The Two Rosalinds

I      The dubious daylight ended,     And I walked the Town alone, unminding whither bound and why,     As from each gaunt street and gaping square a mist of light ascended      And dispersed upon the sky. II      Files of evanescent faces     Passed each other without heeding, in their travail, teen, or joy,     Some in void unvisioned listlessness inwrought with pallid traces      Of keen penury's annoy. III      Nebulous flames in crystal cages     Leered as if with discontent at city movement, murk, and grime,     And as waiting some procession of great ghosts from bygone ages      To exalt the ignoble time. IV      In a colonnade high-lighted,     By a thoroughfare where stern utilitarian traffic dinned,     On a red and white emblazonment of players and parts, I sighted      The name of "Rosalind," V      And her famous mates of "Arden,"     Who observed no stricter customs than "the seasons' difference" bade,     Who lived with running brooks for books in Nature's wildwood garden,      And called idleness their trade . . . VI      Now the poster stirred an ember     Still remaining from my ardours of some forty years before,     When the selfsame portal on an eve it thrilled me to remember      A like announcement bore; VII      And expectantly I had entered,     And had first beheld in human mould a Rosalind woo and plead,     On whose transcendent figuring my speedy soul had centred      As it had been she indeed . . . VIII      So; all other plans discarding,     I resolved on entrance, bent on seeing what I once had seen,     And approached the gangway of my earlier knowledge, disregarding      The tract of time between. IX      "The words, sir?" cried a creature     Hovering mid the shine and shade as 'twixt the live world and the tomb;     But the well-known numbers needed not for me a text or teacher      To revive and re-illume. X      Then the play . . . But how unfitted     Was THIS Rosalind! - a mammet quite to me, in memories nurst,     And with chilling disappointment soon I sought the street I had quitted,      To re-ponder on the first. XI      The hag still hawked, - I met her     Just without the colonnade. "So you don't like her, sir?" said she.     "Ah - I was once that Rosalind! - I acted her - none better -      Yes - in eighteen sixty-three. XII      "Thus I won Orlando to me     In my then triumphant days when I had charm and maidenhood,     Now some forty years ago. - I used to say, COME WOO ME, WOO ME!"      And she struck the attitude. XIII      It was when I had gone there nightly;     And the voice - though raucous now - was yet the old one. - Clear as noon     My Rosalind was here . . . Thereon the band withinside lightly      Beat up a merry tune.