gain in the end:And when I get used to the place I shall find it
A home, and may find there a friend.
IV
“Life there will be better than t’other.
For peace is assured.
The men in one wing and their wives in another Is strictly the rule of the Board.”
V
Just then one young Pa’son arriving
Steps up out of breath
To the side o’ the waggon wherein we were driving
To Union; and calls out and saith:
VI
“Old folks, that harsh order is altered,
Be not sick of heart!
The Guardians they poohed and they pished and they paltered
When urged not to keep you apart.
VII
“‘It is wrong,’ I maintained, ‘to divide them,
Near forty years wed.’
‘Very well, sir. We promise, then, they shall abide them
In one wing together,’ they said.”
VIII
Then I sank—knew ’twas quite a foredone thing
That misery should be
To the end! . . . To get freed of her there was the one thing
Had made the change welcome to me.
IX
To go there was ending but badly;
’Twas shame and ’twas pain;
“But anyhow,” thought I, “thereby I shall gladly
Get free of this forty years’ chain.”
X
I thought they’d be strangers aroun’ me,
But she’s to be there!
Let me jump out o’ waggon and go back and drown me
At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.
The Flirt’s Tragedy
(17–)
Here alone by the logs in my chamber,
Deserted, decrepit—
Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot
Of friends I once knew—
My drama and hers begins weirdly
Its dumb re-enactment,
Each scene, sigh, and circumstance passing
In spectral review.
—Wealth was mine beyond wish when I met her—
The pride of the lowland—
Embowered in Tintinhull Valley
By laurel and yew;
And love lit my soul, notwithstanding
My features’ ill favour,
Too obvious beside her perfections
Of line and of hue.
But it pleased her to play on my passion,
And whet me to pleadings
That won from her mirthful negations
And scornings undue.
Then I fled her disdains and derisions
To cities of pleasure,
And made me the crony of idlers
In every purlieu.
Of those who lent ear to my story,
A needy Adonis
Gave hint how to grizzle her garden
From roses to rue,
Could his price but be paid for so purging
My scorner of scornings:
Thus tempted, the lust to avenge me
Germed inly and grew.
I clothed him in sumptuous apparel,
Consigned to him coursers,
Meet equipage, liveried attendants
In full retinue.
So dowered, with letters of credit
He wayfared to England,
And spied out the manor she goddessed,
And handy thereto,
Set to hire him a tenantless mansion
As coign-stone of vantage
For testing what gross adulation
Of beauty could do.
He laboured through mornings and evens,
On new moons and sabbaths,
By wiles to enmesh her attention
In park, path, and pew;
And having afar played upon her,
Advanced his lines nearer,
And boldly outleaping conventions,
Bent briskly to woo.
His gay godlike face, his rare seeming
Anon worked to win her,
And later, at noontides and night-tides
They held rendezvous.
His tarriance full spent, he departed
