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Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses

Год написания книги
2017
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We heard the boy moaning:
“O misery mine!  My false father
Has murdered my true!”

She gasped: yea, she heard; understood it.
Next day the child fled us;
And nevermore sighted was even
A print of his shoe.

Thenceforward she shunned me, and languished;
Till one day the park-pool
Embraced her fair form, and extinguished
Her eyes’ living blue.

– So; ask not what blast may account for
This aspect of pallor,
These bones that just prison within them
Life’s poor residue;

But pass by, and leave unregarded
A Cain to his suffering,
For vengeance too dark on the woman
Whose lover he slew.

THE REJECTED MEMBER’S WIFE

We shall see her no more
On the balcony,
Smiling, while hurt, at the roar
As of surging sea
From the stormy sturdy band
Who have doomed her lord’s cause,
Though she waves her little hand
As it were applause.

Here will be candidates yet,
And candidates’ wives,
Fervid with zeal to set
Their ideals on our lives:
Here will come market-men
On the market-days,
Here will clash now and then
More such party assays.

And the balcony will fill
When such times are renewed,
And the throng in the street will thrill
With to-day’s mettled mood;
But she will no more stand
In the sunshine there,
With that wave of her white-gloved hand,
And that chestnut hair

    .January 1906.

THE FARM-WOMAN’S WINTER

I

If seasons all were summers,
And leaves would never fall,
And hopping casement-comers
Were foodless not at all,
And fragile folk might be here
That white winds bid depart;
Then one I used to see here
Would warm my wasted heart!

II

One frail, who, bravely tilling
Long hours in gripping gusts,
Was mastered by their chilling,
And now his ploughshare rusts.
So savage winter catches
The breath of limber things,
And what I love he snatches,
And what I love not, brings.

AUTUMN IN KING’S HINTOCK PARK

Here by the baring bough
Raking up leaves,
Often I ponder how
Springtime deceives, —
I, an old woman now,
Raking up leaves.

Here in the avenue
Raking up leaves,
Lords’ ladies pass in view,
Until one heaves
Sighs at life’s russet hue,
Raking up leaves!

Just as my shape you see
Raking up leaves,
I saw, when fresh and free,
Those memory weaves
Into grey ghosts by me,
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