—The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair, And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade, And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware That she lives no more a maid, But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she trod To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history known In its last particular to him—aye, almost as to God, And believed her quite his own. So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon, And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace, And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon At this idle watering-place . . . What now I see before me is a long lane overhung With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave. And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young, Ere a woman held me slave. THE MOTH-SIGNAL (_On Egdon Heath_) “WHAT are you still, still thinking,” He asked in vague surmise, “That stare at the wick unblinking With those great lost luminous eyes?” “O, I see a poor moth burning In the candle-flame,” said she, “Its wings and legs are turning To a cinder rapidly.” “Moths fly in from the heather,” He said, “now the days decline.” “I know,” said she. “The weather, I hope, will at last be fine. “I think,” she added lightly, “I’ll look out at the door. The ring the moon wears nightly May be visible now no more.” She rose, and, little heeding, Her husband then went on With his attentive reading In the annals of ages gone. Outside the house a figure Came from the tumulus near, And speedily waxed bigger, And clasped and called her Dear. “I saw the pale-winged token You sent through the crack,” sighed she. “That moth is burnt and broken With which you lured out me. “And were I as the moth is It might be better far For one whose marriage troth is Shattered as potsherds are!” Then grinned the Ancient Briton From the tumulus treed with pine: “So, hearts are thwartly smitten In these days as in mine!” SEEN BY THE WAITS THROUGH snowy woods and shady We went to play a tune To the lonely manor-lady By the light of the Christmas moon. We violed till, upward glancing To where a mirror leaned, We saw her airily dancing, Deeming her movements screened; Dancing alone in the room there, Thin-draped in her robe of night; Her postures, glassed in the gloom there, Were a strange phantasmal sight. She had learnt (we heard when homing) That her roving spouse was dead; Why she had danced in the gloaming We thought, but never said. THE TWO SOLDIERS