AT A HOUSE IN HAMPSTEAD
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POET, come you haunting hereWhere streets have stolen up all around,And never a nightingale pours oneFull-throated sound? Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,Thought you to find all just the sameHere shining, as in hours of old,If you but came? What will you do in your surpriseAt seeing that changes wrought in RomeAre wrought yet more on the misty slopeOne time your home? Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?Swing the doors open noisily?Show as an umbraged ghost besideYour ancient tree? Or will you, softening, the whileYou further and yet further look,Learn that a laggard few would fainPreserve your nook? . . . —Where the Piazza steps incline,And catch late light at eventide,I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,“’Twas here he died.” I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,Where day and night a pyramid keepsUplifted its white hand, and said,“’Tis there he sleeps.” Pleasanter now it is to holdThat here, where sang he, more of himRemains than where he, tuneless, cold,Passed to the dim. _July_ 1920. A WOMAN’S FANCY “AH Madam; you’ve indeed come back here?’Twas sad—your husband’s so swift death,And you away! You shouldn’t have left him:It hastened his last breath.” “Dame, I am not the lady you think me;I know not her, nor know her name;I’ve come to lodge here—a friendless woman;My health my only aim.” She came; she lodged. Wherever she rambledThey held her as no other thanThe lady named; and told how her husbandHad died a forsaken man. So often did they call her thuswiseMistakenly, by that man’s name,So much did they declare about him,That his past form and fame Grew on her, till she pitied his sorrowAs if she truly had been the cause—Yea, his deserter; and came to wonderWhat mould of man he was. “Tell me my history!” would exclaim she;“_Our_ history,” she said mournfully.“But _you_ know, surely, Ma’am?” they would answer,Much in perplexity. Curious, she crept to his grave one evening,And a second time in the dusk of the morrow;Then a third time, with crescent emotionLike a bereaved wife’s sorrow. No gravestone rose by the rounded hillock;—“I marvel why this is?” she said.—“He had no kindred, Ma’am, but you near.”—She set a stone at his head. She learnt to dream of him, and told them:“In slumber often uprises he,And says: ‘I am joyed that, after all, Dear,You’ve not deserted me!” At length died too this kinless woman,As he had died she had grown to crave;And at her dying she besought themTo bury her in his grave. Such said, she had paused; until she added:“Call me by his name on the stone,As I were, first to last, his dearest,Not she who left him lone!” And this they did. And so it became thereThat, by the strength of a tender whim,The stranger was she who bore his name there,Not she who wedded him.
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