Part 2

AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK (Circa 1850)

ON afternoons of drowsy calm We stood in the panelled pew, Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm To the tune of “Cambridge New.”

We watched the elms, we watched the rooks, The clouds upon the breeze, Between the whiles of glancing at our books, And swaying like the trees.

So mindless were those outpourings!— Though I am not aware That I have gained by subtle thought on things Since we stood psalming there.

AT THE WICKET-GATE

THERE floated the sounds of church-chiming, But no one was nigh, Till there came, as a break in the loneness, Her father, she, I. And we slowly moved on to the wicket, And downlooking stood, Till anon people passed, and amid them We parted for good.

Greater, wiser, may part there than we three Who parted there then, But never will Fates colder-featured Hold sway there again. Of the churchgoers through the still meadows No single one knew What a play was played under their eyes there As thence we withdrew.

IN A MUSEUM

HERE’S the mould of a musical bird long passed from light, Which over the earth before man came was winging; There’s a contralto voice I heard last night, That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.

Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard, In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.

EXETER.

APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD PSALM TUNE

I MET you first—ah, when did I first meet you? When I was full of wonder, and innocent, Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent, While dimming day grew dimmer In the pulpit-glimmer.

Much riper in years I met you—in a temple Where summer sunset streamed upon our shapes, And you spread over me like a gauze that drapes, And flapped from floor to rafters, Sweet as angels’ laughters.

But you had been stripped of some of your old vesture By Monk, or another. Now you wore no frill, And at first you startled me. But I knew you still, Though I missed the minim’s waver, And the dotted quaver.

I grew accustomed to you thus. And you hailed me Through one who evoked you often. Then at last Your raiser was borne off, and I mourned you had passed From my life with your late outsetter; Till I said, “’Tis better!”

But you waylaid me. I rose and went as a ghost goes, And said, eyes-full “I’ll never hear it again! It is overmuch for scathed and memoried men When sitting among strange people Under their steeple.”

Now, a new stirrer of tones calls you up before me And wakes your speech, as she of Endor did (When sought by Saul who, in disguises hid, Fell down on the earth to hear it) Samuel’s spirit.

So, your quired oracles beat till they make me tremble As I discern your mien in the old attire, Here in these turmoiled years of belligerent fire Living still on—and onward, maybe, Till Doom’s great day be!

Sunday, August 13, 1916.

AT THE WORD “FAREWELL”

SHE looked like a bird from a cloud On the clammy lawn, Moving alone, bare-browed In the dim of dawn. The candles alight in the room For my parting meal Made all things withoutdoors loom Strange, ghostly, unreal.

The hour itself was a ghost, And it seemed to me then As of chances the chance furthermost I should see her again. I beheld not where all was so fleet That a Plan of the past Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet Was in working at last:

No prelude did I there perceive To a drama at all, Or foreshadow what fortune might weave From beginnings so small; But I rose as if quicked by a spur I was bound to obey, And stepped through the casement to her Still alone in the gray.

“I am leaving you . . . Farewell!” I said, As I followed her on By an alley bare boughs overspread; “I soon must be gone!” Even then the scale might have been turned Against love by a feather, —But crimson one cheek of hers burned When we came in together.

FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER

A DAY is drawing to its fall I had not dreamed to see; The first of many to enthrall My spirit, will it be? Or is this eve the end of all Such new delight for me?

I journey home: the pattern grows Of moonshades on the way: “Soon the first quarter, I suppose,” Sky-glancing travellers say; I realize that it, for those, Has been a common day.