The Blow

THAT no man schemed it is my hope— Yea, that it fell by will and scope Of That Which some enthrone, And for whose meaning myriads grope.

For I would not that of my kind There should, of his unbiassed mind, Have been one known Who such a stroke could have designed;

Since it would augur works and ways Below the lowest that man assays To have hurled that stone Into the sunshine of our days!

And if it prove that no man did, And that the Inscrutable, the Hid, Was cause alone Of this foul crash our lives amid,

I’ll go in due time, and forget In some deep graveyard’s oubliette The thing whereof I groan, And cease from troubling; thankful yet

Time’s finger should have stretched to show No aimful author’s was the blow That swept us prone, But the Immanent Doer’s That doth not know,

Which in some age unguessed of us May lift Its blinding incubus, And see, and own: “It grieves me I did thus and thus!”

LOVE THE MONOPOLIST (Young Lover’s Reverie)

THE train draws forth from the station-yard, And with it carries me. I rise, and stretch out, and regard The platform left, and see An airy slim blue form there standing, And know that it is she.

While with strained vision I watch on, The figure turns round quite To greet friends gaily; then is gone . . . The import may be slight, But why remained she not hard gazing Till I was out of sight?

“O do not chat with others there,” I brood. “They are not I. O strain your thoughts as if they were Gold bands between us; eye All neighbour scenes as so much blankness Till I again am by!

“A troubled soughing in the breeze And the sky overhead Let yourself feel; and shadeful trees, Ripe corn, and apples red, Read as things barren and distasteful While we are separated!

“When I come back uncloak your gloom, And let in lovely day; Then the long dark as of the tomb Can well be thrust away With sweet things I shall have to practise, And you will have to say!”

Begun 1871: finished—