The Haunter

He does not think that I haunt here nightly: 

How shall I let him know 

That whither his fancy sets him wandering 

I, too, alertly go? - 

Hover and hover a few feet from him 

Just as I used to do, 

But cannot answer the words he lifts me – 

Only listen thereto! 

When I could answer he did not say them: 

When I could let him know 

How I would like to join in his journeys 

Seldom he wished to go. 

Now that he goes and wants me with him 

More than he used to do, 

Never he sees my faithful phantom 

Though he speaks thereto. 

Yes, I companion him to places 

Only dreamers know, 

Where the shy hares print long paces, 

Where the night rooks go; 

Into old aisles where the past is all to him, 

Close as his shade can do, 

Always lacking the power to call to him, 

Near as I reach thereto! 

What a good haunter I am, O tell him, 

Quickly make him know 

If he but sigh since my loss befell him 

Straight to his side I go. 

Tell him a faithful one is doing 

All that love can do 

Still that his path may be worth pursuing, 

And to bring peace thereto. 

-o0o-

The Going

Why did you give no hint that night

That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,

And calmly, as if indifferent quite,

You would close your term here, up and be gone

     Where I could not follow

     With wing of swallow

To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

     Never to bid good-bye

     Or lip me the softest call,

Or utter a wish for a word, while I

Saw morning harden upon the wall,

     Unmoved, unknowing

     That your great going

Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why do you make me leave the house

And think for a breath it is you I see

At the end of the alley of bending boughs

Where so often at dusk you used to be;

     Till in darkening dankness

     The yawning blankness

Of the perspective sickens me!

     You were she who abode

     By those red-veined rocks far West,

You were the swan-necked one who rode

Along the beetling Beeny Crest,

     And, reining nigh me,

     Would muse and eye me,

While Life unrolled us its very best.

Why, then, latterly did we not speak,

Did we not think of those days long dead,

And ere your vanishing strive to seek

That time’s renewal?  We might have said,

     “In this bright spring weather

     We’ll visit together

Those places that once we visited.”

     Well, well!  All’s past amend,

     Unchangeable.  It must go.

I seem but a dead man held on end

To sink down soon. . . .  O you could not know

     That such swift fleeing

     No soul foreseeing—

Not even I—would undo me so!

-o0o-

At Day-close in November

The ten hours’ light is abating,

And a late bird wings across,

Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,

Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noontime,

Float past like specks in the eye;

I set every tree in my June time,

And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here

Conceive that there never has been

A time when no tall trees grew here,

That none will in time be seen.

-o0o-

When I set out for Lyonnesse

When I set out for Lyonnesse,

A hundred miles away,

The rime was on the spray,

And starlight lit my lonesomeness

When I set out for Lyonnesse

A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there

No prophet durst declare,

Nor did the wisest wizard guess

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes,

All marked with mute surmise

My radiance rare and fathomless,

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes! 

-o0o-

A Wife Waits

Will's at the dance in the Club-room below,

Where the tall liquor-cups foam;

I on the pavement up here by the Bow,

Wait, wait, to steady him home.

Will and his partner are treading a tune,

Loving companions they be;

Willy, before we were married in June,

Said he loved no one but me;

Said he would let his old pleasures all go

Ever to live with his Dear.

Will's at the dance in the Club-room below,

Shivering I wait for him here.

-o0o-

The End of the Episode

Indulge no more may we

In this sweet-bitter pastime:

The love-light shines the last time

Between you, Dear, and me.

There shall remain no trace

Of what so closely tied us,

And blank as ere love eyed us

Will be our meeting-place.

The flowers and thymy air,

Will they now miss our coming?

The dumbles thin their humming

To find we haunt not there?

Though fervent was our vow,

Though ruddily ran our pleasure,

Bliss has fulfilled its measure,

And sees its sentence now.

Ache deep; but make no moans:

Smile out; but stilly suffer:

The paths of love are rougher

Than thoroughfares of stones.

-o0o-

Shelley's Skylark

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. 

-o0o-

The Whitewashed Wall

Why does she turn in that shy soft way

Whenever she stirs the fire,

And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,

As if entranced to admire

Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight

Of a rose in richest green?

I have known her long, but this raptured rite

I never before have seen.

- Well, once when her son cast his shadow there,

A friend took a pencil and drew him

Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines

Had a lifelike semblance to him.

And there long stayed his familiar look;

But one day, ere she knew,

The whitener came to cleanse the nook,

And covered the face from view.

"Yes," he said: "My brush goes on with a rush,

And the draught is buried under;

When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,

What else can you do, I wonder?"

But she knows he's there. And when she yearns

For him, deep in the labouring night,

She sees him as close at hand, and turns

To him under his sheet of white.

-o0o-

I Say I'll Seek Her

 I say, "I'll seek her side

     Ere hindrance interposes;"

     But eve in midnight closes,

    And here I still abide.

    When darkness wears I see

     Her sad eyes in a vision;

     They ask, "What indecision

    Detains you, Love, from me? -

    "The creaking hinge is oiled,

     I have unbarred the backway,

     But you tread not the trackway;

    And shall the thing be spoiled?

    "Far cockcrows echo shrill,

     The shadows are abating,

     And I am waiting, waiting;

    But O, you tarry still!"

-o0o-

On the Departure Platform

We kissed at the barrier ; and passing through

She left me, and moment by moment got

Smaller and smaller, until to my view

                She was but a spot ;

A wee white spot of muslin fluff

That down the diminishing platform bore

Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough

               To the carriage door.

Under the lamplight’s fitful glowers,

Behind dark groups from far and near,

Whose interests were apart from ours,

                 She would disappear,

Then show again, till I ceased to see

That flexible form, that nebulous white ;

And she who was more than my life to me

                 Had vanished quite.

We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,

And in season she will appear again—

Perhaps in the same soft white array—

                 But never as then !

—"And why, young man, must eternally fly

A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well ?"

—O friend, nought happens twice thus ; why,

                 I cannot tell !

-o0o-

The Division

Rain on the windows, creaking doors,

With blasts that besom the green,

And I am here, and you are there,

And a hundred miles between!

O were it but the weather, Dear,

O were it but the miles

That summed up all our severance,

There might be room for smiles.

But that thwart thing betwixt us twain,

Which nothing cleaves or clears,

Is more than distance, Dear, or rain,

And longer than the years!

-o0o-

The Curate's Kindness

A Workhouse Irony

I

I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me,

But she's to be there!

Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me

At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

II

I thought: "Well, I've come to the Union -

The workhouse at last -

After honest hard work all the week, and Communion

O' Zundays, these fifty years past.

III

"'Tis hard; but," I thought, "never mind it:

There's gain in the end:

And when I get used to the place I shall find it

A home, and may find there a friend.

IV

"Life there will be better than t'other.

For peace is assured.

The men in one wing and their wives in another

Is strictly the rule of the Board."

V

Just then one young Pa'son arriving

Steps up out of breath

To the side o' the waggon wherein we were driving

To Union; and calls out and saith:

VI

"Old folks, that harsh order is altered,

Be not sick of heart!

The Guardians they poohed and they pished and they paltered

When urged not to keep you apart.

VII

"'It is wrong,' I maintained, 'to divide them,

Near forty years wed.'

'Very well, sir. We promise, then, they shall abide them

In one wing together,' they said."

VIII

Then I sank - knew 'twas quite a foredone thing

That misery should be

To the end! . . . To get freed of her there was the one thing

Had made the change welcome to me.

IX

To go there was ending but badly;

'Twas shame and 'twas pain;

"But anyhow," thought I, "thereby I shall gladly

Get free of this forty years' chain."

X

I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me,

But she's to be there!

Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me

At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

-o0o-

Tess's Lament

I 

I would that folk forgot me quite, 

   Forgot me quite! 

I would that I could shrink from sight, 

   And no more see the sun. 

Would it were time to say farewell, 

To claim my nook, to need my knell, 

Time for them all to stand and tell 

   Of my day's work as done. 

II 

Ah! dairy where I lived so long, 

   I lived so long; 

Where I would rise up stanch and strong, 

   And lie down hopefully. 

'Twas there within the chimney-seat 

He watched me to the clock's slow beat - 

Loved me, and learnt to call me sweet, 

   And whispered words to me. 

III 

And now he's gone; and now he's gone; . . . 

   And now he's gone! 

The flowers we potted p'rhaps are thrown 

   To rot upon the farm. 

And where we had our supper-fire 

May now grow nettle, dock, and briar, 

And all the place be mould and mire 

   So cozy once and warm. 

IV 

And it was I who did it all, 

   Who did it all; 

'Twas I who made the blow to fall 

   On him who thought no guile. 

Well, it is finished - past, and he 

Has left me to my misery, 

And I must take my Cross on me 

   For wronging him awhile. 

V 

How gay we looked that day we wed, 

   That day we wed! 

"May joy be with ye!" all o'm said 

   A standing by the durn. 

I wonder what they say o's now, 

And if they know my lot; and how 

She feels who milks my favourite cow, 

   And takes my place at churn! 

VI 

It wears me out to think of it, 

   To think of it; 

I cannot bear my fate as writ, 

   I'd have my life unbe; 

Would turn my memory to a blot, 

Make every relic of me rot, 

My doings be as they were not, 

   And what they've brought to me! 

-o0o-

The Milkmaid

Under a daisied bank 

There stands a rich red ruminating cow, 

   And hard against her flank 

A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow. 

   The flowery river-ooze 

Upheaves and falls; the milk purrs in the pail; 

   Few pilgrims but would choose 

The peace of such a life in such a vale. 

   The maid breathes words - to vent, 

It seems, her sense of Nature's scenery, 

   Of whose life, sentiment, 

And essence, very part itself is she. 

   She bends a glance of pain, 

And, at a moment, lets escape a tear; 

   Is it that passing train, 

Whose alien whirr offends her country ear? - 

   Nay! Phyllis does not dwell 

On visual and familiar things like these; 

   What moves her is the spell 

Of inner themes and inner poetries: 

   Could but by Sunday morn 

Her gay new gown come, meads might dry to dun, 

   Trains shriek till ears were torn, 

If Fred would not prefer that Other One. 

-o0o-

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.

-o0o-

The Well-Beloved

I went 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. 

- When I arrived and met my bride, 

   Her look was pinched and thin, 

As if her soul had shrunk and died, 

   And left a waste within. 

-o0o-

To Lizbie Browne

I

Dear Lizbie Browne, 

Where are you now? 

In sun, in rain? - 

Or is your brow 

Past joy, past pain, 

Dear Lizbie Browne? 

II 

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? 

IV 

When, Lizbie Browne, 

You had just begun 

To be endeared 

By stealth to one, 

You disappeared 

My Lizbie Browne! 

V 

Ay, Lizbie Browne, 

So swift your life, 

And mine so slow, 

You were a wife 

Ere I could show 

Love, Lizbie Browne. 

VI 

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! 

IX 

So, Lizbie Browne, 

When on a day 

Men speak of me 

As not, you'll say, 

"And who was he?" - 

Yes, Lizbie Browne! 

-o0o-

Drummer Hodge

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.

Yet portion of that unknown plain

Will Hodge for ever be;

His homely Northern breast and brain

Grow to some Southern tree,

And strange-eyed constellations reign

His stars eternally. 

-o0o-

The new series of

 My Choice My Delight

began today

mychoicemydelight.blogspot.com

-o0o-

I look into my Glass

 I look into my glass,

And view my wasting skin,

And say, "Would God it came to pass

My heart had shrunk as thin!"

For then, I, undistrest

By hearts grown cold to me,

Could lonely wait my endless rest

With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

With throbbings of noontide. 

Inscriptions for a Peal of Eight Bells

After a restoration.

Thomas Tremble new-made me

Eighteen hundred and fifty-three:

Why he did I fail to see.

I was well-toned by William Brine,

Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine;

Now, re-cast, I weakly whine.

Fifteen hundred used my date to be,

But since they melted me

'Tis only eighteen fifty-three.

Henry Hopkins got me made,

And I summon forth as bade;

Not to much purpose, I'm afraid.

I likewise: for I band and bid

In commoner metal than I did,

Some of me being stolen, and hid.

I, too, since in a mould they flung me,

Drained my silver, and re-hung me,

So that in tin-like tones I tongue me.

In nineteen hundred, so 'tis said,

They cut my canon off my head

And made me look scalped, scraped, and dead.

I'm the peal's tenor still, but rue it!

Once it took two to swing me through it:

Now I'm re-hung, one dolt can do it.

-o0o-

Where Three Roads Joined

Where three roads joined it was green and fair,

And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,

Where life laughed sweet when I halted there;

Yet there I never again would be.

I am sure those branchways are brooding now,

With a wistful blankness upon their face,

While the few mute passengers notice how

Spectre-beridden is the place;

Which nightly sighs like a laden soul,

And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell

Not far from thence, should have let it roll

Away from them down a plumbless well

While the phasm of him who fared starts up,

And of her who was waiting him sobs from near,

As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup

They filled for themselves when their sky was clear.

Yes, I see those roads - now rutted and bare,

While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea;

And though life laughed when I halted there,

It is where I never again would be.

-o0o-

A Sound in the Night (2 of 2)

She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,

And his voice as he unclothed him: "'Twas nothing, as I said,

But the nor'-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath'art the river,

And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head."

"Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,

Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,

The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,

Why is it silent now?

"And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,

And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,

And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,

And thy breath as if hard to get?"

He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing,

Then started up and walked about the room resentfully:

"O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded,

Why castedst thou thy spells on me?

"There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:

She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,

As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e'en the cry you heard, wife,

But she will cry no more!

"And now I can't abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on't,

This farmstead once a castle: I'll get me straight away!"

He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,

And went ere the dawn turned day.

They found a woman's body at a spot called Rocky Shallow,

Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground,

And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly known

her,

But he could not be found.

And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,

And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,

And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,

And sometimes an infant's moan.

-o0o-

A new series of My Choice My Delight begins on Tuesday 12th June and then will be updated every Friday and Tuesday
mychoicemydelight.blogspot.com

-o=0=o-

A Sound in the Night (1 of 2)

"What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband? -

What is it sounds in this house so eerily?

It seems to be a woman's voice: each little while I hear it,

And it much troubles me!"

"'Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:

Letting fancies worry thee! - sure 'tis a foolish thing,

When we were on'y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,

And now it's but evening."

"Yet seems it still a woman's voice outside the castle, husband,

And 'tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.

Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure

Ere ever thou sawest my face?"

"It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,

If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,

Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatches

Like a creature that sighs and mopes."

"Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,

And it saddens me much that so piteous a sound

On this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrow

Should so ghost-like wander round!"

"To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,

And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,

And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,

And throw the light over the moor."

He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber,

And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight,

And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern,

And go out into the night.

-o0o-

Rose-Ann

Why didn't you say you was promised, Rose-Ann?

Why didn't you name it to me,

Ere ever you tempted me hither, Rose-Ann,

So often, so wearifully?

O why did you let me be near 'ee, Rose-Ann,

Talking things about wedlock so free,

And never by nod or by whisper, Rose-Ann,

Give a hint that it wasn't to be?

Down home I was raising a flock of stock ewes,

Cocks and hens, and wee chickens by scores,

And lavendered linen all ready to use,

A-dreaming that they would be yours.

Mother said: "She's a sport-making maiden, my son";

And a pretty sharp quarrel had we;

O why do you prove by this wrong you have done

That I saw not what mother could see?

Never once did you say you was promised, Rose-Ann,

Never once did I dream it to be;

And it cuts to the heart to be treated, Rose-Ann,

As you in your scorning treat me!

-o0o-