Where touched the check-floored chancel My knees and his? The step looks shyly at the sun, And says, “’Twas here the thing was done, For bale or else for bliss!” Of all those there I least was ware Would it be that or this When touched the check-floored chancel My knees and his! Here in this fateful chancel Where all’s the same, I thought the culminant crest of life Was reached when I went forth the wife I was not when I came. Each commonplace one of my race, Some say, has such an aim— To go from a fateful chancel As not the same. Here, through this hoary chancel Where all’s the same, A thrill, a gaiety even, ranged That morning when it seemed I changed My nature with my name. Though now not fair, though gray my hair, He loved me, past proclaim, Here in this hoary chancel, Where all’s the same. AT THE ENTERING OF THE NEW YEAR I (OLD STYLE) OUR songs went up and out the chimney, And roused the home-gone husbandmen; Our allemands, our heys, poussettings, Our hands-across and back again, Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements On to the white highway, Where nighted farers paused and muttered, “Keep it up well, do they!” The contrabasso’s measured booming Sped at each bar to the parish bounds, To shepherds at their midnight lambings, To stealthy poachers on their rounds; And everybody caught full duly The notes of our delight, As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise Hailed by our sanguine sight. II (NEW STYLE) WE stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb, As if to give ear to the muffled peal, Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim; But our truest heed is to words that steal From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray, And seems, so far as our sense can see, To feature bereaved Humanity, As it sighs to the imminent year its say:— “O stay without, O stay without, Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired; Though stars irradiate thee about Thy entrance here is undesired. Open the gate not, mystic one; Must we avow what we would close confine? _With thee_, _good friend_, _we would have converse none_, Albeit the fault may not be thine.” _December_ 31. _During the War_. THEY WOULD NOT COME I TRAVELLED to where in her lifetime She’d knelt at morning prayer, To call her up as if there; But she paid no heed to my suing, As though her old haunt could win not A thought from her spirit, or care. I went where my friend had lectioned The prophets in high declaim, That my soul’s ear the same Full tones should catch as aforetime; But silenced by gear of the Present Was the voice that once there came!