Carol and Cadence New poems: MDCCCCII-MDCCCCVII: By John Payne |
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HOUSEHOLD GHOSTS. |
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 | Carol and Cadence |  |
HOUSEHOLD GHOSTS.
My cats sit, gravely on the firelight gazing,
That flames and fades:
I see seven bask before the embers blazing;
But five are shades.
Top, Dandie, live; but Robin, Partie, Rover,
Shireen and Mick, their earthly ills are over,
Their bodies lie and rot beneath the mould.
Yet, in this ghost-evoking Yuletide weather,
All sit for me before the fire together;
Their kind cat-faces greet me, as of old.
That flames and fades:
I see seven bask before the embers blazing;
But five are shades.
Top, Dandie, live; but Robin, Partie, Rover,
Shireen and Mick, their earthly ills are over,
Their bodies lie and rot beneath the mould.
Yet, in this ghost-evoking Yuletide weather,
All sit for me before the fire together;
Their kind cat-faces greet me, as of old.
The live ones trench not on the dead ones' places;
Each hath his own;
His viewless limit unto each one traces
A hand unknown.
News of the land, no doubt, with shadow-voices,
The land whereas one mourns not nor rejoices,
Unto the live their shadow-fellows tell,
News of the world beyond the night and morning,
The world where gladness is not neither mourning,
Where all desireless is and all is well.
Each hath his own;
His viewless limit unto each one traces
A hand unknown.
News of the land, no doubt, with shadow-voices,
The land whereas one mourns not nor rejoices,
Unto the live their shadow-fellows tell,
News of the world beyond the night and morning,
The world where gladness is not neither mourning,
Where all desireless is and all is well.
Many are the friends with whom hath Time denied me
Till death to fare;
Many are the phantom-shapes that sit beside me,
Before the flare;
And oft for comrades, lovers, unforgetting,
Wrung is my heart with yearning and regretting.
Yet many an hour there is in which I'd fain,
Of all the dear dead, 'neath the clay that moulder,
Feel Rover's fondling head upon my shoulder
Or Partie's paws about my neck again.
Till death to fare;
Many are the phantom-shapes that sit beside me,
Before the flare;
And oft for comrades, lovers, unforgetting,
Wrung is my heart with yearning and regretting.
Yet many an hour there is in which I'd fain,
Of all the dear dead, 'neath the clay that moulder,
Feel Rover's fondling head upon my shoulder
Or Partie's paws about my neck again.
75
What limboes they inhabit now, who knoweth,
What shadow-airs?
But this I know, in few men's bosoms gloweth
Such love as theirs.
And when folk say that Bismarck, Gladstone, Krüger,
Pro-Boer, Logroller, journalist, Landleaguer,
All souls possess and only these have none,
These for whom life was love, this, to my deeming,
Of all the lies that shame our world of seeming,
The idlest shows beneath the all-suffering sun.
What shadow-airs?
But this I know, in few men's bosoms gloweth
Such love as theirs.
And when folk say that Bismarck, Gladstone, Krüger,
Pro-Boer, Logroller, journalist, Landleaguer,
All souls possess and only these have none,
These for whom life was love, this, to my deeming,
Of all the lies that shame our world of seeming,
The idlest shows beneath the all-suffering sun.
| Carol and Cadence | |