Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

Excerpt

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AN UPBRAIDING

Now I am dead you sing to me   The songs we used to know,But while I lived you had no wish   Or care for doing so.

Now I am dead you come to me   In the moonlight, comfortless;Ah, what would I have given alive   To win such tenderness!

When you are dead, and stand to me   Not differenced, as now,But like again, will you be cold   As when we lived, or how?

THE YOUNG GLASS-STAINER

"These Gothic windows, how they wear me outWith cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square,Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout,And fitting in Peter here, and Matthew there!

"What a vocation! Here do I draw nowThe abnormal, loving the Hellenic norm;Martha I paint, and dream of Hera's brow,Mary, and think of Aphrodite's form."

Nov. 1893.

LOOKING AT A PICTURE ON AN ANNIVERSARY

But don't you know it, my dear,   Don't you know it,That this day of the year(What rainbow-rays embow it!)We met, strangers confessed,   But parted—blest?

Though at this query, my dear,   There in your frameUnmoved you still appear,You must be thinking the same,But keep that look demure   Just to allure.

And now at length a trace   I surely visionUpon that wistful faceOf old-time recognition,Smiling forth, "Yes, as you say,   It is the day."

For this one phase of you   Now left on earthThis great date must endueWith pulsings of rebirth? -I see them vitalize   Those two deep eyes!

But if this face I con   Does not declareConsciousness living onStill in it, little I careTo live myself, my dear,   Lone-labouring here!

Spring 1913.

THE CHOIRMASTER'S BURIAL

He often would ask usThat, when he died,After playing so manyTo their last rest,If out of us anyShould here abide,And it would not task us,We would with our lutesPlay over himBy his grave-brimThe psalm he liked best -The one whose sense suits"Mount Ephraim" -And perhaps we should seemTo him, in Death's dream,Like the seraphim.

As soon as I knewThat his spirit was goneI thought this his due,And spoke thereupon."I think," said the vicar,"A read service quickerThan viols out-of-doorsIn these frosts and hoars.That old-fashioned wayRequires a fine day,And it seems to meIt had better not be."

Hence, that afternoon,Though never knew heThat his wish could not be,To get through it fasterThey buried the masterWithout any tune.

But 'twas said that, whenAt the dead of next nightThe vicar looked out,There struck on his kenThronged roundabout,Where the frost was grayingThe headstoned grass,A band all in whiteLike the saints in church-glass,Singing and playingThe ancient staveBy the choirmaster's grave.

Such the tenor man toldWhen he had grown old.

THE MAN WHO FORGOT

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met   I sat upon a gate;I saw the sun decline and set,   And still was fain to wait.

A trotting boy passed up the way   And roused me from my thought;I called to him, and showed where lay   A spot I shyly sought....