Late Lyrics and Earlier | Page 8

why this is?"
she said.
- "He had no kindred, Ma'am, but you near."
--She set a stone at his head.
She learnt to dream of him, and told them:
"In slumber often uprises he,
And says: 'I am joyed that, after all,
Dear,
You've not deserted me!"
At length died too this kinless woman,
As he had died she had grown to crave;
And at her dying she
besought them
To bury her in his grave.
Such said, she had paused; until she added:
"Call me by his name on the stone,
As I were, first to last, his dearest,
Not she who left him lone!"
And this they did. And so it became there
That, by the strength of a tender whim,
The stranger was she who
bore his name there,
Not she who wedded him.
HER SONG
I sang that song on Sunday,
To witch an idle while,
I sang that song on Monday,

As fittest to beguile;
I sang it as the year outwore,
And the new slid in;
I thought not what might shape before
Another would begin.
I sang that song in summer,
All unforeknowingly,
To him as a new-comer
From regions strange to me:
I sang it when in afteryears
The shades stretched out,
And paths were faint; and flocking fears
Brought cup-eyed care and doubt.
Sings he that song on Sundays
In some dim land afar,
On Saturdays, or Mondays,
As when the evening star
Glimpsed in upon his bending face
And my hanging hair,
And time untouched me with a trace
Of soul-smart or despair?
A WET AUGUST
Nine drops of water bead the jessamine,
And nine-and-ninety smear
the stones and tiles:
- 'Twas not so in that August--full-rayed, fine--

When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.
Or was there then no noted radiancy
Of summer? Were dun clouds, a
dribbling bough,
Gilt over by the light I bore in me,
And was the
waste world just the same as now?
It can have been so: yea, that threatenings
Of coming down-drip on

the sunless gray,
By the then possibilities in things
Were wrought
more bright than brightest skies to-day.
1920.
THE DISSEMBLERS
"It was not you I came to please,
Only myself," flipped she;
"I like this spot of phantasies,
And thought you far from me."
But O, he was the secret spell
That led her to the lea!
"It was not she who shaped my ways,
Or works, or thoughts," he said.
"I scarcely marked her living days,
Or missed her much when dead."
But O, his joyance knew its knell
When daisies hid her head!
TO A LADY PLAYING AND SINGING IN THE MORNING
Joyful lady, sing!
And I will lurk here listening,
Though nought be
done, and nought begun,
And work-hours swift are scurrying.
Sing, O lady, still!
Aye, I will wait each note you trill,
Though
duties due that press to do
This whole day long I unfulfil.
"--It is an evening tune;
One not designed to waste the noon,"
You
say. I know: time bids me go--
For daytide passes too, too soon!
But let indulgence be,
This once, to my rash ecstasy:
When sounds
nowhere that carolled air
My idled morn may comfort me!

"A MAN WAS DRAWING NEAR TO ME"
On that gray night of mournful drone,
A part from aught to hear, to
see,
I dreamt not that from shires unknown
In gloom, alone,
By Halworthy,
A man was drawing near to me.
I'd no concern at anything,
No sense of coming pull-heart play;
Yet,
under the silent outspreading
Of even's wing
Where Otterham lay,
A man was riding up my way.
I thought of nobody--not of one,
But only of trifles--legends, ghosts--

Though, on the moorland dim and dun
That travellers shun
About these coasts,
The man had passed
Tresparret Posts.
There was no light at all inland,
Only the seaward pharos-fire,

Nothing to let me understand
That hard at hand
By Hennett Byre
The man was getting nigh and
nigher.
There was a rumble at the door,
A draught disturbed the drapery,

And but a minute passed before,
With gaze that bore
My destiny,
The man revealed himself to me.
THE STRANGE HOUSE
(MAX GATE, A.D. 2000)
"I hear the piano playing--
Just as a ghost might play."
"--O, but what are you saying?
There's no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;

Years past it went amiss."
"--I heard it, or shouldn't have spoken:
A strange house, this!
"I catch some undertone here,
From some one out of sight."
"--Impossible; we are alone here,
And shall be through the night."
"--The parlour-door--what stirred
it?"
"--No one: no soul's in range."
"--But, anyhow, I heard it,
And it seems strange!
"Seek my own room I cannot--
A figure is on the stair!"
"--What figure? Nay, I scan not
Any one lingering there.
A bough outside is waving,
And that's its shade by the moon."
"--Well, all is strange! I am
craving
Strength to leave soon."
"--Ah, maybe you've some vision
Of showings beyond our sphere;
Some sight, sense, intuition
Of what once happened here?
The house is old; they've hinted
It once held two love-thralls,
And they may have imprinted
Their dreams on