Part 15

At whiles would flit Swart bats, whose wings, be-webbed and tanned, Whirred like the wheels of ancient clocks: She laughed a hailing as she scanned Me in the gloom, the tuneful box Intoning it.

Lifelong to be I thought it. That there watched hard by A spirit who sang to the indoor tune, “O make the most of what is nigh!” I did not hear in my dull soul-swoon— I did not see.

ON STURMINSTER FOOT-BRIDGE (ONOMATOPOEIC)

RETICULATIONS creep upon the slack stream’s face When the wind skims irritably past, The current clucks smartly into each hollow place That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier’s sodden base; The floating-lily leaves rot fast.

On a roof stand the swallows ranged in wistful waiting rows, Till they arrow off and drop like stones Among the eyot-withies at whose foot the river flows; And beneath the roof is she who in the dark world shows As a lattice-gleam when midnight moans.

ROYAL SPONSORS

“THE king and the queen will stand to the child; ’Twill be handed down in song; And it’s no more than their deserving, With my lord so faithful at Court so long, And so staunch and strong.

“O never before was known such a thing! ’Twill be a grand time for all; And the beef will be a whole-roast bullock, And the servants will have a feast in the hall, And the ladies a ball.

“While from Jordan’s stream by a traveller, In a flagon of silver wrought, And by caravan, stage-coach, wain, and waggon A precious trickle has been brought, Clear as when caught.”

The morning came. To the park of the peer The royal couple bore; And the font was filled with the Jordan water, And the household awaited their guests before The carpeted door.

But when they went to the silk-lined cot The child was found to have died. “What’s now to be done? We can disappoint not The king and queen!” the family cried With eyes spread wide.

“Even now they approach the chestnut-drive! The service must be read.” “Well, since we can’t christen the child alive, By God we shall have to christen him dead!” The marquis said.

Thus, breath-forsaken, a corpse was taken To the private chapel—yea— And the king knew not, nor the queen, God wot, That they answered for one returned to clay At the font that day.

OLD FURNITURE

I KNOW not how it may be with others Who sit amid relics of householdry That date from the days of their mothers’ mothers, But well I know how it is with me Continually.

I see the hands of the generations That owned each shiny familiar thing In play on its knobs and indentations, And with its ancient fashioning Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler, As in a mirror a candle-flame Shows images of itself, each frailer As it recedes, though the eye may frame Its shape the same.

On the clock’s dull dial a foggy finger, Moving to set the minutes right With tentative touches that lift and linger In the wont of a moth on a summer night, Creeps to my sight.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing— As whilom—just over the strings by the nut, The tip of a bow receding, advancing In airy quivers, as if it would cut The plaintive gut.

And I see a face by that box for tinder, Glowing forth in fits from the dark, And fading again, as the linten cinder Kindles to red at the flinty spark, Or goes out stark.

Well, well. It is best to be up and doing, The world has no use for one to-day Who eyes things thus—no aim pursuing! He should not continue in this stay, But sink away.

A THOUGHT IN TWO MOODS

I SAW it—pink and white—revealed Upon the white and green; The white and green was a daisied field, The pink and white Ethleen.

And as I looked it seemed in kind That difference they had none; The two fair bodiments combined As varied miens of one.

A sense that, in some mouldering year, As one they both would lie, Made me move quickly on to her To pass the pale thought by.

She laughed and said: “Out there, to me, You looked so weather-browned, And brown in clothes, you seemed to be Made of the dusty ground!”

THE LAST PERFORMANCE

“I AM playing my oldest tunes,” declared she, “All the old tunes I know,— Those I learnt ever so long ago.” —Why she should think just then she’d play them Silence cloaks like snow.