An Autumn Rain Scene

There trudges one to a merry-making
      With a sturdy swing,
   On whom the rain comes down.

To fetch the saving medicament
      Is another bent,
   On whom the rain comes down.

One slowly drives his herd to the stall
      Ere ill befall,
   On whom the rain comes down.

This bears his missives of life and death
      With quickening breath,
   On whom the rain comes down.

One watches for signals of wreck or war
      From the hill afar,
   On whom the rain comes down.

No care if he gain a shelter or none,
      Unhired moves one,
   On whom the rain comes down.

And another knows nought of its chilling fall
      Upon him at all,
   On whom the rain comes down.

October 1904.

from "A Sign Seeker"

I mark the months in liveries dank and dry,
     The noontides many-shaped and hued;
     I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.

I view the evening bonfires of the sun
     On hills where morning rains have hissed;
     The eyeless countenance of the mist
Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.

I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,
     The cauldrons of the sea in storm,
     Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm,
And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.

I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,
     The coming of eccentric orbs;
     To mete the dust the sky absorbs,
To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.

Revulsion

Though I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better
To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.

For winning love we win the risk of losing,
And losing love is as one's life were riven;
It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using
To cede what was superfluously given.

Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling
That devastates the love-worn wooer's frame,
The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling
That agonizes disappointed aim!
So may I live no junctive law fulfilling,
And my heart's table bear no woman's name.

1866.

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!"

The Problem

 











Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it -
      We who believe the evidence?
   Here and there the watch-towers knell it
      With a sullen significance,
Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained sense.

   Hearts that are happiest hold not by it;
      Better we let, then, the old view reign;
   Since there is peace in it, why decry it?
      Since there is comfort, why disdain?
Note not the pigment the while that the painting determines humanity's joy and pain!

On an invitation to the United States

I

My ardours for emprize nigh lost

Since Life has bared its bones to me,

I shrink to seek a modern coast

Whose riper times have yet to be;

Where the new regions claim them free

From that long drip of human tears

Which peoples old in tragedy

Have left upon the centuried years.

II

For, wonning in these ancient lands,

Enchased and lettered as a tomb,

And scored with prints of perished hands,

And chronicled with dates of doom,

Though my own Being bear no bloom

I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,

Give past exemplars present room,

And their experience count as mine.

The Bullfinches

    Brother Bulleys, let us sing
   From the dawn till evening! -
For we know not that we go not
   When the day's pale pinions fold
   Unto those who sang of old.

   When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,
   Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,
Roosting near them I could hear them
   Speak of queenly Nature's ways,
   Means, and moods,--well known to fays.

   All we creatures, nigh and far
   (Said they there), the Mother's are:
Yet she never shows endeavour
   To protect from warrings wild
   Bird or beast she calls her child.

   Busy in her handsome house
   Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;
Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,
   While beneath her groping hands
   Fiends make havoc in her bands.

   How her hussif'ry succeeds
   She unknows or she unheeds,
All things making for Death's taking!
   --So the green-gowned faeries say
   Living over Blackmoor way.

   Come then, brethren, let us sing,
   From the dawn till evening! -
For we know not that we go not
   When the day's pale pinions fold
   Unto those who sang of old.

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.

Paying Calls

I went by footpath and by stile
    Beyond where bustle ends,
Strayed here a mile and there a mile
    And called upon some friends.

On certain ones I had not seen
    For years past did I call,
And then on others who had been
    The oldest friends of all.

It was the time of midsummer
    When they had used to roam;
But now, though tempting was the air,
    I found them all at home.

I spoke to one and other of them
    By mound and stone and tree
Of things we had done ere days were dim,
    But they spoke not to me.

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.

"You were the sort that men forget"

   You were the sort that men forget;
     Though I--not yet! -
Perhaps not ever. Your slighted weakness
   Adds 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!

The Tresses

     "When the air was damp
It made my curls hang slack
As they kissed my neck and back
While I footed the salt-aired track
     I loved to tramp.

     "When it was dry
They would roll up crisp and tight
As I went on in the light
Of the sun, which my own sprite
     Seemed to outvie.

     "Now I am old;
And have not one gay curl
As I had when a girl
For dampness to unfurl
     Or sun uphold!"

"The wind blew words"

The wind blew words along the skies,
And these it blew to me
Through the wide dusk: "Lift up your eyes,
Behold this troubled tree,
Complaining as it sways and plies;
It is a limb of thee."

"Yea, too, the creatures sheltering round -
Dumb figures, wild and tame,
Yea, too, thy fellows who abound -
Either of speech the same
Or far and strange--black, dwarfed, and browned,
They are stuff of thy own frame."

I moved on in a surging awe
Of inarticulateness
At the pathetic Me I saw
In all his huge distress,
Making self-slaughter of the law
To kill, break, or suppress.

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."

In front of the Landscape (excerpt)

Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions,
     Dolorous and dear,
Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters
     Stretching around,
Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape
     Yonder and near,

Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland
     Foliage-crowned,
Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flat
     Stroked by the light,
Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial
     Meadow or mound.

What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost
     Under my sight,
Hindering me to discern my paced advancement
     Lengthening to miles;
What were the re-creations killing the daytime
     As by the night?

[Image: Chris Spracklen]

Her Confession

As some bland soul, to whom a debtor says
"I'll now repay the amount I owe to you,"
In inward gladness feigns forgetfulness
That such a payment ever was his due

(His long thought notwithstanding), so did I
At our last meeting waive your proffered kiss
With quick divergent talk of scenery nigh,
By such suspension to enhance my bliss.

And as his looks in consternation fall
When, gathering that the debt is lightly deemed,
The debtor makes as not to pay at all,
So faltered I, when your intention seemed

Converted by my false uneagerness
To putting off for ever the caress.

W. P. V., 1865-67.

The Farm-Woman's Winter

I
If seasons all were summers,
And leaves would never fall,
And hopping casement-comers
Were foodless not at all,
And fragile folk might be here
That white winds bid depart;
Then one I used to see here
Would warm my wasted heart!

II
One frail, who, bravely tilling
Long hours in gripping gusts,
Was mastered by their chilling,
And now his ploughshare rusts.
So savage winter catches
The breath of limber things,
And what I love he snatches,
And what I love not, brings.

from "In a London Flat"

"You look like a widower," she said
Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed,
As he sat by the fire in the outer room,
Reading late on a night of gloom,
And a cab-hack's wheeze, and the clap of its feet
In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street,
Were all that came to them now and then . . .
"You really do!" she quizzed again.

A Wet Night

I pace along, the rain-shafts riddling me,
Mile after mile out by the moorland way,
And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray
Into the lane, and round the corner tree;

Where, as my clothing clams me, mire-bestarred,
And the enfeebled light dies out of day,
Leaving the liquid shades to reign, I say,
"This is a hardship to be calendared!"

Yet sires of mine now perished and forgot,
When worse beset, ere roads were shapen here,
And night and storm were foes indeed to fear,
Times numberless have trudged across this spot
In sturdy muteness on their strenuous lot,
And taking all such toils as trifles mere.

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!

1893.