Moments of Vision | Page 6

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 fingering low or higher

From your four thin threads and eff-holes came outflowing.

And, too, what merry tunes
He would bow at nights or noons
That
chanced to find him bent to lute a measure,
When he made you speak his heart
As in dream,
Without book or music-chart,
On some theme
Elusive as a jack-o'-lanthorn's gleam,
And the
psalm of duty shelved for trill of pleasure.
Well, you can not, alas,
The barrier overpass
That screens him in
those Mournful Meads hereunder,
Where no fiddling can be heard
In the glades
Of silentness, no bird
Thrills the shades;
Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades,

No bowing wakes a congregation's wonder.
He must do without you now,
Stir you no more anyhow
To
yearning concords taught you in your glory;
While, your strings a tangled wreck,
Once smart drawn,
Ten worm-wounds in your neck,
Purflings wan
With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con
Your present
dumbness, shape your olden story.
1916.
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
This statue of Liberty, busy man,
Here erect in the city square,
I have watched while your scrubbings,
this early morning,

Strangely wistful,
And half tristful,
Have turned her from foul to
fair;
With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,
Bringing her out of the grime
That has smeared her during the
smokes of winter
With such glumness
In her dumbness,
And aged her before her
time.
You have washed her down with motherly care -
Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,
To the very hem of the robes that
drape her -
All expertly
And alertly,
Till a long stream, black with soot,
Flows over the pavement to the road,
And her shape looms pure as snow:
I read you are hired by the City
guardians -
May be yearly,
Or once merely -
To treat the statues so?
"Oh, I'm not hired by the Councilmen
To cleanse the statues here.
I do this one as a self-willed duty,
Not as paid to,
Or at all made to,
But because the doing is dear."
Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!
Liberty's knight divine.
What you have done would have been my
doing,
Yea, most verily,
Well, and thoroughly,
Had but your courage been
mine!

"Oh I care not for Liberty's mould,
Liberty charms not me;
What's Freedom but an idler's vision,
Vain, pernicious,
Often vicious,
Of things that cannot be!
"Memory it is that brings me to this -
Of a daughter--my one sweet own.
She grew a famous carver's
model,
One of the fairest
And of the rarest:-
She sat for the figure as
shown.
"But alas, she died in this distant place
Before I was warned to betake
Myself to her side! . . . And in love of
my darling,
In love of the fame of her,
And the good name of her,
I do this for
her sake."
Answer I gave not. Of that form
The carver was I at his side;
His child, my model, held so saintly,
Grand in feature,
Gross in nature,
In the dens of vice had died.
THE BACKGROUND AND THE FIGURE
(Lover's Ditty)
I think of