Satires of Circumstance Part 11

It was your way, my dear, To be gone without a word When callers, friends, or kin Had left, and I hastened in To rejoin you, as I inferred.

And when you'd a mind to career Off anywhere--say to town - You were all on a sudden gone Before I had thought thereon, Or noticed your trunks were down.

So, now that you disappear For ever in that swift style, Your meaning seems to me Just as it used to be: "Good-bye is not worth while!"

LAMENT

How she would have loved A party to-day! - Bright-hatted and gloved, With table and tray And chairs on the lawn Her smiles would have shone With welcomings . . . But She is shut, she is shut From friends.h.i.+p's spell In the jailing sh.e.l.l Of her tiny cell.

Or she would have reigned At a dinner to-night With ardours unfeigned, And a generous delight; All in her abode She'd have freely bestowed On her guests . . . But alas, She is shut under gra.s.s Where no cups flow, Powerless to know That it might be so.

And she would have sought With a child's eager glance The shy snowdrops brought By the new year's advance, And peered in the rime Of Candlemas-time For crocuses . . . chanced It that she were not tranced From sights she loved best; Wholly possessed By an infinite rest!

And we are here staying Amid these stale things Who care not for gaying, And those junketings That used so to joy her, And never to cloy her As us they cloy! . . . But She is shut, she is shut From the cheer of them, dead To all done and said In a yew-arched bed.

THE HAUNTER

He does not think that I haunt here nightly: How shall I let him know That whither his fancy sets him wandering I, too, alertly go? - Hover and hover a few feet from him Just as I used to do, But cannot answer his words addressed me - Only listen thereto!

When I could answer he did not say them: When I could let him know How I would like to join in his journeys Seldom he wished to go.

Now that he goes and wants me with him More than he used to do, Never he sees my faithful phantom Though he speaks thereto.

Yes, I accompany him to places Only dreamers know, Where the shy hares limp long paces, Where the night rooks go; Into old aisles where the past is all to him, Close as his shade can do, Always lacking the power to call to him, Near as I reach thereto!

What a good haunter I am, O tell him, Quickly make him know If he but sigh since my loss befell him Straight to his side I go.

Tell him a faithful one is doing All that love can do Still that his path may be worth pursuing, And to bring peace thereto.

THE VOICE

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever consigned to existlessness, Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward And the woman calling.

December 1912.

HIS VISITOR

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more: I shall go in the gray, at the pa.s.sing of the mail-train, And need no setting open of the long familiar door As before.

The change I notice in my once own quarters!

A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be, The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered, And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea As with me.

I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt servants; They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and strong, But strangers quite, who never knew my rule here, Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song Float along.

So I don't want to linger in this re-decked dwelling, I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold, And I make again for Mellstock to return here never, And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold Souls of old.

1913.

A CIRCULAR

As "legal representative"

I read a missive not my own, On new designs the senders give For clothes, in tints as shown.

Here figure blouses, gowns for tea, And presentation-trains of state, Charming ball-dresses, millinery, Warranted up to date.

And this gay-pictured, spring-time shout Of Fas.h.i.+on, hails what lady proud?

Her who before last year was out Was costumed in a shroud.

A DREAM OR NO

Why go to Saint-Juliot? What's Juliot to me?

I was but made fancy By some necromancy That much of my life claims the spot as its key.

Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West, And a maiden abiding Thereat as in hiding; Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed.

And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago, There lonely I found her, The sea-birds around her, And other than nigh things uncaring to know.

So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed) That quickly she drew me To take her unto me, And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed.

But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see; Can she ever have been here, And shed her life's sheen here, The woman I thought a long housemate with me?