Slip back, Time! Yet again I am nearing Castle and keep, uprearing Gray, as in my prime. At the inn Smiling close, why is it Not as on my visit When hope and I were twin? Groom and jade Whom I found here, moulder; Strange the tavern-holder, Strange the tap-maid. Here I hired Horse and […]

“I mean to build a hall anon, And shape two turrets there, And a broad newelled stair, And a cool well for crystal water; Yes; I will build a hall anon, Plant roses love shall feed upon, And apple trees and pear.” He set to build the manor-hall, And shaped the turrets there, And the […]

“Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never miss The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray. Hence the only prime And real love-rhyme That I know by heart, And that leaves no smart, Is the purl of a little valley […]

March 1870–March 1913 I O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free – The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me. II The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away In a nether sky, […]

Beeny did not quiver, Juliot grew not gray, Thin Valency’s river Held its wonted way. Bos seemed not to utter Dimmest note of dirge, Targan mouth a mutter To its creamy surge. Yet though these, unheeding, Listless, passed the hour Of her spirit’s speeding, She had, in her flower, Sought and loved the places – […]

Hereto I come to interview a ghost; Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me? Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost, And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me. Where you will next be there’s no knowing, Facing round about me everywhere, With your nut-coloured hair, And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and […]

Why go to Saint-Juliot? What’s Juliot to me? I was but made fancy By some necromancy That much of my life claims the spot as its key. Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West, And a maiden abiding Thereat as in hiding; Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed. And of how, […]

As “legal representative” I read a missive not my own, On new designs the senders give For clothes, in tints as shown. Here figure blouses, gowns for tea, And presentation-trains of state, Charming ball-dresses, millinery, Warranted up to date. And this gay-pictured, spring-time shout Of Fashion, hails what lady proud? Her who before last year […]

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more: I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train, And need no setting open of the long familiar door As before. The change I notice in my once own quarters! […]

He does not think that I haunt here nightly: How shall I let him know That whither his fancy sets him wandering I, too, alertly go? – Hover and hover a few feet from him Just as I used to do, But cannot answer his words addressed me – Only listen thereto! When I could […]

She charged me with having said this and that To another woman long years before, In the very parlour where we sat, – Sat on a night when the endless pour Of rain on the roof and the road below Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . . – So charged […]

How she would have loved A party to-day! – Bright-hatted and gloved, With table and tray And chairs on the lawn Her smiles would have shone With welcomings . . . But She is shut, she is shut From friendship’s spell In the jailing shell Of her tiny cell. Or she would have reigned At […]

That love’s dull smart distressed my heart He shrewdly learnt to see, But that I was in love with a dead man Never suspected he. He searched for the trace of a pictured face, He watched each missive come, And a note that seemed like a love-line Made him look frozen and glum. He dogged […]

Between the folding sea-downs, In the gloom Of a wailful wintry nightfall, When the boom Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb, Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley From the shore To the chamber where I darkled, Sunk and sore With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before To salute […]

‘Love, while you were away there came to me – From whence I cannot tell – A plaintive lady pale and passionless, Who bent her eyes upon me critically, And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness, As if she knew me well.” “I saw no lady of that wistful sort As I came riding home. […]

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass Filling up your narrow room? You never preen or plume, Or look in a week at your full-length figure – Picture of bachelor gloom! “Well, when I dwelt in ancient England, Renting the valley farm, Thoughtless of all heart-harm, I used to gaze at the parson’s daughter, A […]

“Why do you stand in the dripping rye, Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee, When there are firesides near?” said I. “I told him I wished him dead,” said she. “Yea, cried it in my haste to one Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still; And die he did. And I hate the […]

I Queer are the ways of a man I know: He comes and stands In a careworn craze, And looks at the sands And the seaward haze, With moveless hands And face and gaze, Then turns to go . . . And what does he see when he gazes so? II They say he sees […]

Nobody says: Ah, that is the place Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago, What none of the Three Towns cared to know– The birth of a little girl of grace – The sweetest the house saw, first or last; Yet it was so On that day long past. Nobody thinks: There, there she […]

On Monday night I closed my door, And thought you were not as heretofore, And little cared if we met no more. I seemed on Tuesday night to trace Something beyond mere commonplace In your ideas, and heart, and face. On Wednesday I did not opine Your life would ever be one with mine, Though […]