Moments of Vision | Page 9

her in a dim old hall
Dream-built too fancifully,
(Have your way, my heart, O!)?But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead?My feet to such a hall indeed,
Where stood the very She.
Strange, startling, was it then to learn
I had glanced down unborn time,
(Have your way, my heart, O!)?And prophesied, whereby I knew?That which the years had planned to do
In warranty of my rhyme.
BY RUSHY-POND.
A JANUARY NIGHT?(1879)
The rain smites more and more,?The east wind snarls and sneezes;?Through the joints of the quivering door
The water wheezes.
The tip of each ivy-shoot?Writhes on its neighbour's face;?There is some hid dread afoot
That we cannot trace.
Is it the spirit astray?Of the man at the house below?Whose coffin they took in to-day?
We do not know.
A KISS
By a wall the stranger now calls his,?Was born of old a particular kiss,?Without forethought in its genesis;?Which in a trice took wing on the air.?And where that spot is nothing shows:
There ivy calmly grows,?And no one knows?What a birth was there!
That kiss is gone where none can tell -?Not even those who felt its spell:?It cannot have died; that know we well.?Somewhere it pursues its flight,?One of a long procession of sounds
Travelling aethereal rounds?Far from earth's bounds?In the infinite.
THE ANNOUNCEMENT
They came, the brothers, and took two chairs
In their usual quiet way;?And for a time we did not think
They had much to say.
And they began and talked awhile
Of ordinary things,?Till spread that silence in the room
A pent thought brings.
And then they said: "The end has come.
Yes: it has come at last."?And we looked down, and knew that day
A spirit had passed.
THE OXEN
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"?An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,?Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,?If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel
"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"?I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
1915.
THE TRESSES
"When the air was damp?It made my curls hang slack?As they kissed my neck and back?While I footed the salt-aired track
I loved to tramp.
"When it was dry?They would roll up crisp and tight?As I went on in the light?Of the sun, which my own sprite
Seemed to outvie.
"Now I am old;?And have not one gay curl?As I had when a girl?For dampness to unfurl
Or sun uphold!"
THE PHOTOGRAPH
The flame crept up the portrait line by line?As it lay on the coals in the silence of night's profound,
And over the arm's incline,?And along the marge of the silkwork superfine,?And gnawed at the delicate bosom's defenceless round.
Then I vented a cry of hurt, and averted my eyes;?The spectacle was one that I could not bear,
To my deep and sad surprise;?But, compelled to heed, I again looked furtive-wise?Till the flame had eaten her breasts, and mouth, and hair.
"Thank God, she is out of it now!" I said at last,?In a great relief of heart when the thing was done
That had set my soul aghast,?And nothing was left of the picture unsheathed from the past But the ashen ghost of the card it had figured on.
She was a woman long hid amid packs of years,?She might have been living or dead; she was lost to my sight,
And the deed that had nigh drawn tears?Was done in a casual clearance of life's arrears;?But I felt as if I had put her to death that night! . . .
? * *
? Well; she knew nothing thereof did she survive, And suffered nothing if numbered among the dead;
? Yet--yet--if on earth alive Did she feel a smart, and with vague strange anguish strive? If in heaven, did she smile at me sadly and shake her head?
ON A HEATH
I could hear a gown-skirt rustling
Before I could see her shape,?Rustling through the heather
That wove the common's drape,?On that evening of dark weather
When I hearkened, lips agape.
And the town-shine in the distance
Did but baffle here the sight,?And then a voice flew forward:
Dear, is't you? I fear the night!"?And the herons flapped to norward
In the firs upon my right.
There was another looming
Whose life we did not see;?There was one stilly blooming
Full nigh to where walked we;?There was a shade entombing
All that was bright of me.
AN ANNIVERSARY
It was at the very date to which we have come,
In the month of the matching name,?When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum,
Its couch-time at night being the same.?And the same path stretched here that people now follow,
And the same stile crossed their way,?And beyond the same green hillock and hollow
The same horizon lay;?And the same man pilgrims now hereby who pilgrimed here that day.
Let so much be said of the date-day's sameness;
But the tree that neighbours the track,?And stoops like