Wessex Poems and Other Verses

From shine of swords and thump of drum.
Her early loves from war had come,
The King’s-Own Cavalry.

She turned aside, and bowed her head
Anigh Saint Peter’s door;
“Alas for chastened thoughts!” she said;
“I’m faded now, and hoar,
And yet those notes – they thrill me through,
And those gay forms move me anew
As in the years of yore!”.

’Twas Christmas, and the Phœnix Inn
Was lit with tapers tall,
For thirty of the trooper men
Had vowed to give a ball
As “Theirs” had done (’twas handed down)
When lying in the selfsame town
Ere Buonaparté’s fall.

That night the throbbing “Soldier’s Joy,”
The measured tread and sway
Of “Fancy-Lad” and “Maiden Coy,”
Reached Jenny as she lay
Beside her spouse; till springtide blood
Seemed scouring through her like a flood
That whisked the years away.

She rose, and rayed, and decked her head
Where the bleached hairs ran thin;
Upon her cap two bows of red
She fixed with hasty pin;
Unheard descending to the street,
She trod the flags with tune-led feet,
And stood before the Inn.

Save for the dancers’, not a sound
Disturbed the icy air;
No watchman on his midnight round
Or traveller was there;
But over All-Saints’, high and bright,
Pulsed to the music Sirius white,
The Wain by Bullstake Square.

She knocked, but found her further stride
Checked by a sergeant tall:
“Gay Granny, whence come you?” he cried;
“This is a private ball.”
– “No one has more right here than me!
Ere you were born, man,” answered she,
“I knew the regiment all!”

“Take not the lady’s visit ill!”   U
pspoke the steward free;
“We lack sufficient partners still,
So, prithee let her be!
”They seized and whirled her ’mid the maze,
And Jenny felt as in the days
Of her immodesty.

Hour chased each hour, and night advanced;
She sped as shod with wings;
Each time and every time she danced —
Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings:
They cheered her as she soared and swooped,
(She’d learnt ere art in dancing drooped
From hops to slothful swings).

The favourite Quick-step “Speed the Plough” —
(Cross hands, cast off, and wheel) —
“The Triumph,” “Sylph,” “The Row-dow-dow,”
Famed “Major Malley’s Reel,”
“The Duke of York’s,” “The Fairy Dance,”
“The Bridge of Lodi” (brought from France),
She beat out, toe and heel.

The “Fall of Paris” clanged its close,
And Peter’s chime told four,
When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose
To seek her silent door.
They tiptoed in escorting her,
Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur
Should break her goodman’s snore.

The fire that late had burnt fell slack
When lone at last stood she;
Her nine-and-fifty years came back;
She sank upon her knee
Beside the durn, and like a dart
A something arrowed through her heart
In shoots of agony.

Their footsteps died as she leant there,
Lit by the morning star
Hanging above the moorland, where
The aged elm-rows are;
And, as o’ernight, from Pummery Ridge
To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge
No life stirred, near or far.