Wessex Poems and Other Verses Part 2

Though I waste watches framing words to fetter Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss, Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.

For winning love we win the risk of losing, And losing love is as one's life were riven; It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using To cede what was superfluously given.

Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling That devastates the love-worn wooer's frame, The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling That agonizes disappointed aim!

So may I live no junctive law fulfilling, And my heart's table bear no woman's name.

1866.

SHE, TO HIM--I

When you shall see me in the toils of Time, My lauded beauties carried off from me, My eyes no longer stars as in their prime, My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;

When in your being heart concedes to mind, And judgment, though you scarce its process know, Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined, And you are irked that they have withered so:

Remembering that with me lies not the blame, That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill, Knowing me in my soul the very same - One who would die to spare you touch of ill! - Will you not grant to old affection's claim The hand of friends.h.i.+p down Life's sunless hill?

1866.

SHE, TO HIM--II

Perhaps, long hence, when I have pa.s.sed away, Some other's feature, accent, thought like mine, Will carry you back to what I used to say, And bring some memory of your love's decline.

Then you may pause awhile and think, "Poor jade!"

And yield a sigh to me--as ample due, Not as the t.i.ttle of a debt unpaid To one who could resign her all to you -

And thus reflecting, you will never see That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed, Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me, But the Whole Life wherein my part was played; And you amid its fitful masquerade A Thought--as I in yours but seem to be.

1866.

SHE, TO HIM--III

I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will!

And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye That he did not discern and domicile One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!

I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime Of manhood who deal gently with me here; Amid the happy people of my time Who work their love's fulfilment, I appear

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point, True to the wind that kissed ere canker came; Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,

My old dexterities of hue quite gone, And nothing left for Love to look upon.

1866.

SHE, TO HIM--IV

This love puts all humanity from me; I can but maledict her, pray her dead, For giving love and getting love of thee - Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!

How much I love I know not, life not known, Save as some unit I would add love by; But this I know, my being is but thine own-- Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.

And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes; Canst thou then hate me as an envier Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?

Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.

1866.

DITTY (E. L G.)

Beneath a knap where flown Nestlings play, Within walls of weathered stone, Far away From the files of formal houses, By the bough the firstling browses, Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet, No man barters, no man sells Where she dwells.

Upon that fabric fair "Here is she!"

Seems written everywhere Unto me.

But to friends and nodding neighbours, Fellow-wights in lot and labours, Who descry the times as I, No such lucid legend tells Where she dwells.

Should I lapse to what I was Ere we met; (Such can not be, but because Some forget Let me feign it)--none would notice That where she I know by rote is Spread a strange and withering change, Like a drying of the wells Where she dwells.

To feel I might have kissed - Loved as true - Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed My life through.

Had I never wandered near her, Is a smart severe--severer In the thought that she is nought, Even as I, beyond the dells Where she dwells.

And Devotion droops her glance To recall What bond-servants of Chance We are all.

I but found her in that, going On my errant path unknowing, I did not out-skirt the spot That no spot on earth excels, --Where she dwells!

1870.

THE SERGEANT'S SONG (1803)

When Lawyers strive to heal a breach, And Parsons practise what they preach; Then Little Boney he'll pounce down, And march his men on London town!

Rollic.u.m-rorum, tol-lol-lorum, Rollic.u.m-rorum, tol-lol-lay!