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

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, 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