On A Discovered Curl Of Hair

WHEN your soft welcomings were said, This curl was waving on your head, And when we walked where breakers dinned It sported in the sun and wind, And when I had won your words of grace It brushed and clung about my face. Then, to abate the misery Of absentness, you gave it me.

Where are its fellows now? Ah, they For brightest brown have donned a gray, And gone into a caverned ark, Ever unopened, always dark!

Yet this one curl, untouched of time, Beams with live brown as in its prime, So that it seems I even could now Restore it to the living brow By bearing down the western road Till I had reached your old abode.

February 1913.

AN OLD LIKENESS (RECALLING R. T.)

WHO would have thought That, not having missed her Talks, tears, laughter In absence, or sought To recall for so long Her gamut of song; Or ever to waft her Signal of aught That she, fancy-fanned, Would well understand, I should have kissed her Picture when scanned Yawning years after!

Yet, seeing her poor Dim-outlined form Chancewise at night-time, Some old allure Came on me, warm, Fresh, pleadful, pure, As in that bright time At a far season Of love and unreason, And took me by storm Here in this blight-time!

And thus it arose That, yawning years after Our early flows Of wit and laughter, And framing of rhymes At idle times, At sight of her painting, Though she lies cold In churchyard mould, I took its feinting As real, and kissed it, As if I had wist it Herself of old.

HER APOTHEOSIS “Secretum meum mihi” (FADED WOMAN’S SONG)

THERE was a spell of leisure, No record vouches when; With honours, praises, pleasure To womankind from men.

But no such lures bewitched me, No hand was stretched to raise, No gracious gifts enriched me, No voices sang my praise.

Yet an iris at that season Amid the accustomed slight From denseness, dull unreason, Ringed me with living light.

“SACRED TO THE MEMORY” (MARY H.)

THAT “Sacred to the Memory” Is clearly carven there I own, And all may think that on the stone The words have been inscribed by me In bare conventionality.

They know not and will never know That my full script is not confined To that stone space, but stands deep lined Upon the landscape high and low Wherein she made such worthy show.