A very West-of-Wessex girl,

         As blithe as blithe could be,

         Was once well-known to me,

      And she would laud her native town,

         And hope and hope that we

      Might sometime study up and down

         Its charms in company.

      But never I squired my Wessex girl

         In jaunts to Hoe or street

         When hearts were high in beat,

      Nor saw her in the marbled ways

         Where market-people meet

      That in her bounding early days

         Were friendly with her feet.

      Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl,

         When midnight hammers slow

         From Andrew’s, blow by blow,

      As phantom draws me by the hand

         To the place – Plymouth Hoe —

      Where side by side in life, as planned,

         We never were to go!

         To my native place

         Bent upon returning,

         Bosom all day burning

         To be where my race

      Well were known, ’twas much with me

      There to dwell in amity.

         Folk had sought their beds,

         But I hailed: to view me

         Under the moon, out to me

         Several pushed their heads,

      And to each I told my name,

      Plans, and that therefrom I came.

         “Did you?..  Ah, ’tis true

         I once heard, back a long time,

         Here had spent his young time,

         Some such man as you.

      Good-night.”  The casement closed again,

      And I was left in the frosty lane.

      The moving sun-shapes on the spray,

      The sparkles where the brook was flowing,

      Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,

      These were the things we wished would stay;

         But they were going.

      Seasons of blankness as of snow,

      The silent bleed of a world decaying,

      The moan of multitudes in woe,

      These were the things we wished would go;

         But they were staying.

      Then we looked closelier at Time,

      And saw his ghostly arms revolving

      To sweep off woeful things with prime,

      Things sinister with things sublime

         Alike dissolving.

      I paused to read a letter of hers

         By the moon’s cold shine,

      Eyeing it in the tenderest way,

      And edging it up to catch each ray

         Upon her light-penned line.

      I did not know what years would flow

         Of her life’s span and mine

      Ere I read another letter of hers

         By the moon’s cold shine!

      I chance now on the last of hers,

         By the moon’s cold shine;

      It is the one remaining page

      Out of the many shallow and sage

         Whereto she set her sign.

      Who could foresee there were to be

         Such letters of pain and pine

      Ere I should read this last of hers

         By the moon’s cold shine!

      O poet, come you haunting here

      Where streets have stolen up all around,

      And never a nightingale pours one

         Full-throated sound?

      Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,

      Thought you to find all just the same

      Here shining, as in hours of old,

         If you but came?

      What will you do in your surprise

      At seeing that changes wrought in Rome

      Are wrought yet more on the misty slope

         One time your home?

      Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?

      Swing the doors open noisily?

      Show as an umbraged ghost beside

         Your ancient tree?

      Or will you, softening, the while

      You further and yet further look,

      Learn that a laggard few would fain

         Preserve your nook?.

      – Where the Piazza steps incline,

      And catch late light at eventide,

      I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,

         “’Twas here he died.”

      I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,

      Where day and night a pyramid keeps

      Uplifted its white hand, and said,

         “’Tis there he sleeps.”

      Pleasanter now it is to hold

      That here, where sang he, more of him

      Remains than where he, tuneless, cold,

         Passed to the dim.

      “Ah Madam; you’ve indeed come back here?

         ’Twas sad – your husband’s so swift death,

      And you away!  You shouldn’t have left him:

            It hastened his last breath.”

      “Dame, I am not the lady you think me;

         I know not her, nor know her name;

      I’ve