Throw up the cinders, let the night wear through
And all the dear accustomed things be said
Ere up the sleepy stair-case I and you
Take our warm ways to bed.
Then let us loose our hands’ reluctant hold
Lest the uneasy dawn behind dim groves
Stir the still leaves and any hint of cold
Blow on our loves.
“EFFANY”
When elm-buds turn from red to green
And growing lambs more staidly graze
And brighter nettle-tops are seen
Along the hedge-rows’ rambling ways;
When leaves unclose where late the hail
Rustled in naked hawthorn twig,
April comes laughing up the vale
And Effany comes round to dig.
Aloof among her nursery toys
From her high casement Betsey sees
His vellum-coloured corduroys
Stirring behind the apple-trees,
Clutching her trowel she descends,
With unimagined projects big,
For Effany and she are friends,
And she helps Effany to dig.
Deep in the flowering currant-rows
The robin twitters gentle mirth
Where Effany with Betsey goes
Triumphant o’er the new-turned earth;
And the wind wanders out and in
As doubting which it loves the best—
The grizzly stubble round his chin,
Or her be-ruffled golden crest.
His coat, lined with carnation red,
Hangs in the plum-tree’s forkèd boughs,
Till sun is low and the day sped
And Betsey called into the house—
He scrapes his spade, her trowel she,
She looks and lingers loath to start
With little earth-bound feet to tea,
He takes his coat down to depart.
Half musing on the little maid
He trudges towards the coming night,
Stooping beneath his shouldered spade,
To where across the curtained light
With leaves upon its fiery fold
His wife’s thin shadow falls alone—
For she and Effany are old
And all their little ones are gone.