WE sat at the window looking out, And the rain came down like silken strings That Swithin’s day. Each gutter and spout Babbled unchecked in the busy way Of witless things: Nothing to read, nothing to see Seemed in that room for her and me On Swithin’s day. We were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes, For I did not know, nor did she infer How much there was to read and guess By her in me, and to see and crown By me in her. Wasted were two souls in their prime, And great was the waste, that July time When the rain came down. AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK (_Circa_ 1850) ON afternoons of drowsy calm We stood in the panelled pew, Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm To the tune of “Cambridge New.” We watched the elms, we watched the rooks, The clouds upon the breeze, Between the whiles of glancing at our books, And swaying like the trees. So mindless were those outpourings!— Though I am not aware That I have gained by subtle thought on things Since we stood psalming there. AT THE WICKET-GATE THERE floated the sounds of church-chiming, But no one was nigh, Till there came, as a break in the loneness, Her father, she, I. And we slowly moved on to the wicket, And downlooking stood, Till anon people passed, and amid them We parted for good. Greater, wiser, may part there than we three Who parted there then, But never will Fates colder-featured Hold sway there again. Of the churchgoers through the still meadows No single one knew What a play was played under their eyes there As thence we withdrew. IN A MUSEUM I HERE’S the mould of a musical bird long passed from light, Which over the earth before man came was winging; There’s a contralto voice I heard last night, That lodges in me still with its sweet singing. II Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard, In the full-fugued song of the universe unending. EXETER. APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD PSALM TUNE I MET you first—ah, when did I first meet you? When I was full of wonder, and innocent, Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent, While dimming day grew dimmer In the pulpit-glimmer. Much riper in years I met you—in a temple Where summer sunset streamed upon our shapes, And you spread over me like a gauze that drapes, And flapped from floor to rafters, Sweet as angels’ laughters.