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-

Shelley's Skylark

Somewhere afield here something lies

In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust

That moved a poet to prophecies -

A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,

And made immortal through times to be; -

Though it only lived like another bird,

And knew not its immortality.

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell -

A little ball of feather and bone;

And how it perished, when piped farewell,

And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view,

Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green,

Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue

Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find

That tiny pinch of priceless dust,

And bring a casket silver-lined,

And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein,

And consecrate it to endless time;

For it inspired a bard to win

Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme. 

-o0o-

The Spell of the Rose

"I mean to build a hall anon,

And shape two turrets there,

And a broad newelled stair,

And a cool well for crystal water;

Yes; I will build a hall anon,

Plant roses love shall feed upon,

And apple trees and pear."

He set to build the manor-hall,

And shaped the turrets there,

And the broad newelled stair,

And the cool well for crystal water;

He built for me that manor-hall,

And planted many trees withal,

But no rose anywhere.

And as he planted never a rose

That bears the flower of love,

Though other flowers throve

A frost-wind moved our souls to sever

Since he had planted never a rose;

And misconceits raised horrid shows,

And agonies came thereof.

"I'll mend these miseries," then said I,

And so, at dead of night,

I went and, screened from sight,

That nought should keep our souls in severance,

I set a rose-bush."This," said I,

"May end divisions dire and wry,

And long-drawn days of blight."

But I was called from earth - yea, called

Before my rose-bush grew;

And would that now I knew

What feels he of the tree I planted,

And whether, after I was called

To be a ghost, he, as of old,

Gave me his heart anew!

Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees

I set but saw not grow,

And he, beside its glow -

Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me -

Ay, there beside that queen of trees

He sees me as I was, though sees

Too late to tell me so!

-o0o-

In the British Museum

What do you see in that time-touched stone,

When nothing is there

But ashen blankness, although you give it

A rigid stare?

You look not quite as if you saw,

But as if you heard,

Parting your lips, and treading softly

As mouse or bird.

It is only the base of a pillar, they'll tell you,

That came to us

From a far old hill men used to name

Areopagus."

"I know no art, and I only view

A stone from a wall,

But I am thinking that stone has echoed

The voice of Paul,

"Paul as he stood and preached beside it

Facing the crowd,

A small gaunt figure with wasted features,

Calling out loud

"Words that in all their intimate accents

Pattered upon

That marble front, and were far reflected,

And then were gone.

"I'm a labouring man, and know but little,

Or nothing at all;

But I can't help thinking that stone once echoed

The voice of Paul."

-o0o-

Sitting on the Bridge

Sitting on the bridge

Past the barracks, town and ridge,

At once the spirit seized us

To sing a song that pleased us -

As "The Fifth" were much in rumour;

It was "Whilst I'm in the humour,

Take me, Paddy, will you now?"

And a lancer soon drew nigh,

And his Royal Irish eye

Said, "Willing, faith, am I,

O, to take you anyhow, dears,

To take you anyhow."

But, lo! - dad walking by,

Cried, "What, you lightheels! Fie!

Is this the way you roam

And mock the sunset gleam?"

And he marched us straightway home,

Though we said, "We are only, daddy,

Singing, 'Will you take me, Paddy?'"

- Well, we never saw from then

If we sang there anywhen,

The soldier dear again,

Except at night in dream-time,

Except at night in dream.

Perhaps that soldier's fighting

In a land that's far away,

Or he may be idly plighting

Some foreign hussy gay;

Or perhaps his bones are whiting

In the wind to their decay! . . .

Ah! - does he mind him how

The girls he saw that day

On the bridge, were sitting singing

At the time of curfew-ringing,

"Take me, Paddy; will you now, dear?

Paddy, will you now?"

-o0o-

The Self-Unseeing

Here is the ancient floor, 

Footworn and hollowed and thin, 

Here was the former door 

Where the dead feet walked in. 

She sat here in her chair, 

Smiling into the fire; 

He who played stood there, 

Bowing it higher and higher. 

Childlike, I danced in a dream; 

Blessings emblazoned that day; 

Everything glowed with a gleam; 

Yet we were looking away! 

-o0o-

Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day, 

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, 

And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; 

– They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. 

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove 

Over tedious riddles of years ago; 

And some words played between us to and fro 

On which lost the more by our love. 

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing 

Alive enough to have strength to die; 

And a grin of bitterness swept thereby 

Like an ominous bird a-wing…. 

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, 

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me 

Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree, 

And a pond edged with grayish leaves. 

-o0o-

A Commonplace Day

The day is turning ghost, 

And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively, 

   To join the anonymous host 

Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe, 

   To one of like degree. 

   I part the fire-gnawed logs, 

Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends 

   Upon the shining dogs; 

Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends, 

   And beamless black impends. 

   Nothing of tiniest worth 

Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or 

praise, 

   Since the pale corpse-like birth 

Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays - 

   Dullest of dull-hued Days! 

   Wanly upon the panes 

The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and 

yet 

   Here, while Day's presence wanes, 

And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set, 

   He wakens my regret. 

   Regret--though nothing dear 

That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime, 

   Or bloomed elsewhere than here, 

To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime, 

   Or mark him out in Time . . . 

   --Yet, maybe, in some soul, 

In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose, 

   Or some intent upstole 

Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows 

   The world's amendment flows; 

   But which, benumbed at birth 

By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be 

   Embodied on the earth; 

And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity 

   May wake regret in me. 

-o0o-

An August Midnight

 A shaded lamp and a waving blind,

And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:

On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined—

A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;

While 'mid my page there idly stands

A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands...

Thus meet we five, in this still place,

At this point of time, at this point in space.

—My guests besmear my new-penned line,

Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.

"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?

They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

-o0o-

To Lizbie Browne

Dear Lizbie Browne, 

Where are you now? 

In sun, in rain? - 

Or is your brow 

Past joy, past pain, 

Dear Lizbie Browne? 

Sweet Lizbie Browne 

How you could smile, 

How you could sing! - 

How archly wile 

In glance-giving, 

Sweet Lizbie Browne! 

And, Lizbie Browne, 

Who else had hair 

Bay-red as yours, 

Or flesh so fair 

Bred out of doors, 

Sweet Lizbie Browne? 

When, Lizbie Browne, 

You had just begun 

To be endeared 

By stealth to one, 

You disappeared 

My Lizbie Browne! 

Ay, Lizbie Browne, 

So swift your life, 

And mine so slow, 

You were a wife 

Ere I could show 

Love, Lizbie Browne. 

Still, Lizbie Browne, 

You won, they said, 

The best of men 

When you were wed . . . 

Where went you then, 

O Lizbie Browne? 

Dear Lizbie Browne, 

I should have thought, 

"Girls ripen fast," 

And coaxed and caught 

You ere you passed, 

Dear Lizbie Browne! 

But, Lizbie Browne, 

I let you slip; 

Shaped not a sign; 

Touched never your lip 

With lip of mine, 

Lost Lizbie Browne! 

So, Lizbie Browne, 

When on a day 

Men speak of me 

As not, you'll say, 

"And who was he?" - 

Yes, Lizbie Browne! 

-o0o-

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.

-o0o-

Thoughts of Phena

at news of her death 

Not a line of her writing have I 

Not a thread of her hair, 

No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby 

I may picture her there; 

And in vain do I urge my unsight 

To conceive my lost prize 

At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light 

And with laughter her eyes. 

What scenes spread around her last days, 

Sad, shining, or dim? 

Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways 

With an aureate nimb? 

Or did life-light decline from her years, 

And mischances control 

Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears 

Disennoble her soul? 

Thus I do but the phantom retain 

Of the maiden of yore 

As my relic; yet haply the best of her--fined in my brain 

It may be the more 

That no line of her writing have I, 

Nor a thread of her hair, 

No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby 

I may picture her there. 

-o0o-

A Broken Appointment

You did not come, 

And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,— 

Yet less for loss of your dear presence there 

Than that I thus found lacking in your make 

That high compassion which can overbear 

Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake 

Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, 

You did not come. 

You love not me, 

And love alone can lend you loyalty; 

–I know and knew it. But, unto the store 

Of human deeds divine in all but name, 

Was it not worth a little hour or more 

To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came 

To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be 

You love not me? 

-o0o-

The Subalterns

"Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky, 

"I fain would lighten thee, 

But there are laws in force on high 

Which say it must not be." 

"I would not freeze thee, shorn one," cried 

The North, "knew I but how 

To warm my breath, to slack my stride; 

But I am ruled as thou." 

"To-morrow I attack thee, wight," 

Said Sickness. "Yet I swear 

I bear thy little ark no spite, 

But am bid enter there." 

"Come hither, Son," I heard Death say; 

"I did not will a grave 

Should end thy pilgrimage to-day, 

But I, too, am a slave!" 

 We smiled upon each other then, 

And life to me had less 

Of that fell look it wore ere when 

They owned their passiveness.

-o0o-

Long Plighted

Is it worth while, dear, now, 

To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed 

For marriage-rites -- discussed, decried, delayed 

   So many years? 

   Is it worth while, dear, now, 

To stir desire for old fond purposings, 

By feints that Time still serves for dallyings, 

   Though quittance nears? 

   Is it worth while, dear, when 

The day being so far spent, so low the sun, 

The undone thing will soon be as the done, 

   And smiles as tears? 

   Is it worth while, dear, when 

Our cheeks are worn, our early brown is gray; 

When, meet or part we, none says yea or nay, 

   Or heeds, or cares? 

   Is it worth while, dear, since 

We still can climb old Yell'ham's wooded mounds 

Together, as each season steals its rounds 

   And disappears? 

   Is it worth while, dear, since 

As mates in Mellstock churchyard we can lie, 

Till the last crash of all things low and high 

   Shall end the spheres?

-o0o-

Wives in the Sere

Never a careworn wife but shows, 

   If a joy suffuse her, 

Something beautiful to those 

   Patient to peruse her, 

Some one charm the world unknows 

   Precious to a muser, 

Haply what, ere years were foes, 

   Moved her mate to choose her. 

But, be it a hint of rose 

   That an instant hues her, 

Or some early light or pose 

   Wherewith thought renews her - 

Seen by him at full, ere woes 

   Practised to abuse her - 

Sparely comes it, swiftly goes, 

   Time again subdues her. 

-o0o-

A Day-Close in November

The ten hours' light is abating,

And a late bird flies across,

Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,

Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,

Float past like specks in the eye;

I set every tree in my June time,

And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here

Conceive that there never has been

A time when no tall trees grew here,

A time when none will be seen. 

-o0o-

-o0o-

The first post here
will be on Sunday 4th November

-o=0=o-