On that far-famed spot by Lodi_Poems of the Past and the Present

[Picture: Book cover]

POEMS OF THE PAST

AND THE PRESENT

* * * * *

THOMAS HARDY

* * * * *

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON

1919

* * * * *

“_Wessex Poems_”: _First Edition_, _Crown_ 8vo, 1898. _New Edition_

1903.

_First Pocket Edition June_ 1907. _Reprinted January_ 1909, 1913

“_Poems_, _Past and Present_”: _First edition_ 1901 (dated 1902)

_Second Edition_ 1903. _First Pocket Edition June_ 1907

_Reprinted January_ 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919

* * * * *

CONTENTS

PAGE

V.R. 1819–1901 231

WAR POEMS—

EMBARCATION 235

DEPARTURE 237

THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY 239

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY 242

AT THE WAR OFFICE 245

A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY 247

THE DEAD DRUMMER 249

A WIFE IN LONDON 251

THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN 253

SONG OF THE SOLDIERS’ WIVES 260

THE SICK GOD 263

POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE—

GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN 269

SHELLEY’S SKYLARK 272

IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE 274

ROME: ON THE PALATINE 276

,, BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE 278

ANCIENT QUARTER

,, THE VATICAN: SALA DELLE MUSE 280

,, AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS 283

LAUSANNE: IN GIBBON’S OLD GARDEN 286

ZERMATT: TO THE MATTERHORN 288

THE BRIDGE OF LODI 290

ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED 295

STATES

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS—

THE MOTHER MOURNS 299

“I SAID TO LOVE” 305

A COMMONPLACE DAY 307

AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE 310

THE LACKING SENSE 312

TO LIFE 316

DOOM AND SHE 318

THE PROBLEM 321

THE SUBALTERNS 323

THE SLEEP-WORKER 325

THE BULLFINCHES 327

GOD-FORGOTTEN 329

THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT TO AN 333

UNKNOWING GOD

BY THE EARTH’S CORPSE 336

MUTE OPINION 339

TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD 341

TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER 344

ON A FINE MORNING 346

TO LIZBIE BROWNE 348

SONG OF HOPE 352

THE WELL-BELOVED 354

HER REPROACH 358

THE INCONSISTENT 360

A BROKEN APPOINTMENT 362

“BETWEEN US NOW” 364

“HOW GREAT MY GRIEF” 366

“I NEED NOT GO” 367

THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER 369

A SPOT 371

LONG PLIGHTED 373

THE WIDOW 375

AT A HASTY WEDDING 378

THE DREAM-FOLLOWER 379

HIS IMMORTALITY 380

THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN 382

WIVES IN THE SERE 385

THE SUPERSEDED 387

AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT 389

THE CAGED THRUSH FREED AND HOME 391

AGAIN

BIRDS AT WINTER NIGHTFALL 393

THE PUZZLED GAME-BIRDS 394

WINTER IN DURNOVER FIELD 395

THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM 397

THE DARKLING THRUSH 399

THE COMET AT YALBURY OR YELL’HAM 402

MAD JUDY 403

A WASTED ILLNESS 405

A MAN 408

THE DAME OF ATHELHALL 412

THE SEASONS OF HER YEAR 416

THE MILKMAID 418

THE LEVELLED CHURCHYARD 420

THE RUINED MAID 422

THE RESPECTABLE BURGHER ON “THE 425

HIGHER CRITICISM”

ARCHITECTURAL MASKS 428

THE TENANT-FOR-LIFE 430

THE KING’S EXPERIMENT 432

THE TREE: AN OLD MAN’S STORY 435

HER LATE HUSBAND 439

THE SELF-UNSEEING 441

DE PROFUNDIS I. 443

DE PROFUNDIS II. 445

DE PROFUNDIS III. 448

THE CHURCH-BUILDER 451

THE LOST PYX: A MEDIÆVAL LEGEND 457

TESS’S LAMENT 462

THE SUPPLANTER: A TALE 465

IMITATIONS, ETC.—

SAPPHIC FRAGMENT 473

CATULLUS: XXXI 474

AFTER SCHILLER 476

SONG: FROM HEINE 477

FROM VICTOR HUGO 479

CARDINAL BEMBO’S EPITAPH ON RAPHAEL 480

RETROSPECT—

“I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES” 483

MEMORY AND I 486

ἈΓΝΩΣΤΩι ΘΕΩι. 489

V.R. 1819–1901

A REVERIE

MOMENTS the mightiest pass uncalendared,

And when the Absolute

In backward Time outgave the deedful word

Whereby all life is stirred:

“Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute

The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,”

No mortal knew or heard.

But in due days the purposed Life outshone—

Serene, sagacious, free;

—Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done,

And the world’s heart was won . . .

Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be

Lie hid from ours—as in the All-One’s thought lay she—

Till ripening years have run.

SUNDAY NIGHT,

27_th_ _January_ 1901.

WAR POEMS

EMBARCATION

(_Southampton Docks_: _October_, 1899)

HERE, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands,

And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,

And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win

Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,

Vaster battalions press for further strands,

To argue in the self-same bloody mode

Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,

Still fails to mend.—Now deckward tramp the bands,

Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;

And as each host draws out upon the sea

Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,

None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,

Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,

As if they knew not that they weep the while.

DEPARTURE

(_Southampton Docks_: _October_, 1899)

WHILE the far farewell music thins and fails,

And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine—

All smalling slowly to the gray sea line—

And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,

Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,

Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men

To seeming words that ask and ask again:

“How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels

Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,

That are as puppets in a playing hand?—

When shall the saner softer polities

Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land,

And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand

Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”

THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY

(_Southampton Docks_: _October_, 1899)

“THE quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .

It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home,

And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow

More fit to rest than roam.

“But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain;

There’s not a little steel beneath the rust;

My years mount somewhat, but here’s to’t again!

And if I fall, I must.

“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care;

Past scrimmages have proved as much to all;

In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share

Both of the blade and ball.

“And where those villains ripped me in the flitch

With their old iron in my early time,

I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch,

Or at a change of clime.

“And what my mirror shows me in the morning

Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom;

My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning,

Have just a touch of rheum . . .

“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’—Ah,

The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune!

Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’

’Twould lift me to the moon.

“But now it’s late to leave behind me one

Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground,

Will not recover as she might have done

In days when hopes abound.

“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving,

As down we draw . . . Her tears make little show,

Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving

Some twenty years ago.

“I pray those left at home will care for her!

I shall come back; I have before; though when

The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother,

Things may not be as then.”

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY

WIVES’ LAMENT

(_November_ 2, 1899)

O IT was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough—

Light in their loving as soldiers can be—

First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them

Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea! . . .

—Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly

Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,

They stepping steadily—only too readily!—

Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.

III

Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there,

Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night;

Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe,

Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.

Gas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerily

Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss,

While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to them

Not to court perils that honour could miss.

Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded these eyes of ours,

When at last moved away under the arch

All we loved. Aid for them each woman prayed for them,

Treading back slowly the track of their march.

Someone said: “Nevermore will they come: evermore

Are they now lost to us.” O it was wrong!

Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways,

Bear them through safely, in brief time or long.

VII

—Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us,

Hint in the night-time when life beats are low

Other and graver things . . . Hold we to braver things,

Wait we, in trust, what Time’s fulness shall show.

AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON

(_Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded_: _December_, 1899)

LAST year I called this world of gain-givings

The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly

If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,

So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs

The tragedy of things.

Yet at that censured time no heart was rent

Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter

By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter;

Death waited Nature’s wont; Peace smiled unshent

From Ind to Occident.

A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY

SOUTH of the Line, inland from far Durban,

A mouldering soldier lies—your countryman.

Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,

And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans

Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know

By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law

Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,

Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?

And what of logic or of truth appears

In tacking ‘Anno Domini’ to the years?

Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,

But tarries yet the Cause for which He died.”

_Christmas-eve_, 1899.

THE DEAD DRUMMER

THEY throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest

Uncoffined—just as found:

His landmark is a kopje-crest

That breaks the veldt around;

And foreign constellations west

Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—

Fresh from his Wessex home—

The meaning of the broad Karoo,

The Bush, the dusty loam,

And why uprose to nightly view

Strange stars amid the gloam.

III

Yet portion of that unknown plain

Will Hodge for ever be;

His homely Northern breast and brain

Grow up a Southern tree.

And strange-eyed constellations reign

His stars eternally.

A WIFE IN LONDON

(_December_, 1899)

THE TRAGEDY

SHE sits in the tawny vapour

That the City lanes have uprolled,

Behind whose webby fold on fold

Like a waning taper

The street-lamp glimmers cold.

A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,

Flashed news is in her hand

Of meaning it dazes to understand

Though shaped so shortly:

_He—has fallen—in the far South Land_ . . .

THE IRONY

’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,

The postman nears and goes:

A letter is brought whose lines disclose

By the firelight flicker

His hand, whom the worm now knows:

Fresh—firm—penned in highest feather—

Page-full of his hoped return,

And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn

In the summer weather,

And of new love that they would learn.

THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN

The thick lids of Night closed upon me

Alone at the Bill

Of the Isle by the Race {253}—

Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face—

And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me

To brood and be still.

No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,

Or promontory sides,

Or the ooze by the strand,

Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,

Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion

Of criss-crossing tides.

III

Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing

A whirr, as of wings

Waved by mighty-vanned flies,

Or by night-moths of measureless size,

And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing

Of corporal things.

And they bore to the bluff, and alighted—

A dim-discerned train

Of sprites without mould,

Frameless souls none might touch or might hold—

On the ledge by the turreted lantern, farsighted

By men of the main.

And I heard them say “Home!” and I knew them

For souls of the felled

On the earth’s nether bord

Under Capricorn, whither they’d warred,

And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them

With breathings inheld.

Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward

A senior soul-flame

Of the like filmy hue:

And he met them and spake: “Is it you,

O my men?” Said they, “Aye! We bear homeward and hearthward

To list to our fame!”

VII

“I’ve flown there before you,” he said then:

“Your households are well;

But—your kin linger less

On your glory arid war-mightiness

Than on dearer things.”—“Dearer?” cried these from the dead then,

“Of what do they tell?”

VIII

“Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur

Your doings as boys—

Recall the quaint ways

Of your babyhood’s innocent days.

Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer,

And higher your joys.

“A father broods: ‘Would I had set him

To some humble trade,

And so slacked his high fire,

And his passionate martial desire;

Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him

To this due crusade!”

“And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,

Sworn loyal as doves?”

—“Many mourn; many think

It is not unattractive to prink

Them in sables for heroes. Some fickle and fleet hearts

Have found them new loves.”

“And our wives?” quoth another resignedly,

“Dwell they on our deeds?”

—“Deeds of home; that live yet

Fresh as new—deeds of fondness or fret;

Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,

These, these have their heeds.”

XII

—“Alas! then it seems that our glory

Weighs less in their thought

Than our old homely acts,

And the long-ago commonplace facts

Of our lives—held by us as scarce part of our story,

And rated as nought!”

XIII

Then bitterly some: “Was it wise now

To raise the tomb-door

For such knowledge? Away!”

But the rest: “Fame we prized till to-day;

Yet that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize now

A thousand times more!”

XIV

Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions

Began to disband

And resolve them in two:

Those whose record was lovely and true

Bore to northward for home: those of bitter traditions

Again left the land,

And, towering to seaward in legions,

They paused at a spot

Overbending the Race—

That engulphing, ghast, sinister place—

Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless regions

Of myriads forgot.

XVI

And the spirits of those who were homing

Passed on, rushingly,

Like the Pentecost Wind;

And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned

And surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming

Sea-mutterings and me.

_December_ 1899.

SONG OF THE SOLDIERS’ WIVES

AT last! In sight of home again,

Of home again;

No more to range and roam again

As at that bygone time?

No more to go away from us

And stay from us?—

Dawn, hold not long the day from us,

But quicken it to prime!

Now all the town shall ring to them,

Shall ring to them,

And we who love them cling to them

And clasp them joyfully;

And cry, “O much we’ll do for you

Anew for you,

Dear Loves!—aye, draw and hew for you,

Come back from oversea.”

III

Some told us we should meet no more,

Should meet no more;

Should wait, and wish, but greet no more

Your faces round our fires;

That, in a while, uncharily

And drearily

Men gave their lives—even wearily,

Like those whom living tires.

And now you are nearing home again,

Dears, home again;

No more, may be, to roam again

As at that bygone time,

Which took you far away from us

To stay from us;

Dawn, hold not long the day from us,

But quicken it to prime!

THE SICK GOD

IN days when men had joy of war,

A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;

The peoples pledged him heart and hand,

From Israel’s land to isles afar.

His crimson form, with clang and chime,

Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time,

And kings invoked, for rape and raid,

His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.

III

On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam,

On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam:

His haloes rayed the very gore,

And corpses wore his glory-gleam.

Often an early King or Queen,

And storied hero onward, knew his sheen;

’Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon,

And Nelson on his blue demesne.

But new light spread. That god’s gold nimb

And blazon have waned dimmer and more dim;

Even his flushed form begins to fade,

Till but a shade is left of him.

That modern meditation broke

His spell, that penmen’s pleadings dealt a stroke,

Say some; and some that crimes too dire

Did much to mire his crimson cloak.

VII

Yea, seeds of crescive sympathy

Were sown by those more excellent than he,

Long known, though long contemned till then—

The gods of men in amity.

VIII

Souls have grown seers, and thought out-brings

The mournful many-sidedness of things

With foes as friends, enfeebling ires

And fury-fires by gaingivings!

He scarce impassions champions now;

They do and dare, but tensely—pale of brow;

And would they fain uplift the arm

Of that faint form they know not how.

Yet wars arise, though zest grows cold;

Wherefore, at whiles, as ’twere in ancient mould

He looms, bepatched with paint and lath;

But never hath he seemed the old!

Let men rejoice, let men deplore.

The lurid Deity of heretofore

Succumbs to one of saner nod;

The Battle-god is god no more.

POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE

GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

(March, 1887)

O EPIC-FAMED, god-haunted Central Sea,

Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee

When from Torino’s track I saw thy face first flash on me.

And multimarbled Genova the Proud,

Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed,

I first beheld thee clad—not as the Beauty but the Dowd.

Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit

On housebacks pink, green, ochreous—where a slit

Shoreward ’twixt row and row revealed the classic blue through it.

And thereacross waved fishwives’ high-hung smocks,

Chrome kerchiefs, scarlet hose, darned underfrocks;

Since when too oft my dreams of thee, O Queen, that frippery mocks:

Whereat I grieve, Superba! . . . Afterhours

Within Palazzo Doria’s orange bowers

Went far to mend these marrings of thy soul-subliming powers.

But, Queen, such squalid undress none should see,

Those dream-endangering eyewounds no more be

Where lovers first behold thy form in pilgrimage to thee.

SHELLEY’S SKYLARK

(_The neighbourhood of Leghorn_: _March_, 1887)

SOMEWHERE afield here something lies

In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust

That moved a poet to prophecies—

A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,

And made immortal through times to be;—

Though it only lived like another bird,

And knew not its immortality.

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell—

A little ball of feather and bone;

And how it perished, when piped farewell,

And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view,

Maybe it throbs in a myrtle’s green,

Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue

Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find

That tiny pinch of priceless dust,

And bring a casket silver-lined,

And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein,

And consecrate it to endless time;

For it inspired a bard to win

Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE

(_April_, 1887)

I TRACED the Circus whose gray stones incline

Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,

Till came a child who showed an ancient coin

That bore the image of a Constantine.

She lightly passed; nor did she once opine

How, better than all books, she had raised for me

In swift perspective Europe’s history

Through the vast years of Cæsar’s sceptred line.

For in my distant plot of English loam

’Twas but to delve, and straightway there to find

Coins of like impress. As with one half blind

Whom common simples cure, her act flashed home

In that mute moment to my opened mind

The power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.

ROME: ON THE PALATINE

(_April_, 1887)

WE walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,

And passed to Livia’s rich red mural show,

Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico,

We gained Caligula’s dissolving pile.

And each ranked ruin tended to beguile

The outer sense, and shape itself as though

It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow

Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.

When lo, swift hands, on strings nigh over-head,

Began to melodize a waltz by Strauss:

It stirred me as I stood, in Cæsar’s house,

Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led,

And blended pulsing life with lives long done,

Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.

ROME

BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER

(_April_, 1887)

THESE numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry

Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome;

Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome

Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.

And cracking frieze and rotten metope

Express, as though they were an open tome

Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome;

“Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!”

And yet within these ruins’ very shade

The singing workmen shape and set and join

Their frail new mansion’s stuccoed cove and quoin

With no apparent sense that years abrade,

Though each rent wall their feeble works invade

Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.

ROME

THE VATICAN—SALA DELLE MUSE

(1887)

I SAT in the Muses’ Hall at the mid of the day,

And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,

And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun,

Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.

She was nor this nor that of those beings divine,

But each and the whole—an essence of all the Nine;

With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place,

A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.

“Regarded so long, we render thee sad?” said she.

“Not you,” sighed I, “but my own inconstancy!

I worship each and each; in the morning one,

And then, alas! another at sink of sun.

“To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth

Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?”

—“Be not perturbed,” said she. “Though apart in fame,

As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.

—“But my loves go further—to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,

The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim—

Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!”

—“Nay, wight, thou sway’st not. These are but phases of one;

“And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,

One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be—

Extern to thee nothing. Grieve not, nor thyself becall,

Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!”

ROME

AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS

NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS

(1887)

WHO, then, was Cestius,

And what is he to me?—

Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous

One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word

Of anything he did;

For me he is a man who died and was interred

To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest

Not with its first design,

Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest

Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe,

Slew, breathed out threatening;

I know not. This I know: in death all silently

He does a kindlier thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet

With marble finger high

To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,

Those matchless singers lie . . .

—Say, then, he lived and died

That stones which bear his name

Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;

It is an ample fame.

LAUSANNE

IN GIBBON’S OLD GARDEN: 11–12 P.M.

_June_ 27, 1897

(_The_ 110_th_ _anniversary of the completion of the_ “_Decline and

Fall_” _at the same hour and place_)

A SPIRIT seems to pass,

Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:

He contemplates a volume stout and tall,

And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.

Anon the book is closed,

With “It is finished!” And at the alley’s end

He turns, and soon on me his glances bend;

And, as from earth, comes speech—small, muted, yet composed.

“How fares the Truth now?—Ill?

—Do pens but slily further her advance?

May one not speed her but in phrase askance?

Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?

“Still rule those minds on earth

At whom sage Milton’s wormwood words were hurled:

‘_Truth like a bastard comes into the world_

_Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth_’?”

ZERMATT

TO THE MATTERHORN

(_June_-_July_, 1897)

THIRTY-TWO years since, up against the sun,

Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,

Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,

And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

They were the first by whom the deed was done,

And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight

To that day’s tragic feat of manly might,

As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.

Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon

Thou watch’dst each night the planets lift and lower;

Thou gleam’dst to Joshua’s pausing sun and moon,

And brav’dst the tokening sky when Cæsar’s power

Approached its bloody end: yea, saw’st that Noon

When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

THE BRIDGE OF LODI {290}

(_Spring_, 1887)

WHEN of tender mind and body

I was moved by minstrelsy,

And that strain “The Bridge of Lodi”

Brought a strange delight to me.

In the battle-breathing jingle

Of its forward-footing tune

I could see the armies mingle,

And the columns cleft and hewn

III

On that far-famed spot by Lodi

Where Napoleon clove his way

To his fame, when like a god he

Bent the nations to his sway.

Hence the tune came capering to me

While I traced the Rhone and Po;

Nor could Milan’s Marvel woo me

From the spot englamoured so.

And to-day, sunlit and smiling,

Here I stand upon the scene,

With its saffron walls, dun tiling,

And its meads of maiden green,

Even as when the trackway thundered

With the charge of grenadiers,

And the blood of forty hundred

Splashed its parapets and piers . . .

VII

Any ancient crone I’d toady

Like a lass in young-eyed prime,

Could she tell some tale of Lodi

At that moving mighty time.

VIII

So, I ask the wives of Lodi

For traditions of that day;

But alas! not anybody

Seems to know of such a fray.

And they heed but transitory

Marketings in cheese and meat,

Till I judge that Lodi’s story

Is extinct in Lodi’s street.

Yet while here and there they thrid them

In their zest to sell and buy,

Let me sit me down amid them

And behold those thousands die . . .

—Not a creature cares in Lodi

How Napoleon swept each arch,

Or where up and downward trod he,

Or for his memorial March!

XII

So that wherefore should I be here,

Watching Adda lip the lea,

When the whole romance to see here

Is the dream I bring with me?

XIII

And why sing “The Bridge of Lodi”

As I sit thereon and swing,

When none shows by smile or nod he

Guesses why or what I sing? . . .

XIV

Since all Lodi, low and head ones,

Seem to pass that story by,

It may be the Lodi-bred ones

Rate it truly, and not I.

Once engrossing Bridge of Lodi,

Is thy claim to glory gone?

Must I pipe a palinody,

Or be silent thereupon?

XVI

And if here, from strand to steeple,

Be no stone to fame the fight,

Must I say the Lodi people

Are but viewing crime aright?

XVII

Nay; I’ll sing “The Bridge of Lodi”—

That long-loved, romantic thing,

Though none show by smile or nod he

Guesses why and what I sing!

ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES

MY ardours for emprize nigh lost

Since Life has bared its bones to me,

I shrink to seek a modern coast

Whose riper times have yet to be;

Where the new regions claim them free

From that long drip of human tears

Which peoples old in tragedy

Have left upon the centuried years.

For, wonning in these ancient lands,

Enchased and lettered as a tomb,

And scored with prints of perished hands,

And chronicled with dates of doom,

Though my own Being bear no bloom

I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,

Give past exemplars present room,

And their experience count as mine.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

THE MOTHER MOURNS

WHEN mid-autumn’s moan shook the night-time,

And sedges were horny,

And summer’s green wonderwork faltered

On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell’ham-Firs way, where dimly

Came wheeling around me

Those phantoms obscure and insistent

That shadows unchain.

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me

A low lamentation,

As ’twere of a tree-god disheartened,

Perplexed, or in pain.

And, heeding, it awed me to gather

That Nature herself there

Was breathing in aërie accents,

With dirgeful refrain,

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,

Had grieved her by holding

Her ancient high fame of perfection

In doubt and disdain . . .

—“I had not proposed me a Creature

(She soughed) so excelling

All else of my kingdom in compass

And brightness of brain

“As to read my defects with a god-glance,

Uncover each vestige

Of old inadvertence, annunciate

Each flaw and each stain!

“My purpose went not to develop

Such insight in Earthland;

Such potent appraisements affront me,

And sadden my reign!

“Why loosened I olden control here

To mechanize skywards,

Undeeming great scope could outshape in

A globe of such grain?

“Man’s mountings of mind-sight I checked not,

Till range of his vision

Has topped my intent, and found blemish

Throughout my domain.

“He holds as inept his own soul-shell—

My deftest achievement—

Contemns me for fitful inventions

Ill-timed and inane:

“No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape,

My moon as the Night-queen,

My stars as august and sublime ones

That influences rain:

“Reckons gross and ignoble my teaching,

Immoral my story,

My love-lights a lure, that my species

May gather and gain.

“‘Give me,’ he has said, ‘but the matter

And means the gods lot her,

My brain could evolve a creation

More seemly, more sane.’

—“If ever a naughtiness seized me

To woo adulation

From creatures more keen than those crude ones

That first formed my train—

“If inly a moment I murmured,

‘The simple praise sweetly,

But sweetlier the sage’—and did rashly

Man’s vision unrein,

“I rue it! . . . His guileless forerunners,

Whose brains I could blandish,

To measure the deeps of my mysteries

Applied them in vain.

“From them my waste aimings and futile

I subtly could cover;

‘Every best thing,’ said they, ‘to best purpose

Her powers preordain.’—

“No more such! . . . My species are dwindling,

My forests grow barren,

My popinjays fail from their tappings,

My larks from their strain.

“My leopardine beauties are rarer,

My tusky ones vanish,

My children have aped mine own slaughters

To quicken my wane.

“Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes,

And slimy distortions,

Let nevermore things good and lovely

To me appertain;

“For Reason is rank in my temples,

And Vision unruly,

And chivalrous laud of my cunning

Is heard not again!”

“I SAID TO LOVE”

I SAID to Love,

“It is not now as in old days

When men adored thee and thy ways

All else above;

Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One

Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,”

I said to Love.

I said to him,

“We now know more of thee than then;

We were but weak in judgment when,

With hearts abrim,

We clamoured thee that thou would’st please

Inflict on us thine agonies,”

I said to him.

I said to Love,

“Thou art not young, thou art not fair,

No faery darts, no cherub air,

Nor swan, nor dove

Are thine; but features pitiless,

And iron daggers of distress,”

I said to Love.

“Depart then, Love! . . .

—Man’s race shall end, dost threaten thou?

The age to come the man of now

Know nothing of?—

We fear not such a threat from thee;

We are too old in apathy!

_Mankind shall cease_.—So let it be,”

I said to Love.

A COMMONPLACE DAY

THE day is turning ghost,

And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,

To join the anonymous host

Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,

To one of like degree.

I part the fire-gnawed logs,

Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends

Upon the shining dogs;

Further and further from the nooks the twilight’s stride extends,

And beamless black impends.

Nothing of tiniest worth

Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or

praise,

Since the pale corpse-like birth

Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays—

Dullest of dull-hued Days!

Wanly upon the panes

The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and

yet

Here, while Day’s presence wanes,

And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,

He wakens my regret.

Regret—though nothing dear

That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime,

Or bloomed elsewhere than here,

To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime,

Or mark him out in Time . . .

—Yet, maybe, in some soul,

In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose,

Or some intent upstole

Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows

The world’s amendment flows;

But which, benumbed at birth

By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be

Embodied on the earth;

And undervoicings of this loss to man’s futurity

May wake regret in me.

AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE

THY shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,

Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine

In even monochrome and curving line

Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry

With the torn troubled form I know as thine,

That profile, placid as a brow divine,

With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw

So small a shade, and Heaven’s high human scheme

Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,

Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,

Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

THE LACKING SENSE

SCENE.—_A sad-coloured landscape_, _Waddon Vale_

“O TIME, whence comes the Mother’s moody look amid her labours,

As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?

Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,

With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,

As of angel fallen from grace?”

—“Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:

In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.

The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most

queenly,

Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun

Such deeds her hands have done.”

III

—“And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,

These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves,

Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features

Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,

Distress into delights?”

—“Ah! know’st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,

Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she

loves?

That sightless are those orbs of hers?—which bar to her omniscience

Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones

Whereat all creation groans.

“She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,

When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;

Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;

Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch

That the seers marvel much.

“Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;

Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves;

And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,

Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,

For thou art of her clay.”

TO LIFE

O LIFE with the sad seared face,

I weary of seeing thee,

And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,

And thy too-forced pleasantry!

I know what thou would’st tell

Of Death, Time, Destiny—

I have known it long, and know, too, well

What it all means for me.

But canst thou not array

Thyself in rare disguise,

And feign like truth, for one mad day,

That Earth is Paradise?

I’ll tune me to the mood,

And mumm with thee till eve;

And maybe what as interlude

I feign, I shall believe!

DOOM AND SHE

THERE dwells a mighty pair—

Slow, statuesque, intense—

Amid the vague Immense:

None can their chronicle declare,

Nor why they be, nor whence.

Mother of all things made,

Matchless in artistry,

Unlit with sight is she.—

And though her ever well-obeyed

Vacant of feeling he.

III

The Matron mildly asks—

A throb in every word—

“Our clay-made creatures, lord,

How fare they in their mortal tasks

Upon Earth’s bounded bord?

“The fate of those I bear,

Dear lord, pray turn and view,

And notify me true;

Shapings that eyelessly I dare

Maybe I would undo.

“Sometimes from lairs of life

Methinks I catch a groan,

Or multitudinous moan,

As though I had schemed a world of strife,

Working by touch alone.”

“World-weaver!” he replies,

“I scan all thy domain;

But since nor joy nor pain

Doth my clear substance recognize,

I read thy realms in vain.

VII

“World-weaver! what _is_ Grief?

And what are Right, and Wrong,

And Feeling, that belong

To creatures all who owe thee fief?

What worse is Weak than Strong?” . . .

VIII

—Unlightened, curious, meek,

She broods in sad surmise . . .

—Some say they have heard her sighs

On Alpine height or Polar peak

When the night tempests rise.

THE PROBLEM

SHALL we conceal the Case, or tell it—

We who believe the evidence?

Here and there the watch-towers knell it

With a sullen significance,

Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained

sense.

Hearts that are happiest hold not by it;

Better we let, then, the old view reign;

Since there is peace in it, why decry it?

Since there is comfort, why disdain?

Note not the pigment the while that the painting determines humanity’s

joy and pain!

THE SUBALTERNS

“POOR wanderer,” said the leaden sky,

“I fain would lighten thee,

But there be laws in force on high

Which say it must not be.”

—“I would not freeze thee, shorn one,” cried

The North, “knew I but how

To warm my breath, to slack my stride;

But I am ruled as thou.”

III

—“To-morrow I attack thee, wight,”

Said Sickness. “Yet I swear

I bear thy little ark no spite,

But am bid enter there.”

—“Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say;

“I did not will a grave

Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,

But I, too, am a slave!”

We smiled upon each other then,

And life to me wore less

That fell contour it wore ere when

They owned their passiveness.

THE SLEEP-WORKER

WHEN wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see—

As one who, held in trance, has laboured long

By vacant rote and prepossession strong—

The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;

Wherein have place, unrealized by thee,

Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong,

Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song,

And curious blends of ache and ecstasy?—

Should that morn come, and show thy opened eyes

All that Life’s palpitating tissues feel,

How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise?—

Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,

Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame,

Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?

THE BULLFINCHES

BROTHER Bulleys, let us sing

From the dawn till evening!—

For we know not that we go not

When the day’s pale pinions fold

Unto those who sang of old.

When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,

Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,

Roosting near them I could hear them

Speak of queenly Nature’s ways,

Means, and moods,—well known to fays.

All we creatures, nigh and far

(Said they there), the Mother’s are:

Yet she never shows endeavour

To protect from warrings wild

Bird or beast she calls her child.

Busy in her handsome house

Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;

Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,

While beneath her groping hands

Fiends make havoc in her bands.

How her hussif’ry succeeds

She unknows or she unheeds,

All things making for Death’s taking!

—So the green-gowned faeries say

Living over Blackmoor way.

Come then, brethren, let us sing,

From the dawn till evening!—

For we know not that we go not

When the day’s pale pinions fold

Unto those who sang of old.

GOD-FORGOTTEN

I TOWERED far, and lo! I stood within

The presence of the Lord Most High,

Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win

Some answer to their cry.

—“The Earth, say’st thou? The Human race?

By Me created? Sad its lot?

Nay: I have no remembrance of such place:

Such world I fashioned not.”—

—“O Lord, forgive me when I say

Thou spak’st the word, and mad’st it all.”—

“The Earth of men—let me bethink me . . . Yea!

I dimly do recall

“Some tiny sphere I built long back

(Mid millions of such shapes of mine)

So named . . . It perished, surely—not a wrack

Remaining, or a sign?

“It lost my interest from the first,

My aims therefor succeeding ill;

Haply it died of doing as it durst?”—

“Lord, it existeth still.”—

“Dark, then, its life! For not a cry

Of aught it bears do I now hear;

Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby

Its plaints had reached mine ear.

“It used to ask for gifts of good,

Till came its severance self-entailed,

When sudden silence on that side ensued,

And has till now prevailed.

“All other orbs have kept in touch;

Their voicings reach me speedily:

Thy people took upon them overmuch

In sundering them from me!

“And it is strange—though sad enough—

Earth’s race should think that one whose call

Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff

Must heed their tainted ball! . . .

“But say’st thou ’tis by pangs distraught,

And strife, and silent suffering?—

Deep grieved am I that injury should be wrought

Even on so poor a thing!

“Thou should’st have learnt that _Not to Mend_

For Me could mean but _Not to Know_:

Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end

To what men undergo.” . . .

Homing at dawn, I thought to see

One of the Messengers standing by.

—Oh, childish thought! . . . Yet oft it comes to me

When trouble hovers nigh.

THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT

TO AN UNKNOWING GOD

MUCH wonder I—here long low-laid—

That this dead wall should be

Betwixt the Maker and the made,

Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse,

He eyes it now and then

To know if better ’tis, or worse,

And if it mourn, and when.

But Thou, Lord, giv’st us men our clay

In helpless bondage thus

To Time and Chance, and seem’st straightway

To think no more of us!

That some disaster cleft Thy scheme

And tore us wide apart,

So that no cry can cross, I deem;

For Thou art mild of heart,

And would’st not shape and shut us in

Where voice can not he heard:

’Tis plain Thou meant’st that we should win

Thy succour by a word.

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies

Like man’s from clime to clime,

Thou would’st not let me agonize

Through my remaining time;

But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear—

Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind—

Thou’dst heal the ills with quickest care

Of me and all my kind.

Then, since Thou mak’st not these things be,

But these things dost not know,

I’ll praise Thee as were shown to me

The mercies Thou would’st show!

BY THE EARTH’S CORPSE

“O LORD, why grievest Thou?—

Since Life has ceased to be

Upon this globe, now cold

As lunar land and sea,

And humankind, and fowl, and fur

Are gone eternally,

All is the same to Thee as ere

They knew mortality.”

“O Time,” replied the Lord,

“Thou read’st me ill, I ween;

Were all _the same_, I should not grieve

At that late earthly scene,

Now blestly past—though planned by me

With interest close and keen!—

Nay, nay: things now are _not_ the same

As they have earlier been.

III

“Written indelibly

On my eternal mind

Are all the wrongs endured

By Earth’s poor patient kind,

Which my too oft unconscious hand

Let enter undesigned.

No god can cancel deeds foredone,

Or thy old coils unwind!

“As when, in Noë’s days,

I whelmed the plains with sea,

So at this last, when flesh

And herb but fossils be,

And, all extinct, their piteous dust

Revolves obliviously,

That I made Earth, and life, and man,

It still repenteth me!”

MUTE OPINION

I TRAVERSED a dominion

Whose spokesmen spake out strong

Their purpose and opinion

Through pulpit, press, and song.

I scarce had means to note there

A large-eyed few, and dumb,

Who thought not as those thought there

That stirred the heat and hum.

When, grown a Shade, beholding

That land in lifetime trode,

To learn if its unfolding

Fulfilled its clamoured code,

I saw, in web unbroken,

Its history outwrought

Not as the loud had spoken,

But as the mute had thought.

TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD

BREATHE not, hid Heart: cease silently,

And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,

Sleep the long sleep:

The Doomsters heap

Travails and teens around us here,

And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,

And laughters fail, and greetings die:

Hopes dwindle; yea,

Faiths waste away,

Affections and enthusiasms numb;

Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

Had I the ear of wombèd souls

Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,

And thou wert free

To cease, or be,

Then would I tell thee all I know,

And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence

To theeward fly: to thy locked sense

Explain none can

Life’s pending plan:

Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make

Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.

Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot

Of earth’s wide wold for thee, where not

One tear, one qualm,

Should break the calm.

But I am weak as thou and bare;

No man can change the common lot to rare.

Must come and bide. And such are we—

Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary—

That I can hope

Health, love, friends, scope

In full for thee; can dream thou’lt find

Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER

SUNNED in the South, and here to-day;

—If all organic things

Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,

What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite

From this bleak spot of thorn,

And birch, and fir, and frozen white

Expanse of the forlorn?

Frail luckless exiles hither brought!

Your dust will not regain

Old sunny haunts of Classic thought

When you shall waste and wane;

But mix with alien earth, be lit

With frigid Boreal flame,

And not a sign remain in it

To tell men whence you came.

ON A FINE MORNING

WHENCE comes Solace?—Not from seeing

What is doing, suffering, being,

Not from noting Life’s conditions,

Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;

But in cleaving to the Dream,

And in gazing at the gleam

Whereby gray things golden seem.

Thus do I this heyday, holding

Shadows but as lights unfolding,

As no specious show this moment

With its irisèd embowment;

But as nothing other than

Part of a benignant plan;

Proof that earth was made for man.

_February_ 1899.

TO LIZBIE BROWNE

DEAR Lizbie Browne,

Where are you now?

In sun, in rain?—

Or is your brow

Past joy, past pain,

Dear Lizbie Browne?

Sweet Lizbie Browne

How you could smile,

How you could sing!—

How archly wile

In glance-giving,

Sweet Lizbie Browne!

III

And, Lizbie Browne,

Who else had hair

Bay-red as yours,

Or flesh so fair

Bred out of doors,

Sweet Lizbie Browne?

When, Lizbie Browne,

You had just begun

To be endeared

By stealth to one,

You disappeared

My Lizbie Browne!

Ay, Lizbie Browne,

So swift your life,

And mine so slow,

You were a wife

Ere I could show

Love, Lizbie Browne.

Still, Lizbie Browne,

You won, they said,

The best of men

When you were wed . . .

Where went you then,

O Lizbie Browne?

VII

Dear Lizbie Browne,

I should have thought,

“Girls ripen fast,”

And coaxed and caught

You ere you passed,

Dear Lizbie Browne!

VIII

But, Lizbie Browne,

I let you slip;

Shaped not a sign;

Touched never your lip

With lip of mine,

Lost Lizbie Browne!

So, Lizbie Browne,

When on a day

Men speak of me

As not, you’ll say,

“And who was he?”—

Yes, Lizbie Browne!

SONG OF HOPE

O SWEET To-morrow!—

After to-day

There will away

This sense of sorrow.

Then let us borrow

Hope, for a gleaming

Soon will be streaming,

Dimmed by no gray—

No gray!

While the winds wing us

Sighs from The Gone,

Nearer to dawn

Minute-beats bring us;

When there will sing us

Larks of a glory

Waiting our story

Further anon—

Anon!

Doff the black token,

Don the red shoon,

Right and retune

Viol-strings broken;

Null the words spoken

In speeches of rueing,

The night cloud is hueing,

To-morrow shines soon—

Shines soon!

THE WELL-BELOVED

I wayed by star and planet shine

Towards the dear one’s home

At Kingsbere, there to make her mine

When the next sun upclomb.

I edged the ancient hill and wood

Beside the Ikling Way,

Nigh where the Pagan temple stood

In the world’s earlier day.

And as I quick and quicker walked

On gravel and on green,

I sang to sky, and tree, or talked

Of her I called my queen.

—“O faultless is her dainty form,

And luminous her mind;

She is the God-created norm

Of perfect womankind!”

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed

Glode softly by my side,

A woman’s; and her motion seemed

The motion of my bride.

And yet methought she’d drawn erstwhile

Adown the ancient leaze,

Where once were pile and peristyle

For men’s idolatries.

—“O maiden lithe and lone, what may

Thy name and lineage be,

Who so resemblest by this ray

My darling?—Art thou she?”

The Shape: “Thy bride remains within

Her father’s grange and grove.”

—“Thou speakest rightly,” I broke in,

“Thou art not she I love.”

—“Nay: though thy bride remains inside

Her father’s walls,” said she,

“The one most dear is with thee here,

For thou dost love but me.”

Then I: “But she, my only choice,

Is now at Kingsbere Grove?”

Again her soft mysterious voice:

“I am thy only Love.”

Thus still she vouched, and still I said,

“O sprite, that cannot be!” . . .

It was as if my bosom bled,

So much she troubled me.

The sprite resumed: “Thou hast transferred

To her dull form awhile

My beauty, fame, and deed, and word,

My gestures and my smile.

“O fatuous man, this truth infer,

Brides are not what they seem;

Thou lovest what thou dreamest her;

I am thy very dream!”

—“O then,” I answered miserably,

Speaking as scarce I knew,

“My loved one, I must wed with thee

If what thou say’st be true!”

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom:

“Though, since troth-plight began,

I’ve ever stood as bride to groom,

I wed no mortal man!”

Thereat she vanished by the Cross

That, entering Kingsbere town,

The two long lanes form, near the fosse

Below the faneless Down.