Chapter 3

She learnt to dream of him, and told them: “In slumber often uprises he, And says: ‘I am joyed that, after all, Dear, You’ve not deserted me!”

At length died too this kinless woman, As he had died she had grown to crave; And at her dying she besought them To bury her in his grave.

Such said, she had paused; until she added: “Call me by his name on the stone, As I were, first to last, his dearest, Not she who left him lone!”

And this they did. And so it became there That, by the strength of a tender whim, The stranger was she who bore his name there, Not she who wedded him.

HER SONG

I SANG that song on Sunday, To witch an idle while, I sang that song on Monday, As fittest to beguile; I sang it as the year outwore, And the new slid in; I thought not what might shape before Another would begin.

I sang that song in summer, All unforeknowingly, To him as a new-comer From regions strange to me: I sang it when in afteryears The shades stretched out, And paths were faint; and flocking fears Brought cup-eyed care and doubt.

Sings he that song on Sundays In some dim land afar, On Saturdays, or Mondays, As when the evening star Glimpsed in upon his bending face And my hanging hair, And time untouched me with a trace Of soul-smart or despair?

A WET AUGUST

NINE drops of water bead the jessamine, And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles: —’Twas not so in that August—full-rayed, fine— When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.

Or was there then no noted radiancy Of summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough, Gilt over by the light I bore in me, And was the waste world just the same as now?

It can have been so: yea, that threatenings Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray, By the then possibilities in things Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.

1920.

THE DISSEMBLERS

“IT was not you I came to please, Only myself,” flipped she; “I like this spot of phantasies, And thought you far from me.” But O, he was the secret spell That led her to the lea!

“It was not she who shaped my ways, Or works, or thoughts,” he said. “I scarcely marked her living days, Or missed her much when dead.” But O, his joyance knew its knell When daisies hid her head!

TO A LADY PLAYING AND SINGING IN THE MORNING

JOYFUL lady, sing! And I will lurk here listening, Though nought be done, and nought begun, And work-hours swift are scurrying.

Sing, O lady, still! Aye, I will wait each note you trill, Though duties due that press to do This whole day long I unfulfil.

“—It is an evening tune; One not designed to waste the noon,” You say. I know: time bids me go— For daytide passes too, too soon!

But let indulgence be, This once, to my rash ecstasy: When sounds nowhere that carolled air My idled morn may comfort me!

“A MAN WAS DRAWING NEAR TO ME”

ON that gray night of mournful drone, A part from aught to hear, to see, I dreamt not that from shires unknown In gloom, alone, By Halworthy, A man was drawing near to me.

I’d no concern at anything, No sense of coming pull-heart play; Yet, under the silent outspreading Of even’s wing Where Otterham lay, A man was riding up my way.

I thought of nobody—not of one, But only of trifles—legends, ghosts— Though, on the moorland dim and dun That travellers shun About these coasts, The man had passed Tresparret Posts.

There was no light at all inland, Only the seaward pharos-fire, Nothing to let me understand That hard at hand By Hennett Byre The man was getting nigh and nigher.

There was a rumble at the door, A draught disturbed the drapery, And but a minute passed before, With gaze that bore My destiny, The man revealed himself to me.

THE STRANGE HOUSE (MAX GATE, A.D. 2000)

“I HEAR the piano playing— Just as a ghost might play.” “—O, but what are you saying? There’s no piano to-day; Their old one was sold and broken; Years past it went amiss.” “—I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken: A strange house, this!

“I catch some undertone here, From some one out of sight.” “—Impossible; we are alone here, And shall be through the night.” “—The parlour-door—what stirred it?” “—No one: no soul’s in range.” “—But, anyhow, I heard it, And it seems strange!

“Seek my own room I cannot— A figure is on the stair!” “—What figure? Nay, I scan not Any one lingering there. A bough outside is waving, And that’s its shade by the moon.” “—Well, all is strange! I am craving Strength to leave soon.”

“—Ah, maybe you’ve some vision Of showings beyond our sphere; Some sight, sense, intuition Of what once happened here? The house is old; they’ve hinted It once held two love-thralls, And they may have imprinted Their dreams on its walls?

“They were—I think ’twas told me— Queer in their works and ways; The teller would often hold me With weird tales of those days. Some folk can not abide here, But we—we do not care Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here, Knew joy, or despair.”

“AS ’TWERE TO-NIGHT” (SONG)

AS ’twere to-night, in the brief space Of a far eventime, My spirit rang achime At vision of a girl of grace; As ’twere to-night, in the brief space Of a far eventime.

As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow I airily walked and talked, And wondered as I walked What it could mean, this soar from sorrow; As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow I airily walked and talked.

As ’twere at waning of this week Broke a new life on me; Trancings of bliss to be In some dim dear land soon to seek; As ’twere at waning of this week Broke a new life on me!

THE CONTRETEMPS

A FORWARD rush by the lamp in the gloom, And we clasped, and almost kissed; But she was not the woman whom I had promised to meet in the thawing brume On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.

So loosening from me swift she said: “O why, why feign to be The one I had meant!—to whom I have sped To fly with, being so sorrily wed!” —’Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me.

My assignation had struck upon Some others’ like it, I found. And her lover rose on the night anon; And then her husband entered on The lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around.

“Take her and welcome, man!” he cried: “I wash my hands of her. I’ll find me twice as good a bride!” —All this to me, whom he had eyed, Plainly, as his wife’s planned deliverer.

And next the lover: “Little I knew, Madam, you had a third! Kissing here in my very view!” —Husband and lover then withdrew. I let them; and I told them not they erred.

Why not? Well, there faced she and I— Two strangers who’d kissed, or near, Chancewise. To see stand weeping by A woman once embraced, will try The tension of a man the most austere.

So it began; and I was young, She pretty, by the lamp, As flakes came waltzing down among The waves of her clinging hair, that hung Heavily on her temples, dark and damp.

And there alone still stood we two; She one cast off for me, Or so it seemed: while night ondrew, Forcing a parley what should do We twain hearts caught in one catastrophe.

In stranded souls a common strait Wakes latencies unknown, Whose impulse may precipitate A life-long leap. The hour was late, And there was the Jersey boat with its funnel agroan.

“Is wary walking worth much pother?” It grunted, as still it stayed. “One pairing is as good as another Where all is venture! Take each other, And scrap the oaths that you have aforetime made.” . . .

—Of the four involved there walks but one On earth at this late day. And what of the chapter so begun? In that odd complex what was done? Well; happiness comes in full to none: Let peace lie on lulled lips: I will not say.

WEYMOUTH.

A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER

I DWELT in the shade of a city, She far by the sea, With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty; But never with me.

Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring I never once met, To guide her with accents adoring Through Weippert’s “First Set.” {46}

I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones In Vanity Fair, And she enjoyed hers among hale ones In salt-smelling air.

Maybe she had eyes of deep colour, Maybe they were blue, Maybe as she aged they got duller; That never I knew.

She may have had lips like the coral, But I never kissed them, Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel, Nor sought for, nor missed them.

Not a word passed of love all our lifetime, Between us, nor thrill; We’d never a husband-and-wife time, For good or for ill.

Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal, Lie I and lies she, This never-known lady, eternal Companion to me!

THE OLD GOWN (SONG)

I HAVE seen her in gowns the brightest, Of azure, green, and red, And in the simplest, whitest, Muslined from heel to head; I have watched her walking, riding, Shade-flecked by a leafy tree, Or in fixed thought abiding By the foam-fingered sea.

In woodlands I have known her, When boughs were mourning loud, In the rain-reek she has shown her Wild-haired and watery-browed. And once or twice she has cast me As she pomped along the street Court-clad, ere quite she had passed me, A glance from her chariot-seat.

But in my memoried passion For evermore stands she In the gown of fading fashion She wore that night when we, Doomed long to part, assembled In the snug small room; yea, when She sang with lips that trembled, “Shall I see his face again?”

A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER

I MARKED when the weather changed, And the panes began to quake, And the winds rose up and ranged, That night, lying half-awake.

Dead leaves blew into my room, And alighted upon my bed, And a tree declared to the gloom Its sorrow that they were shed.

One leaf of them touched my hand, And I thought that it was you There stood as you used to stand, And saying at last you knew!

(?) 1913.

A DUETTIST TO HER PIANOFORTE SONG OF SILENCE (E. L. H.—H. C. H.)

SINCE every sound moves memories, How can I play you Just as I might if you raised no scene, By your ivory rows, of a form between My vision and your time-worn sheen, As when each day you Answered our fingers with ecstasy? So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!

And as I am doomed to counterchord Her notes no more In those old things I used to know, In a fashion, when we practised so, “Good-night!—Good-bye!” to your pleated show Of silk, now hoar, Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key, For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!

I fain would second her, strike to her stroke, As when she was by, Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “Fall Of Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal, To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call” Sung soft as a sigh: But upping ghosts press achefully, And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!

Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers Afresh on the air, Too quick would the small white shapes be here Of the fellow twain of hands so dear; And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear; —Then how shall I bear Such heavily-haunted harmony? Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!

“WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED”

WHERE three roads joined it was green and fair, And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea, And life laughed sweet when I halted there; Yet there I never again would be.

I am sure those branchways are brooding now, With a wistful blankness upon their face, While the few mute passengers notice how Spectre-beridden is the place;

Which nightly sighs like a laden soul, And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell Not far from thence, should have let it roll Away from them down a plumbless well

While the phasm of him who fared starts up, And of her who was waiting him sobs from near, As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup They filled for themselves when their sky was clear.

Yes, I see those roads—now rutted and bare, While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea; And though life laughed when I halted there, It is where I never again would be.

“AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM” (ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, Nov. 11, 1918)

I

THERE had been years of Passion—scorching, cold, And much Despair, and Anger heaving high, Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold, Among the young, among the weak and old, And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

II

Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness, Philosophies that sages long had taught, And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought, And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness.

III

The feeble folk at home had grown full-used To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adept In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused; To day—dreamt men in millions, when they mused— To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

IV

Waking to wish existence timeless, null, Sirius they watched above where armies fell; He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

V

So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!” One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly, “Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly, And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?”

VI

Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped, As they had raised it through the four years’ dance Of Death in the now familiar flats of France; And murmured, “Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?”

VII

Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not, The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song. One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What? Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?”

VIII

Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray, No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn, No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray; Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”; No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.

IX

Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency; There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky; Some could, some could not, shake off misery: The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!” And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

HAUNTING FINGERS A PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

“ARE you awake, Comrades, this silent night? Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey make Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!”

“O viol, my friend, I watch, though Phosphor nears, And I fain would drowse away to its utter end This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!”

And they felt past handlers clutch them, Though none was in the room, Old players’ dead fingers touch them, Shrunk in the tomb.

“’Cello, good mate, You speak my mind as yours: Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state, Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?”

“Once I could thrill The populace through and through, Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” . . . (A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)

And they felt old muscles travel Over their tense contours, And with long skill unravel Cunningest scores.

“The tender pat Of her aery finger-tips Upon me daily—I rejoiced thereat!” (Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)

“My keys’ white shine, Now sallow, met a hand Even whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mine In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!”

And its clavier was filmed with fingers Like tapering flames—wan, cold— Or the nebulous light that lingers In charnel mould.

“Gayer than most Was I,” reverbed a drum; “The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! What a host I stirred—even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!”

Trilled an aged viol: “Much tune have I set free To spur the dance, since my first timid trial Where I had birth—far hence, in sun-swept Italy!”

And he feels apt touches on him From those that pressed him then; Who seem with their glance to con him, Saying, “Not again!”

“A holy calm,” Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued, “Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.”

“I faced the sock Nightly,” twanged a sick lyre, “Over ranked lights! O charm of life in mock, O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!”

Thus they, till each past player Stroked thinner and more thin, And the morning sky grew grayer And day crawled in.

THE WOMAN I MET

A STRANGER, I threaded sunken-hearted A lamp-lit crowd; And anon there passed me a soul departed, Who mutely bowed. In my far-off youthful years I had met her, Full-pulsed; but now, no more life’s debtor, Onward she slid In a shroud that furs half-hid.

“Why do you trouble me, dead woman, Trouble me; You whom I knew when warm and human? —How it be That you quitted earth and are yet upon it Is, to any who ponder on it, Past being read!” “Still, it is so,” she said.

“These were my haunts in my olden sprightly Hours of breath; Here I went tempting frail youth nightly To their death; But you deemed me chaste—me, a tinselled sinner! How thought you one with pureness in her Could pace this street Eyeing some man to greet?

“Well; your very simplicity made me love you Mid such town dross, Till I set not Heaven itself above you, Who grew my Cross; For you’d only nod, despite how I sighed for you; So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you! —What I suffered then Would have paid for the sins of ten!

“Thus went the days. I feared you despised me To fling me a nod Each time, no more: till love chastised me As with a rod That a fresh bland boy of no assurance Should fire me with passion beyond endurance, While others all I hated, and loathed their call.

“I said: ‘It is his mother’s spirit Hovering around To shield him, maybe!’ I used to fear it, As still I found My beauty left no least impression, And remnants of pride withheld confession Of my true trade By speaking; so I delayed.

“I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flower He’ll be beguiled.’ I held it, in passing you one late hour, To your face: you smiled, Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there A single one that rivalled me there! . . . Well: it’s all past. I died in the Lock at last.”

So walked the dead and I together The quick among, Elbowing our kind of every feather Slowly and long; Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there That winter night By flaming jets of light.

She showed me Juans who feared their call-time, Guessing their lot; She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time, And that did not. Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me, Why asked you never, ere death befell me, To have my love, Much as I dreamt thereof?”

I could not answer. And she, well weeting All in my heart, Said: “God your guardian kept our fleeting Forms apart!” Sighing and drawing her furs around her Over the shroud that tightly bound her, With wafts as from clay She turned and thinned away.

LONDON, 1918.

“IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN” (SONG)

IF it’s ever spring again, Spring again, I shall go where went I when Down 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 come See not the phantoms all my substance sees!

“Visible in the morning Stand they, when dawn drags in; Visible at night; yet hint or warning Of 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 fingers Of 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 semblancy To 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 airily Against the moon; and still she sang, And took no heed of me.