An Anniversary

It was at the very date to which we have come,

In the month of the matching name,

When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum,

Its couch-time at night being the same.

And the same path stretched here that people now follow,

And the same stile crossed their way,

And beyond the same green hillock and hollow

The same horizon lay;

And the same man pilgrims now hereby who pilgrimed here that day.

Let so much be said of the date-day's sameness;

But the tree that neighbours the track,

And stoops like a pedlar afflicted with lameness,

Knew of no sogged wound or windcrack.

And the joints of that wall were not enshrouded

With mosses of many tones,

And the garth up afar was not overcrowded

With a multitude of white stones,

And the man's eyes then were not so sunk that you saw the socket- bones.

-o0o-