—­Of the four involved there walks but one
      On earth at this late day. 
   And what of the chapter so begun? 
   In that odd complex what was done? 
   Well; happiness comes in full to none: 
Let peace lie on lulled lips:  I will not say.

Weymouth.

A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER

I dwelt in the shade of a city,
   She far by the sea,
With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;
   But never with me.

Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring
   I never once met,
To guide her with accents adoring
   Through Weippert’s “First Set.” {1}

I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones
   In Vanity Fair,
And she enjoyed hers among hale ones
   In salt-smelling air.

Maybe she had eyes of deep colour,
   Maybe they were blue,
Maybe as she aged they got duller;
   That never I knew.

She may have had lips like the coral,
   But I never kissed them,
Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel,
   Nor sought for, nor missed them.

Not a word passed of love all our lifetime,
   Between us, nor thrill;
We’d never a husband-and-wife time,
   For good or for ill.

Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal,
   Lie I and lies she,
This never-known lady, eternal
   Companion to me!

THE OLD GOWN (SONG)

I have seen her in gowns the brightest,
   Of azure, green, and red,
And in the simplest, whitest,
   Muslined from heel to head;
I have watched her walking, riding,
   Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,
Or in fixed thought abiding
   By the foam-fingered sea.

In woodlands I have known her,
   When boughs were mourning loud,
In the rain-reek she has shown her
   Wild-haired and watery-browed. 
And once or twice she has cast me
   As she pomped along the street
Court-clad, ere quite she had passed me,
   A glance from her chariot-seat.

But in my memoried passion
   For evermore stands she
In the gown of fading fashion
   She wore that night when we,
Doomed long to part, assembled
   In the snug small room; yea, when
She sang with lips that trembled,
   “Shall I see his face again?”

A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER

I marked when the weather changed,
And the panes began to quake,
And the winds rose up and ranged,
That night, lying half-awake.

Dead leaves blew into my room,
And alighted upon my bed,
And a tree declared to the gloom
Its sorrow that they were shed.

One leaf of them touched my hand,
And I thought that it was you
There stood as you used to stand,
And saying at last you knew!

(?) 1913.