On One Who Lived And Died Where He Was Born

WHEN a night in November Blew forth its bleared airs An infant descended His birth-chamber stairs For the very first time, At the still, midnight chime; All unapprehended His mission, his aim.— Thus, first, one November, An infant descended The stairs.

On a night in November Of weariful cares, A frail aged figure Ascended those stairs For the very last time: All gone his life’s prime, All vanished his vigour, And fine, forceful frame: Thus, last, one November Ascended that figure Upstairs.

On those nights in November— Apart eighty years— The babe and the bent one Who traversed those stairs From the early first time To the last feeble climb— That fresh and that spent one— Were even the same: Yea, who passed in November As infant, as bent one, Those stairs.

Wise child of November! From birth to blanched hairs Descending, ascending, Wealth-wantless, those stairs; Who saw quick in time As a vain pantomime Life’s tending, its ending, The worth of its fame. Wise child of November, Descending, ascending Those stairs!

THE SECOND NIGHT (BALLAD)

I MISSED one night, but the next I went; It was gusty above, and clear; She was there, with the look of one ill-content, And said: “Do not come near!”

—“I am sorry last night to have failed you here, And now I have travelled all day; And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier, So brief must be my stay.”

—“O man of mystery, why not say Out plain to me all you mean? Why you missed last night, and must now away Is—another has come between!”

—“O woman so mocking in mood and mien, So be it!” I replied: “And if I am due at a differing scene Before the dark has died,

“’Tis that, unresting, to wander wide Has ever been my plight, And at least I have met you at Cremyll side If not last eve, to-night.”

—“You get small rest—that read I quite; And so do I, maybe; Though there’s a rest hid safe from sight Elsewhere awaiting me!”

A mad star crossed the sky to the sea, Wasting in sparks as it streamed, And when I looked to where stood she She had changed, much changed, it seemed:

The sparks of the star in her pupils gleamed, She was vague as a vapour now, And ere of its meaning I had dreamed She’d vanished—I knew not how.

I stood on, long; each cliff-top bough, Like a cynic nodding there, Moved up and down, though no man’s brow But mine met the wayward air.

Still stood I, wholly unaware Of what had come to pass, Or had brought the secret of my new Fair To my old Love, alas!

I went down then by crag and grass To the boat wherein I had come. Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lass Of Edgcumbe, is sharp for some!

“Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numb On the shore here, whither she’d sped To meet her lover last night in the glum, And he came not, ’tis said.

“And she leapt down, heart-hit. Pity she’s dead: So much for the faithful-bent!” . . . I looked, and again a star overhead Shot through the firmament.