Late Lyrics and Earlier | Page 9

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 changed,?And the panes began to quake,?And the winds rose up and ranged,?That night, lying half-awake.
Dead leaves blew into my room,?And alighted upon my bed,?And a tree declared to the gloom?Its sorrow that they were shed.
One leaf of them touched my hand,?And I thought that it was you?There stood as you used to stand,?And saying at last you knew!
(?) 1913.
A DUETTIST TO HER PIANOFORTE?SONG OF SILENCE?(E. L. H.--H. C. H.)
Since every sound moves memories,
How can I play you?Just as I might if you raised no scene,?By your ivory rows, of a form between?My vision and your time-worn sheen,
As when each day you?Answered our fingers with ecstasy??So it's hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!
And as I am doomed to counterchord
Her notes no more?In those old things I used to know,?In a fashion, when we practised so,?"Good-night!--Good-bye!" to your pleated show
Of silk, now hoar,?Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key,?For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!
I fain would second her, strike to her stroke,
As when she was by,?Aye, even from the ancient clamorous "Fall?Of Paris," or "Battle of Prague" withal,?To the "Roving Minstrels," or "Elfin Call"
Sung soft as a sigh:?But upping ghosts press achefully,?And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!
Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers
Afresh on the air,?Too quick would the small white shapes be here?Of the fellow twain of hands so dear;?And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear;
--Then how shall I bear?Such heavily-haunted harmony??Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!
"WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED"
Where three roads joined it was green and fair,?And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,?And life laughed sweet when I halted there;?Yet there I never again would be.
I am sure those branchways are brooding now,?With a wistful blankness upon their face,?While the few mute passengers notice how?Spectre-beridden is the place;
Which nightly sighs like a laden soul,?And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell?Not far from thence, should have let it roll?Away from them down a plumbless well
While the phasm of him who fared starts up,?And of her who was waiting him sobs from near,?As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup?They filled for themselves when their sky was clear.
Yes, I see those roads--now rutted and bare,?While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea;?And though life laughed when