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Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

Год написания книги
2017
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And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather,
With a sense that some mischief was rife.

Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies
Was drowned – which of them was unknown:
And I marvelled – my friend’s wife? – or was it my own
Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is?
– We learnt it was his had so gone.

Then I cried in unrest: “He is free!  But no good is releasing
To him as it would be to me!”
“ – But it is,” said the woman I loved, quietly.
“How?” I asked her.  “ – Because he has long loved me too without ceasing,
And it’s just the same thing, don’t you see.”

“I KNEW A LADY”

(CLUB SONG)

I knew a lady when the days
Grew long, and evenings goldened;
But I was not emboldened
By her prompt eyes and winning ways.

And when old Winter nipt the haws,
“Another’s wife I’ll be,
And then you’ll care for me,”
She said, “and think how sweet I was!”

And soon she shone as another’s wife:
As such I often met her,
And sighed, “How I regret her!
My folly cuts me like a knife!”

And then, to-day, her husband came,
And moaned, “Why did you flout her?
Well could I do without her!
For both our burdens you are to blame!”

A HOUSE WITH A HISTORY

There is a house in a city street
Some past ones made their own;
Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,
And their babblings beat
From ceiling to white hearth-stone.

And who are peopling its parlours now?
Who talk across its floor?
Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow,
Who read not how
Its prime had passed before

Their raw equipments, scenes, and says
Afflicted its memoried face,
That had seen every larger phase
Of human ways
Before these filled the place.

To them that house’s tale is theirs,
No former voices call
Aloud therein.  Its aspect bears
Their joys and cares
Alone, from wall to wall.

A PROCESSION OF DEAD DAYS

I see the ghost of a perished day;
I know his face, and the feel of his dawn:
’Twas he who took me far away
To a spot strange and gray:
Look at me, Day, and then pass on,
But come again: yes, come anon!

Enters another into view;
His features are not cold or white,
But rosy as a vein seen through:
Too soon he smiles adieu.
Adieu, O ghost-day of delight;
But come and grace my dying sight.

Enters the day that brought the kiss:
He brought it in his foggy hand
To where the mumbling river is,
And the high clematis;
It lent new colour to the land,
And all the boy within me manned.

Ah, this one.  Yes, I know his name,
He is the day that wrought a shine
Even on a precinct common and tame,
As ’twere of purposed aim.
He shows him as a rainbow sign
Of promise made to me and mine.

The next stands forth in his morning clothes,
And yet, despite their misty blue,
They mark no sombre custom-growths
That joyous living loathes,
But a meteor act, that left in its queue
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