Satires of Circumstance Part 21

Through snowy woods and shady We went to play a tune To the lonely manor-lady By the light of the Christmas moon.

We violed till, upward glancing To where a mirror leaned, We saw her airily dancing, Deeming her movements screened;

Dancing alone in the room there, Thin-draped in her robe of night; Her postures, gla.s.sed in the gloom there, Were a strange phantasmal sight.

She had learnt (we heard when homing) That her roving spouse was dead; Why she had danced in the gloaming We thought, but never said.

THE TWO SOLDIERS

Just at the corner of the wall We met--yes, he and I - Who had not faced in camp or hall Since we bade home good-bye, And what once happened came back--all - Out of those years gone by.

And that strange woman whom we knew And loved--long dead and gone, Whose poor half-perished residue, Tombless and trod, lay yon!

But at this moment to our view Rose like a phantom wan.

And in his fixed face I could see, Lit by a lurid s.h.i.+ne, The drama re-enact which she Had dyed incarnadine For us, and more. And doubtless he Beheld it too in mine.

A start, as at one slightly known, And with an indifferent air We pa.s.sed, without a sign being shown That, as it real were, A memory-acted scene had thrown Its tragic shadow there.

THE DEATH OF REGRET

I opened my shutter at sunrise, And looked at the hill hard by, And I heartily grieved for the comrade Who wandered up there to die.

I let in the morn on the morrow, And failed not to think of him then, As he trod up that rise in the twilight, And never came down again.

I undid the shutter a week thence, But not until after I'd turned Did I call back his last departure By the upland there discerned.

Uncovering the cas.e.m.e.nt long later, I bent to my toil till the gray, When I said to myself, "Ah--what ails me, To forget him all the day!"

As daily I flung back the shutter In the same blank bald routine, He scarcely once rose to remembrance Through a month of my facing the scene.

And ah, seldom now do I ponder At the window as heretofore On the long valued one who died yonder, And wastes by the sycamore.

IN THE DAYS OF CRINOLINE

A plain tilt-bonnet on her head She took the path across the leaze.

- Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said, "Too dowdy that, for coquetries, So I can hoe at ease.

But when she had pa.s.sed into the heath, And gained the wood beyond the flat, She raised her skirts, and from beneath Unpinned and drew as from a sheath An ostrich-feathered hat.

And where the hat had hung she now Concealed and pinned the dowdy hood, And set the hat upon her brow, And thus emerging from the wood Tripped on in jaunty mood.

The sun was low and crimson-faced As two came that way from the town, And plunged into the wood untraced . . .

When separately therefrom they paced The sun had quite gone down.

The hat and feather disappeared, The dowdy hood again was donned, And in the gloom the fair one neared Her home and husband dour, who conned Calmly his blue-eyed blonde.

"To-day," he said, "you have shown good sense, A dress so modest and so meek Should always deck your goings hence Alone." And as a recompense He kissed her on the cheek.

THE ROMAN GRAVEMOUNDS

By Rome's dim relics there walks a man, Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade; I guess what impels him to sc.r.a.pe and scan; Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed.

"Vast was Rome," he must muse, "in the world's regard, Vast it looms there still, vast it ever will be;"

And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard Left by those who are held in such memory.

But no; in his basket, see, he has brought A little white furred thing, stiff of limb, Whose life never won from the world a thought; It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him.

And to make it a grave he has come to the spot, And he delves in the ancient dead's long home; Their fames, their achievements, the man knows not; The furred thing is all to him--nothing Rome!

"Here say you that Caesar's warriors lie? - But my little white cat was my only friend!

Could she but live, might the record die Of Caesar, his legions, his aims, his end!"

Well, Rome's long rule here is oft and again A theme for the sages of history, And the small furred life was worth no one's pen; Yet its mourner's mood has a charm for me.

November 1910.

THE WORKBOX

"See, here's the workbox, little wife, That I made of polished oak."

He was a joiner, of village life; She came of borough folk.

He holds the present up to her As with a smile she nears And answers to the profferer, "'Twill last all my sewing years!"

"I warrant it will. And longer too.

'Tis a scantling that I got Off poor John Wayward's coffin, who Died of they knew not what.

"The s.h.i.+ngled pattern that seems to cease Against your box's rim Continues right on in the piece That's underground with him.

"And while I worked it made me think Of timber's varied doom; One inch where people eat and drink, The next inch in a tomb.