第5章

The glade is well-screened--eh?--against alarm;Fit place to vindicate by my arm The honour of my spotless wife, Who scorns your libel upon her life In boasting intimacy!

"'All hush-offerings you'll spurn, My husband. Two must come; one only go,'

She said. 'That he'll be you I know;

To faith like ours Heaven will be just, And I shall abide in fullest trust Your speedy glad return.'""Good. Here am also I;

And we'll proceed without more waste of words To warm your cockpit. Of the swords Take you your choice. I shall thereby Feel that on me no blame can lie, Whatever Fate accords."So stripped they there, and fought, And the swords clicked and scraped, and the onsets sped;Till the husband fell; and his shirt was red With streams from his heart's hot cistern. Nought Could save him now; and the other, wrought Maybe to pity, said:

"Why did you urge on this?

Your wife assured you; and 't had better been That you had let things pass, serene In confidence of long-tried bliss, Holding there could be nought amiss In what my words might mean."Then, seeing nor ruth nor rage Could move his foeman more--now Death's deaf thrall -He wiped his steel, and, with a call Like turtledove to dove, swift broke Into the copse, where under an oak His horse cropt, held by a page.

"All's over, Sweet," he cried To the wife, thus guised; for the young page was she.

"'Tis as we hoped and said 't would be.

He never guessed . . . We mount and ride To where our love can reign uneyed.

He's clay, and we are free."

AT MAYFAIR LODGINGS

How could I be aware, The opposite window eyeing As I lay listless there, That through its blinds was dying One I had rated rare Before I had set me sighing For another more fair?

Had the house-front been glass, My vision unobscuring, Could aught have come to pass More happiness-insuring To her, loved as a lass When spouseless, all-alluring?

I reckon not, alas!

So, the square window stood, Steadily night-long shining In my close neighbourhood, Who looked forth undivining That soon would go for good One there in pain reclining, Unpardoned, unadieu'd.

Silently screened from view Her tragedy was ending That need not have come due Had she been less unbending.

How near, near were we two At that last vital rending, -And neither of us knew!

TO MY FATHER'S VIOLIN

Does he want you down there In the Nether Glooms where The hours may be a dragging load upon him, As he hears the axle grind Round and round Of the great world, in the blind Still profound Of the night-time? He might liven at the sound Of your string, revealing you had not forgone him.

In the gallery west the nave, But a few yards from his grave, Did you, tucked beneath his chin, to his bowing Guide the homely harmony Of the quire Who for long years strenuously -Son and sire -

Caught the strains that at his fingering low or higher From your four thin threads and eff-holes came outflowing.

And, too, what merry tunes He would bow at nights or noons That chanced to find him bent to lute a measure, When he made you speak his heart As in dream, Without book or music-chart, On some theme Elusive as a jack-o'-lanthorn's gleam, And the psalm of duty shelved for trill of pleasure.

Well, you can not, alas, The barrier overpass That screens him in those Mournful Meads hereunder, Where no fiddling can be heard In the glades Of silentness, no bird Thrills the shades;Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades, No bowing wakes a congregation's wonder.

He must do without you now, Stir you no more anyhow To yearning concords taught you in your glory;While, your strings a tangled wreck, Once smart drawn, Ten worm-wounds in your neck, Purflings wan With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con Your present dumbness, shape your olden story.

1916.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

This statue of Liberty, busy man, Here erect in the city square, I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning, Strangely wistful, And half tristful, Have turned her from foul to fair;With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush, Bringing her out of the grime That has smeared her during the smokes of winter With such glumness In her dumbness, And aged her before her time.

You have washed her down with motherly care -Head, shoulders, arm, and foot, To the very hem of the robes that drape her -All expertly And alertly, Till a long stream, black with soot, Flows over the pavement to the road, And her shape looms pure as snow:

I read you are hired by the City guardians -May be yearly, Or once merely -

To treat the statues so?

"Oh, I'm not hired by the Councilmen To cleanse the statues here.

I do this one as a self-willed duty, Not as paid to, Or at all made to, But because the doing is dear."Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!

Liberty's knight divine.

What you have done would have been my doing, Yea, most verily, Well, and thoroughly, Had but your courage been mine!

"Oh I care not for Liberty's mould, Liberty charms not me;What's Freedom but an idler's vision, Vain, pernicious, Often vicious, Of things that cannot be!

"Memory it is that brings me to this -

Of a daughter--my one sweet own.

She grew a famous carver's model, One of the fairest And of the rarest:-She sat for the figure as shown.

"But alas, she died in this distant place Before I was warned to betake Myself to her side! . . . And in love of my darling, In love of the fame of her, And the good name of her, I do this for her sake."Answer I gave not. Of that form The carver was I at his side;His child, my model, held so saintly, Grand in feature, Gross in nature, In the dens of vice had died.

THE BACKGROUND AND THE FIGURE

(Lover's Ditty)

I think of the slope where the rabbits fed, Of the periwinks' rockwork lair, Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red -And the something else seen there.

Between the blooms where the sod basked bright, By the bobbing fuchsia trees, Was another and yet more eyesome sight -The sight that richened these.

I shall seek those beauties in the spring, When the days are fit and fair, But only as foils to the one more thing That also will flower there!

THE CHANGE

Out of the past there rises a week -