The trees fret fitfully and twist, Shutters rattle and carpets heave, Slime is the dust of yestereve, And in the streaming mist Fishes might seem to fin a passage if they list.
The swallows flew in the curves of an eight Above the river-gleam In the wet June's last beam: Like little crossbows animate The swallows flew in the curves of an eight Above the river-gleam. ...
What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray, To hazards whence no tears can win us; What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away?...
Clouds spout upon her Their waters amain In ruthless disdain, - Her who but lately Had shivered with pain As at touch of dishonour If there had lit on her So coldly, so straightly...
Who now remembers Almack's balls - Willis's sometime named - In those two smooth-floored upper halls For faded ones so famed? Where as we trod to trilling sound...
We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile, And passed to Livia's rich red mural show, Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico, We gained Caligula's dissolving pile....
The kettle descants in a cozy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then at her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place;...
"Sixpence a week," says the girl to her lover, "Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover The cost of her headstone when she died. And that was a year ago last June;...
"And now to God the Father," he ends, And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: Each listener chokes as he bows and bends, And emotion pervades the crowded aisles....
"Would it had been the man of our wish!" Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she In the wedding-dress the wife to be - "Then why were you so mollyish As not to insist on him for me!"...
"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom, And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,...
They sit and smoke on the esplanade, The man and his friend, and regard the bay Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed, Smile sallowly in the decline of day....
He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there, A type of decayed gentility; And by some small signs he well can guess That she comes to him almost breakfastless. ...
"You see those mothers squabbling there?" Remarks the man of the cemetery. One says in tears, ''Tis mine lies here!' Another, 'Nay, mine, you Pharisee!' Another, 'How dare you move my flowers...
"My stick!" he says, and turns in the lane To the house just left, whence a vixen voice Comes out with the firelight through the pane, And he sees within that the girl of his choice...
"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear, But you did not perceive me. Well, when they deliver what you were shown I shall know nothing of it, believe me!" ...
"I'll tell being past all praying for - Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war, And got some scent of the intimacy That was under way between her and me;...