Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses Part 6

And next I meet you, and I pause, And think that if mistake it were, As some have said, O then it was One that I well can bear!

1915.

LINES TO A MOVEMENT IN MOZART'S E-FLAT SYMPHONY

Show me again the time When in the Junetide's prime We flew by meads and mountains northerly! - Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness, Love lures life on.

Show me again the day When from the sandy bay We looked together upon the pestered sea! - Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking, Love lures life on.

Show me again the hour When by the pinnacled tower We eyed each other and feared futurity! - Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings, Love lures life on.

Show me again just this: The moment of that kiss Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree! - Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness, Love lures life on.

Begun November 1898.

"IN THE SEVENTIES"

"Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego."--JOB.

In the seventies I was bearing in my breast, Penned tight, Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest In the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast Penned tight.

In the seventies when my neighbours--even my friend - Saw me pa.s.s, Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, "Alas, For his onward years and name unless he mend!"

In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend Saw me pa.s.s.

In the seventies those who met me did not know Of the vision That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision And the damps that choked my goings to and fro In the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know Of the vision.

In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it, Locked in me, Though as delicate as lamp-worm's lucency; Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it In the seventies!--could not darken or destroy it, Locked in me.

THE PEDIGREE

I

I bent in the deep of night Over a pedigree the chronicler gave As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed, The uncurtained panes of my window-square let in the watery light Of the moon in its old age: And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globed Like a drifting dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave.

II

So, scanning my sire-sown tree, And the hieroglyphs of this spouse tied to that, With offspring mapped below in lineage, Till the tangles troubled me, The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage Enchanting me to gaze again thereat.

III

It was a mirror now, And in it a long perspective I could trace Of my begetters, dwindling backward each past each All with the kindred look, Whose names had since been inked down in their place On the recorder's book, Generation and generation of my mien, and build, and brow.

IV

And then did I divine That every heave and coil and move I made Within my brain, and in my mood and speech, Was in the gla.s.s portrayed As long forestalled by their so making it; The first of them, the primest fuglemen of my line, Being fogged in far antiqueness past surmise and reason's reach.

V

Said I then, sunk in tone, "I am merest mimicker and counterfeit! - Though thinking, I AM I AND WHAT I DO I DO MYSELF ALONE."

--The cynic twist of the page thereat unknit Back to its normal figure, having wrought its purport wry, The Mage's mirror left the window-square, And the stained moon and drift retook their places there.

1916.

THIS HEART A WOMAN'S DREAM

At midnight, in the room where he lay dead Whom in his life I had never clearly read, I thought if I could peer into that citadel His heart, I should at last know full and well

What hereto had been known to him alone, Despite our long sit-out of years foreflown, "And if," I said, "I do this for his memory's sake, It would not wound him, even if he could wake."

So I bent over him. He seemed to smile With a calm confidence the whole long while That I, withdrawing his heart, held it and, bit by bit, Perused the unguessed things found written on it.

It was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere With quaint vermiculations close and clear - His graving. Had I known, would I have risked the stroke Its reading brought, and my own heart nigh broke!

Yes, there at last, eyes opened, did I see His whole sincere symmetric history; There were his truth, his simple singlemindedness, Strained, maybe, by time's storms, but there no less.

There were the daily deeds from sun to sun In blindness, but good faith, that he had done; There were regrets, at instances wherein he swerved (As he conceived) from cheris.h.i.+ngs I had deserved.

There were old hours all figured down as bliss - Those spent with me--(how little had I thought this!) There those when, at my absence, whether he slept or waked, (Though I knew not 'twas so!) his spirit ached.

There that when we were severed, how day dulled Till time joined us anew, was chronicled: And arguments and battlings in defence of me That heart recorded clearly and ruddily.

I put it back, and left him as he lay While pierced the morning pink and then the gray Into each dreary room and corridor around, Where I shall wait, but his step will not sound.

WHERE THEY LIVED

Dishevelled leaves creep down Upon that bank to-day, Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown; The wet bents bob and sway; The once warm slippery turf is sodden Where we laughingly sat or lay.

The summerhouse is gone, Leaving a weedy s.p.a.ce; The bushes that veiled it once have grown Gaunt trees that interlace, Through whose lank limbs I see too clearly The nakedness of the place.