To his devoted heart*
Who, young, had loved his ageing mate for life,
In late lone years Time gave the elder's part,
Time gave the bridegroom's boast, Time gave a younger wife.
A wilder prank and plot
Time soon will promise, threaten, offering me
Impossible things that Nature suffers not—
A daughter's riper mind, a child's seniority.
Oh, by my filial tears
Mourned all too young, Father! On this my head
Time yet will force at last the longer years,
Claiming some strange respect for me from you, the dead.
Nay, nay! Too new to know
Time's conjuring is, too great to understand.
Memory has not died; it leaves me so—
Leaning a fading brow on your unfaded hand.
*Dr. Johnson outlived by thirty years his wife, who was twenty years his senior.
THE THRESHING MACHINE
No "fan is in his hand" for these
Young villagers beneath the trees,
Watching the wheels. But I recall
The rhythm of rods that rise and fall,
Purging the harvest, over-seas.
No fan, no flail, no threshing-floor!
And all their symbols evermore
Forgone in England now—the sign,
The visible pledge, the threat divine,
The chaff dispersed, the wheat in store.
The unbreathing engine marks no tune,
Steady at sunrise, steady at noon,
Inhuman, perfect, saving time,
And saving measure, and saving rhyme—
And did our Ruskin speak too soon?
"No noble strength on earth" he sees
"Save Hercules' arm"; his grave decrees
Curse wheel and steam. As the wheels ran
I saw the other strength of man,
I knew the brain of Hercules.