Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces | Page 6

olden look may linger on -?All but the couple; they have gone.
V
Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And yet?To me, when nights are weird and wet,?Without those comrades there at tryst
Creeping slowly, creeping sadly,?That lone lane does not exist.?There they seem brooding on their pain,?And will, while such a lane remain.
THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT
If ever joy leave?An abiding sting of sorrow,?So befell it on the morrow
Of that May eve . . .
The travelled sun dropped?To the north-west, low and lower,?The pony's trot grew slower,
And then we stopped.
"This cosy house just by?I must call at for a minute,?A sick man lies within it
Who soon will die.
"He wished to marry me,?So I am bound, when I drive near him,?To inquire, if but to cheer him,
How he may be."
A message was sent in,?And wordlessly we waited,?Till some one came and stated
The bulletin.
And that the sufferer said,?For her call no words could thank her;?As his angel he must rank her
Till life's spark fled.
Slowly we drove away,?When I turned my head, although not?Called; why so I turned I know not
Even to this day.
And lo, there in my view?Pressed against an upper lattice?Was a white face, gazing at us
As we withdrew.
And well did I divine?It to be the man's there dying,?Who but lately had been sighing
For her pledged mine.
Then I deigned a deed of hell;?It was done before I knew it;?What devil made me do it
I cannot tell!
Yes, while he gazed above,?I put my arm about her?That he might see, nor doubt her
My plighted Love.
The pale face vanished quick,?As if blasted, from the casement,?And my shame and self-abasement
Began their prick.
And they prick on, ceaselessly,?For that stab in Love's fierce fashion?Which, unfired by lover's passion,
Was foreign to me.
She smiled at my caress,?But why came the soft embowment?Of her shoulder at that moment
She did not guess.
Long long years has he lain?In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather:?What tears there, bared to weather,
Will cleanse that stain!
Love is long-suffering, brave,?Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel;?But O, too, Love is cruel,
Cruel as the grave.
LOST LOVE
I play my sweet old airs -
The airs he knew?When our love was true -?But he does not balk?His determined walk,?And passes up the stairs.
I sing my songs once more,
And presently hear?His footstep near?As if it would stay;?But he goes his way,?And shuts a distant door.
So I wait for another morn
And another night?In this soul-sick blight;?And I wonder much?As I sit, why such?A woman as I was born!
"MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND"
My spirit will not haunt the mound
Above my breast,?But travel, memory-possessed,?To where my tremulous being found
Life largest, best.
My phantom-footed shape will go
When nightfall grays?Hither and thither along the ways?I and another used to know
In backward days.
And there you'll find me, if a jot
You still should care?For me, and for my curious air;?If otherwise, then I shall not,
For you, be there.
WESSEX HEIGHTS (1896)
There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.
In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man's friend - Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend:?Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I, But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky.
In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways - Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days: They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things - Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings.
Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was, And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this, Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.
I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the moon,?Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune; I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed?For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast.
There's a ghost at Yell'ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night,?There's a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a shroud of white,?There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near, I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear.
As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers, I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers; Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know; Well,