At Castle Boterel
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s I drive to the junction of lane and highway,And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,I look behind at the fading byway,And see on its slope, now glistening wet,Distinctly yet Myself and a girlish form benightedIn dry March weather. We climb the roadBeside a chaise. We had just alightedTo ease the sturdy pony’s loadWhen he sighed and slowed. What we did as we climbed, and what we talked ofMatters not much, nor to what it led, ―Something that life will not be balked ofWithout rude reason till hope is dead,And feeling fled. It filled but a minute. But was there everA time of such quality, since or before,In that hill’s story ? To one mind never,Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,By thousands more. Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,And much have they faced there, first and last,Of the transitory in Earth’s long order ;But what they record in colour and castIs—that we two passed. And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,In mindless rote, has ruled from sightThe substance now, one phantom figureRemains on the slope, as when that nightSaw us alight. I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,I look back at it amid the rainFor the very last time; for my sand is sinking,And I shall traverse old love’s domainNever again.
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