On Looking at a Copy of Alice Meynell's Poems, Given Me, Years Ago, by a Friend Who Has Not, Cannot Have

A whispered greeting, long ago.
Faint pencil-marks run to and fro

Scoring the lines I loved to quote.

A sea-shore of white, shoaling sand,
Blue creeks zigzagging through marsh-grasses,
Sand pipers, and a wind which passes

Cloudily silent up the land.

Upon the high edge of the sea
A great four-master sleeps; three hours
Her bowsprit has not cleared those flowers.

I read and look alternately.

It all comes back again, but dim
As pictures on a winking wall
Hidden save when the dark clouds fall

Or crack to show the moon's bright rim.

I well remember what I was,
And what I wanted. You, unwise
With sore unwisdom, had no eyes

For what was patently the cause.

So are we sport of others' blindness,
We who could see right well alone.
What were you made of -- wood or stone?

Yet I remember you with kindness.

You gave this book to me to ease
The smart in me you could not heal.

Your gift a mirror -- woe or weal.

We sat beneath the apple-trees.

And I remember how they rang,
These words, like bronze cathedral bells
Down ancient lawns, or citadels

Thundering with gongs where choirs sang.

Silent the sea, the earth, the sky,
And in my heart a silent weeping.
Who has not sown can know no reaping!

Bitter conclusion and no lie.

O heart that sorrows, heart that bleeds,
Heart that was never mine, your words
Were like the pecking Autumn birds

Stealing away my garnered seeds.

No future where there is no past!

O cherishing grief which laid me bare,
I wrapped you like a wintry air

About me. Poor enthusiast!

How strange that tumult, looking back.
The ink is pale, the letters fade.
The verses seem to be well made,

But I have lived the almanac.

And you are dead these drifted years,
How many I forget. And she
Who wrote the book, her tragedy

Long since dried up its scalding tears.

I read of her death yesterday,
Frail lady whom I never knew
And knew so well. Would I could strew

Her grave with pansies, blue and grey.

Would I could stand a little space
Under a blowing, brightening sky,
And watch the sad leaves fall and lie

Gently upon that lonely place.

So cried her heart, a feverish thing.
But clay is still, and clay is cold,
And I was young, and I am old,
And in December what birds sing!

Go, wistful book, go back again
Upon your shelf and gather dust.
I've seen the glitter through the rust

Of old, long years, I've known the pain.

I've recollected both of you,
But I shall recollect no more.
Between us I must shut the door.

The living have so much to do.

Who Has Not, Cannot Have

Lances slanted against a froward sky,

So do the days of my life appear before me,

O verily Beloved.
Tempt me not, therefore, that I linger
With my long, pointed, red morocco shoes
Scuffing the fallen vine-leaves

A-skip upon the lozenged marbles of your floor.

I am not a man for chess and blue cushions,

For sheep's-eyeing across lute-strings

Of a dapper afternoon.

What were you among the cooks and water-boys,
Camping on a wind-vexed plain at nightfall
Amid the chattering stalks of last year's grasses,
While I, in some lost distance, wage a war
Against the goblins of a mouldering generation?

Would you follow my torn banners where they flicker
In and out of the cloven bellies of mountains,
And the hail-stones gash like javelins,
And the sun dries up the roots of hair
Till my horse is naked as a woman
Bartered for an arid territory?
There are such, my lady,
And I have lands and lances to compel them,
And owe them nothing but a five-petalled kiss

Blooming between a brace of bloody battles.