Chapter I: WENT by footpath and by stile

Beyond where bustle ends,
Strayed here a mile and there a mile
And called upon some friends.

On certain ones I had not seen
For years past did I call,
And then on others who had been
The oldest friends of all.

It was the time of midsummer
When they had used to roam;
But now, though tempting was the air,
I found them all at home.

I spoke to one and other of them
By mound and stone and tree
Of things we had done ere days were dim,
But they spoke not to me.

THE UPPER BIRCH-LEAVES

Warm yellowy-green
In the blue serene,
How they skip and sway
On this autumn day!
They cannot know
What has happened below,—
That their boughs down there
Are already quite bare,
That their own will be
When a week has passed,—
For they jig as in glee
To this very last.

But no; there lies
At times in their tune
A note that cries
What at first I fear
I did not hear:
“O we remember
At each wind’s hollo—
Though life holds yet—
We go hence soon,
For ’tis November;
—But that you follow
You may forget!”

“IT NEVER LOOKS LIKE SUMMER”

“IT never looks like summer here
On Beeny by the sea.”
But though she saw its look as drear,
Summer it seemed to me.

It never looks like summer now
Whatever weather’s there;
But ah, it cannot anyhow,
On Beeny or elsewhere!

BOSCASTLE,
_March_ 8, 1913.

EVERYTHING COMES

“THE house is bleak and cold
Built so new for me!
All the winds upon the wold
Search it through for me;
No screening trees abound,
And the curious eyes around
Keep on view for me.”

“My Love, I am planting trees
As a screen for you
Both from winds, and eyes that tease
And peer in for you.
Only wait till they have grown,
No such bower will be known
As I mean for you.”

“Then I will bear it, Love,
And will wait,” she said.
—So, with years, there grew a grove.
“Skill how great!” she said.
“As you wished, Dear?”—“Yes, I see!
But—I’m dying; and for me
’Tis too late,” she said.

THE MAN WITH A PAST

THERE was merry-making
When the first dart fell
As a heralding,—
Till grinned the fully bared thing,
And froze like a spell—
Like a spell.

Innocent was she,
Innocent was I,
Too simple we!
Before us we did not see,
Nearing, aught wry—
Aught wry!

I can tell it not now,
It was long ago;
And such things cow;
But that is why and how
Two lives were so—
Were so.

Yes, the years matured,
And the blows were three
That time ensured
On her, which she dumbly endured;
And one on me—
One on me.

HE FEARS HIS GOOD FORTUNE

THERE was a glorious time
At an epoch of my prime;
Mornings beryl-bespread,
And evenings golden-red;
Nothing gray:
And in my heart I said,
“However this chanced to be,
It is too full for me,
Too rare, too rapturous, rash,
Its spell must close with a crash
Some day!”

The radiance went on
Anon and yet anon,
And sweetness fell around
Like manna on the ground.
“I’ve no claim,”
Said I, “to be thus crowned:
I am not worthy this:—
Must it not go amiss?—
Well . . . let the end foreseen
Come duly!—I am serene.”
—And it came.

HE WONDERS ABOUT HIMSELF

NO use hoping, or feeling vext,
Tugged by a force above or under
Like some fantocine, much I wonder
What I shall find me doing next!

Shall I be rushing where bright eyes be?
Shall I be suffering sorrows seven?
Shall I be watching the stars of heaven,
Thinking one of them looks like thee?

Part is mine of the general Will,
Cannot my share in the sum of sources
Bend a digit the poise of forces,
And a fair desire fulfil?

_Nov._ 1893.

JUBILATE

“THE very last time I ever was here,” he said,
“I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead.”
—He was a man I had met with somewhere before,
But how or when I now could recall no more.

“The hazy mazy moonlight at one in the morning
Spread out as a sea across the frozen snow,
Glazed to live sparkles like the great breastplate adorning
The priest of the Temple, with Urim and Thummim aglow.

“The yew-tree arms, glued hard to the stiff stark air,
Hung still in the village sky as theatre-scenes
When I came by the churchyard wall, and halted there
At a shut-in sound of fiddles and tambourines.

“And as I stood hearkening, dulcimers, haut-boys, and shawms,
And violoncellos, and a three-stringed double-bass,
Joined in, and were intermixed with a singing of psalms;
And I looked over at the dead men’s dwelling-place.

“Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see,
As it were through a crystal roof, a great company
Of the dead minueting in stately step underground
To the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound.

“It was ‘Eden New,’ and dancing they sang in a chore,
‘We are out of it all!—yea, in Little-Ease cramped no more!’
And their shrouded figures pacing with joy I could see
As you see the stage from the gallery. And they had no heed of me.

“And I lifted my head quite dazed from the churchyard wall
And I doubted not that it warned I should soon have my call.
But—” . . . Then in the ashes he emptied the dregs of his cup,
And onward he went, and the darkness swallowed him up.

HE REVISITS HIS FIRST SCHOOL