A Sheep Fair

The day arrives of the autumn fair,

And torrents fall,

Though sheep in throngs are gathered there,

   Ten thousand all,

Sodden, with hurdles round them reared:

And, lot by lot, the pens are cleared,

And the auctioneer wrings out his beard,

And wipes his book, bedrenched and smeared,

And takes the rain from his face with the edge of his hand,

   As torrents fall.

The wool of the ewes is like a sponge

   With the daylong rain:

Jammed tight, to turn, or lie, or lunge,

   They strive in vain.

Their horns are soft as finger-nails,

Their shepherds reek against the rails,

The tied dogs soak with tucked-in tails,

The buyers’ hat-brims fill like pails,

Which spill small cascades when they shift their stand

   In the daylong rain.

POSTSCRIPT

Time has trailed lengthily since met

   At Pummery Fair

Those panting thousands in their wet

   And woolly wear:

And every flock long since has bled,

And all the dripping buyers have sped,

And the hoarse auctioneer is dead,

Who ‘Going – going!’ so often said,

As he consigned to doom each meek, mewed band

   At Pummery Fair.

-o0o-

A Spellbound Palace

(Hampton Court) 

On this kindly yellow day of mild low-travelling winter sun 

The stirless depths of the yews 

Are vague with misty blues: 

Across the spacious pathways stretching spires of shadow run, 

And the wind-gnawed walls of ancient brick are fired vermilion. 

Two or three early sanguine finches tune 

Some tentative strains, to be enlarged by May or June: 

From a thrush or blackbird 

Comes now and then a word, 

While an enfeebled fountain somewhere within is heard. 

Our footsteps wait awhile, 

Then draw beneath the pile, 

When an inner court outspreads 

As 'twere History's own asile, 

Where the now-visioned fountain its attenuate crystal sheds 

In passive lapse that seems to ignore the yon world's clamorous clutch, 

And lays an insistent numbness on the place, like a cold hand's touch. 

And there swaggers the Shade of a straddling King, plumed, sworded, with sensual face, 

And lo, too, that of his Minister, at a bold self-centred pace: 

Sheer in the sun they pass; and thereupon all is still, 

Save the mindless fountain tinkling on with thin enfeebled will.

-o0o-

After A Romantic Day

The railway bore him through

An earthen cutting out from a city:

There was no scope for view,

Though the frail light shed by a slim young moon

Fell like a friendly tune.

Fell like a liquid ditty,

And the blank lack of any charm

Of landscape did no harm.

The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,

And moon-lit, was enough

For poetry of place: its weathered face

Formed a convenient sheet whereon

The visions of his mind were drawn.

-o0o-

The Selfsame Song

A bird sings 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 its not the selfsame bird.-- 

No: perished to dust is he.... 

As also are those who heard 

That song with me. 

-o0o-

I Sometimes Think

I sometimes think as here I sit

Of things I have done,

Which seemed in doing not unfit

To face the sun:

Yet never a soul has paused a whit

On such-not one.

There was that eager strenuous press

To sow good seed;

There was that saving from distress

In the nick of need;

There were those words in the wilderness:

Who cared to heed?

Yet can this be full true, or no?

For one did care,

And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,

Like wind on the stair,

Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though

I may despair. 

-o0o-

Weathers

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,

And so do I;

When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,

And nestlings fly:

And the little brown nightingale bills his best,

And they sit outside at “The Travellers’ Rest,”

And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,

And citizens dream of the south and west,

And so do I.

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,

And so do I;

When beeches drip in browns and duns,

And thresh, and ply;

And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,

And meadow rivulets overflow,

And drops on gate-bars hang in a row,

And rooks in families homeward go,

And so do I. 

-o0o-

Old Excursions

"What's the good of going to Ridgeway,

Cerne, or Sydling Mill,

Or to Yell'ham Hill,

Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way

As we used to do?

She will no more climb up there,

Or be visible anywhere

In those haunts we knew."

But to-night, while walking weary,

Near me seemed her shade,

Come as 'twere to upbraid

This my mood in deeming dreary

Scenes that used to please;

And, if she did come to me,

Still solicitous, there may be

Good in going to these.

So, I'll care to roam to Ridgeway,

Cerne, or Sydling Mill,

Or to Yell'ham Hill,

Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way

As we used to do,

Since her phasm may flit out there,

And may greet me anywhere

In those haunts we knew.

-o0o-