End of Another Home Holiday

I

When shall I see the half moon sink again
Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?
When will the scent of the dim, white phlox
Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?

Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,
    (Will it never finish the twelve?)
Falls again and again on my heart with a heavy reproach?

The moon-mist is over the village, out of the mist speaks the bell,
And all the little roofs of the village bow low, pitiful, beseeching,
resigned:
    Oh, little home, what is it I have not done well?

Ah home, suddenly I love you,
As I hear the sharp clean trot of a pony down the road,
Succeeding sharp little sounds dropping into the silence,
Clear upon the long-drawn hoarseness of a train across the valley.

The light has gone out from under my mother's door.
        That she should love me so,
        She, so lonely, greying now,
        And I leaving her,
        Bent on my pursuits!

    Love is the great Asker,
    The sun and the rain do not ask the secret

    Of the time when the grain struggles down in the dark.
    The moon walks her lonely way without anguish,
    Because no loved one grieves over her departure.


II

Forever, ever by my shoulder pitiful Love will linger,
Crouching as little houses crouch under the mist when I turn.
Forever, out of the mist the church lifts up her reproachful finger,
Pointing my eyes in wretched defiance where love hides her face to
mourn.

    Oh but the rain creeps down to wet the grain
        That struggles alone in the dark,
    And asking nothing, cheerfully steals back again!
        The moon sets forth o' nights
        To walk the lonely, dusky heights
        Serenely, with steps unswerving;
        Pursued by no sigh of bereavement,
        No tears of love unnerving
        Her constant tread:
    While ever at my side,
        Frail and sad, with grey bowed head,
        The beggar-woman, the yearning-eyed
        Inexorable love goes lagging.

The wild young heifer, glancing distraught,
With a strange new knocking of life at her side
    Runs seeking a loneliness.
The little grain draws down the earth to hide.
Nay, even the slumberous egg, as it labours under the shell,
    Patiently to divide, and self-divide,
Asks to be hidden, and wishes nothing to tell.

But when I draw the scanty cloak of silence over my eyes,
Piteous Love comes peering under the hood.
Touches the clasp with trembling fingers, and tries
To put her ear to the painful sob of my blood,
While her tears soak through to my breast,
      Where they burn and cauterise.


III

  The moon lies back and reddens.
  In the valley, a corncrake calls
        Monotonously,
  With a piteous, unalterable plaint, that deadens
        My confident activity:
  With a hoarse, insistent request that falls
        Unweariedly, unweariedly,
        Asking something more of me,
            Yet more of me!

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