Why not? Well, there faced she and I— Two strangers who’d kissed, or near, Chancewise. To see stand weeping by A woman once embraced, will try The tension of a man the most austere. So it began; and I was young, She pretty, by the lamp, As flakes came waltzing down among The waves of her clinging hair, that hung Heavily on her temples, dark and damp. And there alone still stood we two; She one cast off for me, Or so it seemed: while night ondrew, Forcing a parley what should do We twain hearts caught in one catastrophe. In stranded souls a common strait Wakes latencies unknown, Whose impulse may precipitate A life-long leap. The hour was late, And there was the Jersey boat with its funnel agroan. “Is wary walking worth much pother?” It grunted, as still it stayed. “One pairing is as good as another Where all is venture! Take each other, And scrap the oaths that you have aforetime made.” . . . —Of the four involved there walks but one On earth at this late day. And what of the chapter so begun? In that odd complex what was done? Well; happiness comes in full to none: Let peace lie on lulled lips: I will not say. WEYMOUTH. A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER I DWELT in the shade of a city, She far by the sea, With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty; But never with me. Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring I never once met, To guide her with accents adoring Through Weippert’s “First Set.” {46} I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones In Vanity Fair, And she enjoyed hers among hale ones In salt-smelling air. Maybe she had eyes of deep colour, Maybe they were blue, Maybe as she aged they got duller; That never I knew. She may have had lips like the coral, But I never kissed them, Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel, Nor sought for, nor missed them. Not a word passed of love all our lifetime, Between us, nor thrill; We’d never a husband-and-wife time, For good or for ill. Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal, Lie I and lies she, This never-known lady, eternal Companion to me! THE OLD GOWN (SONG) I HAVE seen her in gowns the brightest, Of azure, green, and red, And in the simplest, whitest, Muslined from heel to head; I have watched her walking, riding, Shade-flecked by a leafy tree, Or in fixed thought abiding By the foam-fingered sea.