Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses Part 26

He would have said: "'Twas nothing new; We all do what we can; 'Twas only what one man would do For any other man."

Now that I gauge his goodliness He's slipped from human eyes; And when he pa.s.sed there's none can guess, Or point out where he lies.

INTRA SEPULCHRUM

What curious things we said, What curious things we did Up there in the world we walked till dead Our kith and kin amid!

How we played at love, And its wildness, weakness, woe; Yes, played thereat far more than enough As it turned out, I trow!

Played at believing in G.o.ds And observing the ordinances, I for your sake in impossible codes Right ready to acquiesce.

Thinking our lives unique, Quite quainter than usual kinds, We held that we could not abide a week The tether of typic minds.

--Yet people who day by day Pa.s.s by and look at us From over the wall in a casual way Are of this unconscious.

And feel, if anything, That none can be buried here Removed from commonest fas.h.i.+oning, Or lending note to a bier:

No twain who in heart-heaves proved Themselves at all adept, Who more than many laughed and loved, Who more than many wept,

Or were as sprites or elves Into blind matter hurled, Or ever could have been to themselves The centre of the world.

THE WHITEWASHED WALL

Why does she turn in that shy soft way Whenever she stirs the fire, And kiss to the chimney-corner wall, As if entranced to admire Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight Of a rose in richest green?

I have known her long, but this raptured rite I never before have seen.

- Well, once when her son cast his shadow there, A friend took a pencil and drew him Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines Had a lifelike semblance to him.

And there long stayed his familiar look; But one day, ere she knew, The whitener came to cleanse the nook, And covered the face from view.

"Yes," he said: "My brush goes on with a rush, And the draught is buried under; When you have to whiten old cots and brighten, What else can you do, I wonder?"

But she knows he's there. And when she yearns For him, deep in the labouring night, She sees him as close at hand, and turns To him under his sheet of white.

JUST THE SAME

I sat. It all was past; Hope never would hail again; Fair days had ceased at a blast, The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone, And the halo in which I had hied So gaily gallantly on Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither, In a cloud too black for name: - People frisked hither and thither; The world was just the same.

THE LAST TIME

The kiss had been given and taken, And gathered to many past: It never could reawaken; But you heard none say: "It's the last!"

The clock showed the hour and the minute, But you did not turn and look: You read no finis in it, As at closing of a book.

But you read it all too rightly When, at a time anon, A figure lay stretched out whitely, And you stood looking thereon.

THE SEVEN TIMES

The dark was thick. A boy he seemed at that time Who trotted by me with uncertain air; "I'll tell my tale," he murmured, "for I fancy A friend goes there? . . . "

Then thus he told. "I reached--'twas for the first time - A dwelling. Life was clogged in me with care; I thought not I should meet an eyesome maiden, But found one there.

"I entered on the precincts for the second time - 'Twas an adventure fit and fresh and fair - I slackened in my footsteps at the porchway, And found her there.

"I rose and travelled thither for the third time, The hope-hues growing gayer and yet gayer As I hastened round the boscage of the outskirts, And found her there.

"I journeyed to the place again the fourth time (The best and rarest visit of the rare, As it seemed to me, engrossed about these goings), And found her there.

"When I bent me to my pilgrimage the fifth time (Soft-thinking as I journeyed I would dare A certain word at token of good auspice), I found her there.

"That landscape did I traverse for the sixth time, And dreamed on what we purposed to prepare; I reached a tryst before my journey's end came, And found her there.

"I went again--long after--aye, the seventh time; The look of things was sinister and bare As I caught no customed signal, heard no voice call, Nor found her there.

"And now I gad the globe--day, night, and any time, To light upon her hiding unaware, And, maybe, I shall nigh me to some nymph-niche, And find her there!"

" But how," said I, "has your so little lifetime Given roomage for such loving, loss, despair?

A boy so young!" Forthwith I turned my lantern Upon him there.

His head was white. His small form, fine aforetime, Was shrunken with old age and battering wear, An eighty-years long plodder saw I pacing Beside me there.

THE SUN'S LAST LOOK ON THE COUNTRY GIRL (M. H.)