Poems of the Past and the Present Read Online

My species are dwindling,

My forests grow barren,

My popinjays fail from their tappings,

My larks from their strain.

My leopardine beauties are rarer,

My tusky ones vanish,

My children have aped mine own slaughters

To quicken my wane.

Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes,

And slimy distortions,

Let nevermore things good and lovely

To me appertain;

For Reason is rank in my temples,

And Vision unruly,

And chivalrous laud of my cunning

Is heard not again!«

I Said to Love

I said to Love,

»It is not now as in old days

When men adored thee and thy ways

All else above;

Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One

Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,«

I said to Love.

I said to him,

»We now know more of thee than then;

We were but weak in judgment when,

With hearts abrim,

We clamoured thee that thou would'st please

Inflict on us thine agonies,«

I said to him.

I said to Love,

»Thou art not young, thou art not fair,

No elfin darts, no cherub air,

Nor swan, nor dove

Are thine; but features pitiless,

And iron daggers of distress,«

I said to Love.

»Depart then, Love! ...

– Man's race shall perish, threatenest thou,

Without thy kindling coupling-vow?

The age to come the man of now

Know nothing of? –

We fear not such a threat from thee;

We are too old in apathy!

Mankind shall cease. – So let it be,«

I said to Love.

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.

At a Lunar Eclipse

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,

Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine

In even monochrome and curving line

Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry

With the torn troubled form I know as thine,

That profile, placid as a brow divine,

With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw

So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme

Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,

Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,

Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

The Lacking Sense

Scene. – A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale

I

»O time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,

As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?

Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,

With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,

As of angel fallen from grace?«

II

– »Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:

In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.

The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly,

Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun

Such deeds her hands have done.«

III

– »And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,

These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves,

Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features

Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,

Distress into delights?«

IV

– »Ah! knowest thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,

Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves?

That sightless are those orbs of hers? – which bar to her omniscience

Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones

Whereat all creation groans.

V

She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,

When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;

Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;

Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch

That the seers marvel much.

VI

Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;

Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves;

And while she plods dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,

Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,

For thou art of her clay.«

To Life

O Life with the sad seared face,

I weary of seeing thee,

And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,

And thy too-forced pleasantry!

I know what thou would'st tell

Of Death, Time, Destiny –

I have known it long, and know, too, well

What it all means for me.

But canst thou not array

Thyself in rare disguise,

And feign like truth, for one mad day,

That Earth is Paradise?

I'll tune me to the mood,

And mumm with thee till eve;

And maybe what as interlude

I feign, I shall believe!

Doom and She

I

There dwells a mighty pair –

Slow, statuesque, intense –

Amid the vague Immense:

None can their chronicle declare,

Nor why they be, nor whence.

II

Mother of all things made,

Matchless in artistry,

Unlit with sight is she. –

And though her ever well-obeyed

Vacant of feeling he.

III

The Matron mildly asks –

A throb in every word –

»Our clay-made creatures, lord,

How fare they in their mortal tasks

Upon Earth's bounded bord?

IV

The fate of those I bear,

Dear lord, pray turn and view,

And notify me true;

Shapings that eyelessly I dare

Maybe I would undo.

V

Sometimes from lairs of life

Methinks I catch a groan,

Or multitudinous moan,

As though I had schemed a world of strife,

Working by touch alone.«

VI

»World-weaver!« he replies,

»I scan all thy domain;

But since nor joy nor pain

It lies in me to recognize,

Thy questionings are vain.

VII

World-weaver! what is Grief?

And what are Right, and Wrong,

And Feeling, that belong

To creatures all who owe thee fief?

Why is Weak worse than Strong?« ...

VIII

– Unanswered, curious, meek,

She broods in sad surmise. ...

– Some say they have heard her sighs

On Alpine height or Polar peak

When the night tempests rise.

The Problem

Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it –

We who believe the evidence?

Here and there the watch-towers knell it

With a sullen significance,

Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained sense.

Hearts that are happiest hold not by it;

Better we let, then, the old view reign:

Since there is peace in that, why decry it?

Since there is comfort, why disdain?

Note not the pigment so long as the painting determines humanity's joy and pain.

The Subalterns

I

»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.«

II

– »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.«

III

– »To-morrow I attack thee, wight,«

Said Sickness. »Yet I swear

I bear thy little ark no spite,

But am bid enter there.«

IV

– »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!«

V

We smiled upon each other then,

And life to me had less

Of that fell look it wore ere when

They owned their passiveness.

The Sleep-Worker

When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see –

As one who, held in trance, has laboured long

By vacant rote and prepossession strong –

The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;

Wherein have place, unrealized by thee,

Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong,

Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song,

And curious blends of ache and ecstasy? –

Should that morn come, and show thy opened eyes

All that Life's palpitating tissues feel,

How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise? –

Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,

Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame,

Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?

The Bullfinches

Brother Bulleys, let us sing

From the dawn till evening! –

For we know not that we go not

When to-day's pale pinions fold

Where they be that sang of old.

When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,

Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,

Roosting near them I could hear them

Speak of queenly Nature's ways,

Means, and moods, – well known to fays.

All we creatures, nigh and far

(Said they there), the Mother's are;

Yet she never shows endeavour

To protect from warrings wild

Bird or beast she calls her child.

Busy in her handsome house

Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;

Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,

While beneath her groping hands

Fiends make havoc in her bands.

How her hussif'ry succeeds

She unknows or she unheeds,

All things making for Death's taking!

– So the green-gowned faeries say

Living over Blackmoor way.

Come then, brethren, let us sing,

From the dawn till evening! –

For we know not that we go not

When the day's pale pinions fold

Where those be that sang of old.

God-Forgotten

I towered far, and lo! I stood within

The presence of the Lord Most High,

Sent thither by the sons of Earth, to win

Some answer to their cry.

– »The Earth, sayest thou? The Human race?

By Me created? Sad its lot?

Nay: I have no remembrance of such place:

Such world I fashioned not.« –

– »O Lord, forgive me when I say

Thou spakest the word that made it all.« –

»The Earth of men – let me bethink me. ... Yea!

I dimly do recall

Some tiny sphere I built long back

(Mid millions of such shapes of mine)

So named ... It perished, surely – not a wrack

Remaining, or a sign?

It lost my interest from the first,

My aims therefor succeeding ill;

Haply it died of doing as it durst?« –

»Lord, it existeth still.« –

»Dark, then, its life! For not a cry

Of aught it bears do I now hear;

Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby

Its plaints had reached mine ear.

It used to ask for gifts of good,

Till came its severance, self-entailed,

When sudden silence on that side ensued,

And has till now prevailed.

All other orbs have kept in touch;

Their voicings reach me speedily:

Thy people took upon them overmuch

In sundering them from me!

And it is strange – though sad enough –

Earth's race should think that one whose call

Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff

Must heed their tainted ball! ...

But sayest it is by pangs distraught,

And strife, and silent suffering? –

Sore grieved am I that injury should be wrought

Even on so poor a thing!

Thou shouldst have learnt that Not to Mend

For Me could mean but Not to Know:

Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end

To what men undergo.« ...

Homing at dawn, I thought to see

One of the Messengers standing by.

– Oh, childish thought! ... Yet often it comes to me

When trouble hovers nigh.

The Bedridden Peasant

To an Unknowing God

Much wonder I – here long low-laid –

That this dead wall should be

Betwixt the Maker and the made,

Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse,

He eyes it now and then

To know if better it is, or worse,

And if it mourn, and when.

But Thou, Lord, giv'st us men our day

In helpless bondage thus

To Time and Chance, and seem'st straightway

To think no more of us!

That some disaster cleft Thy scheme

And tore us wide apart,

So that no cry can cross, I deem;

For Thou art mild of heart,

And wouldst not shape and shut us in

Where voice can not be heard:

Plainly Thou meant'st that we should win

Thy succour by a word.

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies

Like man's from clime to clime,

Thou wouldst not let me agonize

Through my remaining time;

But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear –

Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind –

Wouldst heal the ills with quickest care

Of me and all my kind.

Then, since Thou mak'st not these things be,

But these things dost not know,

I'll praise Thee as were shown to me

The mercies Thou wouldst show!

By the Earth's Corpse

I

»O Lord, why grievest Thou? –

Since Life has ceased to be

Upon this globe, now cold

As lunar land and sea,

And humankind, and fowl, and fur

Are gone eternally,

All is the same to Thee as ere

They knew mortality.«

II

»O Time,« replied the Lord,

»Thou readest me ill, I ween;

Were all the same, I should not grieve

At that late earthly scene,

Now blestly past – though planned by me

With interest close and keen! –

Nay, nay: things now are not the same

As they have earlier been.

III

Written indelibly

On my eternal mind

Are all the wrongs endured

By Earth's poor patient kind,

Which my too oft unconscious hand

Let enter undesigned.

No god can cancel deeds foredone,

Or thy old coils unwind!

IV

As when, in Noë's days,

I whelmed the plains with sea,

So at this last, when flesh

And herb but fossils be,

And, all extinct, their piteous dust

Revolves obliviously,

That I made Earth, and life, and man,

It still repenteth me!«

Mute Opinion

I

I traversed a dominion

Whose spokesmen spake out strong

Their purpose and opinion

Through pulpit, press, and song.

I scarce had means to note there

A large-eyed few, and dumb,

Who thought not as those thought there

That stirred the heat and hum.

II

When, grown a Shade, beholding

That land in lifetime trode,

To learn if its unfolding

Fulfilled its clamoured code,

I saw, in web unbroken,

Its history outwrought

Not as the loud had spoken,

But as the mute had thought.

To an Unborn Pauper Child

I

Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,

And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,

Sleep the long sleep:

The Doomsters heap

Travails and teens around us here,

And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

II

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,

And laughters fail, and greetings die:

Hopes dwindle; yea,

Faiths waste away,

Affections and enthusiasms numb;

Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

Had I the ear of wombèd souls

Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,

And thou wert free

To cease, or be,

Then would I tell thee all I know,

And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

IV

Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence

To theeward fly: to thy locked sense

Explain none can

Life's pending plan:

Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make

Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.

V

Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot

Of earth's wide wold for thee, where not

One tear, one qualm,

Should break the calm.

But I am weak as thou and bare;

No man can change the common lot to rare.

VI

Must come and bide. And such are we –

Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary –

That I can hope

Health, love, friends, scope

In full for thee; can dream thou'lt find

Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

To Flowers from Italy in Winter

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;

– If all organic things

Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,

What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite

From this bleak spot of thorn,

And birch, and fir, and frozen white

Expanse of the forlorn?

Frail luckless exiles hither brought!

Your dust will not regain

Old sunny haunts of Classic thought

When you shall waste and wane;

But mix with alien earth, be lit

With frigid Boreal flame,

And not a sign remain in it

To tell man whence you came.

On a Fine Morning

I

Whence comes Solace? – Not from seeing

What is doing, suffering, being,

Not from noting Life's conditions,

Nor from heeding Time's monitions;

But in cleaving to the Dream,

And in gazing at the gleam

Whereby gray things golden seem.

II

Thus do I this heyday, holding

Shadows but as lights unfolding,

As no specious show this moment

With its iris-hued embowment;

But as nothing other than

Part or a benignant plan;

Proof that earth was made for man.

To Lizbie Browne

I

Dear Lizbie Browne,

Where are you now?

In sun, in rain? –

Or is your brow

Past joy, past pain,

Dear Lizbie Browne?

II

Sweet Lizbie Browne,

How you could smile,

How you could sing! –

How archly wile

In glance-giving,

Sweet Lizbie Browne!

III

And, Lizbie Browne,

Who else had hair

Bay-red as yours,

Or flesh so fair

Bred out of doors,

Sweet Lizbie Browne?

IV

When, Lizbie Browne,

You had just begun

To be endeared

By stealth to one,

You disappeared

My Lizbie Browne!

V

Ay, Lizbie Browne,

So swift your life,

And mine so slow,

You were a wife

Ere I could show

Love, Lizbie Browne.

VI

Still, Lizbie Browne,

You won, they said,

The best of men

When you were wed. ...

Where went you then,

O Lizbie Browne?

VII

Dear Lizbie Browne,

I should have thought,

»Girls ripen fast,«

And coaxed and caught

You ere you passed,

Dear Lizbie Browne!

VIII

But, Lizbie Browne,

I let you slip;

Shaped not a sign;

Touched never your lip

With lip of mine,

Lost Lizbie Browne!

IX

So, Lizbie Browne,

When on a day

Men speak of me

As not, you'll say,

»And who was he?« –

Yes, Lizbie Browne!

Song of Hope

O sweet To-morrow! –

After to-day

There will away

This sense of sorrow.

Then let us borrow

Hope, for a gleaming

Soon will be streaming,

Dimmed by no gray –

No gray!

While the winds wing us

Sighs from The Gone,

Nearer to dawn

Minute-beats bring us;

When there will sing us

Larks, of a glory

Waiting our story

Further anon –

Anon!

Doff the black token,

Don the red shoon,

Right and retune

Viol-strings broken:

Null the words spoken

In speeches of rueing,

The night cloud is hueing,

To-morrow shines soon –

Shines soon!

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 sayest be true!«

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom:

»Though, since troth-plight began,

I have 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.

Her Reproach

Con the dead page as 'twere live love: press on!

Cold wisdom's words will ease thy track for thee;

Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan

To biting blasts that are intent on me.

But if thy object Fame's far summits be,

Whose inclines many a skeleton overlies

That missed both dream and substance, stop and see

How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!

It surely is far sweeter and more wise

To water love, than toil to leave anon

A name whose glory-gleam will but advise

Invidious minds to eclipse it with their own,

And over which the kindliest will but stay

A moment; musing, »He, too, had his day!«

Westbourne Park Villas, 1867

The Inconsistent

I say, »She was as good as fair!«

When standing by her mound;

»Such passing sweetness,« I declare,

»No longer treads the ground.«

I say, »What living Love can catch

Her bloom and bonhomie,

And what in recent maidens match

Her olden warmth to me!«

– There stands within yon vestry-nook

Where bonded lovers sign,

Her name upon a faded book

With one that is not mine.

To him she breathed the tender vow

She once had breathed to me,

But yet I say, »O Love, even now

Would I had died for thee!«

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?

Between Us Now

Between us now and here –

Two thrown together

Who are not wont to wear

Life's flushest feather –

Who see the scenes slide past,

The daytimes dimming fast,

Let there be truth at last,

Even if despair.

So thoroughly and long

Have you now known me,

So real in faith and strong

Have I now shown me,

That nothing needs disguise

Further in any wise,

Or asks or justifies

A guarded tongue.

Face unto face, then, say,

Eyes my own meeting,

Is your heart far away,

Or with mine beating?

When false things are brought low,

And swift things have grown slow,

Feigning like froth shall go,

Faith be for aye.

How Great My Grief

(Triolet)

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Since first it was my fate to know thee!

– Have the slow years not brought to view

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Nor memory shaped old times anew,

Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Since first it was my fate to know thee?

I Need Not Go

I need not go

Through sleet and snow

To where I know

She waits for me;

She will tarry me there

Till I find it fair,

And have time to spare

From company.

When I've overgot

The world somewhat,

When things cost not

Such stress and strain,

Is soon enough

By cypress sough

To tell my Love

I am come again.

And if some day,

When none cries nay,

I still delay

To seek her side,

(Though ample measure

Of fitting leisure

Await my pleasure)

She will not chide.

What – not upbraid me

That I delayed me,

Nor ask what stayed me

So long? Ah, no! –

New cares may claim me,

New loves inflame me,

She will not blame me,

But suffer it so.

The Coquette, and After

(Triolets)

I

For long the cruel wish I knew

That your free heart should ache for me

While mine should bear no ache for you;

For long – the cruel wish! – I knew

How men can feel, and craved to view

My triumph – fated not to be

For long! ... The cruel wish I knew

That your free heart should ache for me!

II

At last one pays the penalty –

The woman – women always do.

My farce, I found, was tragedy

At last! – One pays the penalty

With interest when one, fancy-free,

Learns love, learns shame. ... Of sinners two

At last one pays the penalty –

The woman – women always do!

A Spot

In years defaced and lost,

Two sat here, transport-tossed,

Lit by a living love

The wilted world knew nothing of:

Scared momently

By gaingivings,

Then hoping things

That could not be. ...

Of love and us no trace

Abides upon the place;

The sun and shadows wheel,

Season and season sereward steal;

Foul days and fair

Here, too, prevail,

And gust and gale

As everywhere.

But lonely shepherd souls

Who bask amid these knolls

May catch a faery sound

On sleepy noontides from the ground:

»O not again

Till Earth outwears

Shall love like theirs

Suffuse this glen!«

Long Plighted

Is it worth while, dear, now,

To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed

For marriage-rites – discussed, descried, 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?

The Widow Betrothed

I passed the lodge and avenue

To her fair tenement,

And sunset on her window-panes

Reflected our intent.

The creeper on the gable nigh

Was fired to more than red,

And when I came to halt thereby

»Bright as my joy!« I said.

Of late days it had been her aim

To meet me in the hall;

Now at my footsteps no one came,

And no one to my call.

Again I knocked, and tardily

An inner tread was heard,

And I was shown her presence then

With a mere answering word.

She met me, and but barely took

My proffered warm embrace;

Preoccupation weighed her look,

And hardened her sweet face.

»To-morrow – could you – would you call?

Abridge your present stay?

My child is ill – my one, my all! –

And can't be left to-day.«

And then she turns, and gives commands

As I were out of sound,

Or were no more to her and hers

Than any neighbour round. ...

– As maid I loved her; but one came

And pleased, and coaxed, and wooed,

And when in time he wedded her

I deemed her gone for good.

He won, I lost her; and my loss

I bore I know not how;

But I do think I suffered then

Less wretchedness than now.

For Time, in taking him, unclosed

An unexpected door

Of bliss for me, which grew to seem

Far surer than before.

Yet in my haste I overlooked

When secondly I sued

That then, as not at first, she had learnt

The call of motherhood. ...

Her word is steadfast, and I know

How firmly pledged are we:

But a new love-claim shares her since

She smiled as maid on me!

At a Hasty Wedding

(Triolet)

If hours be years the twain are blest,

For now they solace swift desire

By bonds of every bond the best,

If hours be years. The twain are blest

Do eastern stars slope never west,

Nor pallid ashes follow fire:

If hours be years the twain are blest,

For now they solace swift desire.

The Dream-Follower

A dream of mine flew over the mead

To the halls where my old Love reigns;

And it drew me on to follow its lead:

And I stood at her window-panes;

And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone

Speeding on to its cleft in the clay;

And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan,

And I whitely hastened away.

His Immortality

I

I saw a dead man's finer part

Shining within each faithful heart

Of those bereft. Then said I: »This must be

His immortality.«

II

I looked there as the seasons wore,

And still his soul continuously bore

A life in theirs. But less its shine excelled

Than when I first beheld.

III

His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then

In later hearts I looked for him again;

And found him – shrunk, alas! into a thin

And spectral mannikin.

IV

Lastly I ask – now old and chill –

If aught of him remain unperished still;

And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,

Dying amid the dark.

The To-Be-Forgotten

I

I heard a small sad sound,

And stood awhile among the tombs around:

»Wherefore, old friends,« said I, »are you distrest,

Now, screened from life's unrest?«

II

– »O not at being here;

But that our future second death is near;

When, with the living, memory of us numbs,

And blank oblivion comes!

III

These, our sped ancestry,

Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;

Nor shape nor thought of theirs can you descry

With keenest backward eye.

IV

They count as quite forgot;

They are as men who have existed not;

Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;

It is the second death.

V

We here, as yet, each day

Are blest with dear recall; as yet, can say

We hold in some soul loved continuance

Of shape and voice and glance.

VI

But what has been will be –

First memory, then oblivion's swallowing sea;

Like men foregone, shall we merge into those

Whose story no one knows.

VII

For which of us could hope

To show in life that world-awakening scope

Granted the few whose memory none lets die,

But all men magnify?

VIII

We were but Fortune's sport;

Things true, things lovely, things of good report

We neither shunned nor sought ... We see our bourne,

And seeing it we mourn.«

Wives in the Sere

I

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.

II

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.

The Superseded

I

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.

II

Yet there are some of us who grieve

To go behind;

Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe

Their fires declined,

And know none spares, remembers, cares

Who go behind.

III

'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?

An August Midnight

I

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 ...

II

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.

Max Gate, 1899

The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again

(Villanelle)

»Men know but little more than we,

Who count us least of things terrene,

How happy days are made to be!

Of such strange tidings what think ye,

O birds in brown that peck and preen?

Men know but little more than we!

When I was borne from yonder tree

In bonds to them, I hoped to glean

How happy days are made to be,

And want and wailing turned to glee;

Alas, despite their mighty mien

Men know but little more than we!

They cannot change the Frost's decree,

They cannot keep the skies serene;

How happy days are made to be

Eludes great Man's sagacity

No less than ours, O tribes in treen!

Men know but little more than we

How happy days are made to be.«

Birds at Winter Nightfall

(Triolet)

Around the house the flakes fly faster,

And all the berries now are gone

From holly and cotonea-aster

Around the house. The flakes fly! – faster

Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster

We used to see upon the lawn

Around the house. The flakes fly faster,

And all the berries now are gone!

Max Gate

The Puzzled Game-Birds

(Triolet)

They are not those who used to feed us

When we were young – they cannot be –

These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?

They are not those who used to feed us,

For did we then cry, they would heed us.

– If hearts can house such treachery

They are not those who used to feed us

When we were young – they cannot be!

Winter in Durnover Field

Scene. – A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and frozen to iron hardness. Three large birds walking about thereon, and wistfully eyeing the surface.