At an Inn
When we as strangers sought
Their catering care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
Of what we were.
They warmed as they opined
Us more than friends—
That we had all resigned
For love’s dear ends.
And that swift sympathy
With living love
Which quicks the world—maybe
The spheres above,
Made them our ministers,
Moved them to say,
“Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
Would flush our day!”
And we were left alone
As Love’s own pair;
Yet never the love-light shone
Between us there!
But that which chilled the breath
Of afternoon,
And palsied unto death
The pane-fly’s tune.
The kiss their zeal foretold,
And now deemed come,
Came not: within his hold
Love lingered-numb.
Why cast he on our port
A bloom not ours?
Why shaped us for his sport
In after-hours?
As we seemed we were not
That day afar,
And now we seem not what
We aching are.
O severing sea and land,
O laws of men,
Ere death, once let us stand
As we stood then!
The Slow Nature
(An Incident Of Froom Valley)
“Thy husband—poor, poor Heart!—is dead—
Dead, out by Moreford Rise;
A bull escaped the barton-shed,
Gored him, and there he lies!”
—“Ha, ha—go away! ’Tis a tale, methink,
Thou joker Kit!” laughed she.
“I’ve known thee many a year, Kit Twink,
And ever hast thou fooled me!”
—“But, Mistress Damon—I can swear
Thy goodman John is dead!
And soon th’lt hear their feet who bear
His body to his bed.”
So unwontedly sad was the merry man’s face—
That face which had long deceived—
That she gazed and gazed; and then could trace
The truth there; and she believed.
She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,
And scanned far Egdon-side;
And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge
And the rippling Froom; till she cried:
“O my chamber’s untidied, unmade my bed
Though the day has begun to wear!
‘What a slovenly hussif!’ it will be said,
When they all go up my stair!”
She disappeared; and the joker stood
Depressed by his neighbour’s doom,
And amazed that a wife struck to widowhood
Thought first of her unkempt room.
But a fortnight thence she could take no food,
And she pined in a slow decay;
While Kit soon lost his mournful mood
And laughed in his ancient way.
1894.
In a Eweleaze Near Weatherbury
The years have gathered grayly
Since I danced upon this leaze
With one who kindled gaily
Love’s fitful ecstasies!
But despite the term as teacher,
I remain what I was then
In each essential feature
Of the fantasies of men.
Yet I note the little chisel
Of never-napping Time,
Defacing ghast and grizzel
The blazon of my prime.
When at night he thinks me sleeping,
I feel him boring sly
Within my bones, and heaping
Quaintest
