Late Lyrics and Earlier | Page 9

its walls?
"They were--I think 'twas told me--

Queer in their works and ways;
The teller would often hold me
With weird tales of those days.
Some folk can not abide here,
But we--we do not care
Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,
Knew joy, or despair."
"AS 'TWERE TO-NIGHT"
(SONG)
As 'twere to-night, in the brief space
Of a far eventime,
My spirit rang achime
At vision of a girl of grace;

As 'twere to-night, in the brief space
Of a far eventime.
As 'twere at noontide of to-morrow
I airily walked and talked,
And wondered as I walked
What it could
mean, this soar from sorrow;
As 'twere at noontide of to-morrow
I airily walked and talked.
As 'twere at waning of this week
Broke a new life on me;
Trancings of bliss to be
In some dim dear
land soon to seek;
As 'twere at waning of this week
Broke a new life on me!
THE CONTRETEMPS
A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,
And we clasped, and almost kissed;
But she was not the woman
whom
I had promised to meet in the thawing brume
On that
harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.

So loosening from me swift she said:
"O why, why feign to be
The one I had meant!--to whom I have sped

To fly with, being so sorrily wed!"
- 'Twas thus and thus that she
upbraided me.
My assignation had struck upon
Some others' like it, I found.
And her lover rose on the night anon;

And then her husband entered on
The lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness
around.
"Take her and welcome, man!" he cried:
"I wash my hands of her.
I'll find me twice as good a bride!"
--All
this to me, whom he had eyed,
Plainly, as his wife's planned
deliverer.
And next the lover: "Little I knew,
Madam, you had a third!
Kissing here in my very view!"
--Husband
and lover then withdrew.
I let them; and I told them not they erred.
Why not? Well, there faced she and I--
Two strangers who'd kissed, or near,
Chancewise. To see stand
weeping by
A woman once embraced, will try
The tension of a man
the most austere.
So it began; and I was young,
She pretty, by the lamp,
As flakes came waltzing down among
The
waves of her clinging hair, that hung
Heavily on her temples, dark
and damp.
And there alone still stood we two;

She one cast off for me,
Or so it seemed: while night ondrew,

Forcing a parley what should do
We twain hearts caught in one
catastrophe.
In stranded souls a common strait
Wakes latencies unknown,
Whose impulse may precipitate
A
life-long leap. The hour was late,
And there was the Jersey boat with
its funnel agroan.
"Is wary walking worth much pother?"
It grunted, as still it stayed.
"One pairing is as good as another

Where all is venture! Take each other,
And scrap the oaths that you
have aforetime made." . . .
--Of the four involved there walks but one
On earth at this late day.
And what of the chapter so begun?
In that
odd complex what was done?
Well; happiness comes in full to none:

Let peace lie on lulled lips: I will not say.
WEYMOUTH.
A GENTLEMAN'S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY,
WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER
I dwelt in the shade of a city,
She far by the sea,
With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;
But never with me.
Her form on the ballroom's smooth flooring
I never once met,
To guide her with accents adoring

Through Weippert's "First Set." {1}
I spent my life's seasons with pale ones
In Vanity Fair,
And she enjoyed hers among hale ones
In salt-smelling air.
Maybe she had eyes of deep colour,
Maybe they were blue,
Maybe as she aged they got duller;
That never I knew.
She may have had lips like the coral,
But I never kissed them,
Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel,
Nor sought for, nor missed them.
Not a word passed of love all our lifetime,
Between us, nor thrill;
We'd never a husband-and-wife time,
For good or for ill.
Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal,
Lie I and lies she,
This never-known lady, eternal
Companion to me!
THE OLD GOWN
(SONG)
I have seen her in gowns the brightest,
Of azure, green, and red,
And in the simplest, whitest,
Muslined from heel to head;
I have watched her walking, riding,

Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,
Or in fixed thought abiding
By the foam-fingered sea.
In woodlands I have known her,
When boughs were mourning loud,
In the rain-reek she has shown
her
Wild-haired and watery-browed.
And once or twice she has cast me
As she pomped along the street
Court-clad, ere quite she had passed
me,
A glance from her chariot-seat.
But in my memoried passion
For evermore stands she
In the gown of fading fashion
She wore that night when we,
Doomed long to part, assembled
In the snug small room; yea, when
She sang with lips that trembled,
"Shall I see his face again?"
A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER
I marked when the weather