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

then, as things unpriced
I sought each fragment, patched and mended;
The midnight whitened
ere I had ended
And gathered words I had sacrificed.
VI
But some, alas, of those I threw
Were past my search, destroyed for ever:
They were your name and
place; and never
Did I regain those clues to you.
VII
I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,
My track; that, so the Will decided,
In life, death, we should be
divided,
And at the sense I ached indeed.

VIII
That ache for you, born long ago,
Throbs on; I never could outgrow it.
What a revenge, did you but
know it!
But that, thank God, you do not know.
BEYOND THE LAST LAMP
(Near Tooting Common)
I
While rain, with eve in partnership,
Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip,

Beyond the last lone lamp I passed
Walking slowly, whispering sadly,
Two linked loiterers, wan,
downcast:
Some heavy thought constrained each face,
And blinded
them to time and place.
II
The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed
In mental scenes no longer
orbed
By love's young rays. Each countenance
As it slowly, as it sadly
Caught the lamplight's yellow glance
Held
in suspense a misery
At things which had been or might be.
III
When I retrod that watery way
Some hours beyond the droop of day,

Still I found pacing there the twain
Just as slowly, just as sadly,
Heedless of the night and rain.
One
could but wonder who they were
And what wild woe detained them
there.
IV

Though thirty years of blur and blot
Have slid since I beheld that spot,

And saw in curious converse there
Moving slowly, moving sadly
That mysterious tragic pair,
Its 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