"The king and the queen will stand to the child;'Twill be handed down in song;
And it's no more than their deserving, With my lord so faithful at Court so long, And so staunch and strong.
"O never before was known such a thing!
'Twill be a grand time for all;
And the beef will be a whole-roast bullock, And the servants will have a feast in the hall, And the ladies a ball.
"While from Jordan's stream by a traveller, In a flagon of silver wrought, And by caravan, stage-coach, wain, and waggon A precious trickle has been brought, Clear as when caught."The morning came. To the park of the peer The royal couple bore;And the font was filled with the Jordan water, And the household awaited their guests before The carpeted door.
But when they went to the silk-lined cot The child was found to have died.
"What's now to be done? We can disappoint not The king and queen!" the family cried With eyes spread wide.
"Even now they approach the chestnut-drive!
The service must be read."
"Well, since we can't christen the child alive, By God we shall have to christen him dead!"The marquis said.
Thus, breath-forsaken, a corpse was taken To the private chapel--yea -And the king knew not, nor the queen, God wot, That they answered for one returned to clay At the font that day.
OLD FURNITURE
I know not how it may be with others Who sit amid relics of householdry That date from the days of their mothers' mothers, But well I know how it is with me Continually.
I see the hands of the generations That owned each shiny familiar thing In play on its knobs and indentations, And with its ancient fashioning Still dallying:
Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler, As in a mirror a candle-flame Shows images of itself, each frailer As it recedes, though the eye may frame Its shape the same.
On the clock's dull dial a foggy finger, Moving to set the minutes right With tentative touches that lift and linger In the wont of a moth on a summer night, Creeps to my sight.
On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing -As whilom--just over the strings by the nut, The tip of a bow receding, advancing In airy quivers, as if it would cut The plaintive gut.
And I see a face by that box for tinder, Glowing forth in fits from the dark, And fading again, as the linten cinder Kindles to red at the flinty spark, Or goes out stark.
Well, well. It is best to be up and doing, The world has no use for one to-day Who eyes things thus--no aim pursuing!
He should not continue in this stay, But sink away.
A THOUGHT IN TWO MOODS
I saw it--pink and white--revealed Upon the white and green;The white and green was a daisied field, The pink and white Ethleen.
And as I looked it seemed in kind That difference they had none;The two fair bodiments combined As varied miens of one.
A sense that, in some mouldering year, As one they both would lie, Made me move quickly on to her To pass the pale thought by.
She laughed and said: "Out there, to me, You looked so weather-browned, And brown in clothes, you seemed to be Made of the dusty ground!"THE LAST PERFORMANCE
"I am playing my oldest tunes," declared she, "All the old tunes I know, -Those I learnt ever so long ago."
- Why she should think just then she'd play them Silence cloaks like snow.
When I returned from the town at nightfall Notes continued to pour As when I had left two hours before:
It's the very last time," she said in closing;"From now I play no more."
A few morns onward found her fading, And, as her life outflew, I thought of her playing her tunes right through;And I felt she had known of what was coming, And wondered how she knew.
1912.
"YOU ON THE TOWER"
I
"You on the tower of my factory -
What do you see up there?
Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings Advancing to reach me here?"- "Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings Advancing to reach you here."II
"Good. Soon I'll come and ask you To tell me again thereon . . .
Well, what is he doing now? Hoi, there!"--"He still is flying on."
"Ah, waiting till I have full-finished.
Good. Tell me again anon . . .
III
Hoi, Watchman! I'm here. When comes he?
Between my sweats I am chill."
--"Oh, you there, working still?
Why, surely he reached you a time back, And took you miles from your mill?
He duly came in his winging, And now he has passed out of view.
How can it be that you missed him?
He brushed you by as he flew."
THE INTERLOPER
"And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home."There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise, And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;I view them talking in quiet glee As they drop down towards the puffins' lair By the roughest of ways;But another with the three rides on, I see, Whom I like not to be there!
No: it's not anybody you think of. Next A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream Where two sit happy and half in the dark:
They read, helped out by a frail-wick'd gleam, Some rhythmic text;But one sits with them whom they don't mark, One I'm wishing could not be there.
No: not whom you knew and name. And now I discern gay diners in a mansion-place, And the guests dropping wit--pert, prim, or choice, And the hostess's tender and laughing face, And the host's bland brow;I cannot help hearing a hollow voice, And I'd fain not hear it there.
No: it's not from the stranger you met once. Ah, Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;People on a lawn--quite a crowd of them. Yes, And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;And they say, "Hurrah!"
To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless, Who ought not to be there.
Nay: it's not the pale Form your imagings raise, That waits on us all at a destined time, It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed, O that it were such a shape sublime;In these latter days!
It is that under which best lives corrode;Would, would it could not be there!
LOGS ON THE HEARTH
A MEMORY OF A SISTER
The fire advances along the log Of the tree we felled, Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck Till its last hour of bearing knelled.
The fork that first my hand would reach And then my foot In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.
