Satires of Circumstance Part 10

POEMS OF 1912-13 Veteris vestigia flammae

THE GOING

Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow's dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not follow With wing of swallow To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

Never to bid good-bye, Or give me the softest call, Or utter a wish for a word, while I Saw morning harden upon the wall, Unmoved, unknowing That your great going Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why do you make me leave the house And think for a breath it is you I see At the end of the alley of bending boughs Where so often at dusk you used to be; Till in darkening dankness The yawning blankness Of the perspective sickens me!

You were she who abode By those red-veined rocks far West, You were the swan-necked one who rode Along the beetling Beeny Crest, And, reining nigh me, Would muse and eye me, While Life unrolled us its very best.

Why, then, latterly did we not speak, Did we not think of those days long dead, And ere your vanis.h.i.+ng strive to seek That time's renewal? We might have said, "In this bright spring weather We'll visit together Those places that once we visited."

Well, well! All's past amend, Unchangeable. It must go.

I seem but a dead man held on end To sink down soon . . . O you could not know That such swift fleeing No soul foreseeing - Not even I--would undo me so!

December 1912.

YOUR LAST DRIVE

Here by the moorway you returned, And saw the borough lights ahead That lit your face--all undiscerned To be in a week the face of the dead, And you told of the charm of that haloed view That never again would beam on you.

And on your left you pa.s.sed the spot Where eight days later you were to lie, And be spoken of as one who was not; Beholding it with a cursory eye As alien from you, though under its tree You soon would halt everlastingly.

I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat At your side that eve I should not have seen That the countenance I was glancing at Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen, Nor have read the writing upon your face, "I go hence soon to my resting-place;

"You may miss me then. But I shall not know How many times you visit me there, Or what your thoughts are, or if you go There never at all. And I shall not care.

Should you censure me I shall take no heed And even your praises I shall not need."

True: never you'll know. And you will not mind.

But shall I then slight you because of such?

Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find The thought "What profit?" move me much Yet the fact indeed remains the same, You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.

December 1912.

THE WALK

You did not walk with me Of late to the hill-top tree By the gated ways, As in earlier days; You were weak and lame, So you never came, And I went alone, and I did not mind, Not thinking of you as left behind.

I walked up there to-day Just in the former way: Surveyed around The familiar ground By myself again: What difference, then?

Only that underlying sense Of the look of a room on returning thence.

RAIN ON A GRAVE

Clouds spout upon her Their waters amain In ruthless disdain, - Her who but lately Had s.h.i.+vered with pain As at touch of dishonour If there had lit on her So coldly, so straightly Such arrows of rain.

She who to shelter Her delicate head Would quicken and quicken Each tentative tread If drops chanced to pelt her That summertime spills In dust-paven rills When thunder-clouds thicken And birds close their bills.

Would that I lay there And she were housed here!

Or better, together Were folded away there Exposed to one weather We both,--who would stray there When sunny the day there, Or evening was clear At the prime of the year.

Soon will be growing Green blades from her mound, And daises be showing Like stars on the ground, Till she form part of them - Ay--the sweet heart of them, Loved beyond measure With a child's pleasure All her life's round.

Jan. 31, 1913.

"I FOUND HER OUT THERE"

I found her out there On a slope few see, That falls westwardly To the salt-edged air, Where the ocean breaks On the purple strand, And the hurricane shakes The solid land.

I brought her here, And have laid her to rest In a noiseless nest No sea beats near.

She will never be stirred In her loamy cell By the waves long heard And loved so well.

So she does not sleep By those haunted heights The Atlantic smites And the blind gales sweep, Whence she often would gaze At Dundagel's far head, While the dipping blaze Dyed her face fire-red;

And would sigh at the tale Of sunk Lyonnesse, As a wind-tugged tress Flapped her cheek like a flail; Or listen at whiles With a thought-bound brow To the murmuring miles She is far from now.

Yet her shade, maybe, Will creep underground Till it catch the sound Of that western sea As it swells and sobs Where she once domiciled, And joy in its throbs With the heart of a child.

WITHOUT CEREMONY