“She moves a sylph in picture-land, Where nothing frosts the air:” (Have your way, my heart, O!) “To all winged pipers overhead She is known by shape and song,” I said, Conscious of licence there. I sang of her in a dim old hall Dream-built too fancifully, (Have your way, my heart, O!) But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead My feet to such a hall indeed, Where stood the very She. Strange, startling, was it then to learn I had glanced down unborn time, (Have your way, my heart, O!) And prophesied, whereby I knew That which the years had planned to do In warranty of my rhyme. BY RUSHY-POND. A JANUARY NIGHT (1879) THE rain smites more and more, The east wind snarls and sneezes; Through the joints of the quivering door The water wheezes. The tip of each ivy-shoot Writhes on its neighbour’s face; There is some hid dread afoot That we cannot trace. Is it the spirit astray Of the man at the house below Whose coffin they took in to-day? We do not know. A KISS BY a wall the stranger now calls his, Was born of old a particular kiss, Without forethought in its genesis; Which in a trice took wing on the air. And where that spot is nothing shows: There ivy calmly grows, And no one knows What a birth was there! That kiss is gone where none can tell— Not even those who felt its spell: It cannot have died; that know we well. Somewhere it pursues its flight, One of a long procession of sounds Travelling aethereal rounds Far from earth’s bounds In the infinite. THE ANNOUNCEMENT THEY came, the brothers, and took two chairs In their usual quiet way; And for a time we did not think They had much to say. And they began and talked awhile Of ordinary things, Till spread that silence in the room A pent thought brings. And then they said: “The end has come. Yes: it has come at last.” And we looked down, and knew that day A spirit had passed. THE OXEN CHRISTMAS EVE, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, “Come; see the oxen kneel “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,” I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so. 1915. THE TRESSES “WHEN the air was damp It made my curls hang slack As they kissed my neck and back While I footed the salt-aired track I loved to tramp.