Estrangement

Marked his mind.

Each welcome-warm arrangement

I had designed

Touched him no more than deeds of careless kind.

 

›I –failed!‹ escaped him glumly.

›– I went on

In my old part. But dumbly –

Memory gone –

Advancing, I sank sick; my vision drawn

 

To something drear, distressing

As the knell

Of all hopes worth possessing!‹ ...

– What befell

Seemed linked with me, but how I could not tell.

 

Hours passed; till I implored him,

As he knew

How faith and frankness toward him

Ruled me through,

To say what ill I had done, and could undo.

 

›Faith – frankness. Ah! Heaven save such!‹

Murmured he,

›They are wedded wealth! I gave such

Liberally,

But you, Dear, not. For you suspected me.‹

 

I was about beseeching

In hurt haste

More meaning, when he, reaching

To my waist,

Led me to pace the hall as once we paced.

 

›I never meant to draw you

To own all,‹

Declared he, ›But – I saw you –

By the wall,

Half-hid. And that was why I failed withal!‹

 

›Where? when?‹ said I – ›Why, nigh me,

At the play

That night. That you should spy me,

Doubt my fay,

And follow, furtive, took my heart away!‹

 

That I had never been there,

But had gone

To my locked room – unseen there,

Curtains drawn,

Long days abiding – told I, wonder-wan.

 

›Nay, 'twas your form and vesture,

Cloak and gown,

Your hooded features – gesture

Half in frown,

That faced me, pale,‹ he urged, ›that night in town.

 

And when, outside, I handed

To her chair

(As courtesy demanded

Of me there)

The leading lady, you peeped from the stair.‹

 

Straight pleaded I: ›Forsooth, Love,

Had I gone,

I must have been in truth, Love,

Mad to don

Such well-known raiment.‹ But he still went on

 

That he was not mistaken

Nor misled. –

I felt like one forsaken,

Wished me dead,

That he could think thus of the wife he had wed!

 

His going seemed to waste him

Like a curse,

To wreck what once had graced him;

And, averse

To my approach, he mused, and moped, and worse.

 

Till, what no words effected

Thought achieved:

It was my wraith – projected,

He conceived,

Thither, by my tense brain at home aggrieved.

 

Thereon his credence centred

Till he died;

And, no more tempted, entered

Sanctified,

The little vault with room for one beside.«

 

III

 

Thus far the lady's story. –

Now she, too,

Reclines within that hoary

Last dark mew

In Mellstock Quire with him she loved so true.

 

A yellowing marble, placed there

Tablet-wise,

And two joined hearts enchased there

Meet the eyes;

And reading their twin names we moralize:

 

Did she, we wonder, follow

Jealously?

And were those protests hollow? –

Or saw he

Some semblant dame? Or can wraiths really be?

 

Were it she went, her honour,

All may hold,

Pressed truth at last upon her

Till she told –

(Him only – others as these lines unfold).

 

Riddle death-sealed for ever,

Let it rest! ...

One's heart could blame her never

If one guessed

That go she did. She knew her actor best.

 

Unrealized

Down comes the winter rain –

Spoils my hat and bow –

Runs into the poll of me;

But mother won't know.

 

We've been out and caught a cold,

Knee-deep in snow;

Such a lucky thing it is

That mother won't know!

 

Rosy lost herself last night –

Couldn't tell where to go.

Yes – it rather frightened her,

But mother didn't know.

 

Somebody made Willy drunk

At the Christmas show:

O 'twas fun! It's well for him

That mother won't know!

 

Howsoever wild we are,

Late at school or slow,

Mother won't be cross with us,

Mother won't know.

 

How we cried the day she died!

Neighbours whispering low ...

But we now do what we will –

Mother won't know.

 

Wagtail and Baby

A baby watched a ford, whereto

A wagtail came for drinking;

A blaring bull went wading through,

The wagtail showed no shrinking.

 

A stallion splashed his way across,

The birdie nearly sinking;

He gave his plumes a twitch and toss,

And held his own unblinking.

 

Next saw the baby round the spot

A mongrel slowly slinking;

The wagtail gazed, but faltered not

In dip and sip and prinking.

 

A perfect gentleman then neared;

The wagtail, in a winking,

With terror rose and disappeared;

The baby fell a-thinking.

 

Aberdeen
(April: 1905)

»And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times.« –

Isaiah, xxxiii 6

 

I looked and thought, »All is too gray and cold

To wake my place-enthusiasms of old!«

Till a voice passed: »Behind that granite mien

Lurks the imposing beauty of a Queen.«

I looked anew; and saw the radiant form

Of Her who soothes in stress, who steers in storm,

On the grave influence of whose eyes sublime

Men count for the stability of the time.

 

George Meredith
(1828-1909)

Forty years back, when much had place

That since has perished out of mind,

I heard that voice and saw that face.

 

He spoke as one afoot will wind

A morning horn ere men awake;

His note was trenchant, turning kind.

 

He was of those whose wit can shake

And riddle to the very core

The counterfeits that Time will break. ...

 

Of late, when we two met once more,

The luminous countenance and rare

Shone just as forty years before.

 

So that, when now all tongues declare

His shape unseen by his green hill,

I scarce believe he sits not there.

 

No matter. Further and further still

Through the world's vaporous vitiate air

His words wing on – as live words will.

 

Yell'ham-Wood's Story

Coomb-firtrees say that Life is a moan,

And Clyffe-hill Clump says »Yea!«

But Yell'ham says a thing of its own:

It's not »Gray, gray

Is Life alway!«

That Yell'ham says,

Nor that Life is for ends unknown.

 

It says that Life would signify

A thwarted purposing:

That we come to live, and are called to die.

Yes, that's the thing

In fall, in spring,

That Yell'ham says: –

»Life offers – to deny!«

 

A Young Man's Epigram on Existence

A senseless school, where we must give

Our lives that we may learn to live!

A dolt is he who memorizes

Lessons that leave no time for prizes.

 

16 W.P.V., 1866

 

 

Notes

1 The early editions were illustrated by the writer.

 

2 thirtover, cross

 

3 tranted, traded as carrier

 

4 horned, sang loudly

 

5 homealong, homeward

 

6 leer, empty-stomached

 

7 tidetimes, holidays

 

8 linhay, lean-to building

 

9 vlankers, fire-flakes

 

10 chimley-tun, chimney-stack

 

11 rafted, roused

 

12 crooping, squatting down

 

13 lewth, shelter

 

14 bivering, with chattering teeth

 

15 totties, feet

 

16 Fall, autumn

 

17 gallied, frightened

 

18 tardle, entanglement

 

19 heft, weight

 

20 mid, might

 

21 thik husbird that rascal

 

22 mixens, manure-heaps

 

23 lumpered, stumbled

 

24 halter-path, bridle-path

 

25 shrammed, numbed

 

26 caddle, quandary

 

27 mid, might

 

28 tallet, loft

 

29 huddied, hidden

 

30 skimmity-ride, satirical procession with effigies

 

31 wold, old

 

32 The »Race« is the turbulent sea-area off the Bill of Portland, where contrary tides meet.

 

33 Pronounce ›Loddy‹.

 

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