AT CASTLE BOTEREL

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,

I look behind at the fading byway,

And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet

Myself and a girlish form benighted

In dry March weather. We climb the road Beside a chaise. We had just alighted

To ease the sturdy pony's load

When he sighed and slowed.

What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of

Matters not much, nor to what it led,Something that life will not be balked of Without rude reason till hope is dead, And feeling fled.

It filled but a minute.

But was there ever

To one mind never,

A time of such quality, since or before,

In that hill's story?

Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot

sore,

By thousands more.

72

AT CASTLE BOTEREL

Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border, And much have they faced there, first and last,

Of the transitory in Earth's long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is that we two passed.

And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Saw us alight.

I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain

For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love's domain

Never again.

March 1913.

THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN

I

QUEER are the ways of a man I know:
He comes and stands

In a careworn craze,
And looks at the sands
And the seaward haze
With moveless hands

And face and gaze,

Then turns to go.

And what does he see when he gazes so?

II

They say he sees as an instant thing
More clear than to-day,

A sweet soft scene

That once was in play

By that briny green;
Yes, notes alway

Warm, real, and keen,

What his back years bring

A phantom of his own figuring.

74

THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN

III

Of this vision of his they might say more :
Not only there

Does he see this sight,
But everywhere

In his brain-day, night,
As if on the air

It were drawn rose-bright-
Yea, far from that shore
Does he carry this vision of heretofore:

IV

A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried,
He withers daily,

Time touches her not,

But she still rides gaily

In his rapt thought

On that shagged and shaly

Atlantic spot,

And as when first eyed

Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.

1913.

ON A MIDSUMMER EVE

I IDLY cut a parsley stalk

And blew therein towards the moon;

I had not thought what ghosts would walk With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand
As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand
Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice, I thought not what my words might be ;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.