Part 25

From the bundle at hand here I take each tree, And set it to stand, here Always to be; When, in a second, As if from fear Of Life unreckoned Beginning here, It starts a sighing Through day and night, Though while there lying ’Twas voiceless quite.

It will sigh in the morning, Will sigh at noon, At the winter’s warning, In wafts of June; Grieving that never Kind Fate decreed It should for ever Remain a seed, And shun the welter Of things without, Unneeding shelter From storm and drought.

Thus, all unknowing For whom or what We set it growing In this bleak spot, It still will grieve here Throughout its time, Unable to leave here, Or change its clime; Or tell the story Of us to-day When, halt and hoary, We pass away.

THE DEAR

I PLODDED to Fairmile Hill-top, where A maiden one fain would guard From every hazard and every care Advanced on the roadside sward.

I wondered how succeeding suns Would shape her wayfarings, And wished some Power might take such ones Under Its warding wings.

The busy breeze came up the hill And smartened her cheek to red, And frizzled her hair to a haze. With a will “Good-morning, my Dear!” I said.

She glanced from me to the far-off gray, And, with proud severity, “Good-morning to you—though I may say I am not your Dear,” quoth she:

“For I am the Dear of one not here— One far from his native land!”— And she passed me by; and I did not try To make her understand.

1901

ONE WE KNEW (M. H. 1772–1857)

SHE told how they used to form for the country dances— “The Triumph,” “The New-rigged Ship”— To the light of the guttering wax in the panelled manses, And in cots to the blink of a dip.

She spoke of the wild “poussetting” and “allemanding” On carpet, on oak, and on sod; And the two long rows of ladies and gentlemen standing, And the figures the couples trod.

She showed us the spot where the maypole was yearly planted, And where the bandsmen stood While breeched and kerchiefed partners whirled, and panted To choose each other for good.

She told of that far-back day when they learnt astounded Of the death of the King of France: Of the Terror; and then of Bonaparte’s unbounded Ambition and arrogance.

Of how his threats woke warlike preparations Along the southern strand, And how each night brought tremors and trepidations Lest morning should see him land.

She said she had often heard the gibbet creaking As it swayed in the lightning flash, Had caught from the neighbouring town a small child’s shrieking At the cart-tail under the lash . . .

With cap-framed face and long gaze into the embers— We seated around her knees— She would dwell on such dead themes, not as one who remembers, But rather as one who sees.

She seemed one left behind of a band gone distant So far that no tongue could hail: Past things retold were to her as things existent, Things present but as a tale.

May 20, 1902.

SHE HEARS THE STORM

THERE was a time in former years— While my roof-tree was his— When I should have been distressed by fears At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously, “The pricking rain strikes cold; His road is bare of hedge or tree, And he is getting old.”

But now the fitful chimney-roar, The drone of Thorncombe trees, The Froom in flood upon the moor, The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty wick’d, The thuds upon the thatch, The eaves-drops on the window flicked, The clacking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers, I scarcely heed or mind; He has won that storm-tight roof of hers Which Earth grants all her kind.

A WET NIGHT

I PACE along, the rain-shafts riddling me, Mile after mile out by the moorland way, And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray Into the lane, and round the corner tree;