Thursday, October 31, 2013

PAGE 28

THE BLINDED BIRD

So zestfully canst thou sing?
And all this indignity,
With God's consent, on thee!
Blinded ere yet a-wing
By the red-hot needle thou,
I stand and wonder how
So zestfully thou canst sing!

Resenting not such wrong,
Thy grievous pain forgot,
Eternal dark thy lot,
Groping thy whole life long;
After that stab of fire;
Enjailed in pitiless wire;
Resenting not such wrong!

Who hath charity? This bird.
Who suffereth long and is kind,
Is not provoked, though blind
And alive ensepulchred?
Who hopeth, endureth all things?
Who thinketh no evil, but sings?
Who is divine? This bird.

-o0o-

A MAIDEN’S PLEDGE

I do not wish to win your vow
To take me soon or late as bride,
And lift me from the nook where now
I tarry your farings to my side.
I am blissful ever to abide
In this green labyrinth - let all be,
If but, whatever may betide,
You do not leave off loving me!

Your comet-comings I will wait
With patience time shall not wear through;
The yellowing years will not abate
My largened love and truth to you,
Nor drive me to complaint undue
Of absence, much as I may pine,
If never another 'twixt us two
Shall come, and you stand wholly mine.

-o0o-

THE FIVE STUDENTS

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,
   The sun grows passionate-eyed,
And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;
   As strenuously we stride, —
Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,
  All beating by.

The air is shaken, the high-road hot,
   Shadowless swoons the day,
The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not
   We on our urgent way, —
Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,
   But one - elsewhere.

Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,
   And forward still we press
Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,
As in the spring hours - yes,
Three of us; fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,
   But - fallen one more.

The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in
   At night-time noiselessly,
The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin
   And yet on the beat are we, —
Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go
   The track we know.

Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,
   The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,
The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,
   Yet I still stalk the course —
One of us -  Dark and fair He, dark and fair She - gone:
   The rest - anon.

-o0o-

THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE

One without looks in to-night
Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
As we sit and think
By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
Wondering, aglow,
Fourfooted, tiptoe.

-o0o-

Thursday, October 24, 2013

PAGE 27

AT MOONRISE AND ONWARDS

  I thought you a fire
   On Heron-Plantation Hill,
Dealing out mischief the most dire
   To the chattels of men of hire
      There in their vill.

      But by and by
   You turned a yellow-green,
Like a large glow-worm in the sky;
   And then I could descry
      Your mood and mien.

      How well I know
   Your furtive feminine shape!
As if reluctantly you show
   You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw
      Aside its drape -

     - How many a year
   Have you kept pace with me,
Wan Woman of the waste up there,
   Behind a hedge, or the bare
      Bough of a tree!

No novelty are you,
   O Lady of all my time,
Veering unbid into my view
   Whether I near Death's mew,
      Or Life's top cyme!

-o0o-

WHY BE AT PAINS

Why be at pains that I should know
   You sought not me?
Do breezes, then, make features glow
   So rosily?
Come, the lit port is at our back,
   And the tumbling sea;
Elsewhere the lampless uphill track
   To uncertainty!

O should not we two waifs join hands?
   I am alone,
You would enrich me more than lands
   By being my own.
Yet, though this facile moment flies,
   Close is your tone,
And ere to-morrow's dewfall dries
   I plough the unknown.

-o0o-

A HOUSE WITH HISTORY

There is a house in a city street
   Some past ones made their own;
Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,
      And their babblings beat
   From ceiling to white hearth-stone.

And who are peopling its parlours now?
   Who talk across its floor?
Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow,
      Who read not how
   Its prime had passed before

Their raw equipments, scenes, and says
   Afflicted its memoried face,
That had seen every larger phase
      Of human ways
   Before these filled the place.

To them that house's tale is theirs,
   No former voices call
Aloud therein.  Its aspect bears
      Their joys and cares
   Alone, from wall to wall.

-o0o-

GROWTH IN MAY

 I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,
   And thence thread a jungle of grass:
Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand
   Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,
   And seem to reveal a dim sense
That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green
   They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,
   That range not greatly above
The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,
   And HER gown, as she waits for her Love.

-o0o-

Thursday, October 17, 2013

PAGE 26

MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,
And the roof-lamp's oily flame
Played down on his listless form and face,
Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,
Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy
Had a ticket stuck; and a string
Around his neck bore the key of his box,
That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams
Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy
Towards a world unknown,
Who calmly, as if incurious quite
On all at stake, can undertake
This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,
Our rude realms far above,
Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete
This region of sin that you find you in,
But are not of?

-o0o-

THE DIVISION

Rain on the windows, creaking doors,
With blasts that besom the green,
And I am here, and you are there,
And a hundred miles between!

O were it but the weather, Dear,
O were it but the miles
That summed up all our severance,
There might be room for smiles.

But that thwart thing betwixt us twain,
Which nothing cleaves or clears,
Is more than distance, Dear, or rain,
And longer than the years!

-o0o-

PROUD SONGSTERS

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand new birds of twelvemonths' growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth and air and rain.

-o0o-

LYING AWAKE

You, Morningtide Star, now are steady-eyed, over the east,
      I know it as if I saw you;
You, Beeches, engrave on the sky your thin twigs, even the least;
      Had I paper and pencil I'd draw you.

You, Meadow, are white with your counterpane cover of dew,
      I see it as if I were there;
You, Churchyard, are lightening faint from the shade of the yew,
      The names creeping out everywhere.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Thursday, October 10, 2013

PAGE 25

OLD EXCURSIONS

"What's the good of going to Ridgeway,
Cerne, or Sydling Mill,       
Or to Yell'ham Hill,
Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way
As we used to do?
She will no more climb up there,
Or be visible anywhere
In those haunts we knew."

But to-night, while walking weary,
Near me seemed her shade,
Come as 'twere to upbraid
This my mood in deeming dreary
Scenes that used to please;
And, if she did come to me,
Still solicitous, there may be
Good in going to these.

So, I'll care to roam to Ridgeway,
Cerne, or Sydling Mill,
Or to Yell'ham Hill,
Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way
As we used to do,
Since her phasm may flit out there,
And may greet me anywhere
In those haunts we knew.

-o0o-

ANY LITTLE OLD SONG

Any little old song
Will do for me,
Tell it of joys gone long,
Or joys to be,
Or friendly faces best
Loved to see.

Newest themes I want not
On subtle strings,
And for thrillings pant not
That new song brings:
I only need the homeliest
Of heart-stirrings.

-o0o-

THE BEAUTY

O do not praise my beauty more,
In such word-wild degree,
And say I am one all eyes adore;
For these things harass me!

But do for ever softly say:
“From now unto the end
Come weal, come wanzing, come what may,
Dear, I will be your friend.”

I hate my beauty in the glass:
My beauty is not I:
I wear it: none cares whether, alas,
Its wearer live or die!

The inner I O care for, then,
Yea, me and what I am,
And shall be at the gray hour when
My cheek begins to clam.

-o0o-

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.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Thursday, October 3, 2013

PAGE 24

IN THE SMALL HOURS

I lay in my bed and fiddled
With a dreamland viol and bow,
And the tunes flew back to my fingers
I had melodied years ago.
It was two or three in the morning
When I fancy-fiddled so
Long reels and country-dances,
And hornpipes swift and slow.

And soon anon came crossing
The chamber in the gray
Figures of jigging fieldfolk -
Saviours of corn and hay -
To the air of "Haste to the Wedding,"
As after a wedding-day;
Yea, up and down the middle
In windless whirls went they!

There danced the bride and bridegroom,
And couples in a train,
Gay partners time and travail
Had longwhiles stilled amain! . . .
It seemed a thing for weeping
To find, at slumber's wane
And morning's sly increeping,
That Now, not Then, held reign.

-o0o-

MISCONCEPTION

I busied myself to find a sure
Snug hermitage
That should preserve my Love secure
From the world's rage;
Where no unseemly saturnals,
Or strident traffic-roars,
Or hum of intervolved cabals
Should echo at her doors.

I laboured that the diurnal spin
Of vanities
Should not contrive to suck her in
By dark degrees,
And cunningly operate to blur
Sweet teachings I had begun;
And then I went full-heart to her
To expound the glad deeds done.

She looked at me, and said thereto
With a pitying smile,
"And THIS is what has busied you
So long a while?
O poor exhausted one, I see
You have worn you old and thin
For naught! Those moils you fear for me
I find most pleasure in!"

-o0o-

A THUNDERSTORM IN TOWN

She wore a 'terra-cotta' dress,
And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
Within the hansom's dry recess,
Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
We sat on, snug and warm.

Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
And the glass that had screened our forms before
Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
I should have kissed her if the rain
Had lasted a minute more. 

-o0o-

I SOMETIMES THINK  

I sometimes think as here I sit
Of things I have done,
Which seemed in doing not unfit
To face the sun:
Yet never a soul has paused a whit
On such - not one.

There was that eager strenuous press
To sow good seed;
There was that saving from distress
In the nick of need;
There were those words in the wilderness:
Who cared to heed?

Yet can this be full true, or no?
For one did care,
And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,
Like wind on the stair,
Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though
I may despair. 

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-