A Cluster of Grapes Part 6

W. G. HOLE

ROOSEVELT-VILLAGE STREET

Nought is there here the eye to strike-- Uncurved ca.n.a.ls where barges ply; A hundred hamlets all alike;

Flat fields that cut an arc of sky With men and women o'er them bent Who needs must labour lest they die.

Would any say that lives so spent Might break, spurred on by love and pride, Their bars of animal content?

Nay, here live men unvexed, untried-- I mused. Yet pacing Roosevelt street In idle humour I espied

A village man and woman meet, And pa.s.s with never word or sign-- So strange in neighbour-folk whose feet

Haunt the same fields in rain and shine That, curious eyed, in either face, In curve of lip, or graven line,

I sought for hints of pain or trace Of harsh resolve, and so grew ware That hers was as a hiding place

Where lurked the kinship of despair; While his bore record deeply wrought That life for him had but one care,

And that--to mesh re-iterant thought In labour, till at last his soul Should find the anodyne it sought.

Hence now with dreary face he stole Through Roosevelt Street, nor stretched his hand To beg from life its smallest dole.

And yet these two had loved and planned To happiest end, but for the flood That wrecks, upreared on rock or sand,

The house of hopes. Thus--cold of mood, He, loving wholly, could but choose To deem her heart as his subdued;

While she, as maidens oft-times use, Denied sweet proofs of love, was fain To gain them by the world-old ruse;

And failing, vexed to find that vain Was all her pretty reticence, She happed upon a worthless swain

On whom, reserved the gold, the pence Of liberal smiles she flung away, Till, snared by her own innocence,

She fell--Ah, G.o.d! how far that day She fell--from hope and promise plumb, To deeps where lips forget to pray.

But he, apart, with sorrow dumb, Beheld, scarce conscious of the strife, Himself in her by fate o'ercome;

And as she pa.s.sed to her new life, Righted by still more wrong, divined Her hate for him who called her wife,

And on the h.o.a.rded knowledge pined And starved, till he, as she, was dead, And nought remained but to unwind

His coil of days. So with slow tread He goes his way through Roosevelt Street At night and morn, nor turns his head

When past him comes the sound of feet-- Of ghostly feet that long ago In life had made his pulses beat.

For, mark you, both are dead, and so Small wonder is it nought should pa.s.s Betwixt them in the street, I trow.

Yet still they move with that huge ma.s.s Of life unpurposeful that reaps The corn in season, mows the gra.s.s,

And then by right of labour sleeps With privilege of dreams that ape Fulfilment, whereby each may creep

From pain through doors of dear escape; Save such, unhappy, as would win Some respite for themselves, and shape

Those pa.s.sionate, deep appeals that din The Powers, ere season due, to stay The long slow tragedies of sin.

THE HAUNTED FIELDS

I know of fields by voices haunted still That years ago grew hushed; Whose b.u.t.tercups are brushed By feet that long have ceased to climb the hill.

On whose green slopes the happy children play As on a mother's lap, Then steal through gate and gap, And by strange hedge-rows make their wondering way.

Sometimes great seas of ripening corn they spy Across whose rippling face The shadowy billows race And round the gate, forlornly whispering, die;

Or in dark rutted lanes by weeds o'ergrown, Round-eyed they watch a thrush That breaks the noonday hush Dashing with zest a snail against a stone;

At others, on an impulse waxing brave, They climb the churchyard wall And, marvelling at it all, See strange black people gathered round a grave.

Then, without question, hurrying up the lane, They seek once more their own-- That world in which is known No fear of death, nor thought of change or pain.

Where still they call and answer, still they play, And summer is ever there; But I--I never dare Pa.s.s through those fields, retrace the well-known way,

Lest I might meet a lad whom once I knew, Whose eyes accusingly Should make demand of me: "Where are those dreams I left in charge with you?"

CAPTIVE IN LONDON TOWN

There comes a ghostly s.p.a.ce 'Twixt midnight and the dawn, When from the heart of London Town The tides of life are drawn.

What time, when Spring is due, The captives dungeoned deep Beneath the stones of London Town Grow troubled in their sleep,

And wake--mint, mallow, dock, Brambles in bondage sore, And gra.s.ses shut in London Town A thousand years and more.

Yet though beneath the stones They starve, and overhead The countless feet pace London Town Of men who hold them dead,

Like Samson, blind and scorned, In pain their time they bide To seize the roots of London Town And tumble down its pride.

Now well by proof and sign, By men unheard, unseen, They know that far from London Town The woods once more are green.

But theirs is still to wait, Deaf to the myriad hum, Beneath the stones of London Town A Spring that needs must come.