If grief come early
Joy comes late,
If joy come early
Grief will wait;
Aye, my dear and tender!
Wise ones joy them early
While the cheeks are red,
Banish grief till surly
Time has dulled their dread.
And joy being ours
Ere youth has flown,
The later hours
May find us gone;
Aye, my dear and tender!
LONELY DAYS
Lonely her fate was,
Environed from sight
In the house where the gate was
Past finding at night.
None there to share it,
No one to tell:
Long she’d to bear it,
And bore it well.
Elsewhere just so she
Spent many a day;
Wishing to go she
Continued to stay.
And people without
Basked warm in the air,
But none sought her out,
Or knew she was there.
Even birthdays were passed so,
Sunny and shady:
Years did it last so
For this sad lady.
Never declaring it,
No one to tell,
Still she kept bearing it—
Bore it well.
The days grew chillier,
And then she went
To a city, familiar
In years forespent,
When she walked gaily
Far to and fro,
But now, moving frailly,
Could nowhere go.
The cheerful colour
Of houses she’d known
Had died to a duller
And dingier tone.
Streets were now noisy
Where once had rolled
A few quiet coaches,
Or citizens strolled.
Through the party-wall
Of the memoried spot
They danced at a ball
Who recalled her not.
Tramlines lay crossing
Once gravelled slopes,
Metal rods clanked,
And electric ropes.
So she endured it all,
Thin, thinner wrought,
Until time cured it all,
And she knew nought.
Versified from a Diary.
“WHAT DID IT MEAN?”
What did it mean that noontide, when
You bade me pluck the flower
Within the other woman’s bower,
Whom I knew nought of then?