Though thirty years of blur and blot

      Have slid since I beheld that spot,

      And saw in curious converse there

         Moving slowly, moving sadly

         That mysterious tragic pair,

      Its olden look may linger on —

      All but the couple; they have gone.

      Whither?  Who knows, indeed.. And yet

      To me, when nights are weird and wet,

      Without those comrades there at tryst

         Creeping slowly, creeping sadly,

         That lone lane does not exist.

      There they seem brooding on their pain,

      And will, while such a lane remain.

         If ever joy leave

      An abiding sting of sorrow,

      So befell it on the morrow

         Of that May eve.

         The travelled sun dropped

      To the north-west, low and lower,

      The pony’s trot grew slower,

         And then we stopped.

         “This cosy house just by

      I must call at for a minute,

      A sick man lies within it

         Who soon will die.

         “He wished to marry me,

      So I am bound, when I drive near him,

      To inquire, if but to cheer him,

         How he may be.”

         A message was sent in,

      And wordlessly we waited,

      Till some one came and stated

         The bulletin.

         And that the sufferer said,

      For her call no words could thank her;

      As his angel he must rank her

         Till life’s spark fled.

         Slowly we drove away,

      When I turned my head, although not

      Called; why so I turned I know not

         Even to this day.

         And lo, there in my view

      Pressed against an upper lattice

      Was a white face, gazing at us

         As we withdrew.

         And well did I divine

      It to be the man’s there dying,

      Who but lately had been sighing

         For her pledged mine.

         Then I deigned a deed of hell;

      It was done before I knew it;

      What devil made me do it

         I cannot tell!

         Yes, while he gazed above,

      I put my arm about her

      That he might see, nor doubt her

         My plighted Love.

         The pale face vanished quick,

      As if blasted, from the casement,

      And my shame and self-abasement

         Began their prick.

         And they prick on, ceaselessly,

      For that stab in Love’s fierce fashion

      Which, unfired by lover’s passion,

         Was foreign to me.

         She smiled at my caress,

      But why came the soft embowment

      Of her shoulder at that moment

         She did not guess.

         Long long years has he lain

      In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather:

      What tears there, bared to weather,

         Will cleanse that stain!

         Love is long-suffering, brave,

      Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel;

      But O, too, Love is cruel,

         Cruel as the grave.

      I play my sweet old airs —

         The airs he knew

         When our love was true —

         But he does not balk

         His determined walk,

      And passes up the stairs.

      I sing my songs once more,

         And presently hear

         His footstep near

         As if it would stay;

         But he goes his way,

      And shuts a distant door.

      So I wait for another morn

         And another night

         In this soul-sick blight;

         And I wonder much

         As I sit, why such

      A woman as I was born!

      My spirit will not haunt the mound

         Above my breast,

      But travel, memory-possessed,

      To where my tremulous being found

         Life largest, best.

      My phantom-footed shape will go

         When nightfall grays

      Hither and thither along the ways

      I and another used to know

         In backward days.

      And there you’ll find me, if a jot

         You still should care

      For me, and for my curious air;

      If otherwise, then I shall not,

         For you, be there.

      There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand

      For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,

      Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,

      I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.

      In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man’s friend —

      Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend:

      Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I,

      But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky.

      In