Chapter 8

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 days She was seen in the church—at dawn, or when the sun dipt And the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze, Before the script.

She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowers As 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 breath Was 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 now The 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 old The 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 men Could less disturb a woman’s trust In him as a steadfast star which must Rise 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 out A confidence sublime as Spring’s When 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 show Her 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 road That wound towards the wicket of your abode, And I did not think That life would shrink To 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 not Again 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 never Walk 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 me

When the wind scraped a minor lay, And the spent west from white To gray turned tiredly, and from gray To broadest bands of night!

But I saw not, and he saw not What shining life-tides flowed To 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 did Up 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 us From over the wall in a casual way Are of this unconscious.

And feel, if anything, That none can be buried here Removed 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 admire Its 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 him Upon 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 hied So gaily gallantly on Had 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 gayer As 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 dare A 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 bare As 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.

THE SUN’S LAST LOOK ON THE COUNTRY GIRL (M. H.)

THE sun threw down a radiant spot On the face in the winding-sheet— The face it had lit when a babe’s in its cot; And the sun knew not, and the face knew not That soon they would no more meet.

Now that the grave has shut its door, And lets not in one ray, Do they wonder that they meet no more— That face and its beaming visitor— That met so many a day?

_December_ 1915.

IN A LONDON FLAT

I

“YOU look like a widower,” she said Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed, As he sat by the fire in the outer room, Reading late on a night of gloom, And a cab-hack’s wheeze, and the clap of its feet In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street, Were all that came to them now and then . . . “You really do!” she quizzed again.

II

And the Spirits behind the curtains heard, And also laughed, amused at her word, And at her light-hearted view of him. “Let’s get him made so—just for a whim!” Said the Phantom Ironic. “’Twould serve her right If we coaxed the Will to do it some night.” “O pray not!” pleaded the younger one, The Sprite of the Pities. “She said it in fun!”

III

But so it befell, whatever the cause, That what she had called him he next year was; And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere, He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there, And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores, At the empty bed through the folding-doors As he remembered her words; and wept That she had forgotten them where she slept.

DRAWING DETAILS IN AN OLD CHURCH

I HEAR the bell-rope sawing, And the oil-less axle grind, As I sit alone here drawing What some Gothic brain designed; And I catch the toll that follows From the lagging bell, Ere it spreads to hills and hollows Where the parish people dwell.

I ask not whom it tolls for, Incurious who he be; So, some morrow, when those knolls for One unguessed, sound out for me, A stranger, loitering under In nave or choir, May think, too, “Whose, I wonder?” But care not to inquire.

RAKE-HELL MUSES

YES; since she knows not need, Nor walks in blindness, I may without unkindness A true thing tell:

Which would be truth, indeed, Though worse in speaking, Were her poor footsteps seeking A pauper’s cell.

I judge, then, better far She now have sorrow, Than gladness that to-morrow Might know its knell.—

It may be men there are Could make of union A lifelong sweet communion— A passioned spell;

But _I_, to save her name And bring salvation By altar-affirmation And bridal bell;

I, by whose rash unshame These tears come to her:— My faith would more undo her Than my farewell!

Chained to me, year by year My moody madness Would wither her old gladness Like famine fell.

She’ll take the ill that’s near, And bear the blaming. ’Twill pass. Full soon her shaming They’ll cease to yell.

Our unborn, first her moan, Will grow her guerdon, Until from blot and burden A joyance swell;

In that therein she’ll own My good part wholly, My evil staining solely My own vile vell.

Of the disgrace, may be “He shunned to share it, Being false,” they’ll say. I’ll bear it; Time will dispel

The calumny, and prove This much about me, That she lives best without me Who would live well.

That, this once, not self-love But good intention Pleads that against convention We two rebel.

For, is one moonlight dance, One midnight passion, A rock whereon to fashion Life’s citadel?

Prove they their power to prance Life’s miles together From upper slope to nether Who trip an ell?

—Years hence, or now apace, May tongues be calling News of my further falling Sinward pell-mell:

Then this great good will grace Our lives’ division, She’s saved from more misprision Though I plumb hell.

189–

THE COLOUR

(_The following lines are partly made up_, _partly remembered from a Wessex folk-rhyme_)

“WHAT shall I bring you? Please will white do Best for your wearing The long day through?” “—White is for weddings, Weddings, weddings, White is for weddings, And that won’t do.”

“What shall I bring you? Please will red do Best for your wearing The long day through?” “ —Red is for soldiers, Soldiers, soldiers, Red is for soldiers, And that won’t do.”

“What shall I bring you? Please will blue do Best for your wearing The long day through?” “—Blue is for sailors, Sailors, sailors, Blue is for sailors, And that won’t do.

“What shall I bring you? Please will green do Best for your wearing The long day through?” “—Green is for mayings, Mayings, mayings, Green is for mayings, And that won’t do.”

“What shall I bring you Then? Will black do Best for your wearing The long day through?” “—Black is for mourning, Mourning, mourning, Black is for mourning, And black will do.”

MURMURS IN THE GLOOM (NOCTURNE)

I WAYFARED at the nadir of the sun Where populations meet, though seen of none; And millions seemed to sigh around As though their haunts were nigh around, And unknown throngs to cry around Of things late done.

“O Seers, who well might high ensample show” (Came throbbing past in plainsong small and slow), “Leaders who lead us aimlessly, Teachers who train us shamelessly, Why let ye smoulder flamelessly The truths ye trow?

“Ye scribes, that urge the old medicament, Whose fusty vials have long dried impotent, Why prop ye meretricious things, Denounce the sane as vicious things, And call outworn factitious things Expedient?

“O Dynasties that sway and shake us so, Why rank your magnanimities so low That grace can smooth no waters yet, But breathing threats and slaughters yet Ye grieve Earth’s sons and daughters yet As long ago?

“Live there no heedful ones of searching sight, Whose accents might be oracles that smite To hinder those who frowardly Conduct us, and untowardly; To lead the nations vawardly From gloom to light?”

_September_ 22, 1899.

EPITAPH

I NEVER cared for Life: Life cared for me, And hence I owed it some fidelity. It now says, “Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind Sufficient toll for an unwilling mind, And I dismiss thee—not without regard That thou didst ask no ill-advised reward, Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find.”

AN ANCIENT TO ANCIENTS

WHERE once we danced, where once sang, Gentlemen, The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang, And cracks creep; worms have fed upon The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then Than now, with harps and tabrets gone, Gentlemen!

Where once we rowed, where once we sailed, Gentlemen, And damsels took the tiller, veiled Against too strong a stare (God wot Their fancy, then or anywhen!) Upon that shore we are clean forgot, Gentlemen!

We have lost somewhat, afar and near, Gentlemen, The thinning of our ranks each year Affords a hint we are nigh undone, That we shall not be ever again The marked of many, loved of one, Gentlemen.

In dance the polka hit our wish, Gentlemen, The paced quadrille, the spry schottische, “Sir Roger.”—And in opera spheres The “Girl” (the famed “Bohemian”), And “Trovatore,” held the ears, Gentlemen.

This season’s paintings do not please, Gentlemen, Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise; Throbbing romance has waned and wanned; No wizard wields the witching pen Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, and Sand, Gentlemen.

The bower we shrined to Tennyson, Gentlemen, Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust, The spider is sole denizen; Even she who read those rhymes is dust, Gentlemen!

We who met sunrise sanguine-souled, Gentlemen, Are wearing weary. We are old; These younger press; we feel our rout Is imminent to Aïdes’ den,— That evening’s shades are stretching out, Gentlemen!

And yet, though ours be failing frames, Gentlemen, So were some others’ history names, Who trode their track light-limbed and fast As these youth, and not alien From enterprise, to their long last, Gentlemen.

Sophocles, Plato, Socrates, Gentlemen, Pythagoras, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Homer,—yea, Clement, Augustin, Origen, Burnt brightlier towards their setting-day, Gentlemen.

And ye, red-lipped and smooth-browed; list, Gentlemen; Much is there waits you we have missed; Much lore we leave you worth the knowing, Much, much has lain outside our ken: Nay, rush not: time serves: we are going, Gentlemen.

AFTER READING PSALMS XXXIX., XL., ETC.

SIMPLE was I and was young; Kept no gallant tryst, I; Even from good words held my tongue, _Quoniam Tu fecisti_!

Through my youth I stirred me not, High adventure missed I, Left the shining shrines unsought; Yet—_me deduxisti_!

At my start by Helicon Love-lore little wist I, Worldly less; but footed on; Why? _Me suscepisti_!

When I failed at fervid rhymes, “Shall,” I said, “persist I?” “_Dies_” (I would add at times) “_Meos posuisti_!”

So I have fared through many suns; Sadly little grist I Bring my mill, or any one’s, _Domine_, _Tu scisti_!

And at dead of night I call: “Though to prophets list I, Which hath understood at all? Yea: _Quem elegisti_?”

187–

SURVIEW “Cogitavi vias meas”

A CRY from the green-grained sticks of the fire Made me gaze where it seemed to be: ’Twas my own voice talking therefrom to me On how I had walked when my sun was higher— My heart in its arrogancy.

“_You held not to whatsoever was true_,” Said my own voice talking to me: “_Whatsoever was just you were slack to see_; _Kept not things lovely and pure in view_,” Said my own voice talking to me.

“_You slighted her that endureth all_,” Said my own voice talking to me; “_Vaunteth not_, _trusteth hopefully_; _That suffereth long and is kind withal_,” Said my own voice talking to me.

“_You taught not that which you set about_,” Said my own voice talking to me; “_That the greatest of things is Charity_. . . ” —And the sticks burnt low, and the fire went out, And my voice ceased talking to me.

FOOTNOTES

{46} Quadrilles danced early in the nineteenth century.

{128} It was said her real name was Eve Trevillian or Trevelyan; and that she was the handsome mother of two or three illegitimate children, _circa_ 1784–95.