“FOUR-PAWS” IN LONDON
Four-paws, we know the sun is white At dawn in Hampshire when the night Deserts those frozen miles, When robin creaks from wintry bush And early milk-boy’s breeches brush The hoar-frost from the stiles;
Yet shall you never hear him more Insistent at our cottage door Nor of his spoils partake, Alas, poor puss who stir and yawn Uneasy in the London dawn And, in a flat, awake.
Four-paws, forgive us! When apprised Of our departure you devised, No doubt, some darling plan Of exodus that should surpass His who removed last Michaelmas— Your friend the dairy-man:—
A mightier waggon on the road You pictured and so vast a load That all should turn and look,— Betsey precarious on the shaft, Master and Mistress fore and aft, The carter and the cook,
Nurse, with her knitting, in mid-air, Carpets in bales, your favourite chair And (the progressive path With added glory to invest) Our Four-paws couchant on the crest Of an inverted bath.
Alas, what difference disgraced Our flight! An obscure van replaced The customary wain; And you, with many a mournful cry, Fettered by Betsey in the fly And hampered in the train.
And now you’re here. Well, it may be The sun does rise in Battersea Although to-day be dark, Life is not shorn of loves and hates While there are sparrows on the slates And keepers in the Park:
And you yourself will come to learn The ways of London and in turn Assume your cockney cares, Like other folk who live in flats, Chasing your purely abstract rats Upon the concrete stairs.
TO MY SISTER DOROTHY,
A PASTE BROOCH
Time, cunning smith, hath set you in my heart Like stones in silver none may wrest apart; Not counterfeit as these our loves shall stay When sullen-footed Time hath paced away.
SESTINA
TO D. E.
I saw myself encircled in the grey Of your grey eyes, Dear Love, as in a glass; In place of lurking glooms I come their way As idle ghosts through magic mirrors pass Or shifty clouds bewilder a spring day Or windy shadows dusk the summer grass.
And as swift sickles lop the hedge-row grass, As ghosts scent out the dawn with faces grey And flee before the stirring feet of day, As magic shivers in a splintered glass, So all the shaken pictures of me pass Even with the moving of your head away.
Yet would your head be ever turned my way, Only our peace is fugitive as grass:— Beyond the clapping lintels footsteps pass, Shake the snared joy from quiet’s cobweb grey— O who drinks silence from a jolted glass, Who deals in stillness on a market-day?
Our joys go begging for a gentle day, They are swayed as weed-stems in a water-way, Hurt as blind lips that drain a broken glass, Blown down by breath as petals flung on grass, Thinned as gold hair dull sorrow braids with grey, Lopped short as willow-tufts where cattle pass.
This noisy horde of minutes never pass, This patchwork crew;—they throng us day by day, Hint of silk linings to their cloaks of grey, Cleave out strong-elbowed their ungentle way, Bruise the poor joy as legions tread the grass, Or as wet fingers rub a moaning glass.
There is no day ringed round with seas of glass, No island day, where like-faced minutes pass Fingered on gathered mouth through breathless grass With close-girt garment lest the bloom of day Be brushed or pollen spilt along their way,— Or lest my face be shook from your eyes’ grey.
O dear grey eyes, though ruder minutes pass And dusk the glass, your heart is turned my way Wherein all day my face springs up like grass.