Chapter 3

—“O Lord, forgive me when I say Thou spak’st the word, and mad’st it all.”— “The Earth of men—let me bethink me . . . Yea! I dimly do recall

“Some tiny sphere I built long back (Mid millions of such shapes of mine) So named . . . It perished, surely—not a wrack Remaining, or a sign?

“It lost my interest from the first, My aims therefor succeeding ill; Haply it died of doing as it durst?”— “Lord, it existeth still.”—

“Dark, then, its life! For not a cry Of aught it bears do I now hear; Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby Its plaints had reached mine ear.

“It used to ask for gifts of good, Till came its severance self-entailed, When sudden silence on that side ensued, And has till now prevailed.

“All other orbs have kept in touch; Their voicings reach me speedily: Thy people took upon them overmuch In sundering them from me!

“And it is strange—though sad enough— Earth’s race should think that one whose call Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff Must heed their tainted ball! . . .

“But say’st thou ’tis by pangs distraught, And strife, and silent suffering?— Deep grieved am I that injury should be wrought Even on so poor a thing!

“Thou should’st have learnt that _Not to Mend_ For Me could mean but _Not to Know_: Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end To what men undergo.” . . .

Homing at dawn, I thought to see One of the Messengers standing by. —Oh, childish thought! . . . Yet oft it comes to me When trouble hovers nigh.

THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT TO AN UNKNOWING GOD

MUCH wonder I—here long low-laid— That this dead wall should be Betwixt the Maker and the made, Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse, He eyes it now and then To know if better ’tis, or worse, And if it mourn, and when.

But Thou, Lord, giv’st us men our clay In helpless bondage thus To Time and Chance, and seem’st straightway To think no more of us!

That some disaster cleft Thy scheme And tore us wide apart, So that no cry can cross, I deem; For Thou art mild of heart,

And would’st not shape and shut us in Where voice can not he heard: ’Tis plain Thou meant’st that we should win Thy succour by a word.

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies Like man’s from clime to clime, Thou would’st not let me agonize Through my remaining time;

But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear— Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind— Thou’dst heal the ills with quickest care Of me and all my kind.

Then, since Thou mak’st not these things be, But these things dost not know, I’ll praise Thee as were shown to me The mercies Thou would’st show!

BY THE EARTH’S CORPSE

I

“O LORD, why grievest Thou?— Since Life has ceased to be Upon this globe, now cold As lunar land and sea, And humankind, and fowl, and fur Are gone eternally, All is the same to Thee as ere They knew mortality.”

II

“O Time,” replied the Lord, “Thou read’st me ill, I ween; Were all _the same_, I should not grieve At that late earthly scene, Now blestly past—though planned by me With interest close and keen!— Nay, nay: things now are _not_ the same As they have earlier been.

III

“Written indelibly On my eternal mind Are all the wrongs endured By Earth’s poor patient kind, Which my too oft unconscious hand Let enter undesigned. No god can cancel deeds foredone, Or thy old coils unwind!

IV

“As when, in Noë’s days, I whelmed the plains with sea, So at this last, when flesh And herb but fossils be, And, all extinct, their piteous dust Revolves obliviously, That I made Earth, and life, and man, It still repenteth me!”

MUTE OPINION

I

I TRAVERSED a dominion Whose spokesmen spake out strong Their purpose and opinion Through pulpit, press, and song. I scarce had means to note there A large-eyed few, and dumb, Who thought not as those thought there That stirred the heat and hum.

II

When, grown a Shade, beholding That land in lifetime trode, To learn if its unfolding Fulfilled its clamoured code, I saw, in web unbroken, Its history outwrought Not as the loud had spoken, But as the mute had thought.

TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD

I

BREATHE not, hid Heart: cease silently, And though thy birth-hour beckons thee, Sleep the long sleep: The Doomsters heap Travails and teens around us here, And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

II

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh, And laughters fail, and greetings die: Hopes dwindle; yea, Faiths waste away, Affections and enthusiasms numb; Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

Had I the ear of wombèd souls Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls, And thou wert free To cease, or be, Then would I tell thee all I know, And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

IV

Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence To theeward fly: to thy locked sense Explain none can Life’s pending plan: Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.

V

Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot Of earth’s wide wold for thee, where not One tear, one qualm, Should break the calm. But I am weak as thou and bare; No man can change the common lot to rare.

VI

Must come and bide. And such are we— Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary— That I can hope Health, love, friends, scope In full for thee; can dream thou’lt find Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER

SUNNED in the South, and here to-day; —If all organic things Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say, What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite From this bleak spot of thorn, And birch, and fir, and frozen white Expanse of the forlorn?

Frail luckless exiles hither brought! Your dust will not regain Old sunny haunts of Classic thought When you shall waste and wane;

But mix with alien earth, be lit With frigid Boreal flame, And not a sign remain in it To tell men whence you came.

ON A FINE MORNING

WHENCE comes Solace?—Not from seeing What is doing, suffering, being, Not from noting Life’s conditions, Nor from heeding Time’s monitions; But in cleaving to the Dream, And in gazing at the gleam Whereby gray things golden seem.

II

Thus do I this heyday, holding Shadows but as lights unfolding, As no specious show this moment With its irisèd embowment; But as nothing other than Part of a benignant plan; Proof that earth was made for man.

_February_ 1899.

TO LIZBIE BROWNE

I

DEAR Lizbie Browne, Where are you now? In sun, in rain?— Or is your brow Past joy, past pain, Dear Lizbie Browne?

II

Sweet Lizbie Browne How you could smile, How you could sing!— How archly wile In glance-giving, Sweet Lizbie Browne!

III

And, Lizbie Browne, Who else had hair Bay-red as yours, Or flesh so fair Bred out of doors, Sweet Lizbie Browne?

IV

When, Lizbie Browne, You had just begun To be endeared By stealth to one, You disappeared My Lizbie Browne!

V

Ay, Lizbie Browne, So swift your life, And mine so slow, You were a wife Ere I could show Love, Lizbie Browne.

VI

Still, Lizbie Browne, You won, they said, The best of men When you were wed . . . Where went you then, O Lizbie Browne?

VII

Dear Lizbie Browne, I should have thought, “Girls ripen fast,” And coaxed and caught You ere you passed, Dear Lizbie Browne!

VIII

But, Lizbie Browne, I let you slip; Shaped not a sign; Touched never your lip With lip of mine, Lost Lizbie Browne!

IX

So, Lizbie Browne, When on a day Men speak of me As not, you’ll say, “And who was he?”— Yes, Lizbie Browne!

SONG OF HOPE

O SWEET To-morrow!— After to-day There will away This sense of sorrow. Then let us borrow Hope, for a gleaming Soon will be streaming, Dimmed by no gray— No gray!

While the winds wing us Sighs from The Gone, Nearer to dawn Minute-beats bring us; When there will sing us Larks of a glory Waiting our story Further anon— Anon!

Doff the black token, Don the red shoon, Right and retune Viol-strings broken; Null the words spoken In speeches of rueing, The night cloud is hueing, To-morrow shines soon— Shines soon!

THE WELL-BELOVED

I wayed by star and planet shine Towards the dear one’s home At Kingsbere, there to make her mine When the next sun upclomb.

I edged the ancient hill and wood Beside the Ikling Way, Nigh where the Pagan temple stood In the world’s earlier day.

And as I quick and quicker walked On gravel and on green, I sang to sky, and tree, or talked Of her I called my queen.

—“O faultless is her dainty form, And luminous her mind; She is the God-created norm Of perfect womankind!”

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed Glode softly by my side, A woman’s; and her motion seemed The motion of my bride.

And yet methought she’d drawn erstwhile Adown the ancient leaze, Where once were pile and peristyle For men’s idolatries.

—“O maiden lithe and lone, what may Thy name and lineage be, Who so resemblest by this ray My darling?—Art thou she?”

The Shape: “Thy bride remains within Her father’s grange and grove.” —“Thou speakest rightly,” I broke in, “Thou art not she I love.”

—“Nay: though thy bride remains inside Her father’s walls,” said she, “The one most dear is with thee here, For thou dost love but me.”

Then I: “But she, my only choice, Is now at Kingsbere Grove?” Again her soft mysterious voice: “I am thy only Love.”

Thus still she vouched, and still I said, “O sprite, that cannot be!” . . . It was as if my bosom bled, So much she troubled me.

The sprite resumed: “Thou hast transferred To her dull form awhile My beauty, fame, and deed, and word, My gestures and my smile.

“O fatuous man, this truth infer, Brides are not what they seem; Thou lovest what thou dreamest her; I am thy very dream!”

—“O then,” I answered miserably, Speaking as scarce I knew, “My loved one, I must wed with thee If what thou say’st be true!”

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom: “Though, since troth-plight began, I’ve ever stood as bride to groom, I wed no mortal man!”

Thereat she vanished by the Cross That, entering Kingsbere town, The two long lanes form, near the fosse Below the faneless Down.

—When I arrived and met my bride, Her look was pinched and thin, As if her soul had shrunk and died, And left a waste within.

HER REPROACH

CON the dead page as ’twere live love: press on! Cold wisdom’s words will ease thy track for thee; Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan To biting blasts that are intent on me.

But if thy object Fame’s far summits be, Whose inclines many a skeleton o’erlies That missed both dream and substance, stop and see How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!

It surely is far sweeter and more wise To water love, than toil to leave anon A name whose glory-gleam will but advise Invidious minds to quench it with their own,

And over which the kindliest will but stay A moment, musing, “He, too, had his day!”

WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1867.

THE INCONSISTENT

I SAY, “She was as good as fair,” When standing by her mound; “Such passing sweetness,” I declare, “No longer treads the ground.” I say, “What living Love can catch Her bloom and bonhomie, And what in newer maidens match Her olden warmth to me!”

—There stands within yon vestry-nook Where bonded lovers sign, Her name upon a faded book With one that is not mine. To him she breathed the tender vow She once had breathed to me, But yet I say, “O love, even now Would I had died for thee!”

A BROKEN APPOINTMENT

YOU did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, You did not come.

You love not me, And love alone can lend you loyalty; —I know and knew it. But, unto the store Of human deeds divine in all but name, Was it not worth a little hour or more To add yet this: Once, you, a woman, came To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be You love not me?

“BETWEEN US NOW”

BETWEEN us now and here— Two thrown together Who are not wont to wear Life’s flushest feather— Who see the scenes slide past, The daytimes dimming fast, Let there be truth at last, Even if despair.

So thoroughly and long Have you now known me, So real in faith and strong Have I now shown me, That nothing needs disguise Further in any wise, Or asks or justifies A guarded tongue.

Face unto face, then, say, Eyes mine own meeting, Is your heart far away, Or with mine beating? When false things are brought low, And swift things have grown slow, Feigning like froth shall go, Faith be for aye.

“HOW GREAT MY GRIEF” (TRIOLET)

HOW great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee! —Have the slow years not brought to view How great my grief, my joys how few, Nor memory shaped old times anew, Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee How great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee?

“I NEED NOT GO”

I NEED not go Through sleet and snow To where I know She waits for me; She will wait me there Till I find it fair, And have time to spare From company.

When I’ve overgot The world somewhat, When things cost not Such stress and strain, Is soon enough By cypress sough To tell my Love I am come again.

And if some day, When none cries nay, I still delay To seek her side, (Though ample measure Of fitting leisure Await my pleasure) She will riot chide.

What—not upbraid me That I delayed me, Nor ask what stayed me So long? Ah, no!— New cares may claim me, New loves inflame me, She will not blame me, But suffer it so.

THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER (TRIOLETS)

I

FOR long the cruel wish I knew That your free heart should ache for me While mine should bear no ache for you; For, long—the cruel wish!—I knew How men can feel, and craved to view My triumph—fated not to be For long! . . . The cruel wish I knew That your free heart should ache for me!

II

At last one pays the penalty— The woman—women always do. My farce, I found, was tragedy At last!—One pays the penalty With interest when one, fancy-free, Learns love, learns shame . . . Of sinners two At last _one_ pays the penalty— The woman—women always do!

A SPOT

IN years defaced and lost, Two sat here, transport-tossed, Lit by a living love The wilted world knew nothing of: Scared momently By gaingivings, Then hoping things That could not be.

Of love and us no trace Abides upon the place; The sun and shadows wheel, Season and season sereward steal; Foul days and fair Here, too, prevail, And gust and gale As everywhere.

But lonely shepherd souls Who bask amid these knolls May catch a faery sound On sleepy noontides from the ground: “O not again Till Earth outwears Shall love like theirs Suffuse this glen!”

LONG PLIGHTED

IS it worth while, dear, now, To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed For marriage-rites—discussed, decried, delayed So many years?

Is it worth while, dear, now, To stir desire for old fond purposings, By feints that Time still serves for dallyings, Though quittance nears?

Is it worth while, dear, when The day being so far spent, so low the sun, The undone thing will soon be as the done, And smiles as tears?

Is it worth while, dear, when Our cheeks are worn, our early brown is gray; When, meet or part we, none says yea or nay, Or heeds, or cares?

Is it worth while, dear, since We still can climb old Yell’ham’s wooded mounds Together, as each season steals its rounds And disappears?

Is it worth while, dear, since As mates in Mellstock churchyard we can lie, Till the last crash of all things low and high Shall end the spheres?

THE WIDOW

BY Mellstock Lodge and Avenue Towards her door I went, And sunset on her window-panes Reflected our intent.

The creeper on the gable nigh Was fired to more than red And when I came to halt thereby “Bright as my joy!” I said.

Of late days it had been her aim To meet me in the hall; Now at my footsteps no one came; And no one to my call.

Again I knocked; and tardily An inner step was heard, And I was shown her presence then With scarce an answering word.

She met me, and but barely took My proffered warm embrace; Preoccupation weighed her look, And hardened her sweet face.

“To-morrow—could you—would you call? Make brief your present stay? My child is ill—my one, my all!— And can’t be left to-day.”

And then she turns, and gives commands As I were out of sound, Or were no more to her and hers Than any neighbour round . . .

—As maid I wooed her; but one came And coaxed her heart away, And when in time he wedded her I deemed her gone for aye.

He won, I lost her; and my loss I bore I know not how; But I do think I suffered then Less wretchedness than now.

For Time, in taking him, had oped An unexpected door Of bliss for me, which grew to seem Far surer than before . . .

Her word is steadfast, and I know That plighted firm are we: But she has caught new love-calls since She smiled as maid on me!

AT A HASTY WEDDING (TRIOLET)

IF hours be years the twain are blest, For now they solace swift desire By bonds of every bond the best, If hours be years. The twain are blest Do eastern stars slope never west, Nor pallid ashes follow fire: If hours be years the twain are blest, For now they solace swift desire.

THE DREAM-FOLLOWER

A DREAM of mine flew over the mead To the halls where my old Love reigns; And it drew me on to follow its lead: And I stood at her window-panes;

And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone Speeding on to its cleft in the clay; And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan, And I whitely hastened away.

HIS IMMORTALITY

I

I SAW a dead man’s finer part Shining within each faithful heart Of those bereft. Then said I: “This must be His immortality.”

II

I looked there as the seasons wore, And still his soul continuously upbore Its life in theirs. But less its shine excelled Than when I first beheld.

III

His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then In later hearts I looked for him again; And found him—shrunk, alas! into a thin And spectral mannikin.

IV

Lastly I ask—now old and chill— If aught of him remain unperished still; And find, in me alone, a feeble spark, Dying amid the dark.

_February_ 1899.

THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN

I

I HEARD a small sad sound, And stood awhile amid the tombs around: “Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are ye distrest, Now, screened from life’s unrest?”

II

—“O not at being here; But that our future second death is drear; When, with the living, memory of us numbs, And blank oblivion comes!

III

“Those who our grandsires be Lie here embraced by deeper death than we; Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descry With keenest backward eye.

IV

“They bide as quite forgot; They are as men who have existed not; Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath; It is the second death.

V

“We here, as yet, each day Are blest with dear recall; as yet, alway In some soul hold a loved continuance Of shape and voice and glance.

VI

“But what has been will be— First memory, then oblivion’s turbid sea; Like men foregone, shall we merge into those Whose story no one knows.

VII

“For which of us could hope To show in life that world-awakening scope Granted the few whose memory none lets die, But all men magnify?

VIII

“We were but Fortune’s sport; Things true, things lovely, things of good report We neither shunned nor sought . . . We see our bourne, And seeing it we mourn.”

WIVES IN THE SERE

I

NEVER a careworn wife but shows, If a joy suffuse her, Something beautiful to those Patient to peruse her, Some one charm the world unknows Precious to a muser, Haply what, ere years were foes, Moved her mate to choose her.

II

But, be it a hint of rose That an instant hues her, Or some early light or pose Wherewith thought renews her— Seen by him at full, ere woes Practised to abuse her— Sparely comes it, swiftly goes, Time again subdues her.

THE SUPERSEDED

I

AS newer comers crowd the fore, We drop behind. —We who have laboured long and sore Times out of mind, And keen are yet, must not regret To drop behind.

II

Yet there are of us some who grieve To go behind; Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe Their fires declined, And know none cares, remembers, spares Who go behind.

III

’Tis not that we have unforetold The drop behind; We feel the new must oust the old In every kind; But yet we think, must we, must _we_, Too, drop behind?

AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT

I

A SHADED lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined— A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While ’mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

II

Thus meet we five, in this still place, At this point of time, at this point in space. —My guests parade my new-penned ink, Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink. “God’s humblest, they!” I muse. Yet why? They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

MAX GATE, 1899.

THE CAGED THRUSH FREED AND HOME AGAIN (VILLANELLE)

“MEN know but little more than we, Who count us least of things terrene, How happy days are made to be!

“Of such strange tidings what think ye, O birds in brown that peck and preen? Men know but little more than we!

“When I was borne from yonder tree In bonds to them, I hoped to glean How happy days are made to be,

“And want and wailing turned to glee; Alas, despite their mighty mien Men know but little more than we!

“They cannot change the Frost’s decree, They cannot keep the skies serene; How happy days are made to be