As
I lay awake at night-time
In an ancient country barrack known to ancient cannoneers,
And recalled the hopes that heralded each seeming brave and
bright time
Of my primal purple years,
Much it haunted me that, nigh
there,
I had borne my bitterest loss—when One who went, came not
again;
In a joyless hour of discord, in a joyless-hued July
there—
A July just such as then.
And as thus I brooded
longer,
With my faint eyes on the feeble square of wan-lit window
frame,
A quick conviction sprung within me, grew, and grew yet
stronger,
That the month-night was the same,
Too, as that which saw her
leave me
On the rugged ridge of Waterstone, the peewits plaining round;
p. 4And a
lapsing twenty years had ruled that—as it were to grieve
me—
I should near the once-loved ground.
Though but now a war-worn
stranger
Chance had quartered here, I rose up and descended to the
yard.
All was soundless, save the troopers’ horses tossing at the
manger,
And the sentry keeping guard.
Through the gateway I betook
me
Down the High Street and beyond the lamps, across the battered
bridge,
Till the country darkness clasped me and the friendly shine
forsook me,
And I bore towards the Ridge,
With a dim unowned emotion
Saying softly: “Small my reason, now at midnight, to be
here . . .
Yet a sleepless swain of fifty with a brief romantic notion
May retrace a track so dear.”
Thus I walked with thoughts
half-uttered
Up the lane I knew so well, the grey, gaunt, lonely Lane of
Slyre;
And at whiles behind me, far at sea, a sullen thunder muttered
As I mounted high and higher.
p. 5Till, the upper roadway quitting,
I adventured on the open drouthy downland thinly grassed,
While the spry white scuts of conies flashed before me, earthward
flitting,
And an arid wind went past.
Round about me bulged the
barrows
As before, in antique silence—immemorial funeral
piles—
Where the sleek herds trampled daily the remains of flint-tipt
arrows
Mid the thyme and chamomiles;
And the Sarsen stone there,
dateless,
On whose breast we had sat and told the zephyrs many a tender
vow,
Held the heat of yester sun, as sank thereon one fated
mateless
From those far fond hours till now.
Maybe flustered by my
presence
Rose the peewits, just as all those years back, wailing soft and
loud,
And revealing their pale pinions like a fitful phosphorescence
Up against the cope of cloud,
Where their dolesome
exclamations
Seemed the voicings of the self-same throats I had heard when
life was green,
p. 6Though since
that day uncounted frail forgotten generations
Of their kind had flecked the scene.—
And so, living long and
longer
In a past that lived no more, my eyes discerned there,
suddenly,
That a figure broke the skyline—first in vague contour,
then stronger,
And was crossing near to me.
Some long-missed familiar
gesture,
Something wonted, struck me in the figure’s pause to list
and heed,
Till I fancied from its handling of its loosely wrapping
vesture
That it might be She indeed.
’Twas not reasonless:
below there
In the vale, had been her home; the nook might hold her even
yet,
And the downlands were her father’s fief; she still might
come and go there;—
So I rose, and said, “Agnette!”
With a little leap,
half-frightened,
She withdrew some steps; then letting intuition smother fear
In a place so long-accustomed, and as one whom thought
enlightened,
She replied: “What—that
voice?—here!”
p. 7“Yes, Agnette!—And did the
occasion
Of our marching hither make you think I might walk where
we two—”
“O, I often come,” she murmured with a moment’s
coy evasion,
“(’Tis not far),—and—think
of you.”
Then I took her hand, and led
her
To the ancient people’s stone whereon I had sat.
There now sat we;
And together talked, until the first reluctant shyness fled
her,
And she spoke confidingly.
“It is just as
ere we parted!”
Said she, brimming high with joy.—“And when, then,
came you here, and why?”
“—Dear, I could not sleep for thinking of our
trystings when twin-hearted.”
She responded, “Nor could I.
“There are few things I
would rather
Than be wandering at this spirit-hour—lone-lived, my
kindred dead—
On this wold of well-known feature I inherit from my father:
Night or day, I have no dread . . .
“O I wonder, wonder
whether
Any heartstring bore a signal-thrill between us twain or
no?—
p. 8Some such
influence can, at times, they say, draw severed souls
together.”
I said, “Dear, we’ll dream it
so.”
Each one’s hand the
other’s grasping,
And a mutual forgiveness won, we sank to silent thought,
A large content in us that seemed our rended lives reclasping,
And contracting years to nought.
Till I, maybe overweary
From the lateness, and a wayfaring so full of strain and
stress
For one no longer buoyant, to a peak so steep and eery,
Sank to slow unconsciousness . . .
How long I slept I knew
not,
But the brief warm summer night had slid when, to my swift
surprise,
A red upedging sun, of glory chambered mortals view not,
Was blazing on my eyes,
From the Milton Woods to
Dole-Hill
All the spacious landscape lighting, and around about my feet
Flinging tall thin tapering shadows from the meanest mound and
mole-hill,
And on trails the ewes had beat.
p. 9She was sitting still beside me,
Dozing likewise; and I turned to her, to take her hanging
hand;
When, the more regarding, that which like a spectre shook and
tried me
In her image then I scanned;
That which Time’s
transforming chisel
Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too
well,
In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven,
grizzle—
Pits, where peonies once did dwell.
She had wakened, and
perceiving
(I surmise) my sigh and shock, my quite involuntary dismay,
Up she started, and—her wasted figure all throughout it
heaving—
Said, “Ah, yes: I am thus by day!
“Can you really wince
and wonder
That the sunlight should reveal you such a thing of skin and
bone,
As if unaware a Death’s-head must of need lie not far
under
Flesh whose years out-count your own?
“Yes: that movement was
a warning
Of the worth of man’s devotion!—Yes, Sir, I am
old,” said she,
p. 10“And
the thing which should increase love turns it quickly into
scorning—
And your new-won heart from me!”
Then she went, ere I could
call her,
With the too proud temper ruling that had parted us before,
And I saw her form descend the slopes, and smaller grow and
smaller,
Till I caught its course no more . . .
True; I might have dogged her
downward;
—But it may be (though I know not) that this trick
on us of Time
Disconcerted and confused me.—Soon I bent my footsteps
townward,
Like to one who had watched a crime.
Well I knew my native
weakness,
Well I know it still. I cherished her reproach like
physic-wine,
For I saw in that emaciate shape of bitterness and bleakness
A nobler soul than mine.
Did I not return, then,
ever?—
Did we meet again?—mend all?—Alas, what greyhead
perseveres!—
Soon I got the Route elsewhither.—Since that hour I have
seen her never:
Love is lame at fifty years.
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