HOUSE AND MAN
ONE hour: as dim he and his house now look
As a reflection in a rippling brook,
While I remember him; but first, his house.
Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs
That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles
Part of the squirrels' track. In all those miles
Of forest silence and forest murmur, only
One house—"Lonely!" he said, "I wish it were
lonely"—
Which the trees looked upon from every side,
And that was his.
He waved good-bye to hide
A sigh that he converted to a laugh.
He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half
Ghost-like, half like a beggar's rag, clean wrung
And useless on the brier where it has hung
Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.
But why I call back man and house again
Is that now on a beech-tree's tip I see
As then I saw—I at the gate, and he
In the house darkness,—a magpie veering about,
A magpie like a weathercock in doubt.
THE GYPSY
A FORTNIGHT before Christmas Gypsies were every-
where:
Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to
the fair.
"My gentleman," said one, "You've got a lucky
face."
"And you've a luckier," I thought, "if such a grace
And impudence in rags are lucky." "Give a penny
For the poor baby's sake." "Indeed I have not any
Unless you can give change for a sovereign, my
dear."
"Then just half a pipeful of tobacco can you
spare?"
I gave it. With that much victory she laughed
content.
I should have given more, but off and away she
went
With her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoin
The rest before I could translate to its proper coin
Gratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then,
As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my pen
For her brother's music when he drummed the
tambourine
And stamped his feet, which made the workmen
passing grin,
While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally
Bacchanal dance
"Over the hills and far away." This and his glance
Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer,
Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked
stick, and steer,
Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas Corpses
to be.
Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany.
That night he peopled for me the hollow wooded
land,
More dark and wild than stormiest heavens, that I
searched and scanned
Like a ghost new-arrived. The gradations of the
dark
Were like an underworld of death, but for the spark
In the Gypsy boy's black eyes as he played and
stamped his tune,
"Over the hills and far away," and a crescent moon.
MAN AND DOG
"'TWILL take some getting." "Sir, I think 'twill
so."
The old man stared up at the mistletoe
That hung too high in the poplar's crest for plunder
Of any climber, though not for kissing under:
Then he went on against the north-east wind—
Straight but lame, leaning on a staff new-skinned,
Carrying a brolly, flag-basket, and old coat,—
Towards Alton, ten miles off. And he had not
Done less from Chilgrove where he pulled up docks.
'Twere best, if he had had "a money-box,"
To have waited there till the sheep cleared a field
For what a half-week's flint-picking would yield.
His mind was running on the work he had done
Since he left Christchurch in the New Forest, one
Spring in the 'seventies,—navvying on dock and
line
From Southampton to Newcastle-on-Tyne,—
In 'seventy-four a year of soldiering
With the Berkshires,—hoeing and harvesting
In half the shires where corn and couch will grow.
His sons, three sons, were fighting, but the hoe
And reap-hook he liked, or anything to do with
trees.
He fell once from a poplar tall as these:
The Flying Man they called him in hospital.
"If I flew now, to another world I'd fall."
He laughed and whistled to the small brown bitch
With spots of blue that hunted in the ditch.
Her foxy Welsh grandfather must have paired
Beneath him. He kept sheep in Wales and scared
Strangers, I will warrant, with his pearl eye
And trick of shrinking off as he were shy,
Then following close in silence for—for what?
"No rabbit, never fear, she ever got,
Yet always hunts. To-day she nearly had one:
She would and she wouldn't. 'Twas like that. The
bad one!
She's not much use, but still she's company,
Though I'm not. She goes everywhere with me.
So Alton I must reach to-night somehow:
I'll get no shakedown with that bedfellow
From farmers. Many a man sleeps worse to-night
Than I shall." "In the trenches." "Yes, that's
right.
But they'll be out of that—I hope they be—
This weather, marching after the enemy."
"And so I hope. Good luck." And there I nodded
"Good-night. You keep straight on." Stiffly he
plodded;
And at his heels the crisp leaves scurried fast,
And the leaf-coloured robin watched. They
passed,
The robin till next day, the man for good,
Together in the twilight of the wood.
A PRIVATE
THIS ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frozen night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all
bores:
"At Mrs. Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,
"I slept." None knew which bush. Above the
town,
Beyond "The Drover," a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France—that, too, he secret keeps.