He searched for the trace of a pictured face, He watched each missive come, And a note that seemed like a love-line Made him look frozen and glum. He dogged my feet to the city street, He followed me to the sea, But not to the neighbouring churchyard Did he dream of following me. “SHE CHARGED ME” SHE charged me with having said this and that To another woman long years before, In the very parlour where we sat,— Sat on a night when the endless pour Of rain on the roof and the road below Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . . —So charged she me; and the Cupid’s bow Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face, And her white forefinger lifted slow. Had she done it gently, or shown a trace That not too curiously would she view A folly passed ere her reign had place, A kiss might have ended it. But I knew From the fall of each word, and the pause between, That the curtain would drop upon us two Ere long, in our play of slave and queen. THE NEWCOMER’S WIFE HE paused on the sill of a door ajar That screened a lively liquor-bar, For the name had reached him through the door Of her he had married the week before. “We called her the Hack of the Parade; But she was discreet in the games she played; If slightly worn, she’s pretty yet, And gossips, after all, forget. “And he knows nothing of her past; I am glad the girl’s in luck at last; Such ones, though stale to native eyes, Newcomers snatch at as a prize.” “Yes, being a stranger he sees her blent Of all that’s fresh and innocent, Nor dreams how many a love-campaign She had enjoyed before his reign!” That night there was the splash of a fall Over the slimy harbour-wall: They searched, and at the deepest place Found him with crabs upon his face. A CONVERSATION AT DAWN HE lay awake, with a harassed air, And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair, Seemed trouble-tried As the dawn drew in on their faces there. The chamber looked far over the sea From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay, And stepping a stride He parted the window-drapery. Above the level horizon spread The sunrise, firing them foot to head From its smouldering lair, And painting their pillows with dyes of red. “What strange disquiets have stirred you, dear, This dragging night, with starts in fear Of me, as it were, Or of something evil hovering near?” “My husband, can I have fear of you? What should one fear from a man whom few, Or none, had matched In that late long spell of delays undue!” He watched her eyes in the heaving sun: “Then what has kept, O reticent one, Those lids unlatched— Anything promised I’ve not yet done?”