A Merrymaking In Question

“I WILL get a new string for my fiddle, And call to the neighbours to come, And partners shall dance down the middle Until the old pewter-wares hum: And we’ll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!”

From the night came the oddest of answers: A hollow wind, like a bassoon, And headstones all ranged up as dancers, And cypresses droning a croon, And gurgoyles that mouthed to the tune.

“I SAID AND SANG HER EXCELLENCE” (Fickle Lover’s Song)

I SAID and sang her excellence: They called it laud undue. (Have your way, my heart, O!) Yet what was homage far above The plain deserts of my olden Love Proved verity of my new.

“She moves a sylph in picture-land, Where nothing frosts the air:” (Have your way, my heart, O!) “To all winged pipers overhead She is known by shape and song,” I said, Conscious of licence there.

I sang of her in a dim old hall Dream-built too fancifully, (Have your way, my heart, O!) But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead My feet to such a hall indeed, Where stood the very She.

Strange, startling, was it then to learn I had glanced down unborn time, (Have your way, my heart, O!) And prophesied, whereby I knew That which the years had planned to do In warranty of my rhyme.

BY RUSHY-POND.

A JANUARY NIGHT (1879)

THE rain smites more and more, The east wind snarls and sneezes; Through the joints of the quivering door The water wheezes.

The tip of each ivy-shoot Writhes on its neighbour’s face; There is some hid dread afoot That we cannot trace.

Is it the spirit astray Of the man at the house below Whose coffin they took in to-day? We do not know.