Down in the lane so thin and dark
The tan-yards stank of bitter bark,
The curate’s pigeons gave a flutter,
A cat went courting down the gutter,
And none else stirred a foot or feather.
The houses put their heads together,
Talking, perhaps, so dark and sly,
Of all the folk they’d seen go by,
Children, and men and women, merry all,
Who’d some day pass that way to burial.
Epilogue
How swift the summer goes,
Forget-me-not, pink, rose.
The young grass when I started
And now the hay is carted,
And now my song is ended,
And all the summer spended;
The blackbird’s second brood
Routs beech leaves in the wood;
The pink and rose have speeded,
Forget-me-not has seeded
Only the winds that blew,
The rain that makes things new,
The earth that hides things old,
And blessings manifold.
O lovely lily clean,
O lily springing green,
O lily bursting white,
Dear lily of delight,
Spring in my heart agen
That I may flower to men.
Selections from
THE WIDOW IN THE BYE STREET
THE END
Some of life’s sad ones are too strong to die,
Grief doesn’t kill them as it kills the weak,
Sorrow is not for those who sit and cry
Lapped in the love of turning t’other cheek,
But for the noble souls austere and bleak
Who have had the bitter dose and drained the cup
And wait for Death face fronted, standing up.
As the last man upon the sinking ship,
Seeing the brine creep brightly on the deck,
Hearing aloft the slatting topsails rip,
Ripping to rags among the topmast’s wreck,
Yet hoists the new red ensign without speck,
That she, so fair, may sink with colours flying,
So the old widowed mother kept from dying.
She tottered home, back to the little room
It was all over for her, but for life;
She drew the blinds, and trembled in the gloom;
“I sat here thus when I was wedded wife;
Sorrow sometimes, and joy; but always strife.
Struggle to live except just at the last,
O God, I thank Thee for the mercies past.
Harry, my man, when we were courting; eh ...
The April morning up the Cony-gree.
How grand he looked upon our wedding day.
‘I wish we’d had the bells,’ he said to me;
And we’d the moon that evening, I and he,
And dew come wet, oh, I remember how,
And we come home to where I’m sitting now.
And he lay dead here, and his son was born here;
He never saw his son, his little Jim.
And now I’m all alone here, left to mourn here,
And there are all his clothes, but never him.
He’s down under the prison in the dim,
With quicklime working on him to the bone,
The flesh I made with many and many a groan.
And then he ran so, he was strong at running,
Always a strong one, like his dad at that.
In summertimes I done my sewing sunning,
And he’d be sprawling, playing with the cat.
And neighbours brought their knitting out to chat
Till five o’clock; he had his tea at five;
How sweet life was when Jimmy was alive.”