Moments of Vision | Page 9

I shall wait, but his step will not sound.
WHERE THEY LIVED
Dishevelled leaves creep down
Upon that bank to-day,
Some green,
some yellow, and some pale brown;
The wet bents bob and sway;
The once warm slippery turf is sodden
Where we laughingly sat or lay.
The summerhouse is gone,
Leaving a weedy space;
The bushes that
veiled it once have grown
Gaunt trees that interlace,
Through whose lank limbs I see too clearly
The nakedness of the place.
And where were hills of blue,
Blind drifts of vapour blow,
And the
names of former dwellers few,
If any, people know,
And instead of a voice that called, "Come in,
Dears,"
Time calls, "Pass below!"
THE OCCULTATION
When the cloud shut down on the morning shine,

And darkened the sun,
I said, "So ended that joy of mine
Years back begun."
But day continued its lustrous roll
In upper air;
And did my late irradiate soul
Live on somewhere?
LIFE LAUGHS ONWARD
Rambling I looked for an old abode
Where, years back, one had lived
I knew;
Its site a dwelling duly showed,
But it was new.
I went where, not so long ago,
The sod had riven two breasts asunder;

Daisies throve gaily there, as though
No grave were under.
I walked along a terrace where
Loud children gambolled in the sun;

The figure that had once sat there
Was missed by none.
Life laughed and moved on unsubdued,
I saw that Old succumbed to
Young:
'Twas well. My too regretful mood
Died on my tongue.
THE PEACE-OFFERING
It was but a little thing,
Yet I knew it meant to me
Ease from what
had given a sting
To the very birdsinging
Latterly.

But I would not welcome it;
And for all I then declined
O the
regrettings infinite
When the night-processions flit
Through the mind!
"SOMETHING TAPPED"
Something tapped on the pane of my room
When there was never a trace
Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom
My weary Beloved's face.
"O I am tired of waiting," she said,
"Night, morn, noon, afternoon;
So cold it is in my lonely bed,
And I thought you would join me soon!"
I rose and neared the window-glass,
But vanished thence had she:
Only a pallid moth, alas,
Tapped at the pane for me.
August 1913.
THE WOUND
I climbed to the crest,
And, fog-festooned,
The sun lay west
Like a crimson wound:
Like that wound of mine
Of which none knew,
For I'd given no sign

That it pierced me through.
A MERRYMAKING IN QUESTION
"I will get a new string for my fiddle,
And call to the neighbours to come,
And partners shall dance down
the middle
Until the old pewter-wares hum:
And we'll sip the mead, cyder, and
rum!"
From the night came the oddest of answers:
A hollow wind, like a bassoon,
And headstones all ranged up as
dancers,
And cypresses droning a croon,
And gurgoyles that mouthed to the
tune.
"I SAID AND SANG HER EXCELLENCE"
(Fickle Lover's
Song)
I said and sang her excellence:
They called it laud undue.
(Have your way, my heart, O!)
Yet what was homage far above
The
plain deserts of my olden Love
Proved verity of my new.
"She moves a sylph in picture-land,
Where nothing frosts the air:"
(Have your way, my heart, O!)
"To all winged pipers overhead
She
is known by shape and song," I said,

Conscious of licence there.
I sang of her in a dim old hall
Dream-built too fancifully,
(Have your way, my heart, O!)
But lo, the ripe months chanced to
lead
My feet to such a hall indeed,
Where stood the very She.
Strange, startling, was it then to learn
I had glanced down unborn time,
(Have your way, my heart, O!)
And prophesied, whereby I knew

That which the years had planned to do
In warranty of my rhyme.
BY RUSHY-POND.
A JANUARY NIGHT
(1879)
The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;

Through the joints of the quivering door
The water wheezes.
The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour's face;
There is
some hid dread afoot
That we cannot trace.
Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin
they took in to-day?
We do not know.

A KISS
By a wall the stranger now calls his,
Was born of old a particular kiss,

Without forethought in its genesis;
Which in a trice took wing on
the air.
And where that spot is nothing shows:
There ivy calmly grows,
And no one knows
What a birth was there!
That kiss is gone where none can tell -
Not even those who felt its
spell:
It cannot have died; that know we well.
Somewhere it pursues
its flight,
One of a long procession of sounds
Travelling aethereal rounds
Far from earth's bounds
In the infinite.
THE ANNOUNCEMENT
They came, the brothers, and took two chairs
In their usual quiet way;
And for a time we did not think
They had much to say.
And they began and talked awhile
Of ordinary things,
Till spread that silence in the room
A pent thought brings.
And