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.