Classic Poem

I

Alone and built of a pallid stone
Across the levels looked her house
And tattered plot, where nought had grown
But withered trees which creaked their boughs.
No fruit or blossom or petal blown
Was there to gladden mournful eyes,
But all was drab and monotone
Beneath a reign of leaden skies.
A red, red weed was all the flower,
Which crawled serpiginous about
The marsh, unchanged from hour to hour
Until the evening blotted out
The landscape which she called her own.

And, save for a ridge of bent and sand,
Which rose between them and the sea,
The marshes stretched on either hand,
And, ever looking, wearied she
Of low sad purple and sombre brown
And, where the rivulets trickled down,
Moss-tracks of vivid green,
And stiff grey grasses which bend and sigh,
As the marsh wind wails and passes by,
And quagmires in between
The firmer ground--and over all
She heard the curlews' dreary call
As they piped eternally.


II

In the days of grace, in the good days gone,
She had set him up on a golden throne,
The face of a god and a heart of stone,
But now she must live alone,
Alone, alone, alone
In a little grey house of stone
Which stares o'er the marshes towards the sea
Where the great grey waves roll sullenly
Night and day for ever and aye
With mournful voices which seem to say
"Alone, alone, alone."


III

She laid her down on a sandy ledge,
Alone,
And buried her face amid the sedge
And mourned till eve for a broken pledge,
Alone,
And the great grey sea began to moan
Gathering noise from depths unknown
And boomed with a hollow undertone
"Alone, alone, alone."


IV

Up came the night with funeral wing
The ominous depths o'ershadowing,
But she lay a dumb insentient thing--
Alone with a heart of stone,
With neither tears nor hopes nor fears
And the booming swell like a monstrous knell
Tolled strongly in her ears.


V

Alone, alone, alone,
She who had loved and known
On other nights like this
Strong arms about her and many a kiss
And words of gentle tone.

Alone, alone, alone,
A woman she had known
Like a figure carved from stone
Held a letter in her hand
She scarce could understand
Of words which hardly could be read
"Goodbye--There is nothing to be said."

* * * * *

Ah! God, if she had known.

Alone, alone, alone,
She who had longed for love by stealth
As a gold-mad miser longs for wealth
Or a poet longs for fame,
Her seared numb body had just an ache
For a pitiful pitiless last mistake
And the smirch upon her name.


VI

A shrill chill wind blew out of the West
As a young child wails for a Mother's breast,
It broke the swell and whitened each crest
And moaned "I come with a strange behest;
The dead are happier. They are at rest
Alone, alone, alone,
Each under a graven stone,
Where the poppies are red
In the homes of the dead
And their scarlet petals spill
And the seabirds scream
As they wheel and gleam
And the seawinds whistle shrill.
The dead are happy, for they are free
They have said farewell to misery,
Alone
Each under a stone;
But the hearts which mourn for a faithless friend
Can never, never, never mend,
And so they break for friendship's sake
Alone, alone, alone."


VII

The sea wind blew like a wild lament
For loved ones dying or love mis-spent
And still in her hollow of sand and bent
She lay alone, alone,
And stared out into the keening blast
Not heeding the future or mourning the past,
For past and future were one.


VIII

Ah! pity her, who needed it most--
But in the village along the coast
Are those who tremble and moan,
Seeming to wait alone
For a dreadful something unknown,
As the tempest travels gathering force
And sobs and howls and raves and roars
And laughs like a demon band,
And the great waves clamber into the bay
With voices triumphant which seem to say
"Hurrah! Hurrah! we have found a prey
But we seek another on land."

Ah! shivering fisherwife in your shawl,
Perhaps they have found a prey
Who leap and shout in the bay,
And you will weep for the grief of it all
For many and many a day.


IX

All night the moon peered wan and pale
Thro' rifts in a scudding storm-rent veil
O'er a moving mountainous waste.
All night did the climbers rear and roar
And fall with a crash upon the shore,
League on league of them coming in haste
Till they broke and leapt no more,
Leaping and shouting until they broke
Upon the screaming shore.
And the simple hardy fisherfolk
Kept watch and slept no more,
As the wicked wind raved down the street
With gouts of foam and slings of sleet
And battered at every door.

All night the tiles like chips of straw
Were borne, and the air was filled with the roar
Of the monstrous symphony.
But its music lulled as the morning came
And touched the East with a rosy flame,
And whitened a hard clear sky,
And the tide drew out far far to the sea
Which shouted less tumultuously,
Tho' its voices were heard for a sign,
As it beat upon the barrier rocks
With the baffled rage of the Equinox
In a spouting misty line.


X

After a night so fierce and foul
What wonder such a day?
The wind, which shrieked like a tortured soul
Last night across the bay,
Blew high and keen like a violin
And dashed the blue with spray.

After a night so mad and wild
An afternoon of blue,
Of glinting, winking, glad blue waters
And breakers only a few,
Of light and azure undefiled
With scarce a cloud in view.

And at the hour of evening prayer
Came three who roamed the shore,
The sea was older, colder, and greyer,
And moved and murmured more.

Amid the waste of heaven and sea
A body lay alone,
Half in a pool and half on the knee
Of an ancient mossy stone.

The sea had saved a poor little fool
From life and all its harms,
Her body lay in a lonely pool--
Not in a lover's arms.

And on her cheek the mask of peace
And on her lips the smile
Of those who mourn and find release,
Who know, not love, the vile.