Since it would augur works and ways Below the lowest that man assays To have hurled that stone Into the sunshine of our days! And if it prove that no man did, And that the Inscrutable, the Hid, Was cause alone Of this foul crash our lives amid, I’ll go in due time, and forget In some deep graveyard’s oubliette The thing whereof I groan, And cease from troubling; thankful yet Time’s finger should have stretched to show No aimful author’s was the blow That swept us prone, But the Immanent Doer’s That doth not know, Which in some age unguessed of us May lift Its blinding incubus, And see, and own: “It grieves me I did thus and thus!” LOVE THE MONOPOLIST (_Young Lover’s Reverie_) THE train draws forth from the station-yard, And with it carries me. I rise, and stretch out, and regard The platform left, and see An airy slim blue form there standing, And know that it is she. While with strained vision I watch on, The figure turns round quite To greet friends gaily; then is gone . . . The import may be slight, But why remained she not hard gazing Till I was out of sight? “O do not chat with others there,” I brood. “They are not I. O strain your thoughts as if they were Gold bands between us; eye All neighbour scenes as so much blankness Till I again am by! “A troubled soughing in the breeze And the sky overhead Let yourself feel; and shadeful trees, Ripe corn, and apples red, Read as things barren and distasteful While we are separated! “When I come back uncloak your gloom, And let in lovely day; Then the long dark as of the tomb Can well be thrust away With sweet things I shall have to practise, And you will have to say!” _Begun_ 1871: _finished_— AT MIDDLE-FIELD GATE IN FEBRUARY THE bars are thick with drops that show As they gather themselves from the fog Like silver buttons ranged in a row, And as evenly spaced as if measured, although They fall at the feeblest jog. They load the leafless hedge hard by, And the blades of last year’s grass, While the fallow ploughland turned up nigh In raw rolls, clammy and clogging lie— Too clogging for feet to pass. How dry it was on a far-back day When straws hung the hedge and around, When amid the sheaves in amorous play In curtained bonnets and light array Bloomed a bevy now underground! BOCKHAMPTON LANE. THE YOUTH WHO CARRIED A LIGHT I SAW him pass as the new day dawned, Murmuring some musical phrase; Horses were drinking and floundering in the pond, And the tired stars thinned their gaze; Yet these were not the spectacles at all that he conned, But an inner one, giving out rays.