JUST at the corner of the wall We met—yes, he and I— Who had not faced in camp or hall Since we bade home good-bye, And what once happened came back—all— Out of those years gone by. And that strange woman whom we knew And loved—long dead and gone, Whose poor half-perished residue, Tombless and trod, lay yon! But at this moment to our view Rose like a phantom wan. And in his fixed face I could see, Lit by a lurid shine, The drama re-enact which she Had dyed incarnadine For us, and more. And doubtless he Beheld it too in mine. A start, as at one slightly known, And with an indifferent air We passed, without a sign being shown That, as it real were, A memory-acted scene had thrown Its tragic shadow there. THE DEATH OF REGRET I OPENED my shutter at sunrise, And looked at the hill hard by, And I heartily grieved for the comrade Who wandered up there to die. I let in the morn on the morrow, And failed not to think of him then, As he trod up that rise in the twilight, And never came down again. I undid the shutter a week thence, But not until after I’d turned Did I call back his last departure By the upland there discerned. Uncovering the casement long later, I bent to my toil till the gray, When I said to myself, “Ah—what ails me, To forget him all the day!” As daily I flung back the shutter In the same blank bald routine, He scarcely once rose to remembrance Through a month of my facing the scene. And ah, seldom now do I ponder At the window as heretofore On the long valued one who died yonder, And wastes by the sycamore. IN THE DAYS OF CRINOLINE A PLAIN tilt-bonnet on her head She took the path across the leaze. —Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said, “Too dowdy that, for coquetries, So I can hoe at ease.” But when she had passed into the heath, And gained the wood beyond the flat, She raised her skirts, and from beneath Unpinned and drew as from a sheath An ostrich-feathered hat. And where the hat had hung she now Concealed and pinned the dowdy hood, And set the hat upon her brow, And thus emerging from the wood Tripped on in jaunty mood. The sun was low and crimson-faced As two came that way from the town, And plunged into the wood untraced . . . When separately therefrom they paced The sun had quite gone down. The hat and feather disappeared, The dowdy hood again was donned, And in the gloom the fair one neared Her home and husband dour, who conned Calmly his blue-eyed blonde. “To-day,” he said, “you have shown good sense, A dress so modest and so meek Should always deck your goings hence Alone.” And as a recompense He kissed her on the cheek. THE ROMAN GRAVEMOUNDS