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SHE HEARS THE STORM

THERE was a time in former years—
While my roof-tree was his—
When I should have been distressed by fears
At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously,
"The pricking rain strikes cold;
His road is bare of hedge or tree,
And he is getting old."

But now the fitful chimney-roar,

The drone of Thorncombe trees, The Froom in flood upon the moor, The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty wick'd,
The thuds upon the thatch,
The eaves-drops on the window flicked,
The clacking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers,
I scarcely heed or mind;

He has won that storm-tight roof of hers
Which Earth grants all her kind.

AFTER THE LAST BREATH

(J. H. 1813-1904)

THERE'S No more to be done, or feared, or hoped;

None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire ;

No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped

Does she require.

Blankly we gaze. We are free to go or stay; Our morrow's anxious plans have missed their

aim;

Whether we leave to-night or wait till day
Counts as the same.

The lettered vessels of medicaments

Seem asking wherefore we have set them here;
Each palliative its silly face presents
As useless gear.

And yet we feel that something savours well ; We note a numb relief withheld before ;

AFTER THE LAST BREATH

Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell
Of Time no more.

133

We see by littles now the deft achievement
Whereby she has escaped the Wrongers all,
In view of which our momentary bereavement
Outshapes but small.

1904.

NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME

WHEN the wasting embers redden the chimneybreast,

And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me,

And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest,

My perished people who housed them here come back to me.

They come and seat them around in their mouldy places,

Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness,

A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces, And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness.

Do

you uphold me, lingering and languishing here,

A pale late plant of your once strong stock? I say to them;

"A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in

the sere,

And on That which consigns men to night after showing the day to them?"

NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME 135

-O let be the Wherefore! We fevered our years not thus:

Take of Life what it grants, without question! they answer me seemingly.

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"

Enjoy, suffer, wait: spread the table here freely like us,

And, satisfied, placid, unfretting, watch Time away beamingly!"

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