drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness 10 Travelling across the wet mead? to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,0Heard no more again far or near? meadow inattention Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, 15 Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,0 northward And the woman calling. Dec. 1912 1914
The Workbox
'See, here's the workbox, little wife, That I made of polished oak.' He was a joiner,0 of village life; carpenter She came of borough folk.0 townspeople
5 He holds the present up to her
As with a smile she nears And answers to the profferer, ' 'Twill last all my sewing years!'
'I warrant it will. And longer too. io 'Tis a scantling0 that I got small piece of wood Off poor John Wayward's coffin, who Died of they knew not what.
'The shingled pattern that seems to cease Against your box's rim 15 Continues right on in the piece That's underground with him.
'And while I worked it made me think Of timber's varied doom; One inch where people eat and drink, 20
The next inch in a tomb.
.
DURING WIND AND RAIN / 188 3
'But why do you look so white, my dear,
And turn aside your face?
You knew not that good lad, I fear,
Though he came from your native place?' 25 'How could I know that good young man,
Though he came from my native town,
When he must have left far earlier than
I was a woman grown?' 'Ah, no. I should have understood!
30 It shocked you that I gave
To you one end of a piece of wood
Whose other is in a grave?' 'Don't, dear, despise my intellect,
Mere accidental things
35 Of that sort never have effect
On my imaginings.' Yet still her lips were limp and wan,
Her face still held aside,
As if she had known not only John,
40 But known of what he died.
1914
During Wind and Rain
They sing their dearest songs?
He, she, all of them?yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play; 5 With the candles mooning0 each face. . . . lighting
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! They clear the creeping moss?
Elders and juniors?aye,
io Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat. . . .
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white storm-birds wing across. 15 They are blithely breakfasting all?
Men and maidens?yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee. . . .
.
