LONELY her fate was,
Environed from sight
In the house where the gate was
Past finding at night.
None there to share it,
No one to tell:
Long she’d to bear it,
And bore it well.
Elsewhere just so she
Spent many a day;
Wishing to go she
Continued to stay.
And people without
Basked warm in the air,
But none sought her out,
Or knew she was there.
Even birthdays were passed so,
Sunny and shady:
Years did it last so
For this sad lady.
Never declaring it,
No one to tell,
Still she kept bearing it—
Bore it well.
The days grew chillier,
And then she went
To a city, familiar
In years forespent,
When she walked gaily
Far to and fro,
But now, moving frailly,
Could nowhere go.
The cheerful colour
Of houses she’d known
Had died to a duller
And dingier tone.
Streets were now noisy
Where once had rolled
A few quiet coaches,
Or citizens strolled.
Through the party-wall
Of the memoried spot
They danced at a ball
Who recalled her not.
Tramlines lay crossing
Once gravelled slopes,
Metal rods clanked,
And electric ropes.
So she endured it all,
Thin, thinner wrought,
Until time cured it all,
And she knew nought.
Versified from a Diary.
“WHAT DID IT MEAN?”
What did it mean that noontide, when
You bade me pluck the flower
Within the other woman’s bower,
Whom I knew nought of then?
I thought the flower blushed deeplier—aye,
And as I drew its stalk to me
It seemed to breathe: “I am, I see,
Made use of in a human play.”
And while I plucked, upstarted sheer
As phantom from the pane thereby
A corpse-like countenance, with eye
That iced me by its baleful peer—
Silent, as from a bier . . .
When I came back your face had changed,
It was no face for me;
O did it speak of hearts estranged,
And deadly rivalry
In times before
I darked your door,
To seise me of
Mere second love,
Which still the haunting first deranged?