SHE HEARS THE STORM THERE was a time in former years— I should have murmured anxiously, 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, And what they mean to wayfarers, He has won that storm-tight roof of hers 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 The lettered vessels of medicaments Seem asking wherefore we have set them here; 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 133 We see by littles now the deft achievement 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?" |