So, with this saying,
   “Good-bye, good-bye,”
We speed their waying
Without betraying
   Our grief, our fear
   No more to hear
   From them, close, clear,
   Again:  “Good-bye,
      Good-bye!”

ON THE TUNE CALLED THE OLD-HUNDRED-AND-FOURTH

We never sang together
   Ravenscroft’s terse old tune
On Sundays or on weekdays,
In sharp or summer weather,
   At night-time or at noon.

Why did we never sing it,
   Why never so incline
On Sundays or on weekdays,
Even when soft wafts would wing it
   From your far floor to mine?

Shall we that tune, then, never
   Stand voicing side by side
On Sundays or on weekdays? . . . 
Or shall we, when for ever
   In Sheol we abide,

Sing it in desolation,
   As we might long have done
On Sundays or on weekdays
With love and exultation
   Before our sands had run?

THE OPPORTUNITY (FOR H. P.)

Forty springs back, I recall,
   We met at this phase of the Maytime: 
We might have clung close through all,
   But we parted when died that daytime.

We parted with smallest regret;
   Perhaps should have cared but slightly,
Just then, if we never had met: 
   Strange, strange that we lived so lightly!

Had we mused a little space
   At that critical date in the Maytime,
One life had been ours, one place,
   Perhaps, till our long cold daytime.

- This is a bitter thing
   For thee, O man:  what ails it? 
The tide of chance may bring
   Its offer; but nought avails it!

EVELYN G. OF CHRISTMINSTER

I can see the towers
In mind quite clear
Not many hours’
Faring from here;
But how up and go,
And briskly bear
Thither, and know
That are not there?

Though the birds sing small,
And apple and pear
On your trees by the wall
Are ripe and rare,
Though none excel them,
I have no care
To taste them or smell them
And you not there.

Though the College stones
Are smit with the sun,
And the graduates and Dons
Who held you as one
Of brightest brow
Still think as they did,
Why haunt with them now
Your candle is hid?

Towards the river
A pealing swells: 
They cost me a quiver —
Those prayerful bells! 
How go to God,
Who can reprove
With so heavy a rod
As your swift remove!

The chorded keys
Wait all in a row,
And the bellows wheeze
As long ago. 
And the psalter lingers,
And organist’s chair;
But where are your fingers
That once wagged there?

Shall I then seek
That desert place
This or next week,
And those tracks trace
That fill me with cark
And cloy; nowhere
Being movement or mark
Of you now there!