Part 27

LOOKING AT A PICTURE ON AN ANNIVERSARY

BUT don’t you know it, my dear, Don’t you know it, That this day of the year (What rainbow-rays embow it!) We met, strangers confessed, But parted—blest?

Though at this query, my dear, There in your frame Unmoved you still appear, You must be thinking the same, But keep that look demure Just to allure.

And now at length a trace I surely vision Upon that wistful face Of old-time recognition, Smiling forth, “Yes, as you say, It is the day.”

For this one phase of you Now left on earth This great date must endue With pulsings of rebirth?— I see them vitalize Those two deep eyes!

But if this face I con Does not declare Consciousness living on Still in it, little I care To live myself, my dear, Lone-labouring here!

Spring 1913.

THE CHOIRMASTER’S BURIAL

HE often would ask us That, when he died, After playing so many To their last rest, If out of us any Should here abide, And it would not task us, We would with our lutes Play over him By his grave-brim The psalm he liked best— The one whose sense suits “Mount Ephraim”— And perhaps we should seem To him, in Death’s dream, Like the seraphim.

As soon as I knew That his spirit was gone I thought this his due, And spoke thereupon. “I think,” said the vicar, “A read service quicker Than viols out-of-doors In these frosts and hoars. That old-fashioned way Requires a fine day, And it seems to me It had better not be.”

Hence, that afternoon, Though never knew he That his wish could not be, To get through it faster They buried the master Without any tune.

But ’twas said that, when At the dead of next night The vicar looked out, There struck on his ken Thronged roundabout, Where the frost was graying The headstoned grass, A band all in white Like the saints in church-glass, Singing and playing The ancient stave By the choirmaster’s grave.

Such the tenor man told When he had grown old.

THE MAN WHO FORGOT

AT a lonely cross where bye-roads met I sat upon a gate; I saw the sun decline and set, And still was fain to wait.

A trotting boy passed up the way And roused me from my thought; I called to him, and showed where lay A spot I shyly sought.

“A summer-house fair stands hidden where You see the moonlight thrown; Go, tell me if within it there A lady sits alone.”

He half demurred, but took the track, And silence held the scene; I saw his figure rambling back; I asked him if he had been.

“I went just where you said, but found No summer-house was there: Beyond the slope ’tis all bare ground; Nothing stands anywhere.

“A man asked what my brains were worth; The house, he said, grew rotten, And was pulled down before my birth, And is almost forgotten!”

My right mind woke, and I stood dumb; Forty years’ frost and flower Had fleeted since I’d used to come To meet her in that bower.

WHILE DRAWING IN A CHURCH-YARD

“IT is sad that so many of worth, Still in the flesh,” soughed the yew, “Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth Secludes from view.

“They ride their diurnal round Each day-span’s sum of hours In peerless ease, without jolt or bound Or ache like ours.

“If the living could but hear What is heard by my roots as they creep Round the restful flock, and the things said there, No one would weep.”

“‘Now set among the wise,’ They say: ‘Enlarged in scope, That no God trumpet us to rise We truly hope.’”

I listened to his strange tale In the mood that stillness brings, And I grew to accept as the day wore pale That show of things.

“FOR LIFE I HAD NEVER CARED GREATLY”