“But how,” said I, “has your so little lifetime
Given roomage for such loving, loss, despair?
A boy so young!” Forthwith I turned my lantern
Upon him there.
His head was white. His small form, fine aforetime,
Was shrunken with old age and battering wear,
An eighty-years long plodder saw I pacing
Beside me there.
THE SUN’S LAST LOOK ON THE COUNTRY GIRL
(M. H.)
The sun threw down a radiant spot
On the face in the winding-sheet—
The face it had lit when a babe’s in its cot;
And the sun knew not, and the face knew not
That soon they would no more meet.
Now that the grave has shut its door,
And lets not in one ray,
Do they wonder that they meet no more—
That face and its beaming visitor—
That met so many a day?
December 1915.
IN A LONDON FLAT
I
“You look like a widower,” she said
Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed,
As he sat by the fire in the outer room,
Reading late on a night of gloom,
And a cab-hack’s wheeze, and the clap of its feet
In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street,
Were all that came to them now and then . . .
“You really do!” she quizzed again.
II