Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces | Page 7

time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go.
So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west, Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest,?Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me, And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.
IN DEATH DIVIDED
I
I shall rot here, with those whom in their day
You never knew,?And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,
Met not my view,?Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you.
II
No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower,
While earth endures,?Will fall on my mound and within the hour
Steal on to yours;?One robin never haunt our two green covertures.
III
Some organ may resound on Sunday noons
By where you lie,?Some other thrill the panes with other tunes
Where moulder I;?No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby.
IV
The simply-cut memorial at my head
Perhaps may take?A Gothic form, and that above your bed
Be Greek in make;?No linking symbol show thereon for our tale's sake.
V
And in the monotonous moils of strained, hard-run
Humanity,?The eternal tie which binds us twain in one
No eye will see?Stretching across the miles that sever you from me.
THE PLACE ON THE MAP
I
I look upon the map that hangs by me -?Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry -
And I mark a jutting height?Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea.
II
--'Twas a day of latter summer, hot and dry;?Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked on, she and I,
By this spot where, calmly quite,?She informed me what would happen by and by.
III
This hanging map depicts the coast and place,?And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case
All distinctly to my sight,?And her tension, and the aspect of her face.
IV
Weeks and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue,?Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too,
While she told what, as by sleight,?Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue.
V
For the wonder and the wormwood of the whole?Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soul
Wore a torrid tragic light?Under order-keeping's rigorous control.
VI
So, the map revives her words, the spot, the time,?And the thing we found we had to face before the next year's prime;
The charted coast stares bright,?And its episode comes back in pantomime.
WHERE THE PICNIC WAS
Where we made the fire,?In the summer time,?Of branch and briar?On the hill to the sea?I slowly climb?Through winter mire,?And scan and trace?The forsaken place?Quite readily.
Now a cold wind blows,?And the grass is gray,?But the spot still shows?As a burnt circle--aye,?And stick-ends, charred,?Still strew the sward?Whereon I stand,?Last relic of the band?Who came that day!
Yes, I am here?Just as last year,?And the sea breathes brine?From its strange straight line?Up hither, the same?As when we four came.?- But two have wandered far?From this grassy rise?Into urban roar?Where no picnics are,?And one--has shut her eyes?For evermore.
THE SCHRECKHORN?(With thoughts of Leslie Stephen)?(June 1897)
Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim;?Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams?Upon my nearing vision, less it seems?A looming Alp-height than a guise of him?Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb,?Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe,?Of semblance to his personality?In its quaint glooms, keen lights, and rugged trim.
At his last change, when Life's dull coils unwind,?Will he, in old love, hitherward escape,?And the eternal essence of his mind?Enter this silent adamantine shape,?And his low voicing haunt its slipping snows?When dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose?
A SINGER ASLEEP?(Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909)
I
In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,?That sentrys up and down all night, all day,?From cove to promontory, from ness to bay,
The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally.
II
? It was as though a garland of red roses Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun, In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes, Upon Victoria's formal middle time
? His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.
III
O that far morning of a summer day?When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay?Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes,?I walked and read with a quick glad surprise
New words, in classic guise, -
IV
The passionate pages of his earlier years,?Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears;?Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who?Blew them not naively, but as one who knew
Full well why thus he blew.
V
I still can hear the brabble and the roar?At those thy tunes, O still one, now passed through?That fitful fire of tongues then entered new!?Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore;
Thine swells yet more and more.
VI
? His singing-mistress verily was no other Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother Of all the tribe that feel in melodies; Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep Into the rambling world-encircling deep
? Which hides her where none sees.
VII
And one can hold in thought that nightly here?His phantom may draw down to