Moments of Vision | Page 5

and wide,?Ere dawned your date for meeting me,?O why did you not cry Halloo?Across the stretch between, and say:
"We move, while years as yet divide,?On closing lines which--though it be?You know me not nor I know you -?Will intersect and join some day!"
Then well I had borne?Each scraping thorn;?But the winters froze,?And grew no rose;?No bridge bestrode?The gap at all;?No shape you showed,?And I heard no call!
THE BLINDED BIRD
So zestfully canst thou sing??And all this indignity,?With God's consent, on thee!?Blinded ere yet a-wing?By the red-hot needle thou,?I stand and wonder how?So zestfully thou canst sing!
Resenting not such wrong,?Thy grievous pain forgot,?Eternal dark thy lot,?Groping thy whole life long;?After that stab of fire;?Enjailed in pitiless wire;?Resenting not such wrong!
Who hath charity? This bird.?Who suffereth long and is kind,?Is not provoked, though blind?And alive ensepulchred??Who hopeth, endureth all things??Who thinketh no evil, but sings??Who is divine? This bird.
"THE WIND BLEW WORDS"
The wind blew words along the skies,
And these it blew to me?Through the wide dusk: "Lift up your eyes,
Behold this troubled tree,?Complaining as it sways and plies;
It is a limb of thee.
"Yea, too, the creatures sheltering round -
Dumb figures, wild and tame,?Yea, too, thy fellows who abound -
Either of speech the same?Or far and strange--black, dwarfed, and browned,
They are stuff of thy own frame."
I moved on in a surging awe
Of inarticulateness?At the pathetic Me I saw
In all his huge distress,?Making self-slaughter of the law
To kill, break, or suppress.
THE FADED FACE
How was this I did not see?Such a look as here was shown?Ere its womanhood had blown?Past its first felicity? -?That I did not know you young,
Faded Face,
Know you young!
Why did Time so ill bestead?That I heard no voice of yours?Hail from out the curved contours?Of those lips when rosy red;?Weeted not the songs they sung,
Faded Face,
Songs they sung!
By these blanchings, blooms of old,?And the relics of your voice -?Leavings rare of rich and choice?From your early tone and mould -?Let me mourn,--aye, sorrow-wrung,
Faded Face,
Sorrow-wrung!
THE RIDDLE
I
Stretching eyes west?Over the sea,?Wind foul or fair,?Always stood she?Prospect-impressed;?Solely out there?Did her gaze rest,?Never elsewhere?Seemed charm to be.
II
Always eyes east?Ponders she now -?As in devotion -?Hills of blank brow?Where no waves plough.?Never the least?Room for emotion?Drawn from the ocean?Does she allow.
THE DUEL
"I am here to time, you see;?The glade is well-screened--eh?--against alarm;
Fit place to vindicate by my arm?The honour of my spotless wife,?Who scorns your libel upon her life
In boasting intimacy!
"'All hush-offerings you'll spurn,?My husband. Two must come; one only go,'
She said. 'That he'll be you I know;?To faith like ours Heaven will be just,?And I shall abide in fullest trust
Your speedy glad return.'"
"Good. Here am also I;?And we'll proceed without more waste of words
To warm your cockpit. Of the swords?Take you your choice. I shall thereby?Feel that on me no blame can lie,
Whatever Fate accords."
So stripped they there, and fought,?And the swords clicked and scraped, and the onsets sped;
Till the husband fell; and his shirt was red?With streams from his heart's hot cistern. Nought?Could save him now; and the other, wrought
Maybe to pity, said:
"Why did you urge on this??Your wife assured you; and 't had better been
That you had let things pass, serene?In confidence of long-tried bliss,?Holding there could be nought amiss
In what my words might mean."
Then, seeing nor ruth nor rage?Could move his foeman more--now Death's deaf thrall -
He wiped his steel, and, with a call?Like turtledove to dove, swift broke?Into the copse, where under an oak
His horse cropt, held by a page.
"All's over, Sweet," he cried?To the wife, thus guised; for the young page was she.
"'Tis as we hoped and said 't would be.?He never guessed . . . We mount and ride?To where our love can reign uneyed.
He's clay, and we are free."
AT MAYFAIR LODGINGS
How could I be aware,?The opposite window eyeing?As I lay listless there,?That through its blinds was dying?One I had rated rare?Before I had set me sighing?For another more fair?
Had the house-front been glass,?My vision unobscuring,?Could aught have come to pass?More happiness-insuring?To her, loved as a lass?When spouseless, all-alluring??I reckon not, alas!
So, the square window stood,?Steadily night-long shining?In my close neighbourhood,?Who looked forth undivining?That soon would go for good?One there in pain reclining,?Unpardoned, unadieu'd.
Silently screened from view?Her tragedy was ending?That need not have come due?Had she been less unbending.?How near, near were we two?At that last vital rending, -?And neither of us knew!
TO MY FATHER'S VIOLIN
Does he want you down there?In the Nether Glooms where?The hours may be a dragging load upon him,
As he hears the axle grind
Round and round?Of the great world, in the blind
Still profound?Of the night-time? He might liven at the sound?Of your string, revealing you had not forgone him.
In the gallery west the nave,?But a few yards from his grave,?Did you, tucked beneath his chin, to his bowing
Guide the homely harmony
Of the quire?Who for long years strenuously -
Son and sire -?Caught the strains that at his