第40章 THE VOICE

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever consigned to existlessness, Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward And the woman calling.

December 1912.

HIS VISITOR

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more:

I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train, And need no setting open of the long familiar door As before.

The change I notice in my once own quarters!

A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be, The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered, And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea As with me.

I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt servants;

They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and strong, But strangers quite, who never knew my rule here, Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song Float along.

So I don't want to linger in this re-decked dwelling, I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold, And I make again for Mellstock to return here never, And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold Souls of old.

1913.