Part 8

WHEN he lit the candles there, And the light fell on his hand, And it trembled as he scanned Her and me, his vanquished air Hinted that his dream was done, And I saw he had begun To understand.

When Love’s viol was unstrung, Sore I wished the hand that shook Had been mine that shared her book While that evening hymn was sung, His the victor’s, as he lit Candles where he had bidden us sit With vanquished look.

Now her dust lies listless there, His afar from tending hand, What avails the victory scanned? Does he smile from upper air: “Ah, my friend, your dream is done; And ’tis you who have begun To understand!

“I TRAVEL AS A PHANTOM NOW”

I TRAVEL as a phantom now, For people do not wish to see In flesh and blood so bare a bough As Nature makes of me.

And thus I visit bodiless Strange gloomy households often at odds, And wonder if Man’s consciousness Was a mistake of God’s.

And next I meet you, and I pause, And think that if mistake it were, As some have said, O then it was One that I well can bear!

1915.

LINES TO A MOVEMENT IN MOZART’S E-FLAT SYMPHONY

SHOW me again the time When in the Junetide’s prime We flew by meads and mountains northerly!— Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness, Love lures life on.

Show me again the day When from the sandy bay We looked together upon the pestered sea!— Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking, Love lures life on.

Show me again the hour When by the pinnacled tower We eyed each other and feared futurity!— Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings, Love lures life on.

Show me again just this: The moment of that kiss Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree!— Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness, Love lures life on.

Begun November 1898.

“IN THE SEVENTIES”

“Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego.”—JOB.

IN the seventies I was bearing in my breast, Penned tight, Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest In the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast Penned tight.

In the seventies when my neighbours—even my friend— Saw me pass, Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, “Alas, For his onward years and name unless he mend!” In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend Saw me pass.

In the seventies those who met me did not know Of the vision That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision And the damps that choked my goings to and fro In the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know Of the vision.

In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it, Locked in me, Though as delicate as lamp-worm’s lucency; Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it In the seventies!—could not darken or destroy it, Locked in me.

THE PEDIGREE

I BENT in the deep of night Over a pedigree the chronicler gave As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed, The uncurtained panes of my window-square let in the watery light Of the moon in its old age: And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globed Like a drifting dolphin’s eye seen through a lapping wave.

So, scanning my sire-sown tree, And the hieroglyphs of this spouse tied to that, With offspring mapped below in lineage, Till the tangles troubled me, The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage Enchanting me to gaze again thereat.

III

It was a mirror now, And in it a long perspective I could trace Of my begetters, dwindling backward each past each All with the kindred look, Whose names had since been inked down in their place On the recorder’s book, Generation and generation of my mien, and build, and brow.

And then did I divine That every heave and coil and move I made Within my brain, and in my mood and speech, Was in the glass portrayed As long forestalled by their so making it; The first of them, the primest fuglemen of my line, Being fogged in far antiqueness past surmise and reason’s reach.

Said I then, sunk in tone, “I am merest mimicker and counterfeit!— Though thinking, I am I, And what I do I do myself alone.” —The cynic twist of the page thereat unknit Back to its normal figure, having wrought its purport wry, The Mage’s mirror left the window-square, And the stained moon and drift retook their places there.

1916.