Life and Phantasy :: :: University of Virginia Library

The noisy sparrows in our clēmatis
Chatted of rain, a pensive summer dusk
Shading the little lawn and garden-ground
Between our threshold and the village street;
With one pure star, a lonely altar-lamp
In twilight's vast cathedral; for the clouds
Were gravely gathering, and a fitful breeze
Flurried the window-foliage that before
Hung delicately painted on the sky,
And wafted, showering from their golden boss,
The white-rose petals.

From our garden wall,
Being low within, the great Whiterose-bush lean'd
A thousand tender little heads, to note
The doings of the village all day long;
From when the labourers, trudging to their toil
In earliest sunshine, heard the outpost cocks
Whistle a quaint refrain from farm to farm,
Till hour of shadow, silence, and repose,
The ceasing footstep, and the taper's ray.

Up to the churchyard fence, down to the brook,
And lifted fields beyond with grove and hedge,
The Rose-bush gazed; by-goers, on their part,
Feeling a little message of delight,
Glanced up to find the sweetness in its bower;
School-children, one arm round a comrade's neck,
Would point to some rich cluster, and repay
Our flying bounty with their happy looks.

In that warm twilight, certain years ago,
At sunset, with the roses in a trance,
And many another blossom fast asleep,
One Flow'r of Flow'rs was closing like the rest.
Night's herald star which look'd across the world
Saw nothing prettier than our little child
Saying his evening pray'r at mother's knee,
The white skirt folding on the naked feet
Too tender for rough ways, his eyes at rest
On his mother's face, a window into heaven.
Kiss'd now, and settled in his cot, he's pleased
With murmuring song, until the large lids droop
Slowly and surely, slumber's regular breath
Not parting the soft mouth. So Annie's boy
And mine was laid asleep. I heard her foot
Stir overhead; and hoped we should have time
Before the rain to loiter half an hour,
As far as to the poplars down the road,
And hear the corncrakes through the meadowy vale,
And watch the childhood of a virgin moon,
Above the faded sunset and its clouds,
A floating crescent.

Sweetheart of my life!—
As then, so now; nay, dearer to me now,
For love, that fills the soul, expands it too,
And thus it holds more love, and ever more—
O sweetheart, helpmate, guardian, better self!
Green be those downs and dells above the sea,
Smooth-green for ever, by the plough unhurt,

Nor overdrifted by their neighbouring sands,
Where first I saw you; first since long before
When we were children at an inland place
And play'd together. I had often thought,
I wonder should I know that pleasant child?—
Hardly, I fear'd. I knew her the first glimpse,
While yet the flexile curvature of hat
Kept all her face in shadow to the chin;
And when a breeze to which the harebells danced
Lifted the sun a moment to her eyes,
The ray of recognition flew to mine
Through all the dignity of womanhood.
Like dear old friends we were, yet wondrous new.
The others talk'd; but she and I not much.
Hearing her ribbon whirring in the wind
(No doubting hopes nor whimsies born as yet)
Was pure felicity, like his who sleeps
Within a sense of some unknown good fortune,
True, or of dreamland, undetermined which;
My buoyant spirit tranquil in its joy
As the white seamew swinging on the wave.
Since, what vicissitude! We read the past
Bound in a volume, catch the story up
At any leaf we choose, and much forget
How every blind to-morrow was evolved,
How each oracular sentence shaped itself
For after comprehension.

Thus I mused,
Then also, in that buried summer dusk,
Rich heavy summer, upon autumn's verge,
My wife and boy upstairs, I leaning grave
Against the window; and through favourite paths
Memory, as one who saunters in a wood,
Found sober joy. In turn that eve itself
Rises distinctly. Troops of dancing moths
Brush'd the dry grass. I heard, as if from far,
The tone of passing voices in the street.

Announced by cheerful octaves of a horn,
Those rapid wheels flew, shaking our white rose,
That link'd us with the modern Magic Way,
And all the moving million-peopled world.
For every evening, done our share of work,
In happy hour came in the lottery-bag,
Whose messenger had many a prize for us:
The multifarious page ephemeral,
The joy at times of some brave book, whereby
The world is richer; and more special words,
Conveying conjured into dots of ink
Almost the voice, look, gesture that we knew,—
From Annie's former house, or mine, from shore
Of murky Thames, or rarer from hot land
Of Hindoo or Chinese, Canadian woods,
Or that vast isle of kangaroos and gold,
Magnetic metal,—thus on the four winds
One's ancient comrades blown about the world.
Where's George, I often thought, our hope, our pride?
“Saint George,” we called him, glory of the school,
With Greek and Latin at those fingers' ends
That sway'd the winning oar and bat; a prince
In look, demeanour, generosity;
A Cribb in biceps, Cicero in tongue;
Already victor, when his eye should deign
To fix on any summit of success.
I made his picture many a time myself,
Slaying all sorts of dragons, or with ten
Spitted upon his spear; for he would hint
In haughty, careless tone (why should he care?)
“I've got to push my fortune by-and-by.”
We worshipp'd George in those days, one and all.
But when I went to college, he was off,
They said to travel, and he took away
Mentor conjoin'd with Crichton from my hopes—
No trifling blank. George had done little there,
But could—what could he not? . . And now, perhaps,

Some city, in the strangers' burial-ground,
Some desert sand, or hollow under sea,
Hides him without an epitaph. So men
Slip under, fit to shape the world anew;
And leave their trace—in schoolboy memories.