Chapter I: MISSED one night, but the next I went;

It was gusty above, and clear;
She was there, with the look of one ill-content,
And said: “Do not come near!”

—“I am sorry last night to have failed you here,
And now I have travelled all day;
And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier,
So brief must be my stay.”

—“O man of mystery, why not say
Out plain to me all you mean?
Why you missed last night, and must now away
Is—another has come between!”

—“O woman so mocking in mood and mien,
So be it!” I replied:
“And if I am due at a differing scene
Before the dark has died,

“’Tis that, unresting, to wander wide
Has ever been my plight,
And at least I have met you at Cremyll side
If not last eve, to-night.”

—“You get small rest—that read I quite;
And so do I, maybe;
Though there’s a rest hid safe from sight
Elsewhere awaiting me!”

A mad star crossed the sky to the sea,
Wasting in sparks as it streamed,
And when I looked to where stood she
She had changed, much changed, it seemed:

The sparks of the star in her pupils gleamed,
She was vague as a vapour now,
And ere of its meaning I had dreamed
She’d vanished—I knew not how.

I stood on, long; each cliff-top bough,
Like a cynic nodding there,
Moved up and down, though no man’s brow
But mine met the wayward air.

Still stood I, wholly unaware
Of what had come to pass,
Or had brought the secret of my new Fair
To my old Love, alas!

I went down then by crag and grass
To the boat wherein I had come.
Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lass
Of Edgcumbe, is sharp for some!

“Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numb
On the shore here, whither she’d sped
To meet her lover last night in the glum,
And he came not, ’tis said.

“And she leapt down, heart-hit. Pity she’s dead:
So much for the faithful-bent!” . . .
I looked, and again a star overhead
Shot through the firmament.

SHE WHO SAW NOT

“DID you see something within the house
That made me call you before the red sunsetting?
Something that all this common scene endows
With a richened impress there can be no forgetting?”

“—I have found nothing to see therein,
O Sage, that should have made you urge me to enter,
Nothing to fire the soul, or the sense to win:
I rate you as a rare misrepresenter!”

“—Go anew, Lady,—in by the right . . .
Well: why does your face not shine like the face of Moses?”
“—I found no moving thing there save the light
And shadow flung on the wall by the outside roses.”

“—Go yet once more, pray. Look on a seat.”
“—I go . . . O Sage, it’s only a man that sits there
With eyes on the sun. Mute,—average head to feet.”
“—No more?”—“No more. Just one the place befits there,

“As the rays reach in through the open door,
And he looks at his hand, and the sun glows through his fingers,
While he’s thinking thoughts whose tenour is no more
To me than the swaying rose-tree shade that lingers.”

No more. And years drew on and on
Till no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding;
And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone,
As a vision what she had missed when the real beholding.

THE OLD WORKMAN

“WHY are you so bent down before your time,
Old mason? Many have not left their prime
So far behind at your age, and can still
Stand full upright at will.”

He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,
And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;
“Those upper blocks,” he said, “that there you see,
It was that ruined me.”

There stood in the air up to the parapet
Crowning the corner height, the stones as set
By him—ashlar whereon the gales might drum
For centuries to come.

“I carried them up,” he said, “by a ladder there;
The last was as big a load as I could bear;
But on I heaved; and something in my back
Moved, as ’twere with a crack.

“So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain;
And those who live there, walled from wind and rain
By freestone that I lifted, do not know
That my life’s ache came so.

“They don’t know me, or even know my name,
But good I think it, somehow, all the same
To have kept ’em safe from harm, and right and tight,
Though it has broke me quite.

“Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud,
Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud,
And to stand storms for ages, beating round
When I lie underground.”

THE SAILOR’S MOTHER

“O WHENCE do you come,
Figure in the night-fog that chills me numb?”

“I come to you across from my house up there,
And I don’t mind the brine-mist clinging to me
That blows from the quay,
For I heard him in my chamber, and thought you unaware.”

“But what did you hear,
That brought you blindly knocking in this middle-watch so drear?”

“My sailor son’s voice as ’twere calling at your door,
And I don’t mind my bare feet clammy on the stones,
And the blight to my bones,
For he only knows of _this_ house I lived in before.”

“Nobody’s nigh,
Woman like a skeleton, with socket-sunk eye.”

“Ah—nobody’s nigh! And my life is drearisome,
And this is the old home we loved in many a day
Before he went away;
And the salt fog mops me. And nobody’s come!”

From “To Please his Wife.”

OUTSIDE THE CASEMENT (A REMINISCENCE OF THE WAR)

WE sat in the room
And praised her whom
We saw in the portico-shade outside:
She could not hear
What was said of her,
But smiled, for its purport we did not hide.

Then in was brought
That message, fraught
With evil fortune for her out there,
Whom we loved that day
More than any could say,
And would fain have fenced from a waft of care.

And the question pressed
Like lead on each breast,
Should we cloak the tidings, or call her and tell?
It was too intense
A choice for our sense,
As we pondered and watched her we loved so well.

Yea, spirit failed us
At what assailed us;
How long, while seeing what soon must come,
Should we counterfeit
No knowledge of it,
And stay the stroke that would blanch and numb?

And thus, before
For evermore
Joy left her, we practised to beguile
Her innocence when
She now and again
Looked in, and smiled us another smile.

THE PASSER-BY (L. H. RECALLS HER ROMANCE)

He used to pass, well-trimmed and brushed,
My window every day,
And when I smiled on him he blushed,
That youth, quite as a girl might; aye,
In the shyest way.

Thus often did he pass hereby,
That youth of bounding gait,
Until the one who blushed was I,
And he became, as here I sate,
My joy, my fate.

And now he passes by no more,
That youth I loved too true!
I grieve should he, as here of yore,
Pass elsewhere, seated in his view,
Some maiden new!

If such should be, alas for her!
He’ll make her feel him dear,
Become her daily comforter,
Then tire him of her beauteous gear,
And disappear!

“I WAS THE MIDMOST”