Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses Part 25

Of her wedding in face of the record. Her lover agreed, And they parted before the bra.s.s with a shudderful kiss, For it seemed to flash out on their impulse of pa.s.sionate need, "Mock ye not this!"

Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one, Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were dead Her name and adjuration; but since it was done Nought could be said

Save that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul, And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good, If she wished anon to reach the coveted goal Of beat.i.tude.

To erase from the consecrate text her prayer as there prayed Would aver that, since earth's joys most drew her, past doubt, Friends' prayers for her joy above by Jesu's aid Could be done without.

Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibe That would rise at her back in the nave when she should pa.s.s As another's avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribe On the changeless bra.s.s.

And so for months she replied to her Love: "No, no"; While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more, Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to show Less warmth than before.

And, after an absence, wrote words absolute: That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear; And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit, He should wed elsewhere.

Thence on, at unwonted times through the lengthening days She was seen in the church--at dawn, or when the sun dipt And the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze, Before the script.

She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowers As summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed, When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours, She was missed from her bed.

"The church!" they whispered with qualms; "where often she sits."

They found her: facing the bra.s.s there, else seeing none, But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits; And she knew them not one.

And so she remained, in her handmaids' charge; late, soon, Tracing words in the air with her finger, as seen that night - Those incised on the bra.s.s--till at length unwatched one noon, She vanished from sight.

And, as talebearers tell, thence on to her last-taken breath Was unseen, save as wraith that in front of the bra.s.s made moan; So that ever the way of her life and the time of her death Remained unknown.

And hence, as indited above, you may read even now The quaint church-text, with the date of her death left bare, In the aged Estminster aisle, where folk yet bow Themselves in prayer.

October 30, 1907.

THE MARBLE-STREETED TOWN

I reach the marble-streeted town, Whose "Sound" outbreathes its air Of sharp sea-salts; I see the movement up and down As when she was there.

s.h.i.+ps of all countries come and go, The bandsmen boom in the sun A throbbing waltz; The schoolgirls laugh along the Hoe As when she was one.

I move away as the music rolls: The place seems not to mind That she--of old The brightest of its native souls - Left it behind!

Over this green aforedays she On light treads went and came, Yea, times untold; Yet none here knows her history - Has heard her name.

PLYMOUTH (1914?).

A WOMAN DRIVING

How she held up the horses' heads, Firm-lipped, with steady rein, Down that grim steep the coastguard treads, Till all was safe again!

With form erect and keen contour She pa.s.sed against the sea, And, dipping into the chine's obscure, Was seen no more by me.

To others she appeared anew At times of dusky light, But always, so they told, withdrew From close and curious sight.

Some said her silent wheels would roll Rutless on softest loam, And even that her steeds' footfall Sank not upon the foam.

Where drives she now? It may be where No mortal horses are, But in a chariot of the air Towards some radiant star.

A WOMAN'S TRUST

If he should live a thousand years He'd find it not again That scorn of him by men Could less disturb a woman's trust In him as a steadfast star which must Rise scathless from the nether spheres: If he should live a thousand years He'd find it not again.

She waited like a little child, Unchilled by damps of doubt, While from her eyes looked out A confidence sublime as Spring's When stressed by Winter's loiterings.

Thus, howsoever the wicked wiled, She waited like a little child Unchilled by damps of doubt.

Through cruel years and crueller Thus she believed in him And his aurore, so dim; That, after fenweeds, flowers would blow; And above all things did she show Her faith in his good faith with her; Through cruel years and crueller Thus she believed in him!

BEST TIMES

We went a day's excursion to the stream, Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam, And I did not know That life would show, However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday suns.h.i.+ne by the road That wound towards the wicket of your abode, And I did not think That life would shrink To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night, And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light, And I full forgot That life might not Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair, After a gaiety prolonged and rare, No thought soever That you might never Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

Rewritten from an old draft.

THE CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE

While he was here in breath and bone, To speak to and to see, Would I had known--more clearly known - What that man did for me

When the wind sc.r.a.ped a minor lay, And the spent west from white To gray turned tiredly, and from gray To broadest bands of night!

But I saw not, and he saw not What s.h.i.+ning life-tides flowed To me-ward from his casual jot Of service on that road.