LOOKING AT A PICTURE ON AN ANNIVERSARY
But don’t you know it, my dear,
Don’t you know it,
That this day of the year
(What rainbow-rays embow it!)
We met, strangers confessed,
But parted—blest?
Though at this query, my dear,
There in your frame
Unmoved you still appear,
You must be thinking the same,
But keep that look demure
Just to allure.
And now at length a trace
I surely vision
Upon that wistful face
Of old-time recognition,
Smiling forth, “Yes, as you say,
It is the day.”
For this one phase of you
Now left on earth
This great date must endue
With pulsings of rebirth?—
I see them vitalize
Those two deep eyes!
But if this face I con
Does not declare
Consciousness living on
Still in it, little I care
To live myself, my dear,
Lone-labouring here!
Spring 1913.
THE CHOIRMASTER’S BURIAL
He often would ask us
That, when he died,
After playing so many
To their last rest,
If out of us any
Should here abide,
And it would not task us,
We would with our lutes
Play over him
By his grave-brim
The psalm he liked best—
The one whose sense suits
“Mount Ephraim”—
And perhaps we should seem
To him, in Death’s dream,
Like the seraphim.
As soon as I knew
That his spirit was gone
I thought this his due,
And spoke thereupon.
“I think,” said the vicar,
“A read service quicker
Than viols out-of-doors
In these frosts and hoars.
That old-fashioned way
Requires a fine day,
And it seems to me
It had better not be.”