Satires of Circumstance Part 9

For see, a tomb. And if it were I had bent and broke, I should not dare To linger in the shadows there.

BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER

I

Looking forward to the spring One puts up with anything.

On this February day, Though the winds leap down the street, Wintry scourgings seem but play, And these later shafts of sleet --Sharper pointed than the first - And these later snows--the worst - Are as a half-transparent blind Riddled by rays from sun behind.

II

Shadows of the October pine Reach into this room of mine: On the pine there stands a bird; He is shadowed with the tree.

Mutely perched he bills no word; Blank as I am even is he.

For those happy suns are past, Fore-discerned in winter last.

When went by their pleasure, then?

I, alas, perceived not when.

AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER

The ten hours' light is abating, And a late bird flies across, Where the pines, like waltzers waiting, Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time, Float past like specks in the eye; I set every tree in my June time, And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here Conceive that there never has been A time when no tall trees grew here, A time when none will be seen.

THE YEAR'S AWAKENING

How do you know that the pilgrim track Along the belting zodiac Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds Is traced by now to the Fishes' bounds And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud, And never as yet a tinct of spring Has shown in the Earth's apparelling; O vespering bird, how do you know, How do you know?

How do you know, deep underground, Hid in your bed from sight and sound, Without a turn in temperature, With weather life can scarce endure, That light has won a fraction's strength, And day put on some moments' length, Whereof in merest rote will come, Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb; O crocus root, how do you know, How do you know?

February 1910.

UNDER THE WATERFALL

"Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never miss The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.

Hence the only prime And real love-rhyme That I know by heart, And that leaves no smart, Is the purl of a little valley fall About three spans wide and two spans tall Over a table of solid rock, And into a scoop of the self-same block; The purl of a runlet that never ceases In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces; With a hollow boiling voice it speaks And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks."

"And why gives this the only prime Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?

And why does plunging your arm in a bowl Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?

Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone, Though where precisely none ever has known, Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized, And by now with its smoothness opalized, Is a drinking-gla.s.s: For, down that pa.s.s My lover and I Walked under a sky Of blue with a leaf-woven awning of green, In the burn of August, to paint the scene, And we placed our basket of fruit and wine By the runlet's rim, where we sat to dine; And when we had drunk from the gla.s.s together, Arched by the oak-copse from the weather, I held the vessel to rinse in the fall, Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall, Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss With long bared arms. There the gla.s.s still is.

And, as said, if I thrust my arm below Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe From the past awakens a sense of that time, And the gla.s.s both used, and the cascade's rhyme.

The basin seems the pool, and its edge The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge, And the leafy pattern of china-ware The hanging plants that were bathing there.

By night, by day, when it shines or lours, There lies intact that chalice of ours, And its presence adds to the rhyme of love Persistently sung by the fall above.

No lip has touched it since his and mine In turns therefrom sipped lovers' wine."

THE SPELL OF THE ROSE

"I mean to build a hall anon, And shape two turrets there, And a broad newelled stair, And a cool well for crystal water; Yes; I will build a hall anon, Plant roses love shall feed upon, And apple trees and pear."

He set to build the manor-hall, And shaped the turrets there, And the broad newelled stair, And the cool well for crystal water; He built for me that manor-hall, And planted many trees withal, But no rose anywhere.

And as he planted never a rose That bears the flower of love, Though other flowers throve A frost-wind moved our souls to sever Since he had planted never a rose; And misconceits raised horrid shows, And agonies came thereof.

"I'll mend these miseries," then said I, And so, at dead of night, I went and, screened from sight, That nought should keep our souls in severance, I set a rose-bush. "This," said I, "May end divisions dire and wry, And long-drawn days of blight."

But I was called from earth--yea, called Before my rose-bush grew; And would that now I knew What feels he of the tree I planted, And whether, after I was called To be a ghost, he, as of old, Gave me his heart anew!

Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees I set but saw not grow, And he, beside its glow - Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me - Ay, there beside that queen of trees He sees me as I was, though sees Too late to tell me so!

ST. LAUNCE'S REVISITED

Slip back, Time!

Yet again I am nearing Castle and keep, uprearing Gray, as in my prime.

At the inn Smiling close, why is it Not as on my visit When hope and I were twin?

Groom and jade Whom I found here, moulder; Strange the tavern-holder, Strange the tap-maid.

Here I hired Horse and man for bearing Me on my wayfaring To the door desired.

Evening gloomed As I journeyed forward To the faces sh.o.r.eward, Till their dwelling loomed.

If again Towards the Atlantic sea there I should speed, they'd be there Surely now as then? . . .

Why waste thought, When I know them vanished Under earth; yea, banished Ever into nought.