1916.
NEAR LANIVET, 1872
There was a stunted handpost just on the crest, Only a few feet high: She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest, At the crossways close thereby.
She leant back, being so weary, against its stem, And laid her arms on its own, Each open palm stretched out to each end of them, Her sad face sideways thrown.
Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day Made her look as one crucified In my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way, And hurriedly "Don"t," I cried.
I do not think she heard. Loosing thence she said, As she stepped forth ready to go, "I am rested now.--Something strange came into my head; I wish I had not leant so!"
And wordless we moved onward down from the hill In the west cloud"s murked obscure, And looking back we could see the handpost still In the solitude of the moor.
"It struck her too," I thought, for as if afraid She heavily breathed as we trailed; Till she said, "I did not think how "twould look in the shade, When I leant there like one nailed."
I, lightly: "There"s nothing in it. For YOU, anyhow!"
--"O I know there is not," said she . . .
"Yet I wonder . . . If no one is bodily crucified now, In spirit one may be!"
And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see In the running of Time"s far gla.s.s Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be Some day.--Alas, alas!
JOYS OF MEMORY
When the spring comes round, and a certain day Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees And says, Remember, I begin again, as if it were new, A day of like date I once lived through, Whiling it hour by hour away; So shall I do till my December, When spring comes round.
I take my holiday then and my rest Away from the dun life here about me, Old hours re-greeting With the quiet sense that bring they must Such throbs as at first, till I house with dust, And in the numbness my heartsome zest For things that were, be past repeating When spring comes round.
TO THE MOON
"What have you looked at, Moon, In your time, Now long past your prime?"
"O, I have looked at, often looked at Sweet, sublime, Sore things, shudderful, night and noon In my time."
"What have you mused on, Moon, In your day, So aloof, so far away?"
"O, I have mused on, often mused on Growth, decay, Nations alive, dead, mad, aswoon, In my day!"
"Have you much wondered, Moon, On your rounds, Self-wrapt, beyond Earth"s bounds?"
"Yea, I have wondered, often wondered At the sounds Reaching me of the human tune On my rounds."
"What do you think of it, Moon, As you go?
Is Life much, or no?"
"O, I think of it, often think of it As a show G.o.d ought surely to shut up soon, As I go."
COPYING ARCHITECTURE IN AN OLD MINSTER (Wimborne)
How smartly the quarters of the hour march by That the jack-o"-clock never forgets; Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp"s eye, Or got the true twist of the ogee over, A double ding-dong ricochetts.
Just so did he clang here before I came, And so will he clang when I"m gone Through the Minster"s cavernous hollows--the same Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver To the speechless midnight and dawn!
I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts, Whose mould lies below and around.
Yes; the next "Come, come," draws them out from their posts, And they gather, and one shade appears, and another, As the eve-damps creep from the ground.
See--a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb, And a Duke and his d.u.c.h.ess near; And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom, And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber; And shapes unknown in the rear.
Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan To better ail-stricken mankind; I catch their cheepings, though thinner than The overhead creak of a pa.s.sager"s pinion When leaving land behind.
Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn, And caution them not to come To a world so ancient and trouble-torn, Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness, And ardours chilled and numb.
They waste to fog as I stir and stand, And move from the arched recess, And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand, And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny In a moment"s forgetfulness.
TO SHAKESPEARE AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS
Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes, Thou, who display"dst a life of common-place, Leaving no intimate word or personal trace Of high design outside the artistry Of thy penned dreams, Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally.
Through human orbits thy discourse to-day, Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on In harmonies that cow Oblivion, And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect Maintain a sway Not fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked.
And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour, The Avon just as always gla.s.sed the tower, Thy age was published on thy pa.s.sing-bell But in due rote With other dwellers" deaths accorded a like knell.
And at the strokes some townsman (met, maybe, And thereon queried by some squire"s good dame Driving in shopward) may have given thy name, With, "Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do; Though, as for me, I knew him but by just a neighbour"s nod, "tis true.
"I" faith, few knew him much here, save by word, He having elsewhere led his busier life; Though to be sure he left with us his wife."
--"Ah, one of the tradesmen"s sons, I now recall . . .
Witty, I"ve heard . . .
We did not know him . . . Well, good-day. Death comes to all."
So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find To mingle with the barn-door brood awhile, Then vanish from their homely domicile - Into man"s poesy, we wot not whence, Flew thy strange mind, Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped for ever thence.
1916.