No More Learning

Of late days it had been her aim
To meet me in the hall;
Now at my footsteps no one came;
And no one to my call.

Again I knocked; and tardily
An inner step was heard,
And I was shown her presence then
With scarce an answering word.

She met me, and but barely took
My proffered warm embrace;
Preoccupation weighed her look,
And hardened her sweet face.

"To-morrow--could you--would you call?
Make brief your present stay?
My child is ill--my one, my all! --
And can't be left to-day. "

And then she turns, and gives commands
As I were out of sound,
Or were no more to her and hers
Than any neighbour round . . .

--As maid I wooed her; but one came
And coaxed her heart away,
And when in time he wedded her
I deemed her gone for aye.

He won, I lost her; and my loss
I bore I know not how;
But I do think I suffered then
Less wretchedness than now.

For Time, in taking him, had oped
An unexpected door
Of bliss for me, which grew to seem
Far surer than before . . .
Her word is steadfast, and I know
That plighted firm are we:
But she has caught new love-calls since
She smiled as maid on me!



AT A HASTY WEDDING
(TRIOLET)


IF hours be years the twain are blest,
For now they solace swift desire
By bonds of every bond the best,
If hours be years. The twain are blest
Do eastern stars slope never west,
Nor pallid ashes follow fire:
If hours be years the twain are blest,
For now they solace swift desire.



THE DREAM-FOLLOWER


A DREAM of mine flew over the mead
To the halls where my old Love reigns;
And it drew me on to follow its lead:
And I stood at her window-panes;

And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone
Speeding on to its cleft in the clay;
And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan,
And I whitely hastened away.



HIS IMMORTALITY


I

I SAW a dead man's finer part
Shining within each faithful heart
Of those bereft. Then said I: "This must be
His immortality. "

II

I looked there as the seasons wore,
And still his soul continuously upbore
Its life in theirs. But less its shine excelled
Than when I first beheld.

III

His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then
In later hearts I looked for him again;
And found him--shrunk, alas! into a thin
And spectral mannikin.

IV

Lastly I ask--now old and chill--
If aught of him remain unperished still;
And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,
Dying amid the dark.

_February_ 1899.



THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN


I

I HEARD a small sad sound,
And stood awhile amid the tombs around:
"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are ye distrest,
Now, screened from life's unrest? "

II

--"O not at being here;
But that our future second death is drear;
When, with the living, memory of us numbs,
And blank oblivion comes!

III

"Those who our grandsires be
Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;
Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descry
With keenest backward eye.

IV

"They bide as quite forgot;
They are as men who have existed not;
Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;
It is the second death.