WHEN your soft welcomings were said,
This curl was waving on your head,
And when we walked where breakers dinned
It sported in the sun and wind,
And when I had won your words of grace
It brushed and clung about my face.
Then, to abate the misery
Of absentness, you gave it me.
Where are its fellows now? Ah, they
For brightest brown have donned a gray,
And gone into a caverned ark,
Ever unopened, always dark!
Yet this one curl, untouched of time,
Beams with live brown as in its prime,
So that it seems I even could now
Restore it to the living brow
By bearing down the western road
Till I had reached your old abode.
_February_ 1913.
AN OLD LIKENESS
(RECALLING R. T.)
WHO would have thought
That, not having missed her
Talks, tears, laughter
In absence, or sought
To recall for so long
Her gamut of song;
Or ever to waft her
Signal of aught
That she, fancy-fanned,
Would well understand,
I should have kissed her
Picture when scanned
Yawning years after!
Yet, seeing her poor
Dim-outlined form
Chancewise at night-time,
Some old allure
Came on me, warm,
Fresh, pleadful, pure,
As in that bright time
At a far season
Of love and unreason,
And took me by storm
Here in this blight-time!
And thus it arose
That, yawning years after
Our early flows
Of wit and laughter,
And framing of rhymes
At idle times,
At sight of her painting,
Though she lies cold
In churchyard mould,
I took its feinting
As real, and kissed it,
As if I had wist it
Herself of old.
HER APOTHEOSIS
“Secretum meum mihi”
(FADED WOMAN’S SONG)
THERE was a spell of leisure,
No record vouches when;
With honours, praises, pleasure
To womankind from men.
But no such lures bewitched me,
No hand was stretched to raise,
No gracious gifts enriched me,
No voices sang my praise.
Yet an iris at that season
Amid the accustomed slight
From denseness, dull unreason,
Ringed me with living light.
“SACRED TO THE MEMORY”
(MARY H.)
THAT “Sacred to the Memory”
Is clearly carven there I own,
And all may think that on the stone
The words have been inscribed by me
In bare conventionality.
They know not and will never know
That my full script is not confined
To that stone space, but stands deep lined
Upon the landscape high and low
Wherein she made such worthy show.