Times Laughingstocks | Page 6

fling he flung.)
XI
Thereaft I walked the world alone,
Alone, alone!
On his death-day I gave my groan
And dropt his dead-born child.
'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,

None tending me; for Mother Lee
Had died at Glaston, leaving me
Unfriended on the wild.
XII
And in the night as I lay weak,
As I lay weak,
The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
The red moon low
declined -
The ghost of him I'd die to kiss
Rose up and said: "Ah,
tell me this!
Was the child mine, or was it his?
Speak, that I rest may find!"
XIII
O doubt not but I told him then,

I told him then,
That I had kept me from all men
Since we joined
lips and swore.
Whereat he smiled, and thinned away
As the wind
stirred to call up day . . .
- 'Tis past! And here alone I stray
Haunting the Western Moor.
NOTES.--"Windwhistle" (Stanza iv.). The highness and dryness of
Windwhistle Inn was impressed upon the writer two or three years ago,
when, after climbing on a hot afternoon to the beautiful spot near which
it stands and entering the inn for tea, he was informed by the landlady
that none could be had, unless he would fetch water from a valley half a
mile off, the house containing not a drop, owing to its situation.
However, a tantalizing row of full barrels behind her back testified to a
wetness of a certain sort, which was not at that time desired.
"Marshal's Elm" (Stanza vi.) so picturesquely situated, is no longer an
inn, though the house, or part of it, still remains. It used to exhibit a
fine old swinging sign.
"Blue Jimmy" (Stanza x.) was a notorious horse-stealer of Wessex in
those days, who appropriated more than a hundred horses before he
was caught, among others one belonging to a neighbour of the writer's
grandfather. He was hanged at the now demolished Ivel-chester or
Ilchester jail above mentioned--that building formerly of so many
sinister associations in the minds of the local peasantry, and the
continual haunt of fever, which at last led to its condemnation. Its site
is now an innocent-looking green meadow.
April 1902.
THE TWO ROSALINDS
I
The dubious daylight ended,
And I walked the Town alone,
unminding whither bound and why, As from each gaunt street and
gaping square a mist of light ascended

And dispersed upon the sky.
II
Files of evanescent faces
Passed each other without heeding, in their
travail, teen, or joy, Some in void unvisioned listlessness inwrought
with pallid traces
Of keen penury's annoy.
III
Nebulous flames in crystal cages
Leered as if with discontent at city
movement, murk, and grime, And as waiting some procession of great
ghosts from bygone ages
To exalt the ignoble time.
IV
In a colonnade high-lighted,
By a thoroughfare where stern utilitarian
traffic dinned,
On a red and white emblazonment of players and parts,
I sighted
The name of "Rosalind,"
V
And her famous mates of "Arden,"
Who observed no stricter customs
than "the seasons' difference" bade, Who lived with running brooks for
books in Nature's wildwood garden,
And called idleness their trade . . .
VI
Now the poster stirred an ember
Still remaining from my ardours of
some forty years before, When the selfsame portal on an eve it thrilled

me to remember
A like announcement bore;
VII
And expectantly I had entered,
And had first beheld in human mould
a Rosalind woo and plead, On whose transcendent figuring my speedy
soul had centred
As it had been she indeed . . .
VIII
So; all other plans discarding,
I resolved on entrance, bent on seeing
what I once had seen, And approached the gangway of my earlier
knowledge, disregarding
The tract of time between.
IX
"The words, sir?" cried a creature
Hovering mid the shine and shade
as 'twixt the live world and the tomb; But the well-known numbers
needed not for me a text or teacher
To revive and re-illume.
X
Then the play . . . But how unfitted
Was THIS Rosalind!--a mammet
quite to me, in memories nurst, And with chilling disappointment soon
I sought the street I had quitted,
To re-ponder on the first.
XI

The hag still hawked,--I met her
Just without the colonnade. "So you
don't like her, sir?" said she. "Ah--_I_ was once that Rosalind!--I acted
her--none better -
Yes--in eighteen sixty-three.
XII
"Thus I won Orlando to me
In my then triumphant days when I had
charm and maidenhood, Now some forty years ago.--I used to say,
COME WOO ME, WOO ME!"
And she struck the attitude.
XIII
It was when I had gone there nightly;
And the voice--though raucous
now--was yet the old one.--Clear as noon My Rosalind was here . . .
Thereon the band withinside lightly
Beat up a merry tune.
A SUNDAY MORNING TRAGEDY
(circa 186-)
I bore a daughter flower-fair,
In Pydel Vale, alas for me;
I joyed to