The Last Chrysanthemum

Why should this flower delay so long 

To show its tremulous plumes? 

Now is the time of plaintive robin-song, 

When flowers are in their tombs. 

Through the slow summer, when the sun 

Called to each frond and whorl 

That all he could for flowers was being done, 

Why did it not uncurl? 

It must have felt that fervid call 

Although it took no heed, 

Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall, 

And saps all retrocede. 

Too late its beauty, lonely thing, 

The season's shine is spent, 

Nothing remains for it but shivering 

In tempests turbulent. 

Had it a reason for delay, 

Dreaming in witlessness 

That for a bloom so delicately gay 

Winter would stay its stress? 

I talk as if the thing were born 

With sense to work its mind; 

Yet it is but one mask of many worn 

By the Great Face behind. 

-o0o-

This poem concludes the series here. The blog continues tomorrow in

Johns Mixed Bag Blog

johnsmixedbagblog.blogspot.com

Midnight on the Great Western

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,

And the roof-lamp's oily flame

Played down on his listless form and face,

Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,

Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy

Had a ticket stuck; and a string

Around his neck bore the key of his box,

That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams

Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy

Towards a world unknown,

Who calmly, as if incurious quite

On all at stake, can undertake

This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,

Our rude realms far above,

Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete

This region of sin that you find you in,

But are not of? 

-o0o-

Blog Changes

On Friday 21st December my four blogs will combine to form
JOHNS MIXED BAG BLOG
and the final posts on Now that what I call art, The Thomas Hardy Poetry Path, My Poetry Digest and Every Day a Discovery on the Net will be on Thursday 20th December
The new blog can be seen at
JOHNS MIXED BAG BLOG
johnsmixedbagblog.blogspot.com

The Five Students

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,

   The sun grows passionate-eyed,

And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;

   As strenuously we stride, —

Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,

  All beating by.

The air is shaken, the high-road hot,

   Shadowless swoons the day,

The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not

   We on our urgent way, —

Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,

   But one - elsewhere.

Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,

   And forward still we press

Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,

As in the spring hours - yes,

Three of us; fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,

   But - fallen one more.

The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in

   At night-time noiselessly,

The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin

   And yet on the beat are we, —

Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go

   The track we know.

Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,

   The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,

The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,

   Yet I still stalk the course —

One of us -  Dark and fair He, dark and fair She - gone:

   The rest - anon.

-o0o-

The Blinded Bird

So zestfully canst thou sing?

And all this indignity,

With God's consent, on thee!

Blinded ere yet a-wing

By the red-hot needle thou,

I stand and wonder how

So zestfully thou canst sing!

Resenting not such wrong,

Thy grievous pain forgot,

Eternal dark thy lot,

Groping thy whole life long;

After that stab of fire;

Enjailed in pitiless wire;

Resenting not such wrong!

Who hath charity? This bird.

Who suffereth long and is kind,

Is not provoked, though blind

And alive ensepulchred?

Who hopeth, endureth all things?

Who thinketh no evil, but sings?

Who is divine? This bird.

-o0o-

The Frozen Greenhouse

"There was a frost

Last night!" she said,

"And the stove was forgot

When we went to bed,

And the greenhouse plants

are frozen dead!"

By the breakfast blaze

Blank-faced spoke she,

Her scared young look

Seeming to be

The very symbol

Of tragedy.

The frost is fiercer

Than then today,

As I pass the place

Of her once dismay,

But the greenhouse stands

Warm, tight, and gay,

While she who grieved

At the sad lot

Of her pretty plants -

Cold, iced, forgot -

Herself is colder,

And knows it not.

-o0o-

Her Father

I met her, as we had privily planned,

Where passing feet beat busily:

She whispered: "Father is at hand!

       He wished to walk with me."

His presence as he joined us there

Banished our words of warmth away;

We felt, with cloudings of despair,

       What Love must lose that day.

Her crimson lips remained unkissed,

Our fingers kept no tender hold,

His lack of feeling made the tryst

       Embarrassed, stiff, and cold.

A cynic ghost then rose and said,

"But is his love for her so small

That, nigh to yours, it may be read

       As of no worth at all?

"You love her for her pink and white;

But what when their fresh splendours close?

His love will last her in despite

       Of Time, and wrack, and foes."

-o0o-

The Superceded

As newer comers crowd the fore, 

   We drop behind. 

- We who have laboured long and sore 

   Times out of mind, 

And keen are yet, must not regret 

   To drop behind. 

Yet there are of us some who grieve 

   To go behind; 

Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe 

   Their fires declined, 

And know none cares, remembers, spares 

   Who go behind. 

 'Tis not that we have unforetold 

   The drop behind; 

We feel the new must oust the old 

   In every kind; 

But yet we think, must we, must WE, 

   Too, drop behind? 

-o0o-

At the Railway Station, Upway

"There is not much that I can do,

For I've no money that's quite my own!"

Spoke up the pitying child -

A little boy with a violin

At the station before the train came in, -

"But I can play my fiddle to you,

And a nice one 'tis, and good in tone!"

The man in the handcuffs smiled;

The constable looked, and he smiled, too,

As the fiddle began to twang;

And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang

Uproariously:

"This life so free

Is the thing for me!"

And the constable smiled, and said no word,

As if unconscious of what he heard;

And so they went on till the train came in -

The convict, and boy with the violin.

-o0o-

The Old Workman

"Why are you so bent down before your time,

Old mason? Many have not left their prime

So far behind at your age, and can still

Stand full upright at will."

He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,

And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;

"Those upper blocks," he said, "that there you see,

It was that ruined me."

There stood in the air up to the parapet

Crowning the corner height, the stones as set

By him - ashlar whereon the gales might drum

For centuries to come.

"I carried them up," he said, "by a ladder there;

The last was as big a load as I could bear;

But on I heaved; and something in my back

Moved, as 'twere with a crack.

"So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain;

And those who live there, walled from wind and rain

By freestone that I lifted, do not know

That my life's ache came so.

"They don't know me, or even know my name,

But good I think it, somehow, all the same

To have kept 'em safe from harm, and right and tight,

Though it has broke me quite.

"Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud,

Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud,

And to stand storms for ages, beating round

When I lie underground."

-o0o-

The Dark-Eyed Gentleman

I pitched my day’s leazings in Crimmercrock Lane,    

To tie up my garter and jog on again,    

When a dear dark-eyed gentleman passed there and said,    

In a way that made all o’ me colour rose-red,    

                “What do I see -           

                O pretty knee!”    

And he came and he tied up my garter for me.    

’Twixt sunset and moonrise it was, I can mind:    

Ah, ’tis easy to lose what we nevermore find! -    

Of the dear stranger’s home, of his name, I knew nought,            

But I soon knew his nature and all that it brought.    

                Then bitterly    

                Sobbed I that he    

Should ever have tied up my garter for me!    

Yet now I’ve beside me a fine lissom lad,            

And my slip’s nigh forgot, and my days are not sad;    

My own dearest joy is he, comrade, and friend,    

He it is who safe-guards me, on him I depend;    

                No sorrow brings he,    

                And thankful I be            

That his daddy once tied up my garter for me!  

-o0o-  

The Interloper

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,

And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;

I view them talking in quiet glee

As they drop down towards the puffins' lair

    By the roughest of ways;

But another with the three rides on, I see,

    Whom I like not to be there!

No: it's not anybody you think of. Next

A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream

Where two sit happily and half in the dark:

They read, helped out by a frail-wick'd gleam,

    Some rhythmic text;

But one sits with them whom they don't mark,

    One I'm wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name. And now

I discern gay diners in a mansion-place,

And the guests dropping wit - pert, prim, or choice,

And the hostess's tender and laughing face,

    And the host's bland brow;

But I cannot help hearing a hollow voice,

    And I'd fain not hear it there.

No: it's not from the stranger you once met. Ah,

Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;

People on a lawn - quite a crowd of them. Yes,

And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;

    And they say, "Hurrah!"

To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless,

    Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it's not the pale Form your imagings raise,

That waits on us all at a destined time,

It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed;

O that it were such a shape sublime

    In these latter days!

It is that under which best lives corrode;

    Would, would it could not be there!

-o0o-

The Farm-Woman's Winter

If seasons all were summers,

And leaves would never fall,

And hopping casement-comers

Were foodless not at all,

And fragile folk might be here

That white winds bid depart;

Then one I used to see here

Would warm my wasted heart!

One frail, who, bravely tilling

Long hours in gripping gusts,

Was mastered by their chilling,

And now his ploughshare rusts,

So savage winter catches

The breath of limber things,

And what I love he snatches,

And what I love not, brings.

-o0o-

I Sometimes Think

I sometimes think as here I sit

Of things I have done,

Which seemed in doing not unfit

To face the sun;

Yet never a soul has paused a whit

On such - not one.

There was that eager strenuous press

To sow good seed;

There was that saving from distress

In the nick of need;

There were those words in the wilderness

Who cared to heed?

Yet can this be full true, or no?

For one did care,

And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,

Like wind on the stair,

Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though

I may despair.

-o0o-

Who's in the next room?

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to see

Somebody in the dawning passing through,

Unknown to me."

"Nay: you saw nought. He passed invisibly."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to hear

Somebody muttering firm in a language new

That chills my ear."

"No: you catch not his tongue who has entered there."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to feel

His breath like a clammy draught, as if it drew

From the Polar Wheel."

"No: none who breathes at all does the door conceal."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

A figure wan

With a message to one in there of something due?

Shall I know him anon?"

"Yea he; and he brought such; and you'll know him anon."

-o0o-

To a Well-named Dwelling

Glad old house of lichened stonework,

What I owed you in my lone work,

   Noon and night!

Whensoever faint or ailing,

Letting go my grasp and failing,

   You lent light.

How by that fair title came you?

Did some forward eye so name you

   Knowing that one,

Sauntering down his century blindly,

Would remark your sound, so kindly,

   And be won?

Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,

Bask in April, May, and June-light,

   Zephyr-fanned;

Let your chambers show no sorrow,

Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,

   While they stand.

-o0o-

The Voice of Things

Forty Augusts - aye, and several more - ago,

   When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,

The waves huzza'd like a multitude below

   In the sway of an all-including joy

      Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after,

   When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,

And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter

   At the lot of men, and all the vapoury

      Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where

   Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;

But they supplicate now - like a congregation there

   Who murmur the Confession - I outside,

      Prayer denied.

-o0o-

The West-of-Wessex Girl

A very West-of-Wessex girl,

   As blithe as blithe could be,

   Was once well-known to me,

And she would laud her native town,

   And hope and hope that we

Might sometime study up and down

   Its charms in company.

But never I squired my Wessex girl

   In jaunts to Hoe or street

   When hearts were high in beat,

Nor saw her in the marbled ways

   Where market-people meet

That in her bounding early days

   Were friendly with her feet.

Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl,

   When midnight hammers slow

   From Andrew's, blow by blow,

As phantom draws me by the hand

   To the place - Plymouth Hoe -

Where side by side in life, as planned,

   We never were to go!

-o0o-

 Shortening Days at the Homestead

The first fire since the summer is lit, and is smoking into the room:

The sun-rays thread it through, like woof-lines in a loom.

Sparrows spurt from the hedge, whom misgivings appal

That winter did not leave last year for ever, after all.

Like shock-headed urchins, spiny-haired,

Stand pollard willows, their twigs just bared.

Who is this coming with pondering pace,

Black and ruddy, with white embossed,

His eyes being black, and ruddy his face

And the marge of his hair like morning frost?

It's the cider-maker,

And apple-treeshaker,

And behind him on wheels, in readiness,

His mill, and tubs, and vat, and press.

-o0o-

Silences

There is a silence of a copse or croft

When the wind sinks dumb,

And of a belfry-loft

When the tenor after tolling stops its hum.

And there's the silence of a lonely pond

Where a man was drowned,

Nor nigh nor yond

A newt, frog, toad, to make the merest sound.

But the rapt silence of an empty house

Where oneself was born,

Dwelt, held carouse

With friends, is of all silences most forlorn!

Past are remembered songs and music-strains

Once audible there:

Roof, rafters, panes

Look absent-thoughted, tranced, or locked in prayer.

It seems no power on earth can waken it

Or rouse its rooms,

Or its past permit

The present to stir a torpor like a tomb's.

-o0o-

The Second Visit

Clack, clack, clack, went the mill-wheel as I came,

And she was on the bridge with the thin hand-rail,

And the miller at the door, and the ducks at mill-tail;

I come again years after, and all there seems the same.

And so indeed it is: the apple-tree'd old house,

And the deep mill-pond, and the wet wheel clacking,

And a woman on the bridge, and white ducks quacking,

And the miller at the door, powdered pale from boots to brows.

But it's not the same miller whom long ago I knew,

Nor are they the same apples, nor the same drops that dash

Over the wet wheel, nor the ducks below that splash,

Nor the woman who to fond plaints replied, "You know I do!"

-o0o-

He Inadvertantly Cures His Love-pains

I said: "O let me sing the praise

Of her who sweetly racks my days, -

Her I adore;

Her lips, her eyes, her moods, her ways."

In miseries of pulse and pang

I strung my harp, and straightway sang

As none before: -

To wondrous words my quavers rang!

Thus I let heartaches lilt my verse,

Which suaged and soothed, and made disperse

The smarts I bore

To stagnance like a sepulchre's.

But, eased, the days that thrilled ere then

Lost value; and I ask, O when,

And how, restore

Those old sweet agonies again.

-o0o-

An Unkindly May

A shepherd stands by a gate in a white smock-frock;

He holds the gate ajar, intently counting his flock.

The sour spring wind is blurting boisterous-wise,

And bears on it dirty clouds across the skies;

Plantation timbers creak like rusty cranes,

And pigeons and rooks, dishevelled by late rains,

Are like gaunt vultures, sodden and unkempt,

And songbirds do not end what they attempt;

The buds have tried to open, but quite failing

Have pinched themselves together in their quailing.

The sun frowns whitely in eye-trying flaps

Through passing cloud-holes, mimicking audible taps.

"Nature, you're not commendable today!"

I think, "Better tomorrow," she seems to say.

That shepherd still stands in that white smock-frock,

Unnoting all things save the counting his flock.

-o0o-

Snow in the Suburbs

Every branch big with it,

Bent every twig with it;

Every fork like a white web-foot;

Every street and pavement mute:

Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when

Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.

The palings are glued together like a wall,

And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,

Whereon immediately

A snow-lump thrice his own slight size

Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,

And overturns him,

And near inurns him,

And lights on a nether twig, when its brush

Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,

Up which, with feeble hope,

A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;

And we take him in.

-o0o-

A Parting-Scene

The two pale women cried,

But the man seemed to suffer more,

Which he strove hard to hide,

They stayed in the waiting-room, behind the door,

Till startled by the entering engine-roar,

As if they could not bear to have unfurled

Their misery to the eyes of all the world.

A soldier and his young wife

Were the couple; his mother the third,

Who had seen the seams of life.

He was sailing for the East I later heard.

They kissed long, but they did not speak a word;

Then, strained, he went. To the elder the wife in tears

"Too long; too long!" burst out. ('Twas for five years,)

-o0o-

I Knew a Lady

I knew a lady when the days

Grew long, and evenings goldened;

But I was not emboldened

By her prompt eyes and winning ways.

And when old Winter nipt the haws,

"Another's wife I'll be,

And then you'll care for me,"

She said, "and think how sweet I was!"

And soon she shone as another's wife:

As such I often met her,

And sighed, "How I regret her!

My folly cuts me like a knife!"

And then, today, her husband came,

And moaned, "Why did you flout her?

Well could I do without her!

For both our burdens you are to blame!"

-o0o-

Amabel

I marked her ruined hues,

Her custom-straitened views,

And asked, "Can there indwell

My Amabel?"

I looked upon her gown,

Once rose, now earthen brown;

The change was like the knell

Of Amabel.

Her step's mechanic ways

Had lost the life of May's;

Her laugh, once sweet in swell,

Spoilt Amabel.

I mused: "Who sings the strain

I sang ere warmth did wane?

Who thinks its numbers spell

His Amabel?"

Knowing that, though Love cease,

Love's race shows undecrease;

All find in dorp or dell

An Amabel.

I felt that I could creep

To some housetop and weep,

That Time the tyrant fell

Ruled Amabel!

I said (the while I sighed

That love like ours had died)

"Fond things I'll no more tell

To Amabel.

"But leave her to her fate,

And fling across the gate,

Till the Last Trump, farewell,

O Amabel!"

-o0o-

The Old Gown

I have seen her in gowns the brightest,

Of azure, green, and red,

And in the simplest, whitest,

Muslined from heel to head;

I have watched her walking, riding,

Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,

Or in fixed thought abiding

By the foam-fingered sea.

In woodlands I have known her,

When boughs were mourning loud,

In the rain-reek she has shown her

Wild-haired and water-browed.

And once or twice she has cast me

As she pomped along the street

Court-clad, ere quite she has passed me,

A glance from her chariot seat.

But in my memoried passion

For evermore stands she

In the gown of fading fashion

She wore that night when we,

Doomed long to part, assembled

In the snug, small room; yea, when

She sang with lips that trembled,

"Shall I see his face again?"

-o0o-

The Well-beloved

I went by star and planet shine 

   Towards the dear one's home 

At Kingsbere, there to make her mine 

   When the next sun upclomb. 

I edged the ancient hill and wood 

   Beside the Ikling Way, 

Nigh where the Pagan temple stood 

   In the world's earlier day. 

And as I quick and quicker walked 

   On gravel and on green, 

I sang to sky, and tree, or talked 

   Of her I called my queen. 

- "O faultless is her dainty form, 

   And luminous her mind; 

She is the God-created norm 

   Of perfect womankind!" 

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed 

   Slid softly by my side, 

A woman's; and her motion seemed 

   The motion of my bride. 

And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile 

   Out from the ancient leaze, 

Where once were pile and peristyle 

   For men's idolatries. 

- "O maiden lithe and lone, what may 

   Thy name and lineage be, 

Who so resemblest by this ray 

   My darling?--Art thou she?" 

The Shape: "Thy bride remains within 

   Her father's grange and grove." 

- "Thou speakest rightly," I broke in, 

   "Thou art not she I love." 

- "Nay: though thy bride remains inside 

   Her father's walls," said she, 

"The one most dear is with thee here, 

   For thou dost love but me." 

Then I: "But she, my only choice, 

   Is now at Kingsbere Grove?" 

Again her soft mysterious voice: 

   "I am thy only Love." 

Thus still she vouched, and still I said, 

   "O sprite, that cannot be!" . . . 

It was as if my bosom bled, 

   So much she troubled me. 

The sprite resumed: "Thou hast transferred 

   To her dull form awhile 

My beauty, fame, and deed, and word, 

   My gestures and my smile. 

"O fatuous man, this truth infer, 

   Brides are not what they seem; 

Thou lovest what thou dreamest her; 

   I am thy very dream!" 

- "O then," I answered miserably, 

   Speaking as scarce I knew, 

"My loved one, I must wed with thee 

   If what thou say'st be true!" 

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom: 

   "Though, since troth-plight began, 

I've ever stood as bride to groom, 

   I wed no mortal man!"

Thereat she vanished by the lane

Adjoining Kingsbere town,

Near where, men say, once stood the Fane

To Venus, on the Down.

When I arrived and met my bride

her look was pinched and thin,

As if her soul had shrunk and died,

And left a waste within.

-o0o-

A Wood Fire

"This is a brightsome blaze you've lit, good friend, tonight!"

- "Aye, it has been the bleakest spring I have felt for years,

And nought compares with cloven logs to keep alight:

I buy them bargain-cheap of the executioners,

As I dwell near; and they wanted the crosses out of sight

By Passover, not to affront the eyes of visitors.

"Yes, they're from the crucifixions last week-ending

At Kranion. We can sometimes use the poles again,

But they get split by the nails, and 'tis quicker work than mending

To knock together new; though the uprights now and then

Serve twice when they're let stand. But if a feast's impending,

As lately, you've to tidy up for the corners' ken.

"Though only three were impaled, you may know it didn't pass off

So quietly as was wont? That Galilee carpenter's son

Who boasted he was king, incensed the rabble to scoff:

I heard the noise from my garden. This piece is the one he was on -

Yes, it blazes up well if lit with a few dry chips and shroff;

And it's worthless for much else, what with cuts and stains thereon."

-o0o-

The Dream Is - Which?

I am laughing by the brook with her,

Splashed in its tumbling stir;

And then it is a blankness looms

As if I walked not there,

Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,

And treading a lonely stair.

With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes

We sit where none espies;

Till a harsh change comes edging in

As no such scene were there,

But winter, and I were bent and thin,

And cinder-grey my hair.

We dance in heys around the hall,

Weightless as thistleball;

And then a curtain drops between,

As if I danced not there,

But wandered through a mounded green

To find her, I knew where.

-o0o-

The Whitewashed Wall

Why does she turn in that shy soft way

Whenever she stirs the fire,

And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,

As if entranced to admire

Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight

Of a rose in richest green?

I have known her long, but this raptured rite

I never before have seen.

Well, once when her son cast his shadow there,

A friend took a pencil and drew him

Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines

Had a lifelike semblance to him.

And there long stayed his familiar look;

But one day, ere she knew,

The whitener came to cleanse the nook,

And covered the face from view.

"Yes," he said: "My brush goes on with a rush,

And the draught is buried under;

When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,

What else can you do, I wonder?"

But she knows he's there. And when she yearns

For him, deep in the labouring night,

She sees him as close as hand, and turns

To him under his sheet of white.

-o0o-