The Telegram

“O HE’S suffering—maybe dying—and I not there to aid,And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go?Only the nurse’s brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed,As by stealth, to let me know.

“He was the best and brightest!—candour shone upon his brow,And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he,And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he’s sinking now,Far, far removed from me!”

—The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair,And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade,And in her wild distraction she seems not to be awareThat she lives no more a maid,

But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she trodTo and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history knownIn its last particular to him—aye, almost as to God,And believed her quite his own.

So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon,And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace,And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoonAt this idle watering-place . . .

What now I see before me is a long lane overhungWith lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave.And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young,Ere a woman held me slave.

(On Egdon Heath)

“WHAT are you still, still thinking,”He asked in vague surmise,“That stare at the wick unblinkingWith those great lost luminous eyes?”

“O, I see a poor moth burningIn the candle-flame,” said she,“Its wings and legs are turningTo a cinder rapidly.”

“Moths fly in from the heather,”He said, “now the days decline.”“I know,” said she. “The weather,I hope, will at last be fine.

“I think,” she added lightly,“I’ll look out at the door.The ring the moon wears nightlyMay be visible now no more.”

She rose, and, little heeding,Her husband then went onWith his attentive readingIn the annals of ages gone.

Outside the house a figureCame from the tumulus near,And speedily waxed bigger,And clasped and called her Dear.

“I saw the pale-winged tokenYou sent through the crack,” sighed she.“That moth is burnt and brokenWith which you lured out me.

“And were I as the moth isIt might be better farFor one whose marriage troth isShattered as potsherds are!”

Then grinned the Ancient BritonFrom the tumulus treed with pine:“So, hearts are thwartly smittenIn these days as in mine!”