The Torn Letter

I tore your letter into stripsNo bigger than the airy feathersThat ducks preen out in changing weathersUpon the shifting ripple-tips.

In darkness on my bed aloneI seemed to see you in a vision,And hear you say: “Why this derisionOf one drawn to you, though unknown?”

Yes, eve’s quick mood had run its course,The night had cooled my hasty madness;I suffered a regretful sadnessWhich deepened into real remorse.

I thought what pensive patient daysA soul must know of grain so tender,How much of good must grace the senderOf such sweet words in such bright phrase.

Uprising then, as things unpricedI sought each fragment, patched and mended;The midnight whitened ere I had endedAnd gathered words I had sacrificed.

But some, alas, of those I threwWere past my search, destroyed for ever:They were your name and place; and neverDid I regain those clues to you.

I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,My track; that, so the Will decided,In life, death, we should be divided,And at the sense I ached indeed.

That ache for you, born long ago,Throbs on; I never could outgrow it.What a revenge, did you but know it!But that, thank God, you do not know.

(Near Tooting Common)

WHILE rain, with eve in partnership,Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip,Beyond the last lone lamp I passedWalking slowly, whispering sadly,Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast:Some heavy thought constrained each face,And blinded them to time and place.

The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbedIn mental scenes no longer orbedBy love’s young rays. Each countenanceAs it slowly, as it sadlyCaught the lamplight’s yellow glanceHeld in suspense a miseryAt things which had been or might be.

When I retrod that watery waySome hours beyond the droop of day,Still I found pacing there the twainJust as slowly, just as sadly,Heedless of the night and rain.One could but wonder who they wereAnd what wild woe detained them there.

Though thirty years of blur and blotHave slid since I beheld that spot,And saw in curious converse thereMoving slowly, moving sadlyThat mysterious tragic pair,Its olden look may linger on—All but the couple; they have gone.

Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And yetTo me, when nights are weird and wet,Without those comrades there at trystCreeping slowly, creeping sadly,That lone lane does not exist.There they seem brooding on their pain,And will, while such a lane remain.