PAGE 10

Old Furniture

I know not how it may be with others
   Who sit amid relics of householdry
That date from the days of their mothers' mothers,
   But well I know how it is with me
      Continually.

I see the hands of the generations
That owned each shiny familiar thing
In play on its knobs and indentations,
And with its ancient fashioning
Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,
As in a mirror a candle-flame
Shows images of itself, each frailer
As it recedes, though the eye may frame
Its shape the same.

On the clock's dull dial a foggy finger,
Moving to set the minutes right
With tentative touches that lift and linger
In the wont of a moth on a summer night,
Creeps to my sight.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing -
As *whilom - just over the strings by the nut,
The tip of a bow receding, advancing
In airy quivers, as if it would cut
The plaintive gut.

And I see a face by that box for tinder,
Glowing forth in fits from the dark,
And fading again, as the linten cinder
Kindles to red at the flinty spark,
Or goes out stark.

Well, well. It is best to be up and doing,
The world has no use for one to-day
Who eyes things thus - no aim pursuing!
He should not continue in this stay,
But sink away.

*whilom = formerly, in the past

-o0o-

The Torn Letter

I tore your letter into strips
No bigger than the airy feathers
That ducks preen out in changing weathers
Upon the shifting ripple-tips.

In darkness on my bed alone
I seemed to see you in a vision,
And hear you say: "Why this derision
Of one drawn to you, though unknown?"

Yes, eve's quick mood had run its course,
The night had cooled my hasty madness;
I suffered a regretful sadness
Which deepened into real remorse.

I thought what pensive patient days
A soul must know of grain so tender,
How much of good must grace the sender
Of such sweet words in such bright phrase.

Uprising then, as things unpriced
I sought each fragment, patched and mended;
The midnight whitened ere I had ended
And gathered words I had sacrificed.

But some, alas, of those I threw
Were past my search, destroyed for ever:
They were your name and place; and never
Did I regain those clues to you.

I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,
My track; that, so the Will decided,
In life, death, we should be divided,
And at the sense I ached indeed.

That ache for you, born long ago,
Throbs on; I never could outgrow it.
What a revenge, did you but know it!
But that, thank God, you do not know.

-o0o-

The Difference

Sinking down by the gate I discern the thin moon,
And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine,
But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird's tune,
For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine.

Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such as now,
The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon;
But she will see never this gate, path, or bough,
Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune.

-o0o-

A Day-Close in November

The ten hours' light is abating,
And a late bird flies across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,
Float past like specks in the eye;
I set every tree in my June time,
And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees grew here,
A time when none will be seen.

-o0o-

beginning on Monday 1st July

AMERICAN ART OF THE 19TH CENTURY

http://americanartofthe19thcent.blogspot.com

PAGE 9

The Strange House

"I hear the piano playing -
   Just as a ghost might play."

"O, but what are you saying?
   There's no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;
   Years past it went amiss."
"I heard it, or shouldn't have spoken:
      A strange house, this!

"I catch some undertone here,
From some one out of sight."

"Impossible; we are alone here,
And shall be through the night."

"The parlour-door - what stirred it?"

"No one: no soul's in range."
"But, anyhow, I heard it,
And it seems strange!

"Seek my own room I cannot -
A figure is on the stair!"

"What figure? Nay, I scan not
Any one lingering there.
A bough outside is waving,
And that's its shade by the moon."
"Well, all is strange! I am craving
Strength to leave soon."

"Ah, maybe you've some vision
Of showings beyond our sphere;
Some sight, sense, intuition
Of what once happened here?
The house is old; they've hinted
It once held two love-thralls,
And they may have imprinted
Their dreams on its walls?

"They were - I think 'twas told me -
Queer in their works and ways;
The teller would often hold me
With weird tales of those days.
Some folk can not abide here,
But we - we do not care
Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,
Knew joy, or despair."

-o0o-

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.

-o0o-

On a Fine Morning

Whence comes Solace? - Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life's conditions,
Nor from heeding Time's monitions;
   But in cleaving to the Dream,
   And in gazing at the gleam
   Whereby gray things golden seem.

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irised embowment;
   But as nothing other than
   Part of a benignant plan;
   Proof that earth was made for man.

-o0o-

The Orphaned Old Maid

 I wanted to marry, but father said, "No -
'Tis weakness in women to give themselves so;
If you care for your freedom you'll listen to me,
Make a spouse in your pocket, and let the men be."

I spake on't again and again: father cried,
"Why - if you go husbanding, where shall I bide?
For never a home's for me elsewhere than here!"
And I yielded; for father had ever been dear.

But now father's gone, and I feel growing old,
And I'm lonely and poor in this house on the wold,
And my sweetheart that was found a partner elsewhere,
And nobody flings me a thought or a care.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
 

PAGE 8

SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES

Nos.11-15

1
In the Restaurant

“But hear - If you stay, and the child be born,
It will pass as your husband's with the rest,
While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn
Will be gleaming at us from east to west;
And the child will come as a life despised;
I feel an elopement is ill-advised!”

“O you realize not what it is, my dear,
To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms
Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here
And nightly take him into my arms!
Come to the child no name or fame,
Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.”
 
12
At the Draper’s

“I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,
    But you did not perceive me.
Well, when they deliver what you were shown
    I shall know nothing of it, believe me!”

And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,
    “O, I didn't see you come in there -
Why couldn't you speak? - 'Well, I didn't. I left
    That you should not notice I'd been there.

'You were viewing some lovely things. Soon required
    For a widow, of latest fashion;
And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man
    Who had to be cold and ashen
 
And screwed in a box before thy could dress you
    In the latest new note in mourning,
As they defined it. So, not to distress you,
    I left you to your adorning.”
 
13
On the Death-Bed

I'll tell - being past all praying for -
Then promptly die - He was out at the war,
And got some scent of the intimacy
That was under way between her and me;
And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost
One night, at the very time almost
That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,
And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.

The news of the battle came next day;
He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,
Got out there, visited the field,
And sent home word that a search revealed
He was one of the slain; though, lying alone
And stript, his body had not been known.
But she suspected. I lost her love,
Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;
And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score,
Though it be burning for evermore.
 
14
Over my Coffin

They stand confronting, the coffin between,
His wife of old, and his wife of late,
And the dead man whose both they had been
Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.
“I have called,” says the first. “Do you marvel or not?”
“In truth,” says the second, “I do - somewhat.”

“Well, there was a word to be said by me! -
I divorced that man because of you -
It seemed I must do it, boundenly;
But now I am older, and tell you true,
For life is little, and dead lies he;
I would I had let alone you two!
And both of us, scorning parochial ways,
Had lived like the wives in the patriarch's days.”
 
15
In the Moonlight

“O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave there were?

If your great gaunt eyes so importune
Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon
Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!”

“Why, fool, it is what I would rather see
Than all the living folk there be;
But alas, there is no such joy for me!”

“Ah - she was one you loved, no doubt,
Through good and evil, through rain and drought,
And when she passed, all your sun went out?”

“Nay: she was the woman I did not love,
Whom all the others were ranked above,
Whom during life I thought nothing of.”
 
The new poetry blog AS LONG AS IT RHYMES  was updated yesterday
http://aslongasitrhymes.blogspot.com

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

PAGE 7

SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES

Nos. 6-10 

6
In the Cemetery

“You see those mothers squabbling there?”
Remarks the man of the cemetery.
“One says in tears, "Tis mine lies here!"
Another, "Nay mine, you Pharisee!"
Another, "How dare you move my flowers
And put your own on this grave of ours!"
But all their children were laid therein
At different times, like sprats in a tin.

“And then the main drain had to cross,
And we moved the lot some nights ago,
And packed them away in the general foss
With hundreds more. But their folks don't know,
And as well cry over a new-laid drain
As anything else, to ease your pain!”

7
Outside the Window

“My stick!” he says, and turns in the lane
To the house just left, whence a vixen voice
Comes out with the firelight through the pane,
And he sees within that the girl of his choice
Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare
For something said while he was there.

“At last I behold her soul undraped!”
Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;
“My God! - ‘tis but narrowly I have escaped.
My precious porcelain proves it delf.”
His face has reddened like one ashamed,
And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

8
In the Study

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair
Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,
A type of decayed gentility;
And by some small signs he well can guess
That she comes to him almost breakfastless.

“I have called - I hope I do not err -
I am looking for a purchaser
Of some score volumes of the works
Of eminent divines I own, -
Left by my father - though it irks
My patience to offer them.” And she smiles
As if necessity were unknown;
“But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles
I have wished, as I am fond of art,
To make my rooms a little smart,
And these old books are so in the way.”

And lightly still she laughs to him,
As if to sell were a mere gay whim,
And that, to be frank, life were indeed
To her not vinegar and gall,
But fresh and honey-like; and need
No household skeleton at all.

9
At the Altar-Rail

“My bride is not coming, alas!” says the groom
And the telegram shakes in his hand. “I own
It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room
When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,
And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,
And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.

“Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife -
'Twas foolish perhaps! - to forsake the ways
Of the flaring town for a farmer's life.
She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:
"It's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,
But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.
What I really am you have never gleaned;
"I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned."'

10
In the Nuptial Chamber

“O that mastering tune!” And up in the bed
Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;
“And why?” asks the man she had that day wed,
With a start, as the band plays on outside.
“It's the townsfolk's cheery compliment
Because of our marriage, my Innocent.”

“O but you don't know! 'Tis the passionate air
To which my old Love waltzed with me,
And I swore as we spun that none should share
My home, my kisses, till death, save he!
And he dominates me and thrills me through,
And it's he I embrace while embracing you!”

Next Friday - 11-15

NEW - beginning Monday 10th June - NEW

AS LONG AS IT RHYMES . . .
If you think that poetry should rhyme, this blog is for you!
http://aslongasitrhymes.blogspot.com

PAGE 6

SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES
Nos. 1 - 5

1
At Tea

The kettle descants in a cosy drone,
And the young wife looks in her husband's face,
And then at her guest's, and shows in her own
Her sense that she fills an envied place;
And the visiting lady is all abloom,
And says there was never so sweet a room.

And the happy young housewife does not know
That the woman beside her was first his choice,
Till the fates ordained it could not be so -
Betraying nothing in look or voice
The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,
And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

2
In Church

"And now to God the Father," he ends,
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,
And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
And re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.

3
By her Aunt’s Grave

“Sixpence a week,“ says the girl to her lover,
“Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide
In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover
The cost of her headstone when she died.
And that was a year ago last June;
I've not yet fixed it. But I must soon.”

“And where is the money now, my dear?”
“O, snug in my purse - Aunt was so slow
In saving it - eighty weeks, or near“
“Let's spend it,” he hints. “For she won't know.
There's a dance to-night at the Load of Hay.”
She passively nods. And they go that way.

4
In the Room of the Bride-Elect

“Would it had been the man of our wish!”
Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she
In the wedding-dress - the wife to be -
“Then why were you so mollyish
As not to insist on him for me!”
The mother, amazed: “Why, dearest one,
Because you pleaded for this or none!”

“But father and you should have stood out strong!
Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find
That you were right and I was wrong;
This man is a dolt to the one declined -
Ah! - here he comes with his button-hole rose.
Good God - I must marry him I suppose!”

5
At a Watering Place

They sit and smoke on the esplanade,
The man and his friend, and regard the bay
Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,
Smile shallowly in the decline of day.
And saunterers pass with laugh and jest -
A handsome couple among the rest.

“That smart proud pair,” said the man to his friend,
“Are to marry next week - How little he thinks
That dozens of days and nights on end
I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links
Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm -
Well, bliss is in ignorance: what's the harm!”

-o0o-

 Nos. 6 - 10 next Friday

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

PAGE 5

THE CURATE’S KINDNESS

I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me,
But she's to be there!
Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me
At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

I thought: "Well, I've come to the Union -
The workhouse at last -
After honest hard work all the week, and Communion
O' Zundays, these fifty years past.

"'Tis hard; but," I thought, "never mind it:
There's gain in the end:
And when I get used to the place I shall find it
A home, and may find there a friend.

"Life there will be better than t'other.
For peace is assured.
THE MEN IN ONE WING AND THEIR WIVES IN ANOTHER
Is strictly the rule of the Board."

Just then one young Pa'son arriving
Steps up out of breath
To the side o' the waggon wherein we were driving
To Union; and calls out and saith:

"Old folks, that harsh order is altered,
Be not sick of heart!
The Guardians they poohed and they pished and they paltered
When urged not to keep you apart.

"'It is wrong,' I maintained, 'to divide them,
Near forty years wed.'
'Very well, sir. We promise, then, they shall abide them
In one wing together,' they said."

Then I sank - knew 'twas quite a foredone thing
That misery should be
To the end! . . . To get freed of her there was the one thing
Had made the change welcome to me.

To go there was ending but badly;
'Twas shame and 'twas pain;
"But anyhow," thought I, "thereby I shall gladly
Get free of this forty years' chain."

I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me,
But she's to be there!
Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me
At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

-o0o-

THE MAN HE KILLED

Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have set us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because -
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like - just as I -
Was out of work - had sold his traps -

No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.

-o0o-

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 bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,
I thought not what my words might be;
There came into my ear a voice
That turned a tenderer verse for me.

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

PAGE 4

AT CASTERBRIDGE FAIR
Nos. V-VII

V
The Inquiry

And are ye one of Hermitage -
Of Hermitage, by Ivel Road,
And do ye know, in Hermitage
A thatch-roofed house where sengreens grow?
And does John Waywood live there still -
He of the name that there abode
When father hurdled on the hill
Some fifteen years ago?

Does he now speak o' Patty Beech,
The Patty Beech he used to see,
Or ask at all if Patty Beech
Is known or heard of out this way? 
Ask ever if she's living yet,
And where her present home may be,
And how she bears life's fag and fret
After so long a day?

In years agone at Hermitage
This faded face was counted fair,
None fairer; and at Hermitage
We swore to wed when he should thrive.
But never a chance had he or I,
And waiting made his wish outwear,
And Time, that dooms man's love to die,
Preserves a maid's alive.
 
VI
A Wife Waits

Will's at the dance in the Club-room below,
Where the tall liquor-cups foam;
I on the pavement up here by the Bow,
Wait, wait, to steady him home.

Will and his partner are treading a tune,
Loving companions they be;
Willy, before we were married in June,
Said he loved no one but me;

Said he would let his old pleasures all go
Ever to live with his Dear.
Will's at the dance in the Club-room below,
Shivering I wait for him here.
 
VII
After The Fair

The singers are gone from the Cornmarket-place
With their broadsheets of rhymes,
The street rings no longer in treble and bass
With their skits on the times,
And the Cross, lately thronged, is a dim naked space
That but echoes the stammering chimes.

From Clock-corner steps, as each quarter ding-dongs,
Away the folk roam
By the "Hart" and Grey's Bridge into byways and "drongs,"
Or across the ridged loam;
The younger ones shrilling the lately heard songs,
The old saying, "Would we were home."

The shy-seeming maiden so mute in the fair
Now rattles and talks,
And that one who looked the most swaggering there
Grows sad as she walks,
And she who seemed eaten by cankering care
In statuesque sturdiness stalks.

And midnight clears High Street of all but the ghosts
Of its buried burghees,
From the latest far back to those old Roman hosts
Whose remains one yet sees,
Who loved, laughed, and fought, hailed their friends, drank their toasts
At their meeting-times here, just as these!
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-