Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

With the quiet sense that bring they must
Such throbs as at first, till I house with dust,
And in the numbness my heartsome zest
For things that were, be past repeating
When spring comes round.

TO THE MOON

“What have you looked at, Moon,
In your time,
Now long past your prime?”
“O, I have looked at, often looked at
Sweet, sublime,
Sore things, shudderful, night and noon
In my time.”

“What have you mused on, Moon,
In your day,
So aloof, so far away?”
“O, I have mused on, often mused on
Growth, decay,
Nations alive, dead, mad, aswoon,
In my day!”

“Have you much wondered, Moon,
On your rounds,
Self-wrapt, beyond Earth’s bounds?”
“Yea, I have wondered, often wondered
At the sounds
Reaching me of the human tune
On my rounds.”

“What do you think of it, Moon,
As you go?
Is Life much, or no?”
“O, I think of it, often think of it
As a show
God ought surely to shut up soon,
As I go.”

COPYING ARCHITECTURE IN AN OLD MINSTER

(Wimborne)

How smartly the quarters of the hour march by
That the jack-o’-clock never forgets;
Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp’s eye,
Or got the true twist of the ogee over,
A double ding-dong ricochetts.

Just so did he clang here before I came,
And so will he clang when I’m gone
Through the Minster’s cavernous hollows – the same
Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver
To the speechless midnight and dawn!

I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts,
Whose mould lies below and around.
Yes; the next “Come, come,” draws them out from their posts,
And they gather, and one shade appears, and another,
As the eve-damps creep from the ground.

See – a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb,
And a Duke and his Duchess near;
And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom,
And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber;
And shapes unknown in the rear.

Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan
To better ail-stricken mankind;
I catch their cheepings, though thinner than
The overhead creak of a passager’s pinion
When leaving land behind.

Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn,
And caution them not to come
To a world so ancient and trouble-torn,
Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness,
And ardours chilled and numb.

They waste to fog as I stir and stand,
And move from the arched recess,
And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand,
And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny
In a moment’s forgetfulness.

TO SHAKESPEARE AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS

Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,
Thou, who display’dst a life of common-place,
Leaving no intimate word or personal trace
Of high design outside the artistry
Of thy penned dreams,
Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally.

Through human orbits thy discourse to-day,
Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on
In harmonies that cow Oblivion,
And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect
Maintain a sway