Moments of Vision | Page 4

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 intents, vain lovingkindness,
And ardours chilled and numb.
They waste to fog as I stir and stand,
And move from the arched recess,
And pick up the drawing that
slipped from my hand,
And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny

In a moment's forgetfulness.
TO SHAKESPEARE
AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS
Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,
Thou, who
display'dst a life of common-place,
Leaving no intimate word or
personal trace
Of high design outside the artistry
Of thy penned dreams,
Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally.
Through human orbits thy discourse to-day,
Despite thy formal
pilgrimage, throbs on
In harmonies that cow Oblivion,
And, like the
wind, with all-uncared effect
Maintain a sway
Not fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked.
And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note
The borough clocks
but samely tongued the hour,
The Avon just as always glassed the
tower,
Thy age was published on thy passing-bell
But in due rote
With other dwellers' deaths accorded a like knell.
And at the strokes some townsman (met, maybe,
And thereon queried
by some squire's good dame
Driving in shopward) may have given
thy name,
With, "Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do;
Though, as for me,
I knew him but by just a neighbour's nod, 'tis true.
"I' faith, few knew him much here, save by word,
He having
elsewhere led his busier life;
Though to be sure he left with us his
wife."
--"Ah, one of the tradesmen's sons, I now recall . . .
Witty, I've heard . . .
We did not know him . . . Well, good-day. Death
comes to all."
So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find
To mingle with the

barn-door brood awhile,
Then vanish from their homely domicile -

Into man's poesy, we wot not whence,
Flew thy strange mind,
Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped for
ever thence.
1916.
QUID HIC AGIS?
I
When I weekly knew
An ancient pew,
And murmured there
The
forms of prayer
And thanks and praise
In the ancient ways,
And
heard read out
During August drought
That chapter from Kings

Harvest-time brings;
- How the prophet, broken
By griefs unspoken,

Went heavily away
To fast and to pray,
And, while waiting to die,

The Lord passed by,
And a whirlwind and fire
Drew nigher and
nigher,
And a small voice anon
Bade him up and be gone, -
I did
not apprehend
As I sat to the end
And watched for her smile

Across the sunned aisle,
That this tale of a seer
Which came once a
year
Might, when sands were heaping,
Be like a sweat creeping,

Or in any degree
Bear on her or on me!
II
When later, by chance
Of circumstance,
It befel me to read
On a
hot afternoon
At the lectern there
The selfsame words
As the
lesson decreed,
To the gathered few
From the hamlets near -
Folk
of flocks and herds

Sitting half aswoon,
Who listened thereto
As
women and men
Not overmuch
Concerned at such -
So, like them
then,
I did not see
What drought might be
With me, with her,

As the Kalendar
Moved on, and Time
Devoured our prime.
III

But now, at last,
When our glory has passed,
And there is no smile

From her in the aisle,
But where it once shone
A marble, men say,

With her name thereon
Is discerned to-day;
And spiritless
In
the wilderness
I shrink from sight
And desire the night,
(Though,
as in old wise,
I might still arise,
Go forth, and stand
And
prophesy in the land),
I feel the shake
Of wind and earthquake,

And consuming fire
Nigher and nigher,
And the voice catch clear,

"What doest thou here?"
The Spectator 1916. During the War.
ON A MIDSUMMER EVE
I idly cut a parsley stalk,
And blew therein towards the moon;
I had
not thought what ghosts would walk
With shivering footsteps to my
tune.
I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand
As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand
Above me, with the