My Cicely

"Alive?" And I leapt in my wonder,     Was faint of my joyance,     And grasses and grove shone in garments     Of glory to me.     "She lives, in a plenteous well-being,     To-day as aforehand;     The dead bore the name though a rare one -     The name that bore she."     She lived . . . I, afar in the city     Of frenzy-led factions,     Had squandered green years and maturer     In bowing the knee     To Baals illusive and specious,     Till chance had there voiced me     That one I loved vainly in nonage     Had ceased her to be.     The passion the planets had scowled on,     And change had let dwindle,     Her death-rumour smartly relifted     To full apogee.     I mounted a steed in the dawning     With acheful remembrance,     And made for the ancient West Highway     To far Exonb'ry.     Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging,     I neared the thin steeple     That tops the fair fane of Poore's olden     Episcopal see;     And, changing anew my onbearer,     I traversed the downland     Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains     Bulge barren of tree;     And still sadly onward I followed     That Highway the Icen,     Which trails its pale riband down Wessex     O'er lynchet and lea.     Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,     Where Legions had wayfared,     And where the slow river upglasses     Its green canopy,     And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefrom     Through Casterbridge held I     Still on, to entomb her my vision     Saw stretched pallidly.     No highwayman's trot blew the night-wind     To me so life-weary,     But only the creak of the gibbets     Or waggoners' jee.     Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly     Above me from southward,     And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,     And square Pummerie.     The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,     The Axe, and the Otter     I passed, to the gate of the city     Where Exe scents the sea;     Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,     I learnt 'twas not my Love     To whom Mother Church had just murmured     A last lullaby.     - "Then, where dwells the Canon's kinswoman,     My friend of aforetime?"     ('Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings     And new ecstasy.)     "She wedded." "Ah!" "Wedded beneath her -     She keeps the stage-hostel     Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway -     The famed Lions-Three.     "Her spouse was her lackey no option     'Twixt wedlock and worse things;     A lapse over-sad for a lady     Of her pedigree!"     I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered     To shades of green laurel:     Too ghastly had grown those first tidings     So brightsome of blee!     For, on my ride hither, I'd halted     Awhile at the Lions,     And her her whose name had once opened     My heart as a key     I'd looked on, unknowing, and witnessed     Her jests with the tapsters,     Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents     In naming her fee.     "O God, why this seeming derision!"     I cried in my anguish:     "O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten -     That Thing meant it thee!     "Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,     Were grief I could compass;     Depraved 'tis for Christ's poor dependent     A cruel decree!"     I backed on the Highway; but passed not     The hostel. Within there     Too mocking to Love's re-expression     Was Time's repartee!     Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,     By cromlechs unstoried,     And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,     In self-colloquy,     A feeling stirred in me and strengthened     That SHE was not my Love,     But she of the garth, who lay rapt in     Her long reverie.     And thence till to-day I persuade me     That this was the true one;     That Death stole intact her young dearness     And innocency.     Frail-witted, illuded they call me;     I may be. 'Tis better     To dream than to own the debasement     Of sweet Cicely.     Moreover I rate it unseemly     To hold that kind Heaven     Could work such device to her ruin     And my misery.     So, lest I disturb my choice vision,     I shun the West Highway,     Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms     From blackbird and bee;     And feel that with slumber half-conscious     She rests in the church-hay,     Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time     When lovers were we.