Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses Part 4

Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

II

I thought: "Well, I've come to the Union - The workhouse at last - After honest hard work all the week, and Communion O' Zundays, these fifty years past.

III

"'Tis hard; but," I thought, "never mind it: There's gain in the end: And when I get used to the place I shall find it A home, and may find there a friend.

IV

"Life there will be better than t'other.

For peace is a.s.sured.

THE MEN IN ONE WING AND THEIR WIVES IN ANOTHER Is strictly the rule of the Board."

V

Just then one young Pa'son arriving Steps up out of breath To the side o' the waggon wherein we were driving To Union; and calls out and saith:

VI

"Old folks, that harsh order is altered, Be not sick of heart!

The Guardians they poohed and they pished and they paltered When urged not to keep you apart.

VII

"'It is wrong,' I maintained, 'to divide them, Near forty years wed.'

'Very well, sir. We promise, then, they shall abide them In one wing together,' they said."

VIII

Then I sank--knew 'twas quite a foredone thing That misery should be To the end! . . . To get freed of her there was the one thing Had made the change welcome to me.

IX

To go there was ending but badly; 'Twas shame and 'twas pain; "But anyhow," thought I, "thereby I shall gladly Get free of this forty years' chain."

X

I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me, But she's to be there!

Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

THE FLIRT'S TRAGEDY (17--)

Here alone by the logs in my chamber, Deserted, decrepit - Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot Of friends I once knew -

My drama and hers begins weirdly Its dumb re-enactment, Each scene, sigh, and circ.u.mstance pa.s.sing In spectral review.

- Wealth was mine beyond wish when I met her - The pride of the lowland - Embowered in Tintinhull Valley By laurel and yew;

And love lit my soul, notwithstanding My features' ill favour, Too obvious beside her perfections Of line and of hue.

But it pleased her to play on my pa.s.sion, And whet me to pleadings That won from her mirthful negations And scornings undue.

Then I fled her disdains and derisions To cities of pleasure, And made me the crony of idlers In every purlieu.

Of those who lent ear to my story, A needy Adonis Gave hint how to grizzle her garden From roses to rue,

Could his price but be paid for so purging My scorner of scornings: Thus tempted, the l.u.s.t to avenge me Germed inly and grew.

I clothed him in sumptuous apparel, Consigned to him coursers, Meet equipage, liveried attendants In full retinue.

So dowered, with letters of credit He wayfared to England, And spied out the manor she G.o.ddessed, And handy thereto,

Set to hire him a tenantless mansion As coign-stone of vantage For testing what gross adulation Of beauty could do.

He laboured through mornings and evens, On new moons and sabbaths, By wiles to enmesh her attention In park, path, and pew;

And having afar played upon her, Advanced his lines nearer, And boldly outleaping conventions, Bent briskly to woo.

His gay G.o.dlike face, his rare seeming Anon worked to win her, And later, at noontides and night-tides They held rendezvous.

His tarriance full spent, he departed And met me in Venice, And lines from her told that my jilter Was stooping to sue.

Not long could be further concealment, She pled to him humbly: "By our love and our sin, O protect me; I fly unto you!"

A mighty remorse overgat me, I heard her low anguish, And there in the gloom of the calle My steel ran him through.

A swift push engulphed his hot carrion Within the ca.n.a.l there - That still street of waters dividing The city in two.

- I wandered awhile all unable To smother my torment, My brain racked by yells as from Tophet Of Satan's whole crew.

A month of unrest brought me hovering At home in her precincts, To whose hiding-hole local story Afforded a clue.

Exposed, and expelled by her people, Afar off in London I found her alone, in a sombre And soul-stifling mew.

Still burning to make reparation I pleaded to wive her, And father her child, and thus faintly My mischief undo.

She yielded, and spells of calm weather Succeeded the tempest; And one sprung of him stood as scion Of my bone and thew . . .

But Time unveils sorrows and secrets, And so it befell now: By inches the curtain was twitched at, And slowly undrew.

As we lay, she and I, in the night-time, We heard the boy moaning: "O misery mine! My false father Has murdered my true!"

She gasped: yea, she heard; understood it.