A MERRYMAKING IN QUESTION

“I WILL get a new string for my fiddle,
And call to the neighbours to come,
And partners shall dance down the middle
Until the old pewter-wares hum;

And we'll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!

From the night came the oddest of answers:
A hollow wind, like a bassoon,

And headstones all ranged up as dancers,
And cypresses droning a croon,
And gurgoyles that gushed to the tune.

How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee!
-Have the slow years not brought to view
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Nor memory shaped old times anew,

Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee?

AT AN INN

WHEN we as strangers sought
Their catering care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
Of what we were.
They warmed as they opined
Us more than friends-

That we had all resigned
For love's dear ends.

And that swift sympathy
With living love
Which quicks the world-maybe
The spheres above,

Made them our ministers,

Moved them to say,

Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
Would flush our day!"

And we were left alone

As Love's own pair;

Yet never the love-light shone
Between us there,

AT AN INN

But that which chilled the breath

Of afternoon,

And palsied unto death

The pane-fly's tune.

The kiss their zeal foretold,
And now deemed come,

Came not

within his hold

Love lingered numb.

Why cast he on our port
A bloom not ours?

Why shaped us for his sport
In after-hours?

As we seemed we were not
That day afar,

And now we seem not what
We aching are.

O severing sea and land,

O laws of men,

Ere death, once let us stand
As we stood then!

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