,And the strong of frameGladden or surprise.Do signs on its faceDeclare how farFeet have to traceBefore they gainSome blest champaignWhere no gins are?

THE LAMENT OF THE LOOKING-GLASS

Words from the mirror softly pass   To the curtains with a sigh:“Why should I trouble again to glass   These smileless things hard by,Since she I pleasured once, alas,   Is now no longer nigh!”“I’ve imaged shadows of coursing cloud,   And of the plying limbOn the pensive pine when the air is loud   With its aerial hymn;But never do they make me proud   To catch them within my rim!“I flash back phantoms of the night   That sometimes flit by me,I echo roses red and white —   The loveliest blooms that be —But now I never hold to sight   So sweet a flower as she.”

CROSS-CURRENTS

They parted – a pallid, trembling I pair,   And rushing down the laneHe left her lonely near me there;   – I asked her of their pain.“It is for ever,” at length she said,   “His friends have schemed it so,That the long-purposed day to wed   Never shall we two know.”“In such a cruel case,” said I,   “Love will contrive a course?”“ – Well, no.. A thing may underlie,   Which robs that of its force;“A thing I could not tell him of,   Though all the year I have tried;This: never could I have given him love,   Even had I been his bride.“So, when his kinsfolk stop the way   Point-blank, there could not beA happening in the world to-day   More opportune for me!“Yet hear – no doubt to your surprise —   I am sorry, for his sake,That I have escaped the sacrifice   I was prepared to make!”

THE OLD NEIGHBOUR AND THE NEW

’Twas to greet the new rector I called I here,   But in the arm-chair I seeMy old friend, for long years installed here,   Who palely nods to me.The new man explains what he’s planning   In a smart and cheerful tone,And I listen, the while that I’m scanning   The figure behind his own.The newcomer urges things on me;   I return a vague smile thereto,The olden face gazing upon me   Just as it used to do!And on leaving I scarcely remember   Which neighbour to-day I have seen,The one carried out in September,   Or him who but entered yestreen.

THE CHOSEN

“Ατιυά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμενα“A woman for whom great gods might strive!”   I said, and kissed her there:And then I thought of the other five,   And of how charms outwear.I thought of the first with her eating eyes,And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.And I thought of the fifth, whom I’d called a jade,   And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;And that each had shown her a passable maid,   Yet not of the favour sought.So I traced these words on the bark of a beech,Just at the falling of the mast:“After scanning five; yes, each and each,I’ve found the woman desired – at last!”“ – I feel a strange benumbing spell,   As one ill-wished!” said she.And soon it seemed that something fell   Was starving her love for me.“I feel some curse.  O, five were there?”And wanly she swerved, and went away.I followed sick: night numbed the air,And dark the mournful moorland lay.I cried: “O darling, turn your head!”   But never her face I viewed;“O turn, O turn!” again I said,   And miserably pursued.At length I came to a Christ-cross stoneWhich she had passed without discern;And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,And prayed aloud that she might turn.I rose, and looked; and turn she did;   I cried, “My heart revives!”“Look more,” she said.  I looked as bid;   Her face was all the five’s.All the five women, clear come back,I saw in her – with her made one,The while she drooped upon the track,And her frail term seemed well-nigh run.She’d half forgot me in her change;   “Who are you?  Won’t you sayWho you may be, you man so strange,   Following since yesterday?”I took the composite form she was,And carried her to an arbour small,Not passion-moved, but even becauseIn one I could atone to all.And there she lies, and there I tend,   Till my life’s threads unwind,A various womanhood in blend —   Not one, but all combined.

THE INSCRIPTION

(A TALE)

Sir John was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she,Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun,Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually,   As his widowed one.And to pleasure her in her sorrow, and fix his nameAs a memory Time’s fierce frost should never kill,She caused to be richly chased a brass to his fame,   Which should link them still;For she bonded her name with his own on the brazen page,As if dead and interred there with him, and cold, and numb,(Omitting the day of her dying and year of her age   Till her end should come;)And implored good people to pray “Of their CharytieFor these twaine Soules,” – yea, she who did last remainForgoing Heaven’s bliss if ever with spouse should she   Again have lain.Even there, as it first was set, you may see it now,Writ in quaint Church text, with the date of her death left bare,In the aged Estminster aisle, where the folk yet bow   Themselves in prayer.Thereafter some years slid, till there came a dayWhen it slowly began to be marked of the standers-byThat she would regard the brass, and would bend away   With a drooping sigh.Now the lady was fair as any the eye might scanThrough a summer day of roving – a type at whose lipDespite her maturing seasons, no meet man   Would be loth to sip.And her heart was stirred with a lightning love to its pithFor a newcomer who, while less in years, was oneFull eager and able to make her his own forthwith,   Restrained of none.But she answered Nay, death-white; and still as he urgedShe adversely spake, overmuch as she loved the while,Till he pressed for why, and she led with the face of one scourged   To the neighbouring aisle,And showed him the words, ever gleaming upon her pew,Memorizing her there as the knight’s eternal wife,Or falsing such, debarred inheritance due   Of celestial life.He blenched, and reproached her that one yet undeceasedShould bury her future – that future which none can spell;And she wept, and purposed anon to inquire of the priest   If the price were hellOf her wedding in face of the record.  Her lover agreed,And they parted before the brass with a shudderful kiss,For it seemed to flash out on their impulse of passionate need,   “Mock ye not this!”Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one,Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were deadHer name and adjuration; but since it was done   Nought could be saidSave that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul,And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good,If she wished anon to reach the coveted goal   Of beatitude.To erase from the consecrate text her prayer as there prayedWould aver that, since earth’s joys most drew her, past doubt,Friends’ prayers for her joy above by Jesu’s aid   Could be done without.Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibeThat would rise at her back in the nave when she should passAs another’s avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribe   On the changeless brass.And so for months she replied to her Love: “No, no”;While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more,Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to show   Less warmth than before.And, after an absence, wrote words absolute:That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear;And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit,   He should wed elsewhere.Thence on, at unwonted times through the lengthening daysShe was seen in the church – at dawn, or when the sun diptAnd the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze,   Before the script.She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowersAs summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed,When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours,   She was missed from her bed.“The church!” they whispered with qualms; “where often she sits.”They found her: facing the brass there, else seeing none,But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits;   And she knew them not one.And so she remained, in her handmaids’ charge; late, soon,Tracing words in the air with her finger, as seen that night —Those incised on the brass – till at length unwatched one noon,   She vanished from sight.And, as talebearers tell, thence on to her last-taken breathWas unseen, save as wraith that in front of the brass made moan;So that ever the way of her life and the time of her death   Remained unknown.And hence, as indited above, you may read even nowThe quaint church-text, with the date of her death left bare,In the aged Estminster aisle, where folk yet bow   Themselves in prayer. October 30, 1907.

THE MARBLE-STREETED TOWN

I reach the marble-streeted town,   Whose “Sound” outbreathes its air      Of sharp sea-salts;I see the movement up and down      As when she was there.Ships of all countries come and go,   The bandsmen boom in the sun      A throbbing waltz;The schoolgirls laugh along the Hoe      As when she was one.I move away as the music rolls:   The place seems not to mind      That she – of oldThe brightest of its native souls —      Left it behind!Over this green aforedays she   On light treads went and came,      Yea, times untold;Yet none here knows her history —      Has heard her name.Plymouth (1914?).

A WOMAN DRIVING

How she held up the horses’ heads,   Firm-lipped, with steady rein,Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,   Till all was safe again!With form erect and keen contour   She passed against the sea,And, dipping into the chine’s obscure,   Was seen no more by me.To others she appeared anew   At times of dusky light,But always, so they told, withdrew   From close and curious sight.Some said her silent wheels would roll   Rutless on softest loam,And even that her steeds’ footfall   Sank not upon the foam.Where drives she now?  It may be where   No mortal horses are,But in a chariot of the air   Towards some radiant star.

A WOMAN’S TRUST

If he should live a thousand years   He’d find it not again   That scorn of him by menCould less disturb a woman’s trustIn him as a steadfast star which mustRise scathless from the nether spheres:If he should live a thousand years   He’d find it not again.She waited like a little child,   Unchilled by damps of doubt,   While from her eyes looked outA confidence sublime as Spring’sWhen stressed by Winter’s loiterings.Thus, howsoever the wicked wiled,She waited like a little child   Unchilled by damps of doubt.Through cruel years and crueller   Thus she believed in him   And his aurore, so dim;That, after fenweeds, flowers would blow;And above all things did she showHer faith in his good faith with her;Through cruel years and crueller   Thus she believed in him!

BEST TIMES

We went a day’s excursion to the stream,Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,      And I did not know      That life would show,However it might flower, no finer glow.I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the roadThat wound towards the wicket of your abode,      And I did not think      That life would shrinkTo nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,      And I full forgot      That life might notAgain be touching that ecstatic height.And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,After a gaiety prolonged and rare,      No thought soever      That you might neverWalk down again, struck me as I stood there..Rewritten from an old draft.

THE CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE

While he was here in breath and bone,   To speak to and to see,Would I had known – more clearly known —   What that man did for meWhen the wind scraped a minor lay,   And the spent west from whiteTo gray turned tiredly, and from gray   To broadest bands of night!But I saw not, and he saw not   What shining life-tides flowedTo me-ward from his casual jot   Of service on that road.He would have said: “’Twas nothing new;   We all do what we can;’Twas only what one man would do   For any other man.”Now that I gauge his goodliness   He’s slipped from human eyes;And when he passed there’s none can guess,   Or point out where he lies.

INTRA SEPULCHRUM

   What curious things we said,   What curious things we didUp there in the world we walked till dead   Our kith and kin amid!   How we played at love,   And its wildness, weakness, woe;Yes, played thereat far more than enough   As it turned out, I trow!   Played at believing in gods   And observing the ordinances,I for your sake in impossible codes   Right ready to acquiesce.   Thinking our lives unique,   Quite quainter than usual kinds,We held that we could not abide a week   The tether of typic minds.   – Yet people who day by day   Pass by and look at usFrom over the wall in a casual way   Are of this unconscious.   And feel, if anything,   That none can be buried hereRemoved from commonest fashioning,   Or lending note to a bier:   No twain who in heart-heaves proved   Themselves at all adept,Who more than many laughed and loved,   Who more than many wept,   Or were as sprites or elves   Into blind matter hurled,Or ever could have been to themselves   The centre of the world.

THE WHITEWASHED WALL

Why does she turn in that shy soft way   Whenever she stirs the fire,And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,   As if entranced to admireIts whitewashed bareness more than the sight   Of a rose in richest green?I have known her long, but this raptured rite   I never before have seen.– Well, once when her son cast his shadow there,   A friend took a pencil and drew himUpon that flame-lit wall.  And the lines   Had a lifelike semblance to him.And there long stayed his familiar look;   But one day, ere she knew,The whitener came to cleanse the nook,   And covered the face from view.“Yes,” he said: “My brush goes on with a rush,   And the draught is buried under;When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,   What else can you do, I wonder?”But she knows he’s there.  And when she yearns   For him, deep in the labouring night,She sees him as close at hand, and turns   To him under his sheet of white.

JUST THE SAME

I sat.  It all was past;Hope never would hail again;Fair days had ceased at a blast,The world was a darkened den.The beauty and dream were gone,And the halo in which I had hiedSo gaily gallantly onHad suffered blot and died!I went forth, heedless whither,In a cloud too black for name:– People frisked hither and thither;The world was just the same.

THE LAST TIME

The kiss had been given and taken,   And gathered to many past:It never could reawaken;   But you heard none say: “It’s the last!”The clock showed the hour and the minute,   But you did not turn and look:You read no finis in it,   As at closing of a book.But you read it all too rightly   When, at a time anon,A figure lay stretched out whitely,   And you stood looking thereon.

THE SEVEN TIMES

The dark was thick.  A boy he seemed at that time   Who trotted by me with uncertain air;“I’ll tell my tale,” he murmured, “for I fancy   A friend goes there?.. ”Then thus he told.  “I reached – ’twas for the first time —   A dwelling.  Life was clogged in me with care;I thought not I should meet an eyesome maiden,   But found one there.“I entered on the precincts for the second time —   ’Twas an adventure fit and fresh and fair —I slackened in my footsteps at the porchway,   And found her there.“I rose and travelled thither for the third time,   The hope-hues growing gayer and yet gayerAs I hastened round the boscage of the outskirts,   And found her there.“I journeyed to the place again the fourth time   (The best and rarest visit of the rare,As it seemed to me, engrossed about these goings),   And found her there.“When I bent me to my pilgrimage the fifth time   (Soft-thinking as I journeyed I would dareA certain word at token of good auspice),   I found her there.“That landscape did I traverse for the sixth time,   And dreamed on what we purposed to prepare;I reached a tryst before my journey’s end came,   And found her there.“I went again – long after – aye, the seventh time;   The look of things was sinister and bareAs I caught no customed signal, heard no voice call,   Nor found her there.“And now I gad the globe – day, night, and any time,   To light upon her hiding unaware,And, maybe, I shall nigh me to some nymph-niche,   And find her there!”“But how,” said I, “has your so little lifetime   Given roomage for such loving, loss, despair?A boy so young!”  Forthwith I turned my lantern   Upon him there.His head was white.  His small form, fine aforetime,   Was shrunken with old age and battering wear,An eighty-years long plodder saw I pacing   Beside me there.