But next there came Like the eastern flame Of some high altar, children—a pair— Who laughed at the fly-blown pictures there. “Here are the lovely ships that we, Mother, are by and by going to see! When we get there it’s ’most sure to be fine, And the band will play, and the sun will shine!” It rained on the skylight with a din As we waited and still no train came in; But the words of the child in the squalid room Had spread a glory through the gloom. THE CLOCK-WINDER IT is dark as a cave, Or a vault in the nave When the iron door Is closed, and the floor Of the church relaid With trowel and spade. But the parish-clerk Cares not for the dark As he winds in the tower At a regular hour The rheumatic clock, Whose dilatory knock You can hear when praying At the day’s decaying, Or at any lone while From a pew in the aisle. Up, up from the ground Around and around In the turret stair He clambers, to where The wheelwork is, With its tick, click, whizz, Reposefully measuring Each day to its end That mortal men spend In sorrowing and pleasuring Nightly thus does he climb To the trackway of Time. Him I followed one night To this place without light, And, ere I spoke, heard Him say, word by word, At the end of his winding, The darkness unminding:— “So I wipe out one more, My Dear, of the sore Sad days that still be, Like a drying Dead Sea, Between you and me!” Who she was no man knew: He had long borne him blind To all womankind; And was ever one who Kept his past out of view. OLD EXCURSIONS “WHAT’S the good of going to Ridgeway, Cerne, or Sydling Mill, Or to Yell’ham Hill, Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way As we used to do? She will no more climb up there, Or be visible anywhere In those haunts we knew.” But to-night, while walking weary, Near me seemed her shade, Come as ’twere to upbraid This my mood in deeming dreary Scenes that used to please; And, if she did come to me, Still solicitous, there may be Good in going to these. So, I’ll care to roam to Ridgeway, Cerne, or Sydling Mill, Or to Yell’ham Hill, Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way As we used to do, Since her phasm may flit out there, And may greet me anywhere In those haunts we knew. _April_ 1913. THE MASKED FACE I FOUND me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: “What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?” “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face. I asked: “But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and air be made more clear, The floor more quietsome, And the doors set wide? They numb Fast-locked, and fill with fear.”