Yet though my destiny
It was to miss your early sweet,
You still, when turned to you my feet,
   Had sweet enough to be
      A prize for me!

THE WEST-OF-WESSEX GIRL

A very West-of-Wessex girl,
   As blithe as blithe could be,
   Was once well-known to me,
And she would laud her native town,
   And hope and hope that we
Might sometime study up and down
   Its charms in company.

But never I squired my Wessex girl
   In jaunts to Hoe or street
   When hearts were high in beat,
Nor saw her in the marbled ways
   Where market-people meet
That in her bounding early days
   Were friendly with her feet.

Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl,
   When midnight hammers slow
   From Andrew’s, blow by blow,
As phantom draws me by the hand
   To the place—­Plymouth Hoe—­
Where side by side in life, as planned,
   We never were to go!

Begun in Plymouth, March 1913.

WELCOME HOME

   To my native place
   Bent upon returning,
   Bosom all day burning
   To be where my race
Well were known, ’twas much with me
There to dwell in amity.

   Folk had sought their beds,
   But I hailed:  to view me
   Under the moon, out to me
   Several pushed their heads,
And to each I told my name,
Plans, and that therefrom I came.

   “Did you? . . .  Ah, ’tis true
   I once heard, back a long time,
   Here had spent his young time,
   Some such man as you . . . 
Good-night.”  The casement closed again,
And I was left in the frosty lane.

GOING AND STAYING

I

The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay;
   But they were going.

II

Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
   But they were staying.

III

Then we looked closelier at Time,
And saw his ghostly arms revolving
To sweep off woeful things with prime,
Things sinister with things sublime
   Alike dissolving.

READ BY MOONLIGHT

I paused to read a letter of hers
   By the moon’s cold shine,
Eyeing it in the tenderest way,
And edging it up to catch each ray
   Upon her light-penned line. 
I did not know what years would flow
   Of her life’s span and mine
Ere I read another letter of hers
   By the moon’s cold shine!

I chance now on the last of hers,
   By the moon’s cold shine;
It is the one remaining page
Out of the many shallow and sage
   Whereto she set her sign. 
Who could foresee there were to be
   Such letters of pain and pine
Ere I should read this last of hers
   By the moon’s cold shine!