Wessex Poems and Other Verses

IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY

The years have gathered grayly
Since I danced upon this leaze
With one who kindled gaily
Love’s fitful ecstasies!
But despite the term as teacher,
I remain what I was then
In each essential feature
Of the fantasies of men.

Yet I note the little chisel
Of never-napping Time,
Defacing ghast and grizzel
The blazon of my prime.
When at night he thinks me sleeping,
I feel him boring sly
Within my bones, and heaping
Quaintest pains for by-and-by.

Still, I’d go the world with Beauty,
I would laugh with her and sing,
I would shun divinest duty
To resume her worshipping.
But she’d scorn my brave endeavour,
She would not balm the breeze
By murmuring “Thine for ever!”
As she did upon this leaze.

    1890.

ADDITIONS

THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY’S

They had long met o’ Zundays – her true love and she —
And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;
But she bode wi’ a thirtover uncle, and he
Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be
Naibour Sweatley – a gaffer oft weak at the knee
From taking o’ sommat more cheerful than tea —
Who tranted, and moved people’s things.

She cried, “O pray pity me!”  Nought would he hear;
Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed.
She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi’ her.
The pa’son was told, as the season drew near
To throw over pu’pit the names of the peäir
As fitting one flesh to be made.

The wedding-day dawned and the morning drew on;
The couple stood bridegroom and bride;
The evening was passed, and when midnight had gone
The folks horned out, “God save the King,” and anon
The two home-along gloomily hied.

The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick and drear
To be thus of his darling deprived:
He roamed in the dark ath’art field, mound, and mere,
And, a’most without knowing it, found himself near
The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear,
Where the lantern-light showed ’em arrived.

The bride sought her cham’er so calm and so pale
That a Northern had thought her resigned;
But to eyes that had seen her in tide-times of weal,
Like the white cloud o’ smoke, the red battle-field’s vail,
That look spak’ of havoc behind.

The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to drain,
Then reeled to the linhay for more,
When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain —
Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi’ might and wi’ main,
And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun roar.

Young Tim away yond, rafted up by the light,
Through brimble and underwood tears,
Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping thereright
In the lewth of a codlin-tree, bivering wi’ fright,
Wi’ on’y her night-rail to screen her from sight,
His lonesome young Barbree appears.

Her cwold little figure half-naked he views   P
layed about by the frolicsome breeze,
Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes,
All bare and besprinkled wi’ Fall’s chilly dews,
While her great gallied eyes, through her hair hanging loose,
Sheened as stars through a tardle o’ trees.

She eyed en; and, as when a weir-hatch is drawn,
Her tears, penned by terror afore,
With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn,
Till her power to pour ’em seemed wasted and gone
From the heft o’ misfortune she bore.

“O Tim, my own Tim I must call ’ee – I will!
All the world ha’ turned round on me so!
Can you help her who loved ’ee, though acting so ill?
Can you pity her misery – feel for her still?
When worse than her body so quivering and chill