Part 16

When I returned from the town at nightfall Notes continued to pour As when I had left two hours before: “It’s the very last time,” she said in closing; “From now I play no more.”

A few morns onward found her fading, And, as her life outflew, I thought of her playing her tunes right through; And I felt she had known of what was coming, And wondered how she knew.

1912.

“YOU ON THE TOWER”

“YOU on the tower of my factory— What do you see up there? Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings Advancing to reach me here?” —“Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings Advancing to reach you here.”

“Good. Soon I’ll come and ask you To tell me again thereon . . . Well, what is he doing now? Hoi, there!” —“He still is flying on.” “Ah, waiting till I have full-finished. Good. Tell me again anon . . .

III

“Hoi, Watchman! I’m here. When comes he? Between my sweats I am chill.” —“Oh, you there, working still? Why, surely he reached you a time back, And took you miles from your mill? He duly came in his winging, And now he has passed out of view. How can it be that you missed him? He brushed you by as he flew.”

THE INTERLOPER

“And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home.”

THERE are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise, And the cliff-side track looks green and fair; I view them talking in quiet glee As they drop down towards the puffins’ lair By the roughest of ways; But another with the three rides on, I see, Whom I like not to be there!

No: it’s not anybody you think of. Next A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream Where two sit happy and half in the dark: They read, helped out by a frail-wick’d gleam, Some rhythmic text; But one sits with them whom they don’t mark, One I’m wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name. And now I discern gay diners in a mansion-place, And the guests dropping wit—pert, prim, or choice, And the hostess’s tender and laughing face, And the host’s bland brow; I cannot help hearing a hollow voice, And I’d fain not hear it there.

No: it’s not from the stranger you met once. Ah, Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds; People on a lawn—quite a crowd of them. Yes, And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads; And they say, “Hurrah!” To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless, Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it’s not the pale Form your imagings raise, That waits on us all at a destined time, It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed, O that it were such a shape sublime; In these latter days! It is that under which best lives corrode; Would, would it could not be there!

LOGS ON THE HEARTH A MEMORY OF A SISTER

THE fire advances along the log Of the tree we felled, Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

The fork that first my hand would reach And then my foot In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

Where the bark chars is where, one year, It was pruned, and bled— Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last, Its growings all have stagnated.

My fellow-climber rises dim From her chilly grave— Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb, Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

December 1915.

THE SUNSHADE

AH—it’s the skeleton of a lady’s sunshade, Here at my feet in the hard rock’s chink, Merely a naked sheaf of wires!— Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers Since it was silked in its white or pink.

Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade, No more a screen from the weakest ray; Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes, Nothing but rusty bones as it lies In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.

Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade Up and down this seaside place?— Little thumb standing against its stem, Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem, Softening yet more the already soft face!

Is the fair woman who carried that sunshade A skeleton just as her property is, Laid in the chink that none may scan? And does she regret—if regret dust can— The vain things thought when she flourished this?

SWANAGE CLIFFS.

THE AGEING HOUSE