I thought the flower blushed deeplier—aye, And as I drew its stalk to me It seemed to breathe: “I am, I see, Made use of in a human play.” And while I plucked, upstarted sheer As phantom from the pane thereby A corpse-like countenance, with eye That iced me by its baleful peer— Silent, as from a bier . . . When I came back your face had changed, It was no face for me; O did it speak of hearts estranged, And deadly rivalry In times before I darked your door, To seise me of Mere second love, Which still the haunting first deranged? AT THE DINNER-TABLE I SAT at dinner in my prime, And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass, And started as if I had seen a crime, And prayed the ghastly show might pass. Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight, Grinning back to me as my own; I well-nigh fainted with affright At finding me a haggard crone. My husband laughed. He had slily set A warping mirror there, in whim To startle me. My eyes grew wet; I spoke not all the eve to him. He was sorry, he said, for what he had done, And took away the distorting glass, Uncovering the accustomed one; And so it ended? No, alas, Fifty years later, when he died, I sat me in the selfsame chair, Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed, I saw the sideboard facing there; And from its mirror looked the lean Thing I’d become, each wrinkle and score The image of me that I had seen In jest there fifty years before. THE MARBLE TABLET THERE it stands, though alas, what a little of her Shows in its cold white look! Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of her Voice like the purl of a brook; Not her thoughts, that you read like a book. It may stand for her once in November When first she breathed, witless of all; Or in heavy years she would remember When circumstance held her in thrall; Or at last, when she answered her call! Nothing more. The still marble, date-graven, Gives all that it can, tersely lined; That one has at length found the haven Which every one other will find; With silence on what shone behind. ST. JULIOT: _September_ 8, 1916. THE MASTER AND THE LEAVES I WE are budding, Master, budding, We of your favourite tree; March drought and April flooding Arouse us merrily, Our stemlets newly studding; And yet you do not see! II We are fully woven for summer In stuff of limpest green, The twitterer and the hummer Here rest of nights, unseen, While like a long-roll drummer The nightjar thrills the treen. III