’Tis the old wife at Rickling, she
Has lost her ginger cat, ’twas he
Who used to share the Master’s tea
Beside the settle,
Or on his corduroy-clad knee
Out-purr the kettle;
Who followed when she pinned a-row
Her flapping gowns of indigo
And watched the apple-petals blow,
With stealthy rapture
Rehearsing in a mimic show
Some mouse’s capture.
At dew-fall, with uncovered head,
What tidings have the old wife led
Hither where oak and hazel shed
Their shadow deeper?
—They say the ginger cat is dead,
Shot by the Keeper.
Through coverts dim her searches lie
(Howe’er so hardly sorrows try
The burden of uncertainty
To bear were harder)
To where things dangle when they die—
The Keeper’s larder.
A bough the larder hangs upon—
Rats, and decaying hedge-hogs grown
Shapeless, and owls their features gone,—
A grisly freight,
And many a weasel skeleton
With hairless pate,
And trophy of cats’ tails arrayed,
Tabby and white and black displayed,
The adornment of the still green glade—
More gay for that
Of him who in the morning strayed,
The ginger cat.
She knows it, and she cuts it down;
Then warm beneath her folded gown
Bestows the severed brush’s brown
And orange bands—
So soft of fur, the tears fall down
Upon her hands.
The copse-wood parts, ’tis she who goes,
Whom shades obscure and star-light shows,
Treading between the hazel rows
The fallen sticks,
Home, where the careless fire-light glows
Along the bricks.
Μονοχρόνος Ἡδόνη.
Pull out my couch across the fire,
Let the flames warm me through,
Though the pain gnaw my back away
There shall be pleasure too!
Search out the desolate garden walks—
What though the year be spent—
There shall be marigolds enough
For the bowl we bought in Ghent:
Fire shall bring out their acrid scents
For a walled garden’s sweets,
With the melody of Flemish bells
And the angles of Flemish streets.
Fire and blossom and dreamful shapes
And I, while the long pain stays,
Ward off the shot of the savage hours
On my rampart of yesterdays.