October 2, 1904.

A DRIZZLING EASTER MORNING

And he is risen?  Well, be it so . . . 
And still the pensive lands complain,
And dead men wait as long ago,
As if, much doubting, they would know
What they are ransomed from, before
They pass again their sheltering door.

I stand amid them in the rain,
While blusters vex the yew and vane;
And on the road the weary wain
Plods forward, laden heavily;
And toilers with their aches are fain
For endless rest—­though risen is he.

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!”