I went down then by crag and grass To the boat wherein I had come. Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lass Of Edgcumbe, is sharp for some! “Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numb On the shore here, whither she’d sped To meet her lover last night in the glum, And he came not, ’tis said. “And she leapt down, heart-hit. Pity she’s dead: So much for the faithful-bent!” . . . I looked, and again a star overhead Shot through the firmament. SHE WHO SAW NOT “DID you see something within the house That made me call you before the red sunsetting? Something that all this common scene endows With a richened impress there can be no forgetting?” “—I have found nothing to see therein, O Sage, that should have made you urge me to enter, Nothing to fire the soul, or the sense to win: I rate you as a rare misrepresenter!” “—Go anew, Lady,—in by the right . . . Well: why does your face not shine like the face of Moses?” “—I found no moving thing there save the light And shadow flung on the wall by the outside roses.” “—Go yet once more, pray. Look on a seat.” “—I go . . . O Sage, it’s only a man that sits there With eyes on the sun. Mute,—average head to feet.” “—No more?”—“No more. Just one the place befits there, “As the rays reach in through the open door, And he looks at his hand, and the sun glows through his fingers, While he’s thinking thoughts whose tenour is no more To me than the swaying rose-tree shade that lingers.” No more. And years drew on and on Till no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding; And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone, As a vision what she had missed when the real beholding. THE OLD WORKMAN “WHY are you so bent down before your time, Old mason? Many have not left their prime So far behind at your age, and can still Stand full upright at will.” He pointed to the mansion-front hard by, And to the stones of the quoin against the sky; “Those upper blocks,” he said, “that there you see, It was that ruined me.” There stood in the air up to the parapet Crowning the corner height, the stones as set By him—ashlar whereon the gales might drum For centuries to come. “I carried them up,” he said, “by a ladder there; The last was as big a load as I could bear; But on I heaved; and something in my back Moved, as ’twere with a crack. “So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain; And those who live there, walled from wind and rain By freestone that I lifted, do not know That my life’s ache came so. “They don’t know me, or even know my name, But good I think it, somehow, all the same To have kept ’em safe from harm, and right and tight, Though it has broke me quite.