The bowfast was cast off, the screw revolved,
Making a bloodier bubbling; rattling rope
Fell to the hatch, the engine’s tune resolved
Into its steadier beat of rise and slope;
The steamer went her way; and Michael’s hope
Died as she lessened; he was there alone.
The lowing of the cattle made a gradual moan.
He thought of Mary, but the thought was dim;
That was another life, lived long before.
His mind was in new worlds which altered him.
The startling present left no room for more.
The sullen river lipped, the sky, the shore
Were vaster than of old, and lonely, lonely.
Sky and low hills of grass and moaning cattle only.
THE RETURN.
Soon he was at the Foxholes, at the place
Whither, from over sea, his heart had turned
Often at evening-ends in times of grace.
But little outward change his eye discerned;
A red rose at her bedroom window burned,
Just as before. Even as of old the wasps
Poised at the yellow plums; the gate creaked on its hasps
And the white fantails sidled on the roof
Just as before; their pink feet, even as of old,
Printed the frosty morning’s rime with proof.
Still the zew-tallat’s thatch was green with mould;
The apples on the withered boughs were gold.
Men and the times were changed: “And I,” said he,
“Will go and not return, since she is not for me.
“I’ll go, for it would be a scurvy thing
To spoil her marriage, and besides, she cares
For that half-priest she married with the ring.
Small joy for me in seeing how she wears,
Or seeing what he takes and what she shares.
That beauty and those ways: she had such ways,
There in the daffodils in those old April days.
So with an impulse of good will he turned,
Leaving that place of daffodils; the road
Was paven sharp with memories which burned;
He trod them strongly under as he strode.
At the Green Turning’s forge the furnace glowed;
Red dithying sparks flew from the crumpled soft
Fold from the fire’s heart; down clanged the hammers oft.
That was a bitter place to pass, for there
Mary and he had often, often stayed
To watch the horseshoe growing in the glare.
It was a tryst in childhood when they strayed.
There was a stile beside the forge; he laid
His elbows on it, leaning, looking down.
The river-valley stretched with great trees turning brown.
Infinite, too, because it reached the sky,
And distant spires arose and distant smoke;
The whiteness on the blue went stilly by;
Only the clinking forge the stillness broke.
Ryemeadows brook was there; The Roughs, the oak
Where the White Woman walked; the black firs showed
Around the Occleve homestead, Mary’s new abode.
A long, long time he gazed at that fair place,
So well remembered from of old; he sighed.
“I will go down and look upon her face,
See her again, whatever may betide.
Hell is my future; I shall soon have died,
But I will take to hell one memory more;
She shall not see nor know; I shall be gone before;