THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
Out of the night there looms a sense ’twere better
To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.
For winning love we win the risk of losing,
And losing love is as one’s life were riven;
It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using
To cede what was superfluously given.
Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling
That devastates the love-worn wooer’s frame,
The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling
That agonizes disappointed aim!
So may I live no junctive law fulfilling,
And my heart’s table bear no woman’s name.
1866.
[Picture: Sketch of person walking long path to building on hill]
SHE, TO HIM
I
WHEN you shall see me in the toils of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;
When in your being heart concedes to mind,
And judgment, though you scarce its process know,
Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,
And you are irked that they have withered so:
Remembering that with me lies not the blame,
That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,
Knowing me in my soul the very same—
One who would die to spare you touch of ill!—
Will you not grant to old affection’s claim
The hand of friendship down Life’s sunless hill?
1866.
SHE, TO HIM
II
PERHAPS, long hence, when I have passed away,
Some other’s feature, accent, thought like mine,
Will carry you back to what I used to say,
And bring some memory of your love’s decline.
Then you may pause awhile and think, “Poor jade!”
And yield a sigh to me—as ample due,
Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid
To one who could resign her all to you—
And thus reflecting, you will never see
That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed,
Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me,
But the Whole Life wherein my part was played;
And you amid its fitful masquerade
A Thought—as I in yours but seem to be.
1866.
SHE, TO HIM
III
I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!
I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime
Of manhood who deal gently with me here;
Amid the happy people of my time
Who work their love’s fulfilment, I appear
Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;
Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint
The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,
My old dexterities of hue quite gone,
And nothing left for Love to look upon.
1866.
SHE, TO HIM
IV
This love puts all humanity from me;
I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
For giving love and getting love of thee—
Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!
How much I love I know not, life not known,
Save as some unit I would add love by;
But this I know, my being is but thine own—
Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.
And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her
Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;
Canst thou then hate me as an envier
Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?
Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier
The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.
1866.
DITTY
(E. L G.)
BENEATH a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
From the files of formal houses,
By the bough the firstling browses,
Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
No man barters, no man sells
Where she dwells.
Upon that fabric fair
“Here is she!”
Seems written everywhere
Unto me.
But to friends and nodding neighbours,
Fellow-wights in lot and labours,
Who descry the times as I,
No such lucid legend tells
Where she dwells.
Should I lapse to what I was
Ere we met;
(Such can not be, but because
Some forget
Let me feign it)—none would notice
That where she I know by rote is
Spread a strange and withering change,
Like a drying of the wells
Where she dwells.
To feel I might have kissed—
Loved as true—
Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed
My life through.
Had I never wandered near her,
Is a smart severe—severer
In the thought that she is nought,
Even as I, beyond the dells
Where she dwells.
And Devotion droops her glance
To recall
What bond-servants of Chance
We are all.
I but found her in that, going
On my errant path unknowing,
I did not out-skirt the spot
That no spot on earth excels,
—Where she dwells!
1870.
[Picture: Sketch of man in military dress]
THE SERGEANT’S SONG
(1803)
WHEN Lawyers strive to heal a breach,
And Parsons practise what they preach;
Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
When Justices hold equal scales,
And Rogues are only found in jails;
Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, &c.
When Rich Men find their wealth a curse,
And fill therewith the Poor Man’s purse;
Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, &c.
When Husbands with their Wives agree,
And Maids won’t wed from modesty;
Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, tol-tol-lorum,
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
1878.
_Published in_ “_The Trumpet-Major_,” 1880.
[Picture: Sketch of cannons overlooking a town]
VALENCIENNES
(1793)
BY CORP’L TULLIDGE: _see_ “_The Trumpet-Major_”
IN MEMORY OF S. C. (PENSIONER). DIED 184–
WE trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
And from our mortars tons of iron hummed
Ath’art the ditch, the month we bombed
The Town o’ Valencieën.
’Twas in the June o’ Ninety-dree
(The Duke o’ Yark our then Commander been)
The German Legion, Guards, and we
Laid siege to Valencieën.
This was the first time in the war
That French and English spilled each other’s gore;
—Few dreamt how far would roll the roar
Begun at Valencieën!
’Twas said that we’d no business there
A-topperèn the French for disagreën;
However, that’s not my affair—
We were at Valencieën.
Such snocks and slats, since war began
Never knew raw recruit or veteran:
Stone-deaf therence went many a man
Who served at Valencieën.
Into the streets, ath’art the sky,
A hundred thousand balls and bombs were fleën;
And harmless townsfolk fell to die
Each hour at Valencieën!
And, sweatèn wi’ the bombardiers,
A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears:
—’Twas nigh the end of hopes and fears
For me at Valencieën!
They bore my wownded frame to camp,
And shut my gapèn skull, and washed en cleän,
And jined en wi’ a zilver clamp
Thik night at Valencieën.
“We’ve fetched en back to quick from dead;
But never more on earth while rose is red
Will drum rouse Corpel!” Doctor said
O’ me at Valencieën.
’Twer true. No voice o’ friend or foe
Can reach me now, or any livèn beën;
And little have I power to know
Since then at Valencieën!
I never hear the zummer hums
O’ bees; and don’ know when the cuckoo comes;
But night and day I hear the bombs
We threw at Valencieën . . .
As for the Duke o’ Yark in war,
There be some volk whose judgment o’ en is mean;
But this I say—a was not far
From great at Valencieën.
O’ wild wet nights, when all seems sad,
My wownds come back, as though new wownds I’d had;
But yet—at times I’m sort o’ glad
I fout at Valencieën.
Well: Heaven wi’ its jasper halls
Is now the on’y Town I care to be in . . .
Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls
As we did Valencieën!
1878–1897.
SAN SEBASTIAN
(August 1813)