But, lo!—dad walking by, Cried, “What, you lightheels! Fie! Is this the way you roam And mock the sunset gleam?” And he marched us straightway home, Though we said, “We are only, daddy, Singing, ‘Will you take me, Paddy?’” —Well, we never saw from then If we sang there anywhen, The soldier dear again, Except at night in dream-time, Except at night in dream. Perhaps that soldier’s fighting In a land that’s far away, Or he may be idly plighting Some foreign hussy gay; Or perhaps his bones are whiting In the wind to their decay! . . . Ah!—does he mind him how The girls he saw that day On the bridge, were sitting singing At the time of curfew-ringing, “Take me, Paddy; will you now, dear? Paddy, will you now?” GREY’S BRIDGE. THE YOUNG CHURCHWARDEN WHEN he lit the candles there, And the light fell on his hand, And it trembled as he scanned Her and me, his vanquished air Hinted that his dream was done, And I saw he had begun To understand. When Love’s viol was unstrung, Sore I wished the hand that shook Had been mine that shared her book While that evening hymn was sung, His the victor’s, as he lit Candles where he had bidden us sit With vanquished look. Now her dust lies listless there, His afar from tending hand, What avails the victory scanned? Does he smile from upper air: “Ah, my friend, your dream is done; And ’tis _you_ who have begun To understand! “I TRAVEL AS A PHANTOM NOW” I TRAVEL as a phantom now, For people do not wish to see In flesh and blood so bare a bough As Nature makes of me. And thus I visit bodiless Strange gloomy households often at odds, And wonder if Man’s consciousness Was a mistake of God’s. And next I meet you, and I pause, And think that if mistake it were, As some have said, O then it was One that I well can bear! 1915. LINES TO A MOVEMENT IN MOZART’S E-FLAT SYMPHONY SHOW me again the time When in the Junetide’s prime We flew by meads and mountains northerly!— Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness, Love lures life on. Show me again the day When from the sandy bay We looked together upon the pestered sea!— Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking, Love lures life on. Show me again the hour When by the pinnacled tower We eyed each other and feared futurity!— Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings, Love lures life on. Show me again just this: The moment of that kiss Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree!— Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness, Love lures life on. _Begun November_ 1898. “IN THE SEVENTIES”