At dawn he caught an eastward-going ferry, And all day long he steamed between great banks Which smelt of yellow thorn and loganberry. Then wharves appeared, and chimneys rose in ranks, Mast upon mast arose; the river’s flanks Were filled with English ships, and one he found Needing another stoker, being homeward bound. And all the time the trouble in his head Ran like a whirlwind moving him; he knew Since she was lost that he was better dead. He had no project outlined, what to do, Beyond go home; he joined the steamer’s crew. She sailed that night: he dulled his maddened soul, Plying the iron coal-slice on the bunker coal. Work did not clear the turmoil in his mind; Passion takes colour from the nature’s core; His misery was as his nature, blind. Life was still turmoil when he went ashore. To see his old love married lay before; To see another have her, drink the gall, Kicked like a dog without, while he within had all. * * * * * Soon he was at the Foxholes, at the place Whither, from over sea, his heart had turned Often at evening-ends in times of grace. But little outward change his eye discerned; A red rose at her bedroom window burned, Just as before. Even as of old the wasps Poised at the yellow plums: the gate creaked on its hasps, And the white fantails sidled on the roof Just as before; their pink feet, even as of old, Printed the frosty morning’s rime with proof. Still the zew-tallat’s thatch was green with mould; The apples on the withered boughs were gold. Men and the times were changed: "And I," said he, "Will go and not return, since she is not for me. "I’ll go, for it would be a scurvy thing To spoil her marriage, and besides, she cares For that half-priest she married with the ring. Small joy for me in seeing how she wears, Or seeing what he takes and what she shares. That beauty and those ways: she had such ways, There in the daffodils in those old April days." So with an impulse of good will he turned, Leaving that place of daffodils; the road Was paven sharp with memories which burned; He trod them strongly under as he strode. At the Green Turning’s forge the furnace glowed; Red dithying sparks flew from the crumpled soft Fold from the fire’s heart; down clanged the hammers oft. That was a bitter place to pass, for there Mary and he had often, often stayed To watch the horseshoe growing in the glare. It was a tryst in childhood when they strayed. There was a stile beside the forge; he laid His elbows on it, leaning, looking down The river-valley stretched with great trees turning brown. Infinite, too, because it reached the sky, And distant spires arose and distant smoke; The whiteness on the blue went stilly by; Only the clinking forge the stillness broke. Ryemeadows brook was there; The Roughs, the oak Where the White Woman walked; the black firs showed Around the Occleve homestead Mary’s new abode.