Satires of Circumstance Part 20

We have found us already shunned, disdained, And for re-acceptance have not once striven; Whatever offence our course has given The brunt thereof we have long sustained.

Well, let us away, scorned unexplained.

STARLINGS ON THE ROOF

"No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot, The people who lived here have left the spot, And others are coming who knew them not.

If you listen anon, with an ear intent, The voices, you'll find, will be different From the well-known ones of those who went."

"Why did they go? Their tones so bland Were quite familiar to our band; The comers we shall not understand."

"They look for a new life, rich and strange; They do not know that, let them range Wherever they may, they will get no change.

"They will drag their house-gear ever so far In their search for a home no miseries mar; They will find that as they were they are,

"That every hearth has a ghost, alack, And can be but the scene of a bivouac Till they move perforce--no time to pack!"

THE MOON LOOKS IN

I

I have risen again, And awhile survey By my chilly ray Through your window-pane Your upturned face, As you think, "Ah-she Now dreams of me In her distant place!"

II

I pierce her blind In her far-off home: She fixes a comb, And says in her mind, "I start in an hour; Whom shall I meet?

Won't the men be sweet, And the women sour!"

THE SWEET HUSSY

In his early days he was quite surprised When she told him she was compromised By meetings and lingerings at his whim, And thinking not of herself but him; While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round That scandal should so soon abound, (As she had raised them to nine or ten Of antecedent nice young men) And in remorse he thought with a sigh, How good she is, and how bad am I! - It was years before he understood That she was the wicked one--he the good.

THE TELEGRAM

"O he's suffering--maybe dying--and I not there to aid, And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go?

Only the nurse's brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed, As by stealth, to let me know.

"He was the best and brightest!--candour shone upon his brow, And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he, And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he's sinking now, Far, far removed from me!"

- The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair, And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade, And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware That she lives no more a maid,

But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she trod To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history known In its last particular to him--aye, almost as to G.o.d, And believed her quite his own.

So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon, And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace, And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon At this idle watering-place . . .

What now I see before me is a long lane overhung With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave.

And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young, Ere a woman held me slave.

THE MOTH-SIGNAL (On Egdon Heath)

"What are you still, still thinking,"

He asked in vague surmise, "That stare at the wick unblinking With those great lost luminous eyes?"

"O, I see a poor moth burning In the candle-flame," said she, Its wings and legs are turning To a cinder rapidly."

"Moths fly in from the heather,"

He said, "now the days decline."

"I know," said she. "The weather, I hope, will at last be fine.

"I think," she added lightly, "I'll look out at the door.

The ring the moon wears nightly May be visible now no more."

She rose, and, little heeding, Her husband then went on With his attentive reading In the annals of ages gone.

Outside the house a figure Came from the tumulus near, And speedily waxed bigger, And clasped and called her Dear.

"I saw the pale-winged token You sent through the crack," sighed she.

"That moth is burnt and broken With which you lured out me.

"And were I as the moth is It might be better far For one whose marriage troth is Shattered as potsherds are!"

Then grinned the Ancient Briton From the tumulus treed with pine: "So, hearts are thwartly smitten In these days as in mine!"

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