Only in me the waters cry Who mourn the hours now slipped for ever, Hours of boding, joy, and fever, When we loved, by chance beguiled, I a boy and you a child-- Child! but with an angel"s air, Astonished, eager, unaware, Or elfin"s, wandering with a grace Foreign to any fireside race, And with a gaiety unknown In the light feet and hair backblown, And with a sadness yet more strange, In meagre cheeks which knew to change Or faint or fired more swift than sight, And forlorn hands and lips pressed white, And fragile voice, and head downcast, Hiding tears, lifted at the last To speed with one pale smile the wise Glance of the grey immortal eyes.
How strange it was that we should dare Compound a miracle so rare As, "twixt this pace and Time"s next pace, Each to discern th" elected"s face!
Yet stranger that the high sweet fire, In hearts nigh foreign to desire, Could burn, sigh, weep, and burn again As oh, it never has since then!
Most strange of all that we so young Dared learn but would not speak love"s tongue, Love pledged but in the reveries Of our sad and dreaming eyes....
Now upon such journey bound me, Grief, disquiet, and stillness round me, As bids me where I cannot tell, Turn I and sigh, unseen, farewell.
Breathe the name as soft as mist, Lips, which nor kissed her nor were kissed!
And again--a sigh, a death-- "Elizabeth. Elizabeth."
No voice answers; but the mist Glows for a moment amethyst Ere the hid sun dissolves away, And dimness, growing dimmer grey, Hides all ... till nothing can I see But the blind walls enclosing me, And no sound and no motion hear But the vague water throbbing near, Sole voice upon the darkening hill Where all is blank and dead and still.
J. D. C. FELLOW
AFTER LONDON
London Bridge is broken down; Green is the gra.s.s on Ludgate Hill; I know a farmer in Camden Town Killed a brock by Pentonville.
I have heard my grandam tell How some thousand years ago Houses stretched from Camberwell Right to Highbury and Bow.
Down by Shadwell"s golden meads Tall ships" masts would stand as thick As the pretty tufted reeds That the Wapping children pick.
All the kings from end to end Of all the world paid tribute then, And meekly on their knees would bend To the King of the Englishmen.
Thinks I while I dig my plot, What if your grandam"s tales be true?
Thinks I, be they true or not, What"s the odds to a fool like you?
Thinks I, while I smoke my pipe Here beside the tumbling Fleet, Apples drop when they are ripe, And when they drop are they most sweet.
ON A FRIEND WHO DIED SUDDENLY UPON THE SEASh.o.r.e
Quiet he lived, and quietly died; Nor, like the unwilling tide, Did once complain or strive To stay one brief hour more alive.
But as a summer wave Serenely for a while Will lift a crest to the sun, Then sink again, so he Back to the bright heavens gave An answering smile; Then quietly, having run His course, bowed down his head, And sank unmurmuringly, Sank back into the sea, The silent, the unfathomable sea Of all the happy dead.
TENEBRae
They say that I shall find him if I go Along the dusty highways, or the green Tracks of the downland shepherds, or between The swaying corn, or where cool waters flow; And others say, that speak as if they know, That daily in the cities, in the mean Dark streets, amid the crowd he may be seen, With thieves and harlots wandering to and fro.
But I am blind. How shall a blind man dare Venture along the roaring crowded street, Or branching roads where I may never hit The way he has gone? But someday if I sit Quietly at this corner listening, there May come this way the slow sound of his feet.
WHEN ALL IS SAID
When all is said And all is done Beneath the Sun, And Man lies dead;
When all the earth Is a cold grave, And no more brave Bright things have birth;
When cooling sun And stone-cold world, Together hurled, Flame up as one--
O Sons of Men, When all is flame, What of your fame And splendour then?
When all is fire And flaming air, What of your rare And high desire
To turn the clod To a thing divine, The earth a shrine, And Man the G.o.d?
FRANK PREWETT
TO MY MOTHER IN CANADA, FROM SICK-BED IN ITALY
Dear mother, from the sure sun and warm seas Of Italy, I, sick, remember now What sometimes is forgot in times of ease, Our love, the always felt but unspoken vow.
So send I beckoning hands from here to there, And kiss your black once, now white thin-grown hair And your stooped small shoulder and pinched brow.
Here, mother, there is sunshine every day; It warms the bones and breathes upon the heart; But you I see out-plod a little way, Bitten with cold; your cheeks and fingers smart.
Would you were here, we might in temples lie, And look from azure into azure sky, And paradise achieve, slipping death"s part.
But now "tis time for sleep: I think no speech There needs to pa.s.s between us what we mean, For we soul-venturing mingle each with each.
So, mother, pa.s.s across the world unseen And share in me some wished-for dream in you; For so brings destiny her pledges true, The mother withered, in the son grown green.
VOICES OF WOMEN