On those nights in November—
Apart eighty years—
The babe and the bent one
Who traversed those stairs
From the early first time
To the last feeble climb—
That fresh and that spent one—
Were even the same:
Yea, who passed in November
As infant, as bent one,
Those stairs.
Wise child of November!
From birth to blanched hairs
Descending, ascending,
Wealth-wantless, those stairs;
Who saw quick in time
As a vain pantomime
Life’s tending, its ending,
The worth of its fame.
Wise child of November,
Descending, ascending
Those stairs!
THE SECOND NIGHT
(BALLAD)
I missed one night, but the next I went;
It was gusty above, and clear;
She was there, with the look of one ill-content,
And said: “Do not come near!”
—“I am sorry last night to have failed you here,
And now I have travelled all day;
And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier,
So brief must be my stay.”
—“O man of mystery, why not say
Out plain to me all you mean?
Why you missed last night, and must now away
Is—another has come between!”
—“O woman so mocking in mood and mien,
So be it!” I replied:
“And if I am due at a differing scene
Before the dark has died,
“’Tis that, unresting, to wander wide
Has ever been my plight,
And at least I have met you at Cremyll side
If not last eve, to-night.”
—“You get small rest—that read I quite;
And so do I, maybe;
Though there’s a rest hid safe from sight
Elsewhere awaiting me!”
A mad star crossed the sky to the sea,
Wasting in sparks as it streamed,
And when I looked to where stood she
She had changed, much changed, it seemed: