He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing, Then started up and walked about the room resentfully: “O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded, Why castedst thou thy spells on me? “There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry: She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore, As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e’en the cry you heard, wife, But she will cry no more! “And now I can’t abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on’t, This farmstead once a castle: I’ll get me straight away!” He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened, And went ere the dawn turned day. They found a woman’s body at a spot called Rocky Shallow, Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground, And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly known her, But he could not be found. And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle, And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone, And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying, And sometimes an infant’s moan. ON A DISCOVERED CURL OF HAIR WHEN your soft welcomings were said, This curl was waving on your head, And when we walked where breakers dinned It sported in the sun and wind, And when I had won your words of grace It brushed and clung about my face. Then, to abate the misery Of absentness, you gave it me. Where are its fellows now? Ah, they For brightest brown have donned a gray, And gone into a caverned ark, Ever unopened, always dark! Yet this one curl, untouched of time, Beams with live brown as in its prime, So that it seems I even could now Restore it to the living brow By bearing down the western road Till I had reached your old abode. _February_ 1913. AN OLD LIKENESS (RECALLING R. T.) WHO would have thought That, not having missed her Talks, tears, laughter In absence, or sought To recall for so long Her gamut of song; Or ever to waft her Signal of aught That she, fancy-fanned, Would well understand, I should have kissed her Picture when scanned Yawning years after! Yet, seeing her poor Dim-outlined form Chancewise at night-time, Some old allure Came on me, warm, Fresh, pleadful, pure, As in that bright time At a far season Of love and unreason, And took me by storm Here in this blight-time! And thus it arose That, yawning years after Our early flows Of wit and laughter, And framing of rhymes At idle times, At sight of her painting, Though she lies cold In churchyard mould, I took its feinting As real, and kissed it, As if I had wist it Herself of old. HER APOTHEOSIS “Secretum meum mihi” (FADED WOMAN’S SONG)