Poems of the Past and the Present | Page 5

inland from far Durban,?A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.?Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,?And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans?Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know?By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law?Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,?Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
And what of logic or of truth appears?In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years??Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,?But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."
Christmas-eve, 1899.
THE DEAD DRUMMER
I
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined--just as found:?His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;?And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
II
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew -
Fresh from his Wessex home -?The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,?And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
III
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;?His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up a Southern tree.?And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.
A WIFE IN LONDON?(December, 1899)
I--THE TRAGEDY
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,?Behind whose webby fold on fold?Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand?Of meaning it dazes to understand?Though shaped so shortly:
He--has fallen--in the far South Land . . .
II--THE IRONY
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:?A letter is brought whose lines disclose?By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
Fresh--firm--penned in highest feather -
Page-full of his hoped return,?And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn?In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.
THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN
I
The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill?Of the Isle by the Race {1} -?Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -?And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.
II
No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
Or promontory sides,?Or the ooze by the strand,?Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,?Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion
Of criss-crossing tides.
III
Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing
A whirr, as of wings?Waved by mighty-vanned flies,?Or by night-moths of measureless size,?And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing
Of corporal things.
IV
And they bore to the bluff, and alighted -
A dim-discerned train?Of sprites without mould,?Frameless souls none might touch or might hold -?On the ledge by the turreted lantern, farsighted
By men of the main.
V
And I heard them say "Home!" and I knew them
For souls of the felled?On the earth's nether bord?Under Capricorn, whither they'd warred,?And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them
With breathings inheld.
VI
Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward
A senior soul-flame?Of the like filmy hue:?And he met them and spake: "Is it you,?O my men?" Said they, "Aye! We bear homeward and hearthward
To list to our fame!"
VII
"I've flown there before you," he said then:
"Your households are well;?But--your kin linger less?On your glory arid war-mightiness?Than on dearer things."--"Dearer?" cried these from the dead then,
"Of what do they tell?"
VIII
"Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur
Your doings as boys -?Recall the quaint ways?Of your babyhood's innocent days.?Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer,
And higher your joys.
IX
"A father broods: 'Would I had set him
To some humble trade,?And so slacked his high fire,?And his passionate martial desire;?Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him
To this due crusade!"
X
"And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,
Sworn loyal as doves?"?--"Many mourn; many think?It is not unattractive to prink?Them in sables for heroes. Some fickle and fleet hearts
Have found them new loves."
XI
"And our wives?" quoth another resignedly,
"Dwell they on our deeds?"?--"Deeds of home; that live yet?Fresh as new--deeds of fondness or fret;?Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,
These, these have their heeds."
XII
--"Alas! then it seems that our glory
Weighs less in their thought?Than our old homely acts,?And the long-ago commonplace facts?Of our lives--held by us as scarce part of our story,
And rated as nought!"
XIII
Then bitterly some: "Was it wise now
To raise the tomb-door?For such knowledge? Away!"?But the rest: "Fame we prized till to-day;?Yet that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize now
A thousand times more!"
XIV
Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions
Began to disband?And resolve them in two:?Those whose record was lovely and true?Bore to northward for home: those of bitter traditions
Again left the land,
XV
And, towering to seaward in legions,
They paused at a spot?Overbending the Race -?That engulphing, ghast, sinister place -?Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless regions
Of myriads forgot.
XVI
And the spirits of those who were homing
Passed on, rushingly,?Like the Pentecost Wind;?And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned?And surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming
Sea-mutterings and me.
December 1899.
SONG OF THE SOLDIERS' WIVES
I
At last! In sight of home again,
Of home again;?No more to range and roam again
As at that bygone time??No more to go away from us
And stay from us? -?Dawn, hold not long the day from us,
But quicken it to prime!
II
Now all the town shall ring to them,
Shall ring