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Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Год написания книги
2017
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When lovers were we.

HER IMMORTALITY

Upon a noon I pilgrimed through
A pasture, mile by mile,
Unto the place where I last saw
My dead Love’s living smile.

And sorrowing I lay me down
Upon the heated sod:
It seemed as if my body pressed
The very ground she trod.

I lay, and thought; and in a trance
She came and stood me by —
The same, even to the marvellous ray
That used to light her eye.

“You draw me, and I come to you,
My faithful one,” she said,
In voice that had the moving tone
It bore ere breath had fled.

She said: “’Tis seven years since I died:
Few now remember me;
My husband clasps another bride;
My children’s love has she.

“My brethren, sisters, and my friends
Care not to meet my sprite:
Who prized me most I did not know
Till I passed down from sight.”

I said: “My days are lonely here;
I need thy smile alway:
I’ll use this night my ball or blade,
And join thee ere the day.”

A tremor stirred her tender lips,
Which parted to dissuade:
“That cannot be, O friend,” she cried;
“Think, I am but a Shade!

“A Shade but in its mindful ones
Has immortality;
By living, me you keep alive,
By dying you slay me.

“In you resides my single power
Of sweet continuance here;
On your fidelity I count
Through many a coming year.”

– I started through me at her plight,
So suddenly confessed:
Dismissing late distaste for life,
I craved its bleak unrest.

“I will not die, my One of all! —
To lengthen out thy days
I’ll guard me from minutest harms
That may invest my ways!”

She smiled and went.  Since then she comes
Oft when her birth-moon climbs,
Or at the seasons’ ingresses
Or anniversary times;

But grows my grief.  When I surcease,
Through whom alone lives she,
Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,
Never again to be!

THE IVY-WIFE

I longed to love a full-boughed beech
And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
And signalled unity.
But with his drip he forced a breach,
And tried to poison me.

I gave the grasp of partnership
To one of other race —
A plane: he barked him strip by strip
From upper bough to base;
And me therewith; for gone my grip,
My arms could not enlace.

In new affection next I strove
To coll an ash I saw,
And he in trust received my love;
Till with my soft green claw
I cramped and bound him as I wove..
Such was my love: ha-ha!

By this I gained his strength and height
Without his rivalry.
But in my triumph I lost sight
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