Chapter I: GLIMPSED a woman’s muslined form

Sing-songing airily
Against the moon; and still she sang,
And took no heed of me.

Another trice, and I beheld
What first I had not scanned,
That now and then she tapped and shook
A timbrel in her hand.

So late the hour, so white her drape,
So strange the look it lent
To that blank hill, I could not guess
What phantastry it meant.

Then burst I forth: “Why such from you?
Are you so happy now?”
Her voice swam on; nor did she show
Thought of me anyhow.

I called again: “Come nearer; much
That kind of note I need!”
The song kept softening, loudening on,
In placid calm unheed.

“What home is yours now?” then I said;
“You seem to have no care.”
But the wild wavering tune went forth
As if I had not been there.

“This world is dark, and where you are,”
I said, “I cannot be!”
But still the happy one sang on,
And had no heed of me.

THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE

ONE without looks in to-night
Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
As we sit and think
By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
Wondering, aglow,
Fourfooted, tiptoe.

THE SELFSAME SONG

A BIRD bills the selfsame song,
With never a fault in its flow,
That we listened to here those long
Long years ago.

A pleasing marvel is how
A strain of such rapturous rote
Should have gone on thus till now
Unchanged in a note!

—But it’s not the selfsame bird.—
No: perished to dust is he . . .
As also are those who heard
That song with me.

THE WANDERER

THERE is nobody on the road
But I,
And no beseeming abode
I can try
For shelter, so abroad
I must lie.

The stars feel not far up,
And to be
The lights by which I sup
Glimmeringly,
Set out in a hollow cup
Over me.

They wag as though they were
Panting for joy
Where they shine, above all care,
And annoy,
And demons of despair—
Life’s alloy.

Sometimes outside the fence
Feet swing past,
Clock-like, and then go hence,
Till at last
There is a silence, dense,
Deep, and vast.

A wanderer, witch-drawn
To and fro,
To-morrow, at the dawn,
On I go,
And where I rest anon
Do not know!

Yet it’s meet—this bed of hay
And roofless plight;
For there’s a house of clay,
My own, quite,
To roof me soon, all day
And all night.

A WIFE COMES BACK

THIS is the story a man told me
Of his life’s one day of dreamery.

A woman came into his room
Between the dawn and the creeping day:
She was the years-wed wife from whom
He had parted, and who lived far away,
As if strangers they.

He wondered, and as she stood
She put on youth in her look and air,
And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed
Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair
While he watched her there;

Till she freshed to the pink and brown
That were hers on the night when first they met,
When she was the charm of the idle town
And he the pick of the club-fire set . . .
His eyes grew wet,

And he stretched his arms: “Stay—rest!—”
He cried. “Abide with me so, my own!”
But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;
She had vanished with all he had looked upon
Of her beauty: gone.

He clothed, and drew downstairs,
But she was not in the house, he found;
And he passed out under the leafy pairs
Of the avenue elms, and searched around
To the park-pale bound.

He mounted, and rode till night
To the city to which she had long withdrawn,
The vision he bore all day in his sight
Being her young self as pondered on
In the dim of dawn.

“—The lady here long ago—
Is she now here?—young—or such age as she is?”
“—She is still here.”—“Thank God. Let her know;
She’ll pardon a comer so late as this
Whom she’d fain not miss.”

She received him—an ancient dame,
Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb,
“How strange!—I’d almost forgotten your name!—
A call just now—is troublesome;
Why did you come?”

A YOUNG MAN’S EXHORTATION

CALL off your eyes from care
By some determined deftness; put forth joys
Dear as excess without the core that cloys,
And charm Life’s lourings fair.

Exalt and crown the hour
That girdles us, and fill it full with glee,
Blind glee, excelling aught could ever be
Were heedfulness in power.

Send up such touching strains
That limitless recruits from Fancy’s pack
Shall rush upon your tongue, and tender back
All that your soul contains.

For what do we know best?
That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry,
And that men moment after moment die,
Of all scope dispossest.

If I have seen one thing
It is the passing preciousness of dreams;
That aspects are within us; and who seems
Most kingly is the King.

1867: WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS.

AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK

HAD I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:

“_You see that man_?”—I might have looked, and said,
“O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought
Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban’s Head.
So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.”

“_You see that man_?”—“Why yes; I told you; yes:
Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;
And as the evening light scants less and less
He looks up at a star, as many do.”

“_You see that man_?”—“Nay, leave me!” then I plead,
“I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,
And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:
I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!

“Good. That man goes to Rome—to death, despair;
And no one notes him now but you and I:
A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,
And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.”

_September_ 1920.

_Note_.—In September 1820 Keats, on his way to Rome, landed one day on the Dorset coast, and composed the sonnet, “Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.” The spot of his landing is judged to have been Lulworth Cove.

A BYGONE OCCASION (SONG)

THAT night, that night,
That song, that song!
Will such again be evened quite
Through lifetimes long?

No mirth was shown
To outer seers,
But mood to match has not been known
In modern years.

O eyes that smiled,
O lips that lured;
That such would last was one beguiled
To think ensured!

That night, that night,
That song, that song;
O drink to its recalled delight,
Though tears may throng!

TWO SERENADES

I _On Christmas Eve_

LATE on Christmas Eve, in the street alone,
Outside a house, on the pavement-stone,
I sang to her, as we’d sung together
On former eves ere I felt her tether.—
Above the door of green by me
Was she, her casement seen by me;
But she would not heed
What I melodied
In my soul’s sore need—
She would not heed.

Cassiopeia overhead,
And the Seven of the Wain, heard what I said
As I bent me there, and voiced, and fingered
Upon the strings. . . . Long, long I lingered:
Only the curtains hid from her
One whom caprice had bid from her;
But she did not come,
And my heart grew numb
And dull my strum;
She did not come.

II _A Year Later_