winter words

At Day-Close in November

The ten hours' light is abating,

And a late bird flies across,

Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,

Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,

Float past like specks in the eye;

I set every tree in my June time,

And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here

Conceive that there never has been

A time when no tall trees grew here,

A time when none will be seen.

Midnight on the Great Western

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,

And the roof-lamp’s oily flame

Played down on his listless form and face,

Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,

Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy

Had a ticket stuck; and a string

Around his neck bore the key of his box,

That twinkled gleams of the lamp’s sad beams

Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy

Towards a world unknown,

Who calmly, as if incurious quite

On all at stake, can undertake

This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,

Our rude realms far above,

Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete

This region of sin that you find you in,

But are not of?

Wagtail and Baby (A Satire)

A baby watched a ford,where to

A wagtail came for drinking;

A blaring bull wentwading through,

The wagtail showed no shrinking.

A stallion splashed his way across,

The birdie nearly sinking;

He gave his plumes a twitch and toss,

And held his own unblinking.

Next saw the baby round the spot

A mongrel slowly slinking;

The wagtail gazed, but faltered not

In dip and sip and prinking.

A perfect gentleman then neared;

The wagtail,in a winking,

With terror rose and disappeared;

The baby fella-thinking.

The Little Old Table

Creak, little wood thing, creak,

When I touch you with elbow or knee;

That is the way you speak

Of one who gave you to me!

You, little table, she brought-

Brought me with her own hand,

As she looked at me with a thought

That I did not understand.

-Whoever owns it anon,

And hears it, will never know

What a history hangs upon

This creak from long ago.

The Choirmaster's Burial (or The Tenor Man's Story)

He often would ask us

That ,when he died,

After playing so many

To their last rest,

If out of us any

Should here abide,

And it would not task us,

We would with our lutes

Play over him

By his grave-brim

The psalm he liked best-

The one whose sense suits

"Mount Ephraim"-

And perhaps we should seem

To him, in Death's dream,

Like the seraphim.

As soon as I knew

That his spirit was gone

I thought this his due,

And spoke thereupon.

"I think," said the vicar,

"A read service quicker

Than viols out-of-doors

In these frosts and hoars.

That old-fashioned way

Requires a fine day,

And it seems to me

It had better not be."

Hence, that afternoon,

Though never knew he

That his wish could not be,

To get through it faster

They buried the master

Without any tune.

But 'twas said that, when

At the dead of next night

The vicar looked out,

There struck on his ken

Thronged round about,

Where the frost was graying

The headstoned grass,

A band all in white

Like the saints in church-glass,

Singing and playing

The ancient stave

By the choirmaster's grave.

Such the tenor man told

When he had grown old.

Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches and Nightingales)

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,

And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,

And as it gets dark loud nightingales

In bushes

Pipe, as they can when April wears,

As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand-new birds of twelve-months' growing,

Which a year ago, or less than twain,

No finches were, nor nightingales,

Nor thrushes,

But only particles of grain,

And earth, and air, and rain.

At the Railway Station, Upway (or The Convict and Boy with

The Violin)

"There is not much that I can do,

For I 've no money that's quite my own!"

Spoke up the pitying child-

A little boy with a violin

At the station before the train came in,-

"But I can play my fiddle to you,

And a nice one 'tis, and good in tone!"

The man in the handcuffs smiled;

The constable looked, and he smiled, too,

As the fiddle began to twang;

And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang

With grimful glee:

"This life so free

Is the thing for me!"

And the constable smiled, and said no word,

As if unconscious of what he heard;

And so they went on ‘till the train came in -

The convict, and boy with the violin.

Before Life and After

A time there was – as one may guess

And as, indeed, earth's testimonies tell -

Before the birth of consciousness,

When all went well.

None suffered sickness, love, or loss,

None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;

None cared whatever crash or cross

Brought wrack to things.

If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,

If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;

If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,

No sense was stung.

But the disease of feeling germed,

And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;

Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed

How long, how long?

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