Such the tenor man told When he had grown old.
THE MAN WHO FORGOT
At a lonely cross where bye-roads met I sat upon a gate;I saw the sun decline and set, And still was fain to wait.
A trotting boy passed up the way And roused me from my thought;I called to him, and showed where lay A spot I shyly sought.
"A summer-house fair stands hidden where You see the moonlight thrown;Go, tell me if within it there A lady sits alone."He half demurred, but took the track, And silence held the scene;I saw his figure rambling back;
I asked him if he had been.
"I went just where you said, but found No summer-house was there:
Beyond the slope 'tis all bare ground;
Nothing stands anywhere.
"A man asked what my brains were worth;
The house, he said, grew rotten, And was pulled down before my birth, And is almost forgotten!"My right mind woke, and I stood dumb;
Forty years' frost and flower Had fleeted since I'd used to come To meet her in that bower.
WHILE DRAWING IN A CHURCH-YARD
"It is sad that so many of worth, Still in the flesh," soughed the yew, "Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth Secludes from view.
"They ride their diurnal round Each day-span's sum of hours In peerless ease, without jolt or bound Or ache like ours.
"If the living could but hear What is heard by my roots as they creep Round the restful flock, and the things said there, No one would weep.""'Now set among the wise,'
They say: 'Enlarged in scope, That no God trumpet us to rise We truly hope.'"I listened to his strange tale In the mood that stillness brings, And I grew to accept as the day wore pale That show of things.
"FOR LIFE I HAD NEVER CARED GREATLY"
For Life I had never cared greatly, As worth a man's while;Peradventures unsought, Peradventures that finished in nought, Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately Unwon by its style.
In earliest years--why I know not -
I viewed it askance;