Kitabı oku: «Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses», sayfa 3

WHERE THEY LIVED

 
   Dishevelled leaves creep down
   Upon that bank to-day,
Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown;
   The wet bents bob and sway;
The once warm slippery turf is sodden
   Where we laughingly sat or lay.
 
 
   The summerhouse is gone,
   Leaving a weedy space;
The bushes that veiled it once have grown
   Gaunt trees that interlace,
Through whose lank limbs I see too clearly
   The nakedness of the place.
 
 
   And where were hills of blue,
   Blind drifts of vapour blow,
And the names of former dwellers few,
   If any, people know,
And instead of a voice that called, “Come in, Dears,”
   Time calls, “Pass below!”
 

THE OCCULTATION

 
When the cloud shut down on the morning shine,
   And darkened the sun,
I said, “So ended that joy of mine
   Years back begun.”
 
 
But day continued its lustrous roll
   In upper air;
And did my late irradiate soul
   Live on somewhere?
 

LIFE LAUGHS ONWARD

 
Rambling I looked for an old abode
Where, years back, one had lived I knew;
Its site a dwelling duly showed,
   But it was new.
 
 
I went where, not so long ago,
The sod had riven two breasts asunder;
Daisies throve gaily there, as though
   No grave were under.
 
 
I walked along a terrace where
Loud children gambolled in the sun;
The figure that had once sat there
   Was missed by none.
 
 
Life laughed and moved on unsubdued,
I saw that Old succumbed to Young:
’Twas well.  My too regretful mood
   Died on my tongue.
 

THE PEACE-OFFERING

 
It was but a little thing,
Yet I knew it meant to me
Ease from what had given a sting
To the very birdsinging
   Latterly.
 
 
But I would not welcome it;
And for all I then declined
O the regrettings infinite
When the night-processions flit
   Through the mind!
 

“SOMETHING TAPPED”

 
Something tapped on the pane of my room
   When there was never a trace
Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom
   My weary Belovéd’s face.
 
 
“O I am tired of waiting,” she said,
   “Night, morn, noon, afternoon;
So cold it is in my lonely bed,
   And I thought you would join me soon!”
 
 
I rose and neared the window-glass,
   But vanished thence had she:
Only a pallid moth, alas,
   Tapped at the pane for me.
 

August 1913.

THE WOUND

 
I climbed to the crest,
   And, fog-festooned,
The sun lay west
   Like a crimson wound:
 
 
Like that wound of mine
   Of which none knew,
For I’d given no sign
   That it pierced me through.
 

A MERRYMAKING IN QUESTION

 
“I will get a new string for my fiddle,
   And call to the neighbours to come,
And partners shall dance down the middle
   Until the old pewter-wares hum:
   And we’ll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!”
 
 
From the night came the oddest of answers:
   A hollow wind, like a bassoon,
And headstones all ranged up as dancers,
   And cypresses droning a croon,
   And gurgoyles that mouthed to the tune.
 

“I SAID AND SANG HER EXCELLENCE”
(Fickle Lover’s Song)

 
I said and sang her excellence:
   They called it laud undue.
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
Yet what was homage far above
The plain deserts of my olden Love
   Proved verity of my new.
 
 
“She moves a sylph in picture-land,
   Where nothing frosts the air:”
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
“To all winged pipers overhead
She is known by shape and song,” I said,
   Conscious of licence there.
 
 
I sang of her in a dim old hall
   Dream-built too fancifully,
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead
My feet to such a hall indeed,
   Where stood the very She.
 
 
Strange, startling, was it then to learn
   I had glanced down unborn time,
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
And prophesied, whereby I knew
That which the years had planned to do
   In warranty of my rhyme.
 

By Rushy-Pond.

A JANUARY NIGHT
(1879)

 
The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;
Through the joints of the quivering door
   The water wheezes.
 
 
The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour’s face;
There is some hid dread afoot
   That we cannot trace.
 
 
Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin they took in to-day?
   We do not know.
 

A KISS

 
By a wall the stranger now calls his,
Was born of old a particular kiss,
Without forethought in its genesis;
Which in a trice took wing on the air.
And where that spot is nothing shows:
   There ivy calmly grows,
   And no one knows
   What a birth was there!
 
 
That kiss is gone where none can tell —
Not even those who felt its spell:
It cannot have died; that know we well.
Somewhere it pursues its flight,
One of a long procession of sounds
   Travelling aethereal rounds
   Far from earth’s bounds
   In the infinite.
 

THE ANNOUNCEMENT

 
They came, the brothers, and took two chairs
   In their usual quiet way;
And for a time we did not think
      They had much to say.
 
 
And they began and talked awhile
   Of ordinary things,
Till spread that silence in the room
      A pent thought brings.
 
 
And then they said: “The end has come.
   Yes: it has come at last.”
And we looked down, and knew that day
      A spirit had passed.
 

THE OXEN

 
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
   “Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
   By the embers in hearthside ease.
 
 
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
   They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
   To doubt they were kneeling then.
 
 
So fair a fancy few would weave
   In these years!  Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
   “Come; see the oxen kneel
 
 
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
   Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
   Hoping it might be so.
 

1915.

THE TRESSES

 
   “When the air was damp
It made my curls hang slack
As they kissed my neck and back
While I footed the salt-aired track
   I loved to tramp.
 
 
   “When it was dry
They would roll up crisp and tight
As I went on in the light
Of the sun, which my own sprite
   Seemed to outvie.
 
 
   “Now I am old;
And have not one gay curl
As I had when a girl
For dampness to unfurl
   Or sun uphold!”
 

THE PHOTOGRAPH

 
The flame crept up the portrait line by line
As it lay on the coals in the silence of night’s profound,
   And over the arm’s incline,
And along the marge of the silkwork superfine,
And gnawed at the delicate bosom’s defenceless round.
 
 
Then I vented a cry of hurt, and averted my eyes;
The spectacle was one that I could not bear,
   To my deep and sad surprise;
But, compelled to heed, I again looked furtive-wise
Till the flame had eaten her breasts, and mouth, and hair.
 
 
“Thank God, she is out of it now!” I said at last,
In a great relief of heart when the thing was done
   That had set my soul aghast,
And nothing was left of the picture unsheathed from the past
But the ashen ghost of the card it had figured on.
 
 
She was a woman long hid amid packs of years,
She might have been living or dead; she was lost to my sight,
   And the deed that had nigh drawn tears
Was done in a casual clearance of life’s arrears;
But I felt as if I had put her to death that night!.
 

* * *

 
– Well; she knew nothing thereof did she survive,
And suffered nothing if numbered among the dead;
   Yet – yet – if on earth alive
Did she feel a smart, and with vague strange anguish strive?
If in heaven, did she smile at me sadly and shake her head?
 

ON A HEATH

 
I could hear a gown-skirt rustling
   Before I could see her shape,
Rustling through the heather
   That wove the common’s drape,
On that evening of dark weather
   When I hearkened, lips agape.
 
 
And the town-shine in the distance
   Did but baffle here the sight,
And then a voice flew forward:
   “Dear, is’t you?  I fear the night!”
And the herons flapped to norward
   In the firs upon my right.
 
 
There was another looming
   Whose life we did not see;
There was one stilly blooming
   Full nigh to where walked we;
There was a shade entombing
   All that was bright of me.
 

AN ANNIVERSARY

 
It was at the very date to which we have come,
   In the month of the matching name,
When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum,
   Its couch-time at night being the same.
And the same path stretched here that people now follow,
   And the same stile crossed their way,
And beyond the same green hillock and hollow
   The same horizon lay;
And the same man pilgrims now hereby who pilgrimed here that day.
 
 
Let so much be said of the date-day’s sameness;
   But the tree that neighbours the track,
And stoops like a pedlar afflicted with lameness,
   Knew of no sogged wound or windcrack.
And the joints of that wall were not enshrouded
   With mosses of many tones,
And the garth up afar was not overcrowded
   With a multitude of white stones,
And the man’s eyes then were not so sunk that you saw the socket-bones.
 

Kingston-Maurward Ewelease.

“BY THE RUNIC STONE”
(Two who became a story)

 
      By the Runic Stone
   They sat, where the grass sloped down,
And chattered, he white-hatted, she in brown,
      Pink-faced, breeze-blown.
 
 
      Rapt there alone
   In the transport of talking so
In such a place, there was nothing to let them know
      What hours had flown.
 
 
      And the die thrown
   By them heedlessly there, the dent
It was to cut in their encompassment,
      Were, too, unknown.
 
 
      It might have strown
   Their zest with qualms to see,
As in a glass, Time toss their history
      From zone to zone!
 

THE PINK FROCK

 
“O my pretty pink frock,
I sha’n’t be able to wear it!
Why is he dying just now?
   I hardly can bear it!
 
 
“He might have contrived to live on;
But they say there’s no hope whatever:
And must I shut myself up,
   And go out never?
 
 
“O my pretty pink frock,
Puff-sleeved and accordion-pleated!
He might have passed in July,
   And not so cheated!”
 

TRANSFORMATIONS

 
Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.
 
 
These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.
 
 
So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!
 

IN HER PRECINCTS

 
Her house looked cold from the foggy lea,
And the square of each window a dull black blur
      Where showed no stir:
Yes, her gloom within at the lack of me
Seemed matching mine at the lack of her.
 
 
The black squares grew to be squares of light
As the eyeshade swathed the house and lawn,
      And viols gave tone;
There was glee within.  And I found that night
The gloom of severance mine alone.
 

Kingston-Maurward Park.

THE LAST SIGNAL
(Oct. 11, 1886)

A MEMORY OF WILLIAM BARNES

 
   Silently I footed by an uphill road
   That led from my abode to a spot yew-boughed;
Yellowly the sun sloped low down to westward,
      And dark was the east with cloud.
 
 
   Then, amid the shadow of that livid sad east,
   Where the light was least, and a gate stood wide,
Something flashed the fire of the sun that was facing it,
      Like a brief blaze on that side.
 
 
   Looking hard and harder I knew what it meant —
   The sudden shine sent from the livid east scene;
It meant the west mirrored by the coffin of my friend there,
      Turning to the road from his green,
 
 
   To take his last journey forth – he who in his prime
   Trudged so many a time from that gate athwart the land!
Thus a farewell to me he signalled on his grave-way,
      As with a wave of his hand.
 

Winterborne-Came Path.

THE HOUSE OF SILENCE

 
   “That is a quiet place —
That house in the trees with the shady lawn.”
“ – If, child, you knew what there goes on
You would not call it a quiet place.
Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,
   And a brain spins there till dawn.”
 
 
   “But I see nobody there, —
Nobody moves about the green,
Or wanders the heavy trees between.”
“ – Ah, that’s because you do not bear
The visioning powers of souls who dare
   To pierce the material screen.
 
 
   “Morning, noon, and night,
Mid those funereal shades that seem
The uncanny scenery of a dream,
Figures dance to a mind with sight,
And music and laughter like floods of light
   Make all the precincts gleam.
 
 
   “It is a poet’s bower,
Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,
Long teams of all the years and days,
Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,
That meet mankind in its ages seven,
   An aion in an hour.”
 

GREAT THINGS

 
Sweet cyder is a great thing,
   A great thing to me,
Spinning down to Weymouth town
   By Ridgway thirstily,
And maid and mistress summoning
   Who tend the hostelry:
O cyder is a great thing,
   A great thing to me!
 
 
The dance it is a great thing,
   A great thing to me,
With candles lit and partners fit
   For night-long revelry;
And going home when day-dawning
   Peeps pale upon the lea:
O dancing is a great thing,
   A great thing to me!
 
 
Love is, yea, a great thing,
   A great thing to me,
When, having drawn across the lawn
   In darkness silently,
A figure flits like one a-wing
   Out from the nearest tree:
O love is, yes, a great thing,
   A great thing to me!
 
 
Will these be always great things,
   Great things to me?.
Let it befall that One will call,
   “Soul, I have need of thee:”
What then?  Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings,
   Love, and its ecstasy,
Will always have been great things,
   Great things to me!
 

THE CHIMES

 
That morning when I trod the town
The twitching chimes of long renown
   Played out to me
The sweet Sicilian sailors’ tune,
And I knew not if late or soon
   My day would be:
 
 
A day of sunshine beryl-bright
And windless; yea, think as I might,
   I could not say,
Even to within years’ measure, when
One would be at my side who then
   Was far away.
 
 
When hard utilitarian times
Had stilled the sweet Saint-Peter’s chimes
   I learnt to see
That bale may spring where blisses are,
And one desired might be afar
   Though near to me.
 

THE FIGURE IN THE SCENE

 
   It pleased her to step in front and sit
      Where the cragged slope was green,
While I stood back that I might pencil it
      With her amid the scene;
         Till it gloomed and rained;
But I kept on, despite the drifting wet
         That fell and stained
My draught, leaving for curious quizzings yet
         The blots engrained.
 
 
   And thus I drew her there alone,
      Seated amid the gauze
Of moisture, hooded, only her outline shown,
      With rainfall marked across.
         – Soon passed our stay;
Yet her rainy form is the Genius still of the spot,
         Immutable, yea,
Though the place now knows her no more, and has known her not
         Ever since that day.
 

From an old note.

“WHY DID I SKETCH”

 
Why did I sketch an upland green,
   And put the figure in
   Of one on the spot with me? —
For now that one has ceased to be seen
   The picture waxes akin
   To a wordless irony.
 
 
If you go drawing on down or cliff
   Let no soft curves intrude
   Of a woman’s silhouette,
But show the escarpments stark and stiff
   As in utter solitude;
   So shall you half forget.
 
 
Let me sooner pass from sight of the sky
   Than again on a thoughtless day
   Limn, laugh, and sing, and rhyme
With a woman sitting near, whom I
   Paint in for love, and who may
   Be called hence in my time!
 

From an old note.

CONJECTURE

 
If there were in my kalendar
   No Emma, Florence, Mary,
What would be my existence now —
   A hermit’s? – wanderer’s weary? —
      How should I live, and how
      Near would be death, or far?
 
 
Could it have been that other eyes
   Might have uplit my highway?
That fond, sad, retrospective sight
   Would catch from this dim byway
      Prized figures different quite
      From those that now arise?
 
 
With how strange aspect would there creep
   The dawn, the night, the daytime,
If memory were not what it is
   In song-time, toil, or pray-time. —
      O were it else than this,
      I’d pass to pulseless sleep!
 

THE BLOW

 
That no man schemed it is my hope —
Yea, that it fell by will and scope
   Of That Which some enthrone,
And for whose meaning myriads grope.
 
 
For I would not that of my kind
There should, of his unbiassed mind,
   Have been one known
Who such a stroke could have designed;
 
 
Since it would augur works and ways
Below the lowest that man assays
   To have hurled that stone
Into the sunshine of our days!
 
 
And if it prove that no man did,
And that the Inscrutable, the Hid,
   Was cause alone
Of this foul crash our lives amid,
 
 
I’ll go in due time, and forget
In some deep graveyard’s oubliette
   The thing whereof I groan,
And cease from troubling; thankful yet
 
 
Time’s finger should have stretched to show
No aimful author’s was the blow
   That swept us prone,
But the Immanent Doer’s That doth not know,
 
 
Which in some age unguessed of us
May lift Its blinding incubus,
   And see, and own:
“It grieves me I did thus and thus!”
 

LOVE THE MONOPOLIST
(Young Lover’s Reverie)

 
The train draws forth from the station-yard,
   And with it carries me.
I rise, and stretch out, and regard
   The platform left, and see
An airy slim blue form there standing,
   And know that it is she.
 
 
While with strained vision I watch on,
   The figure turns round quite
To greet friends gaily; then is gone.
   The import may be slight,
But why remained she not hard gazing
   Till I was out of sight?
 
 
“O do not chat with others there,”
   I brood.  “They are not I.
O strain your thoughts as if they were
   Gold bands between us; eye
All neighbour scenes as so much blankness
   Till I again am by!
 
 
“A troubled soughing in the breeze
   And the sky overhead
Let yourself feel; and shadeful trees,
   Ripe corn, and apples red,
Read as things barren and distasteful
   While we are separated!
 
 
“When I come back uncloak your gloom,
   And let in lovely day;
Then the long dark as of the tomb
   Can well be thrust away
With sweet things I shall have to practise,
   And you will have to say!”
 

Begun 1871: finished—