Where the bark chars is where, one year, It was pruned, and bled -Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last, Its growings all have stagnated.
My fellow-climber rises dim From her chilly grave -Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb, Laughing, her young brown hand awave.
December 1915.
THE SUNSHADE
Ah--it's the skeleton of a lady's sunshade, Here at my feet in the hard rock's chink, Merely a naked sheaf of wires! -Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers Since it was silked in its white or pink.
Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade, No more a screen from the weakest ray;Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes, Nothing but rusty bones as it lies In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.
Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade Up and down this seaside place? -Little thumb standing against its stem, Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem, Softening yet more the already soft face!
Is the fair woman who carried that sunshade A skeleton just as her property is, Laid in the chink that none may scan?
And does she regret--if regret dust can -The vain things thought when she flourished this?
SWANAGE CLIFFS.
THE AGEING HOUSE
When the walls were red That now are seen To be overspread With a mouldy green, A fresh fair head Would often lean From the sunny casement And scan the scene, While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.
But storms have raged Those walls about, And the head has aged That once looked out;And zest is suaged And trust is doubt, And slow effacement Is rife throughout, While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!
THE CAGED GOLDFINCH
Within a churchyard, on a recent grave, I saw a little cage That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save Its hops from stage to stage.
There was inquiry in its wistful eye, And once it tried to sing;Of him or her who placed it there, and why, No one knew anything.
AT MADAME TUSSAUD'S IN VICTORIAN YEARS
"That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night Here fiddled four decades of years ago;He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight, Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.
"But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier, And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre, In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.
"Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem That to do but a little thing counts a great deal;To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him -With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal."* * *
Ah, but he played staunchly--that fiddler--whoever he was, With the innocent heart and the soul-touching string:
May he find the Fair Haven! For did he not smile with good cause?
Yes; gamuts that graced forty years'-flight were not a small thing!
THE BALLET
They crush together--a rustling heap of flesh -Of more than flesh, a heap of souls; and then They part, enmesh, And crush together again, Like the pink petals of a too sanguine rose Frightened shut just when it blows.
Though all alike in their tinsel livery, And indistinguishable at a sweeping glance, They muster, maybe, As lives wide in irrelevance;A world of her own has each one underneath, Detached as a sword from its sheath.
Daughters, wives, mistresses; honest or false, sold, bought;Hearts of all sizes; gay, fond, gushing, or penned, Various in thought Of lover, rival, friend;Links in a one-pulsed chain, all showing one smile, Yet severed so many a mile!
THE FIVE STUDENTS
The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath, The sun grows passionate-eyed, And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;As strenuously we stride, -
Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I, All beating by.
The air is shaken, the high-road hot, Shadowless swoons the day, The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not We on our urgent way, -Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there, But one--elsewhere.
Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow, And forward still we press Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow, As in the spring hours--yes, Three of us: fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore, But--fallen one more.
The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in At night-time noiselessly, The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin, And yet on the beat are we, -Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go The track we know.
Icicles tag the church-aisle leads, The flag-rope gibbers hoarse, The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads, Yet I still stalk the course, -One of us . . . Dark and fair He, dark and fair She, gone:
The rest--anon.
THE WIND'S PROPHECY
I travel on by barren farms, And gulls glint out like silver flecks Against a cloud that speaks of wrecks, And bellies down with black alarms.
I say: "Thus from my lady's arms I go; those arms I love the best!"The wind replies from dip and rise, "Nay; toward her arms thou journeyest."A distant verge morosely gray Appears, while clots of flying foam Break from its muddy monochrome, And a light blinks up far away.
I sigh: "My eyes now as all day Behold her ebon loops of hair!"Like bursting bonds the wind responds, "Nay, wait for tresses flashing fair!"From tides the lofty coastlands screen Come smitings like the slam of doors, Or hammerings on hollow floors, As the swell cleaves through caves unseen.
Say I: "Though broad this wild terrene, Her city home is matched of none!"From the hoarse skies the wind replies:
"Thou shouldst have said her sea-bord one."The all-prevailing clouds exclude The one quick timorous transient star;The waves outside where breakers are Huzza like a mad multitude.
"Where the sun ups it, mist-imbued,"
I cry, "there reigns the star for me!"
The wind outshrieks from points and peaks:
"Here, westward, where it downs, mean ye!"Yonder the headland, vulturine, Snores like old Skrymer in his sleep, And every chasm and every steep Blackens as wakes each pharos-shine.
"I roam, but one is safely mine,"
