Out of the past there rises a week —

            Who shall read the years O! —

         Out of the past there rises a week

            Enringed with a purple zone.

         Out of the past there rises a week

         When thoughts were strung too thick to speak,

      And the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone.

         In that week there was heard a singing —

            Who shall spell the years, the years! —

         In that week there was heard a singing,

            And the white owl wondered why.

         In that week, yea, a voice was ringing,

         And forth from the casement were candles flinging

      Radiance that fell on the deodar and lit up the path thereby.

         Could that song have a mocking note? —

            Who shall unroll the years O! —

         Could that song have a mocking note

            To the white owl’s sense as it fell?

         Could that song have a mocking note

         As it trilled out warm from the singer’s throat,

      And who was the mocker and who the mocked when two felt all was well?

         In a tedious trampling crowd yet later —

            Who shall bare the years, the years! —

         In a tedious trampling crowd yet later,

            When silvery singings were dumb;

         In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her,

         Mid murks of night I stood to await her,

      And the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was come.

         She said with a travel-tired smile —

            Who shall lift the years O! —

         She said with a travel-tired smile,

            Half scared by scene so strange;

         She said, outworn by mile on mile,

         The blurred lamps wanning her face the while,

      “O Love, I am here; I am with you!”.. Ah, that there should have come a change!

         O the doom by someone spoken —

            Who shall unseal the years, the years! —

         O the doom that gave no token,

            When nothing of bale saw we:

         O the doom by someone spoken,

         O the heart by someone broken,

      The heart whose sweet reverberances are all time leaves to me.

         Sitting on the bridge

         Past the barracks, town and ridge,

      At once the spirit seized us

      To sing a song that pleased us —

      As “The Fifth” were much in rumour;

      It was “Whilst I’m in the humour,

         Take me, Paddy, will you now?”

         And a lancer soon drew nigh,

         And his Royal Irish eye

         Said, “Willing, faith, am I,

      O, to take you anyhow, dears,

         To take you anyhow.”

         But, lo! – dad walking by,

         Cried, “What, you lightheels!  Fie!

         Is this the way you roam

         And mock the sunset gleam?”

         And he marched us straightway home,

      Though we said, “We are only, daddy,

      Singing, ‘Will you take me, Paddy?’”

         – Well, we never saw from then

         If we sang there anywhen,

         The soldier dear again,

      Except at night in dream-time,

         Except at night in dream.

      Perhaps that soldier’s fighting

         In a land that’s far away,

      Or he may be idly plighting

         Some foreign hussy gay;

      Or perhaps his bones are whiting

         In the wind to their decay!.

         Ah! – does he mind him how

         The girls he saw that day

      On the bridge, were sitting singing

      At the time of curfew-ringing,

      “Take me, Paddy; will you now, dear?

         Paddy, will you now?”

      When he lit the candles there,

      And the light fell on his hand,

      And it trembled as he scanned

      Her and me, his vanquished air

      Hinted that his dream was done,

      And I saw he had begun

         To understand.

      When Love’s viol was unstrung,

      Sore I wished the hand that shook

      Had been mine that shared her book

      While that evening hymn was sung,

      His the victor’s, as he lit

      Candles where he had bidden us sit

         With vanquished look.

      Now her dust lies listless there,

      His afar from tending hand,

      What avails the victory scanned?

      Does he smile from upper air:

      “Ah, my friend, your dream is done;

      And ’tis you who have begun

         To understand!

      I travel as a phantom now,

      For people do not wish to see

      In flesh and blood so bare a bough

         As Nature makes of me.

      And thus I visit bodiless

      Strange