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Something do I see
Above the fog that sheets the mead,
A figure like to life indeed,
Moving along with spectre-speed,
Seen by none but me.

O the vision keen! -
Tripping along to me for love...

Gruffly growled the wind on Toller downland broad and bare,
And lonesome was the house, and dark; and few came there.

"Now don't ye rub your eyes so red; we're home and have no cares;...

Here we broached the Christmas barrel,
Pushed up the charred log-ends;
Here we sang the Christmas carol,
And called in friends.

Time has tired me since we met here...

"That is a quiet place -
That house in the trees with the shady lawn."
" - If, child, you knew what there goes on
You would not call it a quiet place.
Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,...

"Can anything avail
Beldame, for my hid grief? -
Listen: I'll tell the tale,
It may bring faint relief! -

"I came where I was not known,
In hope to flee my sin;
And walking forth alone...

(At A Cathedral Service)



That from this bright believing band
An outcast I should be,
That faiths by which my comrades stand
Seem fantasies to me,
And mirage-mists their Shining Land,...

I say, "She was as good as fair,"
When standing by her mound;
"Such passing sweetness," I declare,
"No longer treads the ground."
I say, "What living Love can catch
Her bloom and bonhomie,...

And are ye one of Hermitage -
Of Hermitage, by Ivel Road,
And do ye know, in Hermitage
A thatch-roofed house where sengreens grow?
And does John Waywood live there still -...

Sir John was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she,
Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun,
Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually,
As his widowed one.
...

"And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home."

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,
And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;
I view them talking in quiet glee...

I longed to love a full-boughed beech
And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
And signalled unity.
But with his drip he forced a breach,
And tried to poison me.
...

(To the Editor)



Yes; your up-dated modern page -
All flower-fresh, as it appears -
Can claim a time-tried lineage,

That reaches backward fifty years...

It was a wet wan hour in spring,
And Nature met King Doom beside a lane,
Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading
The Mother's smiling reign.

"Why warbles he that skies are fair...

SCENE. - A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale



I

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?...

Words from the mirror softly pass
To the curtains with a sigh:
"Why should I trouble again to glass
These smileless things hard by,
Since she I pleasured once, alas,
Is now no longer nigh!"
...

Why should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun...

"I am playing my oldest tunes," declared she,
"All the old tunes I know, -
Those I learnt ever so long ago."
- Why she should think just then she'd play them
Silence cloaks like snow.
...

(Oct. 11, 1886)
A MEMORY OF WILLIAM BARNES



Silently I footed by an uphill road
That led from my abode to a spot yew-boughed;
Yellowly the sun sloped low down to westward,...

The kiss had been given and taken,
And gathered to many past:
It never could reawaken;
But you heard none say: "It's the last!"

The clock showed the hour and the minute,...

"O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones!

"We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,...