Satires of Circumstance Part 3

And well did I divine It to be the man's there dying, Who but lately had been sighing For her pledged mine.

Then I deigned a deed of h.e.l.l; It was done before I knew it; What devil made me do it I cannot tell!

Yes, while he gazed above, I put my arm about her That he might see, nor doubt her My plighted Love.

The pale face vanished quick, As if blasted, from the cas.e.m.e.nt, And my shame and self-abas.e.m.e.nt Began their p.r.i.c.k.

And they p.r.i.c.k on, ceaselessly, For that stab in Love's fierce fas.h.i.+on Which, unfired by lover's pa.s.sion, Was foreign to me.

She smiled at my caress, But why came the soft embowment Of her shoulder at that moment She did not guess.

Long long years has he lain In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather: What tears there, bared to weather, Will cleanse that stain!

Love is long-suffering, brave, Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel; But O, too, Love is cruel, Cruel as the grave.

LOST LOVE

I play my sweet old airs - The airs he knew When our love was true - But he does not balk His determined walk, And pa.s.ses up the stairs.

I sing my songs once more, And presently hear His footstep near As if it would stay; But he goes his way, And shuts a distant door.

So I wait for another morn And another night In this soul-sick blight; And I wonder much As I sit, why such A woman as I was born!

"MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND"

My spirit will not haunt the mound Above my breast, But travel, memory-possessed, To where my tremulous being found Life largest, best.

My phantom-footed shape will go When nightfall grays. .h.i.ther and thither along the ways I and another used to know In backward days.

And there you'll find me, if a jot You still should care For me, and for my curious air; If otherwise, then I shall not, For you, be there.

WESs.e.x HEIGHTS (1896)

There are some heights in Wess.e.x, shaped as if by a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly, I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.

In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man's friend - Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend: Down there they are dubious and askance; there n.o.body thinks as I, But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky.

In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways - Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days: They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things - Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings.

Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was, And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what cra.s.s cause Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this, Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.

I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the moon, n.o.body sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune; I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now pa.s.sed For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast.

There's a ghost at Yell'ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night, There's a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a shroud of white, There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near, I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear.

As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers, I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers; Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know; Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go.

So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west, Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest, Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me, And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.

IN DEATH DIVIDED

I

I shall rot here, with those whom in their day You never knew, And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay, Met not my view, Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you.

II

No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower, While earth endures, Will fall on my mound and within the hour Steal on to yours; One robin never haunt our two green covertures.

III

Some organ may resound on Sunday noons By where you lie, Some other thrill the panes with other tunes Where moulder I; No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby.

IV

The simply-cut memorial at my head Perhaps may take A Gothic form, and that above your bed Be Greek in make; No linking symbol show thereon for our tale's sake.

V

And in the monotonous moils of strained, hard-run Humanity, The eternal tie which binds us twain in one No eye will see Stretching across the miles that sever you from me.

THE PLACE ON THE MAP

I

I look upon the map that hangs by me - Its s.h.i.+res and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry - And I mark a jutting height Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea.

II