Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

MOMENTS OF VISION

 
      That mirror
   Which makes of men a transparency,
      Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
      Of you and me?
 
 
      That mirror
   Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
      Who lifts that mirror
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
      Until we start?
 
 
      That mirror
   Works well in these night hours of ache;
      Why in that mirror
Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
      When the world is awake?
 
 
      That mirror
   Can test each mortal when unaware;
      Yea, that strange mirror
May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
      Glassing it – where?
 

THE VOICE OF THINGS

 
Forty Augusts – aye, and several more – ago,
   When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,
The waves huzza’d like a multitude below
   In the sway of an all-including joy
      Without cloy.
 
 
Blankly I walked there a double decade after,
   When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,
And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter
   At the lot of men, and all the vapoury
      Things that be.
 
 
Wheeling change has set me again standing where
   Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;
But they supplicate now – like a congregation there
   Who murmur the Confession – I outside,
      Prayer denied.
 

“WHY BE AT PAINS?”
(Wooer’s Song)

 
Why be at pains that I should know
   You sought not me?
Do breezes, then, make features glow
   So rosily?
Come, the lit port is at our back,
   And the tumbling sea;
Elsewhere the lampless uphill track
   To uncertainty!
 
 
O should not we two waifs join hands?
   I am alone,
You would enrich me more than lands
   By being my own.
Yet, though this facile moment flies,
   Close is your tone,
And ere to-morrow’s dewfall dries
   I plough the unknown.
 

“WE SAT AT THE WINDOW”
(Bournemouth, 1875)

 
We sat at the window looking out,
And the rain came down like silken strings
That Swithin’s day.  Each gutter and spout
Babbled unchecked in the busy way
   Of witless things:
Nothing to read, nothing to see
Seemed in that room for her and me
   On Swithin’s day.
 
 
We were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes,
For I did not know, nor did she infer
How much there was to read and guess
By her in me, and to see and crown
   By me in her.
Wasted were two souls in their prime,
And great was the waste, that July time
   When the rain came down.
 

AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK
(Circa 1850)

 
   On afternoons of drowsy calm
      We stood in the panelled pew,
Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm
      To the tune of “Cambridge New.”
 
 
   We watched the elms, we watched the rooks,
      The clouds upon the breeze,
Between the whiles of glancing at our books,
      And swaying like the trees.
 
 
   So mindless were those outpourings! —
      Though I am not aware
That I have gained by subtle thought on things
      Since we stood psalming there.
 

AT THE WICKET-GATE

 
There floated the sounds of church-chiming,
   But no one was nigh,
Till there came, as a break in the loneness,
   Her father, she, I.
And we slowly moved on to the wicket,
   And downlooking stood,
Till anon people passed, and amid them
   We parted for good.
 
 
Greater, wiser, may part there than we three
   Who parted there then,
But never will Fates colder-featured
   Hold sway there again.
Of the churchgoers through the still meadows
   No single one knew
What a play was played under their eyes there
   As thence we withdrew.
 

IN A MUSEUM

I

 
Here’s the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,
Which over the earth before man came was winging;
There’s a contralto voice I heard last night,
That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.
 

II

 
Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird
Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending
Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard,
In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.
 

Exeter.

APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD PSALM TUNE

 
I met you first – ah, when did I first meet you?
When I was full of wonder, and innocent,
Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent,
   While dimming day grew dimmer
      In the pulpit-glimmer.
 
 
Much riper in years I met you – in a temple
Where summer sunset streamed upon our shapes,
And you spread over me like a gauze that drapes,
   And flapped from floor to rafters,
      Sweet as angels’ laughters.
 
 
But you had been stripped of some of your old vesture
By Monk, or another.  Now you wore no frill,
And at first you startled me.  But I knew you still,
   Though I missed the minim’s waver,
      And the dotted quaver.
 
 
I grew accustomed to you thus.  And you hailed me
Through one who evoked you often.  Then at last
Your raiser was borne off, and I mourned you had passed
   From my life with your late outsetter;
      Till I said, “’Tis better!”
 
 
But you waylaid me.  I rose and went as a ghost goes,
And said, eyes-full “I’ll never hear it again!
It is overmuch for scathed and memoried men
   When sitting among strange people
      Under their steeple.”
 
 
Now, a new stirrer of tones calls you up before me
And wakes your speech, as she of Endor did
(When sought by Saul who, in disguises hid,
   Fell down on the earth to hear it)
      Samuel’s spirit.
 
 
So, your quired oracles beat till they make me tremble
As I discern your mien in the old attire,
Here in these turmoiled years of belligerent fire
   Living still on – and onward, maybe,
      Till Doom’s great day be!
 

Sunday, August 13, 1916.

AT THE WORD “FAREWELL”

 
She looked like a bird from a cloud
   On the clammy lawn,
Moving alone, bare-browed
   In the dim of dawn.
The candles alight in the room
   For my parting meal
Made all things withoutdoors loom
   Strange, ghostly, unreal.
 
 
The hour itself was a ghost,
   And it seemed to me then
As of chances the chance furthermost
   I should see her again.
I beheld not where all was so fleet
   That a Plan of the past
Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet
   Was in working at last:
 
 
No prelude did I there perceive
   To a drama at all,
Or foreshadow what fortune might weave
   From beginnings so small;
But I rose as if quicked by a spur
   I was bound to obey,
And stepped through the casement to her
   Still alone in the gray.
 
 
“I am leaving you.. Farewell!” I said,
   As I followed her on
By an alley bare boughs overspread;
   “I soon must be gone!”
Even then the scale might have been turned
   Against love by a feather,
– But crimson one cheek of hers burned
   When we came in together.
 

FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER

 
A day is drawing to its fall
   I had not dreamed to see;
The first of many to enthrall
   My spirit, will it be?
Or is this eve the end of all
   Such new delight for me?
 
 
I journey home: the pattern grows
   Of moonshades on the way:
“Soon the first quarter, I suppose,”
   Sky-glancing travellers say;
I realize that it, for those,
   Has been a common day.
 

THE RIVAL

 
   I determined to find out whose it was —
   The portrait he looked at so, and sighed;
Bitterly have I rued my meanness
      And wept for it since he died!
 
 
   I searched his desk when he was away,
   And there was the likeness – yes, my own!
Taken when I was the season’s fairest,
      And time-lines all unknown.
 
 
   I smiled at my image, and put it back,
   And he went on cherishing it, until
I was chafed that he loved not the me then living,
      But that past woman still.
 
 
   Well, such was my jealousy at last,
   I destroyed that face of the former me;
Could you ever have dreamed the heart of woman
      Would work so foolishly!
 

HEREDITY

 
I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.
 
 
The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance – that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.
 

“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!
 

SHE, I, AND THEY

 
      I was sitting,
      She was knitting,
And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around;
   When there struck on us a sigh;
   “Ah – what is that?” said I:
“Was it not you?” said she.  “A sigh did sound.”
 
 
      I had not breathed it,
      Nor the night-wind heaved it,
And how it came to us we could not guess;
   And we looked up at each face
   Framed and glazed there in its place,
Still hearkening; but thenceforth was silentness.
 
 
      Half in dreaming,
      “Then its meaning,”
Said we, “must be surely this; that they repine
   That we should be the last
   Of stocks once unsurpassed,
And unable to keep up their sturdy line.”
 

1916.

NEAR LANIVET, 1872

 
There was a stunted handpost just on the crest,
   Only a few feet high:
She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest,
   At the crossways close thereby.
 
 
She leant back, being so weary, against its stem,
   And laid her arms on its own,
Each open palm stretched out to each end of them,
   Her sad face sideways thrown.
 
 
Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day
   Made her look as one crucified
In my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way,
   And hurriedly “Don’t,” I cried.
 
 
I do not think she heard.  Loosing thence she said,
   As she stepped forth ready to go,
“I am rested now. – Something strange came into my head;
   I wish I had not leant so!”
 
 
And wordless we moved onward down from the hill
   In the west cloud’s murked obscure,
And looking back we could see the handpost still
   In the solitude of the moor.
 
 
“It struck her too,” I thought, for as if afraid
   She heavily breathed as we trailed;
Till she said, “I did not think how ’twould look in the shade,
   When I leant there like one nailed.”
 
 
I, lightly: “There’s nothing in it.  For you, anyhow!”
   – “O I know there is not,” said she.
“Yet I wonder.. If no one is bodily crucified now,
   In spirit one may be!”
 
 
And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see
   In the running of Time’s far glass
Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be
   Some day. – Alas, alas!
 

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.
 

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.”
 

COPYING ARCHITECTURE IN AN OLD MINSTER
(Wimborne)

 
   How smartly the quarters of the hour march by
      That the jack-o’-clock never forgets;
   Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp’s eye,
Or got the true twist of the ogee over,
         A double ding-dong ricochetts.
 
 
   Just so did he clang here before I came,
      And so will he clang when I’m gone
   Through the Minster’s cavernous hollows – the same
Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver
      To the speechless midnight and dawn!
 
 
   I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts,
      Whose mould lies below and around.
   Yes; the next “Come, come,” draws them out from their posts,
And they gather, and one shade appears, and another,
      As the eve-damps creep from the ground.
 
 
   See – a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb,
      And a Duke and his Duchess near;
   And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom,
And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber;
      And shapes unknown in the rear.
 
 
   Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan
      To better ail-stricken mankind;
   I catch their cheepings, though thinner than
The overhead creak of a passager’s pinion
      When leaving land behind.
 
 
   Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn,
      And caution them not to come
   To a world so ancient and trouble-torn,
Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness,
      And ardours chilled and numb.
 
 
   They waste to fog as I stir and stand,
      And move from the arched recess,
   And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand,
And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny
      In a moment’s forgetfulness.
 

TO SHAKESPEARE AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS

 
   Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,
   Thou, who display’dst a life of common-place,
   Leaving no intimate word or personal trace
   Of high design outside the artistry
      Of thy penned dreams,
Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally.
 
 
   Through human orbits thy discourse to-day,
   Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on
   In harmonies that cow Oblivion,
   And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect
      Maintain a sway
Not fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked.
 
 
   And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note
   The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour,
   The Avon just as always glassed the tower,
   Thy age was published on thy passing-bell
      But in due rote
With other dwellers’ deaths accorded a like knell.
 
 
   And at the strokes some townsman (met, maybe,
   And thereon queried by some squire’s good dame
   Driving in shopward) may have given thy name,
   With, “Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do;
      Though, as for me,
I knew him but by just a neighbour’s nod, ’tis true.
 
 
   “I’ faith, few knew him much here, save by word,
   He having elsewhere led his busier life;
   Though to be sure he left with us his wife.”
   – “Ah, one of the tradesmen’s sons, I now recall.
      Witty, I’ve heard.
We did not know him.. Well, good-day.  Death comes to all.”
 
 
   So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find
   To mingle with the barn-door brood awhile,
   Then vanish from their homely domicile —
   Into man’s poesy, we wot not whence,
      Flew thy strange mind,
Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped for ever thence.
 

1916.

QUID HIC AGIS?

I

 
When I weekly knew
An ancient pew,
And murmured there
The forms of prayer
And thanks and praise
In the ancient ways,
And heard read out
During August drought
That chapter from Kings
Harvest-time brings;
– How the prophet, broken
By griefs unspoken,
Went heavily away
To fast and to pray,
And, while waiting to die,
The Lord passed by,
And a whirlwind and fire
Drew nigher and nigher,
And a small voice anon
Bade him up and be gone, —
I did not apprehend
As I sat to the end
And watched for her smile
Across the sunned aisle,
That this tale of a seer
Which came once a year
Might, when sands were heaping,
Be like a sweat creeping,
Or in any degree
Bear on her or on me!
 

II

 
When later, by chance
Of circumstance,
It befel me to read
On a hot afternoon
At the lectern there
The selfsame words
As the lesson decreed,
To the gathered few
From the hamlets near —
Folk of flocks and herds
Sitting half aswoon,
Who listened thereto
As women and men
Not overmuch
Concerned at such —
So, like them then,
I did not see
What drought might be
With me, with her,
As the Kalendar
Moved on, and Time
Devoured our prime.
 

III

 
But now, at last,
When our glory has passed,
And there is no smile
From her in the aisle,
But where it once shone
A marble, men say,
With her name thereon
Is discerned to-day;
And spiritless
In the wilderness
I shrink from sight
And desire the night,
(Though, as in old wise,
I might still arise,
Go forth, and stand
And prophesy in the land),
I feel the shake
Of wind and earthquake,
And consuming fire
Nigher and nigher,
And the voice catch clear,
“What doest thou here?”
 

The Spectator 1916. During the War.

ON A MIDSUMMER EVE

 
I idly cut a parsley stalk,
And blew therein towards the moon;
I had not thought what ghosts would walk
With shivering footsteps to my tune.
 
 
I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand
As if to drink, into the brook,
And a faint figure seemed to stand
Above me, with the bygone look.
 
 
I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,
I thought not what my words might be;
There came into my ear a voice
That turned a tenderer verse for me.
 

TIMING HER
(Written to an old folk-tune)

 
Lalage’s coming:
Where is she now, O?
Turning to bow, O,
And smile, is she,
Just at parting,
Parting, parting,
As she is starting
To come to me?
 
 
Where is she now, O,
Now, and now, O,
Shadowing a bough, O,
Of hedge or tree
As she is rushing,
Rushing, rushing,
Gossamers brushing
To come to me?
 
 
Lalage’s coming;
Where is she now, O;
Climbing the brow, O,
Of hills I see?
Yes, she is nearing,
Nearing, nearing,
Weather unfearing
To come to me.
 
 
Near is she now, O,
Now, and now, O;
Milk the rich cow, O,
Forward the tea;
Shake the down bed for her,
Linen sheets spread for her,
Drape round the head for her
Coming to me.
 
 
Lalage’s coming,
She’s nearer now, O,
End anyhow, O,
To-day’s husbandry!
Would a gilt chair were mine,
Slippers of vair were mine,
Brushes for hair were mine
Of ivory!
 
 
What will she think, O,
She who’s so comely,
Viewing how homely
A sort are we!
Nothing resplendent,
No prompt attendant,
Not one dependent
Pertaining to me!
 
 
Lalage’s coming;
Where is she now, O?
Fain I’d avow, O,
Full honestly
Nought here’s enough for her,
All is too rough for her,
Even my love for her
Poor in degree.
 
 
She’s nearer now, O,
Still nearer now, O,
She ’tis, I vow, O,
Passing the lea.
Rush down to meet her there,
Call out and greet her there,
Never a sweeter there
Crossed to me!
 
 
Lalage’s come; aye,
Come is she now, O!.
Does Heaven allow, O,
A meeting to be?
Yes, she is here now,
Here now, here now,
Nothing to fear now,
Here’s Lalage!