Winter words

1. At day-close in November

 The ten hours' light is abating,
 And a late bird wings across,
 Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
 Give their black heads a toss.

 Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,
 Float past like specks in the eye;
 I set every tree in my June time,
 And now they obscure the sky.

 And the children who ramble through here
 Conceive that there never has been
 A time when no tall trees grew here,
 That none will in time be seen.

2. Midnight on the Great Western

 In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,
 And the roof-lamp's oily flame
 Played down on his listless form and face,
 Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,
 Or whence he came.

 In the band of his hat the journeying boy
 Had a ticket stuck; and a string
 Around his neck bore the key of his box,
 That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams
 Like a living thing.

 What past can be yours, O journeying boy
 Towards a world unknown,
 Who calmly, as if incurious quite
 On all at stake, can undertake
 This plunge alone?

 Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,
 Our rude realms far above,
 Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete
 This region of sin that you find you in,
 But are not of?

3. Wagtail and Baby

 A baby watched a ford, whereto
 A wagtail came for drinking;
 A blaring bull went wading through,
 The wagtail showed no shrinking.

 A stallion splashed his way across,
 The birdie nearly sinking;
 He gave his plumes a twitch and toss,
 And held his own unblinking.

 Next saw the baby round the spot
 A mongrel slowly slinking;
 The wagtail gazed, but faltered not
 In dip and sip and prinking.

 A perfect gentleman then neared;
 The wagtail, in a winking,
 With terror rose and disappeared;
 The baby fell a-thinking.

4. The little old table

 Creak, little wood thing, creak,
 When I touch you with elbow or knee;
 That is the way you speak
 Of one who gave you to me!

 You, little table, she brought -
 Brought me with her own hand,
 As she looked at me with a thought
 That I did not understand.

 - Whoever owns it anon,
 And hears it, will never know
 What a history hangs upon
 This creak from long ago.

5. The choirmaster's burial

 He often would ask us
 That, when he died,
 After playing so many
 To their last rest,
 If out of us any
 Should here abide,
 And it would not task us,
 We would with our lutes
 Play over him
 By his grave-brim
 The psalm he liked best -
 The one whose sense suits
 "Mount Ephraim" -
 And perhaps we should seem
 To him, in Death's dream,
 Like the seraphim.

 As soon as I knew
 That his spirit was gone
 I thoguht this his due,
 And spoke thereupon.
 "I think," said the vicar,
 "A read service quicker
 Than viols out-of-doors
 In these frosts and hoars.
 That old-fashioned way
 Requires a fine day,
 And it seems to me
 It had better not be."

 Hence, that afternoon,
 Though never knew he
 That his wish could not be,
 To get through it faster
 They buried the master
 Without any tune.

 But 'twas said that, when
 At the dead of next night
 The vicar looked out,
 There struck on his ken
 Thronged roundabout,
 Where the frost was graying
 The headstoned grass,
 A band all in white
 Like the saints in church-glass,
 Singing and playing
 The ancient stave
 By the choirmaster's grave.

 Such the tenor man told
 When he had grown old.

6. Proud songsters

 The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
 And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
 And as it gets dark loud nightingales
    In bushes
 Pipe, as they can when April wears,
    As if all Time were theirs.

 These are brand-new birds of twelve-months' growing,
 Which a year ago, or less than twain,
 No finches were, nor nightingales,
    Nor thrushes,
 But only particles of grain,
    And earth, and air, and rain.

7. At the railway station, Upway

 "There is not much that I can do,
 For I've no money that's quite my own!"
 Spoke up the pitying child -
 A little boy with a violin
 At the station before the train came in, -
 "But I can play my fiddle to you,
 And a nice one 'tis, and good in tone!"

 The man in the handcuffs smiled;
 The constable looked, and he smiled, too,
 As the fiddle began to twang;
 And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang
 With grimful glee:
    "This life so free
    Is the thing for me!"
 And the constable smiled, and said no word,
 As if unconscious of what he heard;
 And so they went on till the train came in -
 The convict, and boy with the violin.

8. Before life and after

 A time there was - as one may guess
 And as, indeed, earth's testimonies tell -
 Before the birth of consciousness,
 When all went well.

 None suffered sickness, love, or loss,
 None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;
 None cared whatever crash or cross
 Brought wrack to things.

 If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,
 If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;
 If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,
 No sense was stung.

 But the disease of feeling germed,
 And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;
 Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed
 How long, how long?