Moments of Vision | Page 3

to the strength of my regret!
You'd not the art--you never had
For good or bad -?To make men see how sweet your meaning,
Which, visible, had charmed them glad.
You would, by words inept let fall,
Offend them all,?Even if they saw your warm devotion
Would hold your life's blood at their call.
You lacked the eye to understand
Those friends offhand?Whose mode was crude, though whose dim purport
Outpriced the courtesies of the bland.
I am now the only being who
Remembers you?It may be. What a waste that Nature
Grudged soul so dear the art its due!
SHE, I, AND THEY
I was sitting,?She was knitting,?And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around;
When there struck on us a sigh;?"Ah--what is that?" said I:?"Was it not you?" said she. "A sigh did sound."
I had not breathed it,?Nor the night-wind heaved it,?And how it came to us we could not guess;
And we looked up at each face?Framed and glazed there in its place,?Still hearkening; but thenceforth was silentness.
Half in dreaming,?"Then its meaning,"?Said we, "must be surely this; that they repine
That we should be the last?Of stocks once unsurpassed,?And unable to keep up their sturdy line."
1916.
NEAR LANIVET, 1872
There was a stunted handpost just on the crest,
Only a few feet high:?She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest,
At the crossways close thereby.
She leant back, being so weary, against its stem,
And laid her arms on its own,?Each open palm stretched out to each end of them,
Her sad face sideways thrown.
Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day
Made her look as one crucified?In my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way,
And hurriedly "Don't," I cried.
I do not think she heard. Loosing thence she said,
As she stepped forth ready to go,?"I am rested now.--Something strange came into my head;
I wish I had not leant so!"
And wordless we moved onward down from the hill
In the west cloud's murked obscure,?And looking back we could see the handpost still
In the solitude of the moor.
"It struck her too," I thought, for as if afraid
She heavily breathed as we trailed;?Till she said, "I did not think how 'twould look in the shade,
When I leant there like one nailed."
I, lightly: "There's nothing in it. For YOU, anyhow!"?--"O I know there is not," said she . . .?"Yet I wonder . . . If no one is bodily crucified now,
In spirit one may be!"
And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see
In the running of Time's far glass?Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be
Some day.--Alas, alas!
JOYS OF MEMORY
When the spring comes round, and a certain day?Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees
And says, Remember,?I begin again, as if it were new,?A day of like date I once lived through,?Whiling it hour by hour away;
So shall I do till my December,
When spring comes round.
I take my holiday then and my rest?Away from the dun life here about me,
Old hours re-greeting?With the quiet sense that bring they must?Such throbs as at first, till I house with dust,?And in the numbness my heartsome zest
For things that were, be past repeating
When spring comes round.
TO THE MOON
"What have you looked at, Moon,
In your time,?Now long past your prime?"?"O, I have looked at, often looked at
Sweet, sublime,?Sore things, shudderful, night and noon
In my time."
"What have you mused on, Moon,
In your day,?So aloof, so far away?"?"O, I have mused on, often mused on
Growth, decay,?Nations alive, dead, mad, aswoon,
In my day!"
"Have you much wondered, Moon,
On your rounds,?Self-wrapt, beyond Earth's bounds?"?"Yea, I have wondered, often wondered
At the sounds?Reaching me of the human tune
On my rounds."
"What do you think of it, Moon,
As you go??Is Life much, or no?"?"O, I think of it, often think of it
As a show?God ought surely to shut up soon,
As I go."
COPYING ARCHITECTURE IN AN OLD MINSTER?(Wimborne)
How smartly the quarters of the hour march by
That the jack-o'-clock never forgets;?Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp's eye,?Or got the true twist of the ogee over,
A double ding-dong ricochetts.
Just so did he clang here before I came,
And so will he clang when I'm gone?Through the Minster's cavernous hollows--the same?Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver
To the speechless midnight and dawn!
I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts,
Whose mould lies below and around.?Yes; the next "Come, come," draws them out from their posts, And they gather, and one shade appears, and another,
As the eve-damps creep from the ground.
See--a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb,
And a Duke and his Duchess near;?And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom,?And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber;
And shapes unknown in the rear.
Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan
To better ail-stricken mankind;?I catch their cheepings, though thinner than?The overhead creak of a passager's pinion
When leaving land behind.
Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn,
And caution them not to come?To a world so ancient and trouble-torn,?Of foiled