"My keys' white shine, Now sallow, met a hand Even whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mine In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!"

And its clavier was filmed with fingers Like tapering flames--wan, cold-- Or the nebulous light that lingers In charnel mould.

"Gayer than most Was I," reverbed a drum; "The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! What a host I stirred--even when c.r.a.pe m.u.f.flings gagged me well-nigh dumb!"

Trilled an aged viol: "Much tune have I set free To spur the dance, since my first timid trial Where I had birth--far hence, in sun-swept Italy!"

And he feels apt touches on him From those that pressed him then; Who seem with their glance to con him, Saying, "Not again!"

"A holy calm,"

Mourned a shawm's voice subdued, "Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanct.i.tude."

"I faced the sock Nightly," tw.a.n.ged a sick lyre, "Over ranked lights! O charm of life in mock, O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!"

Thus they, till each past player Stroked thinner and more thin, And the morning sky grew grayer And day crawled in.

THE WOMAN I MET

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted A lamp-lit crowd; And anon there pa.s.sed me a soul departed, Who mutely bowed.

In my far-off youthful years I had met her, Full-pulsed; but now, no more life's debtor, Onward she slid In a shroud that furs half-hid.

"Why do you trouble me, dead woman, Trouble me; You whom I knew when warm and human?

--How it be That you quitted earth and are yet upon it Is, to any who ponder on it, Past being read!"

"Still, it is so," she said.

"These were my haunts in my olden sprightly Hours of breath; Here I went tempting frail youth nightly To their death; But you deemed me chaste--me, a tinselled sinner!

How thought you one with pureness in her Could pace this street Eyeing some man to greet?

"Well; your very simplicity made me love you Mid such town dross, Till I set not Heaven itself above you, Who grew my Cross; For you'd only nod, despite how I sighed for you; So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!

--What I suffered then Would have paid for the sins of ten!

"Thus went the days. I feared you despised me To fling me a nod Each time, no more: till love chastised me As with a rod That a fresh bland boy of no a.s.surance Should fire me with pa.s.sion beyond endurance, While others all I hated, and loathed their call.

"I said: 'It is his mother's spirit Hovering around To shield him, maybe!' I used to fear it, As still I found My beauty left no least impression, And remnants of pride withheld confession Of my true trade By speaking; so I delayed.

"I said: 'Perhaps with a costly flower He'll be beguiled.'

I held it, in pa.s.sing you one late hour, To your face: you smiled, Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there A single one that rivalled me there! . . .

Well: it's all past.

I died in the Lock at last."

So walked the dead and I together The quick among, Elbowing our kind of every feather Slowly and long; Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there That winter night By flaming jets of light.

She showed me Juans who feared their call-time, Guessing their lot; She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time, And that did not.

Till suddenly murmured she: "Now, tell me, Why asked you never, ere death befell me, To have my love, Much as I dreamt thereof?"

I could not answer. And she, well weeting All in my heart, Said: "G.o.d your guardian kept our fleeting Forms apart!"

Sighing and drawing her furs around her Over the shroud that tightly bound her, With wafts as from clay She turned and thinned away.

LONDON, 1918.

"IF IT'S EVER SPRING AGAIN"

(SONG)

If it's ever spring again, Spring again, I shall go where went I when Down the moor-c.o.c.k splashed, and hen, Seeing me not, amid their flounder, Standing with my arm around her; If it's ever spring again, Spring again, I shall go where went I then.

If it's ever summer-time, Summer-time, With the hay crop at the prime, And the cuckoos--two--in rhyme, As they used to be, or seemed to, We shall do as long we've dreamed to, If it's ever summer-time, Summer-time, With the hay, and bees achime.

THE TWO HOUSES

In the heart of night, When farers were not near, The left house said to the house on the right, "I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here."

Said the right, cold-eyed: "Newcomer here I am, Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide, Loose cas.e.m.e.nts, wormy beams, and doors that jam.

"Modern my wood, My hangings fair of hue; While my windows open as they should, And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.

"Your gear is gray, Your face wears furrows untold."

"--Yours might," mourned the other, "if you held, brother, The Presences from aforetime that I hold.

"You have not known Men's lives, deaths, toils, and teens; You are but a heap of stick and stone: A new house has no sense of the have-beens.

"Void as a drum You stand: I am packed with these, Though, strangely, living dwellers who come See not the phantoms all my substance sees!

"Visible in the morning Stand they, when dawn drags in; Visible at night; yet hint or warning Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.

"Babes new-brought-forth Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth; Yea, throng they as when first from the 'Byss upfetched.

"Dancers and singers Throb in me now as once; Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingers Of heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce.

"Note here within The bridegroom and the bride, Who smile and greet their friends and kin, And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.

"Where such inbe, A dwelling's character Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.

"Yet the blind folk My tenants, who come and go In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke, Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know."

"--Will the day come,"

Said the new one, awestruck, faint, "When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb - And with such spectral guests become acquaint?"