LET us off and search, and find a place Where yours and mine can be natural lives, Where no one comes who dissects and dives And proclaims that ours is a curious case, That its touch of romance can scarcely grace.
You would think it strange at first, but then Everything has been strange in its time. When some one said on a day of the prime He would bow to no brazen god again He doubtless dazed the mass of men.
None will recognize us as a pair whose claims To righteous judgment we care not making; Who have doubted if breath be worth the taking, And have no respect for the current fames Whence the savour has flown while abide the names.
We have found us already shunned, disdained, And for re-acceptance have not once striven; Whatever offence our course has given The brunt thereof we have long sustained. Well, let us away, scorned unexplained.
“NO smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot, The people who lived here have left the spot, And others are coming who knew them not.
“If you listen anon, with an ear intent, The voices, you’ll find, will be different From the well-known ones of those who went.”
“Why did they go? Their tones so bland Were quite familiar to our band; The comers we shall not understand.”
“They look for a new life, rich and strange; They do not know that, let them range Wherever they may, they will get no change.
“They will drag their house-gear ever so far In their search for a home no miseries mar; They will find that as they were they are,
“That every hearth has a ghost, alack, And can be but the scene of a bivouac Till they move perforce—no time to pack!”
I have risen again, And awhile survey By my chilly ray Through your window-pane Your upturned face, As you think, “Ah-she Now dreams of me In her distant place!”
I pierce her blind In her far-off home: She fixes a comb, And says in her mind, “I start in an hour; Whom shall I meet? Won’t the men be sweet, And the women sour!”
IN his early days he was quite surprised When she told him she was compromised By meetings and lingerings at his whim, And thinking not of herself but him; While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round That scandal should so soon abound, (As she had raised them to nine or ten Of antecedent nice young men) And in remorse he thought with a sigh, How good she is, and how bad am I!— It was years before he understood That she was the wicked one—he the good.
