Just so did he clang here before I came, And so will he clang when I’m gone Through the Minster’s cavernous hollows—the same Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver To the speechless midnight and dawn! I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts, Whose mould lies below and around. Yes; the next “Come, come,” draws them out from their posts, And they gather, and one shade appears, and another, As the eve-damps creep from the ground. See—a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb, And a Duke and his Duchess near; And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom, And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber; And shapes unknown in the rear. Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan To better ail-stricken mankind; I catch their cheepings, though thinner than The overhead creak of a passager’s pinion When leaving land behind. Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn, And caution them not to come To a world so ancient and trouble-torn, Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness, And ardours chilled and numb. They waste to fog as I stir and stand, And move from the arched recess, And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand, And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny In a moment’s forgetfulness. TO SHAKESPEARE AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS BRIGHT baffling Soul, least capturable of themes, Thou, who display’dst a life of common-place, Leaving no intimate word or personal trace Of high design outside the artistry Of thy penned dreams, Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally. Through human orbits thy discourse to-day, Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on In harmonies that cow Oblivion, And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect Maintain a sway Not fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked. And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour, The Avon just as always glassed the tower, Thy age was published on thy passing-bell But in due rote With other dwellers’ deaths accorded a like knell. And at the strokes some townsman (met, maybe, And thereon queried by some squire’s good dame Driving in shopward) may have given thy name, With, “Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do; Though, as for me, I knew him but by just a neighbour’s nod, ’tis true. “I’ faith, few knew him much here, save by word, He having elsewhere led his busier life; Though to be sure he left with us his wife.” —“Ah, one of the tradesmen’s sons, I now recall . . . Witty, I’ve heard . . . We did not know him . . . Well, good-day. Death comes to all.”