Satires of Circumstance Part 12

Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist?

Or a Vallency Valley With stream and leafed alley, Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist?

February 1913.

AFTER A JOURNEY

Hereto I come to interview a ghost; Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?

Up the cliff, down, till I'm lonely, lost, And the unseen waters' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns awe me.

Where you will next be there's no knowing, Facing round about me everywhere, With your nut-coloured hair, And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.

Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last; Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you; What have you now found to say of our past - Viewed across the dark s.p.a.ce wherein I have lacked you?

Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?

Things were not lastly as firstly well With us twain, you tell?

But all's closed now, despite Time's derision.

I see what you are doing: you are leading me on To the spots we knew when we haunted here together, The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone At the then fair hour in the then fair weather, And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago, When you were all aglow, And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!

Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see, The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily, Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me, For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily.

Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours, The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again!

I am just the same as when Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.

PENTARGAN BAY.

A DEATH-DAY RECALLED

Beeny did not quiver, Juliot grew not gray, Thin Valency's river Held its wonted way.

Bos seemed not to utter Dimmest note of dirge, Targan mouth a mutter To its creamy surge.

Yet though these, unheeding, Listless, pa.s.sed the hour Of her spirit's speeding, She had, in her flower, Sought and loved the places - Much and often pined For their lonely faces When in towns confined.

Why did not Valency In his purl deplore One whose haunts were whence he Drew his limpid store?

Why did Bos not thunder, Targan apprehend Body and breath were sunder Of their former friend?

BEENY CLIFF March 1870--March 1913

I

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free - The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

II

The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say, As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.

III

A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.

IV

--Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?

V

What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western sh.o.r.e, The woman now is--elsewhere--whom the ambling pony bore, And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will see it nevermore.

AT CASTLE BOTEREL

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, I look behind at the fading byway, And see on its slope, now glistening wet, Distinctly yet

Myself and a girlish form benighted In dry March weather. We climb the road Beside a chaise. We had just alighted To ease the st.u.r.dy pony's load When he sighed and slowed.

What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of Matters not much, nor to what it led, - Something that life will not be balked of Without rude reason till hope is dead, And feeling fled.

It filled but a minute. But was there ever A time of such quality, since or before, In that hill's story? To one mind never, Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore, By thousands more.

Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border, And much have they faced there, first and last, Of the transitory in Earth's long order; But what they record in colour and cast Is--that we two pa.s.sed.

And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour, In mindless rote, has ruled from sight The substance now, one phantom figure Remains on the slope, as when that night Saw us alight.

I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking, I look back at it amid the rain For the very last time; for my sand is sinking, And I shall traverse old love's domain Never again.

March 1913.

PLACES

n.o.body says: Ah, that is the place Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago, What none of the Three Towns cared to know-- The birth of a little girl of grace - The sweetest the house saw, first or last; Yet it was so On that day long past.

n.o.body thinks: There, there she lay In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower, And listened, just after the bedtime hour, To the stammering chimes that used to play The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune In Saint Andrew's tower Night, morn, and noon.