Chapter 4

They load the leafless hedge hard by, And the blades of last year’s grass, While the fallow ploughland turned up nigh In raw rolls, clammy and clogging lie— Too clogging for feet to pass.

How dry it was on a far-back day When straws hung the hedge and around, When amid the sheaves in amorous play In curtained bonnets and light array Bloomed a bevy now underground!

BOCKHAMPTON LANE.

THE YOUTH WHO CARRIED A LIGHT

I SAW him pass as the new day dawned, Murmuring some musical phrase; Horses were drinking and floundering in the pond, And the tired stars thinned their gaze; Yet these were not the spectacles at all that he conned, But an inner one, giving out rays.

Such was the thing in his eye, walking there, The very and visible thing, A close light, displacing the gray of the morning air, And the tokens that the dark was taking wing; And was it not the radiance of a purpose rare That might ripe to its accomplishing?

What became of that light? I wonder still its fate! Was it quenched ere its full apogee? Did it struggle frail and frailer to a beam emaciate? Did it thrive till matured in verity? Or did it travel on, to be a new young dreamer’s freight, And thence on infinitely?

1915.

THE HEAD ABOVE THE FOG

SOMETHING do I see Above the fog that sheets the mead, A figure like to life indeed, Moving along with spectre-speed, Seen by none but me.

O the vision keen!— Tripping along to me for love As in the flesh it used to move, Only its hat and plume above The evening fog-fleece seen.

In the day-fall wan, When nighted birds break off their song, Mere ghostly head it skims along, Just as it did when warm and strong, Body seeming gone.

Such it is I see Above the fog that sheets the mead— Yea, that which once could breathe and plead!— Skimming along with spectre-speed To a last tryst with me.

OVERLOOKING THE RIVER STOUR

THE swallows flew in the curves of an eight Above the river-gleam In the wet June’s last beam: Like little crossbows animate The swallows flew in the curves of an eight Above the river-gleam.

Planing up shavings of crystal spray A moor-hen darted out From the bank thereabout, And through the stream-shine ripped his way; Planing up shavings of crystal spray A moor-hen darted out.

Closed were the kingcups; and the mead Dripped in monotonous green, Though the day’s morning sheen Had shown it golden and honeybee’d; Closed were the kingcups; and the mead Dripped in monotonous green.

And never I turned my head, alack, While these things met my gaze Through the pane’s drop-drenched glaze, To see the more behind my back . . . O never I turned, but let, alack, These less things hold my gaze!

THE MUSICAL BOX

LIFELONG to be Seemed the fair colour of the time; That there was standing shadowed near A spirit who sang to the gentle chime Of the self-struck notes, I did not hear, I did not see.

Thus did it sing To the mindless lyre that played indoors As she came to listen for me without: “O value what the nonce outpours— This best of life—that shines about Your welcoming!”

I had slowed along After the torrid hours were done, Though still the posts and walls and road Flung back their sense of the hot-faced sun, And had walked by Stourside Mill, where broad Stream-lilies throng.

And I descried The dusky house that stood apart, And her, white-muslined, waiting there In the porch with high-expectant heart, While still the thin mechanic air Went on inside.

At whiles would flit Swart bats, whose wings, be-webbed and tanned, Whirred like the wheels of ancient clocks: She laughed a hailing as she scanned Me in the gloom, the tuneful box Intoning it.

Lifelong to be I thought it. That there watched hard by A spirit who sang to the indoor tune, “O make the most of what is nigh!” I did not hear in my dull soul-swoon— I did not see.

ON STURMINSTER FOOT-BRIDGE (ONOMATOPOEIC)

RETICULATIONS creep upon the slack stream’s face When the wind skims irritably past, The current clucks smartly into each hollow place That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier’s sodden base; The floating-lily leaves rot fast.

On a roof stand the swallows ranged in wistful waiting rows, Till they arrow off and drop like stones Among the eyot-withies at whose foot the river flows; And beneath the roof is she who in the dark world shows As a lattice-gleam when midnight moans.

ROYAL SPONSORS

“THE king and the queen will stand to the child; ’Twill be handed down in song; And it’s no more than their deserving, With my lord so faithful at Court so long, And so staunch and strong.

“O never before was known such a thing! ’Twill be a grand time for all; And the beef will be a whole-roast bullock, And the servants will have a feast in the hall, And the ladies a ball.

“While from Jordan’s stream by a traveller, In a flagon of silver wrought, And by caravan, stage-coach, wain, and waggon A precious trickle has been brought, Clear as when caught.”

The morning came. To the park of the peer The royal couple bore; And the font was filled with the Jordan water, And the household awaited their guests before The carpeted door.

But when they went to the silk-lined cot The child was found to have died. “What’s now to be done? We can disappoint not The king and queen!” the family cried With eyes spread wide.

“Even now they approach the chestnut-drive! The service must be read.” “Well, since we can’t christen the child alive, By God we shall have to christen him dead!” The marquis said.

Thus, breath-forsaken, a corpse was taken To the private chapel—yea— And the king knew not, nor the queen, God wot, That they answered for one returned to clay At the font that day.

OLD FURNITURE

I KNOW not how it may be with others Who sit amid relics of householdry That date from the days of their mothers’ mothers, But well I know how it is with me Continually.

I see the hands of the generations That owned each shiny familiar thing In play on its knobs and indentations, And with its ancient fashioning Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler, As in a mirror a candle-flame Shows images of itself, each frailer As it recedes, though the eye may frame Its shape the same.

On the clock’s dull dial a foggy finger, Moving to set the minutes right With tentative touches that lift and linger In the wont of a moth on a summer night, Creeps to my sight.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing— As whilom—just over the strings by the nut, The tip of a bow receding, advancing In airy quivers, as if it would cut The plaintive gut.

And I see a face by that box for tinder, Glowing forth in fits from the dark, And fading again, as the linten cinder Kindles to red at the flinty spark, Or goes out stark.

Well, well. It is best to be up and doing, The world has no use for one to-day Who eyes things thus—no aim pursuing! He should not continue in this stay, But sink away.

A THOUGHT IN TWO MOODS

I SAW it—pink and white—revealed Upon the white and green; The white and green was a daisied field, The pink and white Ethleen.

And as I looked it seemed in kind That difference they had none; The two fair bodiments combined As varied miens of one.

A sense that, in some mouldering year, As one they both would lie, Made me move quickly on to her To pass the pale thought by.

She laughed and said: “Out there, to me, You looked so weather-browned, And brown in clothes, you seemed to be Made of the dusty ground!”

THE LAST PERFORMANCE

“I AM playing my oldest tunes,” declared she, “All the old tunes I know,— Those I learnt ever so long ago.” —Why she should think just then she’d play them Silence cloaks like snow.

When I returned from the town at nightfall Notes continued to pour As when I had left two hours before: “It’s the very last time,” she said in closing; “From now I play no more.”

A few morns onward found her fading, And, as her life outflew, I thought of her playing her tunes right through; And I felt she had known of what was coming, And wondered how she knew.

1912.

“YOU ON THE TOWER”

I

“YOU on the tower of my factory— What do you see up there? Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings Advancing to reach me here?” —“Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings Advancing to reach you here.”

II

“Good. Soon I’ll come and ask you To tell me again thereon . . . Well, what is he doing now? Hoi, there!” —“He still is flying on.” “Ah, waiting till I have full-finished. Good. Tell me again anon . . .

III

“Hoi, Watchman! I’m here. When comes he? Between my sweats I am chill.” —“Oh, you there, working still? Why, surely he reached you a time back, And took you miles from your mill? He duly came in his winging, And now he has passed out of view. How can it be that you missed him? He brushed you by as he flew.”

THE INTERLOPER

“And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home.”

THERE are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise, And the cliff-side track looks green and fair; I view them talking in quiet glee As they drop down towards the puffins’ lair By the roughest of ways; But another with the three rides on, I see, Whom I like not to be there!

No: it’s not anybody you think of. Next A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream Where two sit happy and half in the dark: They read, helped out by a frail-wick’d gleam, Some rhythmic text; But one sits with them whom they don’t mark, One I’m wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name. And now I discern gay diners in a mansion-place, And the guests dropping wit—pert, prim, or choice, And the hostess’s tender and laughing face, And the host’s bland brow; I cannot help hearing a hollow voice, And I’d fain not hear it there.

No: it’s not from the stranger you met once. Ah, Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds; People on a lawn—quite a crowd of them. Yes, And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads; And they say, “Hurrah!” To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless, Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it’s not the pale Form your imagings raise, That waits on us all at a destined time, It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed, O that it were such a shape sublime; In these latter days! It is that under which best lives corrode; Would, would it could not be there!

LOGS ON THE HEARTH A MEMORY OF A SISTER

THE fire advances along the log Of the tree we felled, Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

The fork that first my hand would reach And then my foot In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

Where the bark chars is where, one year, It was pruned, and bled— Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last, Its growings all have stagnated.

My fellow-climber rises dim From her chilly grave— Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb, Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

_December_ 1915.

THE SUNSHADE

AH—it’s the skeleton of a lady’s sunshade, Here at my feet in the hard rock’s chink, Merely a naked sheaf of wires!— Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers Since it was silked in its white or pink.

Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade, No more a screen from the weakest ray; Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes, Nothing but rusty bones as it lies In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.

Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade Up and down this seaside place?— Little thumb standing against its stem, Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem, Softening yet more the already soft face!

Is the fair woman who carried that sunshade A skeleton just as her property is, Laid in the chink that none may scan? And does she regret—if regret dust can— The vain things thought when she flourished this?

SWANAGE CLIFFS.

THE AGEING HOUSE

WHEN the walls were red That now are seen To be overspread With a mouldy green, A fresh fair head Would often lean From the sunny casement And scan the scene, While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.

But storms have raged Those walls about, And the head has aged That once looked out; And zest is suaged And trust is doubt, And slow effacement Is rife throughout, While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!

THE CAGED GOLDFINCH

WITHIN a churchyard, on a recent grave, I saw a little cage That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save Its hops from stage to stage.

There was inquiry in its wistful eye, And once it tried to sing; Of him or her who placed it there, and why, No one knew anything.

AT MADAME TUSSAUD’S IN VICTORIAN YEARS

“THAT same first fiddler who leads the orchéstra to-night Here fiddled four decades of years ago; He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight, Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.

“But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier, And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray; Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre, In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.

“Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem That to do but a little thing counts a great deal; To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him— With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal.”

* * *

Ah, but he played staunchly—that fiddler—whoever he was, With the innocent heart and the soul-touching string: May he find the Fair Haven! For did he not smile with good cause? Yes; gamuts that graced forty years’-flight were not a small thing!

THE BALLET

THEY crush together—a rustling heap of flesh— Of more than flesh, a heap of souls; and then They part, enmesh, And crush together again, Like the pink petals of a too sanguine rose Frightened shut just when it blows.

Though all alike in their tinsel livery, And indistinguishable at a sweeping glance, They muster, maybe, As lives wide in irrelevance; A world of her own has each one underneath, Detached as a sword from its sheath.

Daughters, wives, mistresses; honest or false, sold, bought; Hearts of all sizes; gay, fond, gushing, or penned, Various in thought Of lover, rival, friend; Links in a one-pulsed chain, all showing one smile, Yet severed so many a mile!

THE FIVE STUDENTS

THE sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath, The sun grows passionate-eyed, And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path; As strenuously we stride,— Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I, All beating by.

The air is shaken, the high-road hot, Shadowless swoons the day, The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not We on our urgent way,— Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there, But one—elsewhere.

Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow, And forward still we press Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow, As in the spring hours—yes, Three of us: fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore, But—fallen one more.

The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in At night-time noiselessly, The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin, And yet on the beat are we,— Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go The track we know.

Icicles tag the church-aisle leads, The flag-rope gibbers hoarse, The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads, Yet I still stalk the course,— One of us . . . Dark and fair He, dark and fair She, gone: The rest—anon.

THE WIND’S PROPHECY

I TRAVEL on by barren farms, And gulls glint out like silver flecks Against a cloud that speaks of wrecks, And bellies down with black alarms. I say: “Thus from my lady’s arms I go; those arms I love the best!” The wind replies from dip and rise, “Nay; toward her arms thou journeyest.”

A distant verge morosely gray Appears, while clots of flying foam Break from its muddy monochrome, And a light blinks up far away. I sigh: “My eyes now as all day Behold her ebon loops of hair!” Like bursting bonds the wind responds, “Nay, wait for tresses flashing fair!”

From tides the lofty coastlands screen Come smitings like the slam of doors, Or hammerings on hollow floors, As the swell cleaves through caves unseen. Say I: “Though broad this wild terrene, Her city home is matched of none!” From the hoarse skies the wind replies: “Thou shouldst have said her sea-bord one.”

The all-prevailing clouds exclude The one quick timorous transient star; The waves outside where breakers are Huzza like a mad multitude. “Where the sun ups it, mist-imbued,” I cry, “there reigns the star for me!” The wind outshrieks from points and peaks: “Here, westward, where it downs, mean ye!”

Yonder the headland, vulturine, Snores like old Skrymer in his sleep, And every chasm and every steep Blackens as wakes each pharos-shine. “I roam, but one is safely mine,” I say. “God grant she stay my own!” Low laughs the wind as if it grinned: “Thy Love is one thou’st not yet known.”

_Rewritten from an old copy_.

DURING WIND AND RAIN

THEY sing their dearest songs— He, she, all of them—yea, Treble and tenor and bass, And one to play; With the candles mooning each face . . . Ah, no; the years O! How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

They clear the creeping moss— Elders and juniors—aye, Making the pathways neat And the garden gay; And they build a shady seat . . . Ah, no; the years, the years; See, the white storm-birds wing across!

They are blithely breakfasting all— Men and maidens—yea, Under the summer tree, With a glimpse of the bay, While pet fowl come to the knee . . . Ah, no; the years O! And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

They change to a high new house, He, she, all of them—aye, Clocks and carpets and chairs On the lawn all day, And brightest things that are theirs . . . Ah, no; the years, the years; Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

HE PREFERS HER EARTHLY

THIS after-sunset is a sight for seeing, Cliff-heads of craggy cloud surrounding it. —And dwell you in that glory-show? You may; for there are strange strange things in being, Stranger than I know.

Yet if that chasm of splendour claim your presence Which glows between the ash cloud and the dun, How changed must be your mortal mould! Changed to a firmament-riding earthless essence From what you were of old:

All too unlike the fond and fragile creature Then known to me . . . Well, shall I say it plain? I would not have you thus and there, But still would grieve on, missing you, still feature You as the one you were.

THE DOLLS

“WHENEVER you dress me dolls, mammy, Why do you dress them so, And make them gallant soldiers, When never a one I know; And not as gentle ladies With frills and frocks and curls, As people dress the dollies Of other little girls?”

Ah—why did she not answer:— “Because your mammy’s heed Is always gallant soldiers, As well may be, indeed. One of them was your daddy, His name I must not tell; He’s not the dad who lives here, But one I love too well.”

MOLLY GONE

NO more summer for Molly and me; There is snow on the tree, And the blackbirds plump large as the rooks are, almost, And the water is hard Where they used to dip bills at the dawn ere her figure was lost To these coasts, now my prison close-barred.

No more planting by Molly and me Where the beds used to be Of sweet-william; no training the clambering rose By the framework of fir Now bowering the pathway, whereon it swings gaily and blows As if calling commendment from her.

No more jauntings by Molly and me To the town by the sea, Or along over Whitesheet to Wynyard’s green Gap, Catching Montacute Crest To the right against Sedgmoor, and Corton-Hill’s far-distant cap, And Pilsdon and Lewsdon to west.

No more singing by Molly to me In the evenings when she Was in mood and in voice, and the candles were lit, And past the porch-quoin The rays would spring out on the laurels; and dumbledores hit On the pane, as if wishing to join.

Where, then, is Molly, who’s no more with me? —As I stand on this lea, Thinking thus, there’s a many-flamed star in the air, That tosses a sign That her glance is regarding its face from her home, so that there Her eyes may have meetings with mine.

A BACKWARD SPRING

THE trees are afraid to put forth buds, And there is timidity in the grass; The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds, And whether next week will pass Free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush Of barberry waiting to bloom.

Yet the snowdrop’s face betrays no gloom, And the primrose pants in its heedless push, Though the myrtle asks if it’s worth the fight This year with frost and rime To venture one more time On delicate leaves and buttons of white From the selfsame bough as at last year’s prime, And never to ruminate on or remember What happened to it in mid-December.

_April_ 1917.

LOOKING ACROSS

I

IT is dark in the sky, And silence is where Our laughs rang high; And recall do I That One is out there.

II

The dawn is not nigh, And the trees are bare, And the waterways sigh That a year has drawn by, And Two are out there.

III

The wind drops to die Like the phantom of Care Too frail for a cry, And heart brings to eye That Three are out there.

IV

This Life runs dry That once ran rare And rosy in dye, And fleet the days fly, And Four are out there.

V

Tired, tired am I Of this earthly air, And my wraith asks: Why, Since these calm lie, Are not Five out there?

_December_ 1915.

AT A SEASIDE TOWN IN 1869 (_Young Lover’s Reverie_)

I WENT and stood outside myself, Spelled the dark sky And ship-lights nigh, And grumbling winds that passed thereby.

Then next inside myself I looked, And there, above All, shone my Love, That nothing matched the image of.

Beyond myself again I ranged; And saw the free Life by the sea, And folk indifferent to me.