Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses Part 3

Folk had sought their beds, But I hailed: to view me Under the moon, out to me Several pushed their heads, And to each I told my name, Plans, and that therefrom I came.

"Did you? . . . Ah, 'tis true I once heard, back a long time, Here had spent his young time, Some such man as you . . .

Good-night." The cas.e.m.e.nt closed again, And I was left in the frosty lane.

GOING AND STAYING

I

The moving sun-shapes on the spray, The sparkles where the brook was flowing, Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May, These were the things we wished would stay; But they were going.

II

Seasons of blankness as of snow, The silent bleed of a world decaying, The moan of mult.i.tudes in woe, These were the things we wished would go; But they were staying.

III

Then we looked closelier at Time, And saw his ghostly arms revolving To sweep off woeful things with prime, Things sinister with things sublime Alike dissolving.

READ BY MOONLIGHT

I paused to read a letter of hers By the moon's cold s.h.i.+ne, Eyeing it in the tenderest way, And edging it up to catch each ray Upon her light-penned line.

I did not know what years would flow Of her life's span and mine Ere I read another letter of hers By the moon's cold s.h.i.+ne!

I chance now on the last of hers, By the moon's cold s.h.i.+ne; It is the one remaining page Out of the many shallow and sage Whereto she set her sign.

Who could foresee there were to be Such letters of pain and pine Ere I should read this last of hers By the moon's cold s.h.i.+ne!

AT A HOUSE IN HAMPSTEAD SOMETIME THE DWELLING OF JOHN KEATS

O poet, come you haunting here Where streets have stolen up all around, And never a nightingale pours one Full-throated sound?

Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills, Thought you to find all just the same Here s.h.i.+ning, as in hours of old, If you but came?

What will you do in your surprise At seeing that changes wrought in Rome Are wrought yet more on the misty slope One time your home?

Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?

Swing the doors open noisily?

Show as an umbraged ghost beside Your ancient tree?

Or will you, softening, the while You further and yet further look, Learn that a laggard few would fain Preserve your nook? . . .

--Where the Piazza steps incline, And catch late light at eventide, I once stood, in that Rome, and thought, "'Twas here he died."

I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot, Where day and night a pyramid keeps Uplifted its white hand, and said, "'Tis there he sleeps."

Pleasanter now it is to hold That here, where sang he, more of him Remains than where he, tuneless, cold, Pa.s.sed to the dim.

July 1920.

A WOMAN'S FANCY

"Ah Madam; you've indeed come back here?

'Twas sad--your husband's so swift death, And you away! You shouldn't have left him: It hastened his last breath."

"Dame, I am not the lady you think me; I know not her, nor know her name; I've come to lodge here--a friendless woman; My health my only aim."

She came; she lodged. Wherever she rambled They held her as no other than The lady named; and told how her husband Had died a forsaken man.

So often did they call her thuswise Mistakenly, by that man's name, So much did they declare about him, That his past form and fame

Grew on her, till she pitied his sorrow As if she truly had been the cause-- Yea, his deserter; and came to wonder What mould of man he was.

"Tell me my history!" would exclaim she; "OUR history," she said mournfully.

"But YOU know, surely, Ma'am?" they would answer, Much in perplexity.

Curious, she crept to his grave one evening, And a second time in the dusk of the morrow; Then a third time, with crescent emotion Like a bereaved wife's sorrow.

No gravestone rose by the rounded hillock; --"I marvel why this is?" she said.

- "He had no kindred, Ma'am, but you near."

--She set a stone at his head.

She learnt to dream of him, and told them: "In slumber often uprises he, And says: 'I am joyed that, after all, Dear, You've not deserted me!"

At length died too this kinless woman, As he had died she had grown to crave; And at her dying she besought them To bury her in his grave.

Such said, she had paused; until she added: "Call me by his name on the stone, As I were, first to last, his dearest, Not she who left him lone!"

And this they did. And so it became there That, by the strength of a tender whim, The stranger was she who bore his name there, Not she who wedded him.

HER SONG