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 c.h.i.n.k, 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 orchestra 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 gla.s.s 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!