Part 13

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!