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Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces

Год написания книги
2017
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By that briny green;
Yes, notes alway
Warm, real, and keen,
What his back years bring —
A phantom of his own figuring.

III

Of this vision of his they might say more:
Not only there
Does he see this sight,
But everywhere
In his brain – day, night,
As if on the air
It were drawn rose bright —
Yea, far from that shore
Does he carry this vision of heretofore:

IV

A ghost-girl-rider.  And though, toil-tried,
He withers daily,
Time touches her not,
But she still rides gaily
In his rapt thought
On that shagged and shaly
Atlantic spot,
And as when first eyed
Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.

MISCELLANEOUS PIECES

THE WISTFUL LADY

“Love, while you were away there came to me —
From whence I cannot tell —
A plaintive lady pale and passionless,
Who bent her eyes upon me critically,
And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness,
As if she knew me well.”

“I saw no lady of that wistful sort
As I came riding home.
Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrain
By memories sadder than she can support,
Or by unhappy vacancy of brain,
To leave her roof and roam?”

“Ah, but she knew me.  And before this time
I have seen her, lending ear
To my light outdoor words, and pondering each,
Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime,
As if she fain would close with me in speech,
And yet would not come near.

“And once I saw her beckoning with her hand
As I came into sight
At an upper window.  And I at last went out;
But when I reached where she had seemed to stand,
And wandered up and down and searched about,
I found she had vanished quite.”

Then thought I how my dead Love used to say,
With a small smile, when she
Was waning wan, that she would hover round
And show herself after her passing day
To any newer Love I might have found,
But show her not to me.

THE WOMAN IN THE RYE

“Why do you stand in the dripping rye,
Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,
When there are firesides near?” said I.
“I told him I wished him dead,” said she.

“Yea, cried it in my haste to one
Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still;
And die he did.  And I hate the sun,
And stand here lonely, aching, chill;

“Stand waiting, waiting under skies
That blow reproach, the while I see
The rooks sheer off to where he lies
Wrapt in a peace withheld from me.”

THE CHEVAL-GLASS

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass
Filling up your narrow room?
You never preen or plume,
Or look in a week at your full-length figure —
Picture of bachelor gloom!

“Well, when I dwelt in ancient England,
Renting the valley farm,
Thoughtless of all heart-harm,
I used to gaze at the parson’s daughter,
A creature of nameless charm.

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