I was sitting,

            She was knitting,

      And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around;

         When there struck on us a sigh;

         “Ah – what is that?” said I:

      “Was it not you?” said she.  “A sigh did sound.”

            I had not breathed it,

            Nor the night-wind heaved it,

      And how it came to us we could not guess;

         And we looked up at each face

         Framed and glazed there in its place,

      Still hearkening; but thenceforth was silentness.

            Half in dreaming,

            “Then its meaning,”

      Said we, “must be surely this; that they repine

         That we should be the last

         Of stocks once unsurpassed,

      And unable to keep up their sturdy line.”

      There was a stunted handpost just on the crest,

         Only a few feet high:

      She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest,

         At the crossways close thereby.

      She leant back, being so weary, against its stem,

         And laid her arms on its own,

      Each open palm stretched out to each end of them,

         Her sad face sideways thrown.

      Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day

         Made her look as one crucified

      In my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way,

         And hurriedly “Don’t,” I cried.

      I do not think she heard.  Loosing thence she said,

         As she stepped forth ready to go,

      “I am rested now. – Something strange came into my head;

         I wish I had not leant so!”

      And wordless we moved onward down from the hill

         In the west cloud’s murked obscure,

      And looking back we could see the handpost still

         In the solitude of the moor.

      “It struck her too,” I thought, for as if afraid

         She heavily breathed as we trailed;

      Till she said, “I did not think how ’twould look in the shade,

         When I leant there like one nailed.”

      I, lightly: “There’s nothing in it.  For you, anyhow!”

         – “O I know there is not,” said she.

      “Yet I wonder.. If no one is bodily crucified now,

         In spirit one may be!”

      And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see

         In the running of Time’s far glass

      Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be

         Some day. – Alas, alas!

         When the spring comes round, and a certain day

      Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees

               And says, Remember,

            I begin again, as if it were new,

            A day of like date I once lived through,

            Whiling it hour by hour away;

               So shall I do till my December,

                  When spring comes round.

         I take my holiday then and my rest

      Away from the dun life here about me,

               Old hours re-greeting

            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.

         “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.”

         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