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LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD., VIGO ST., W. NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXXI
_Printed in Great Britain by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_
ON THE STATUE OF A VESTAL VIRGIN BY TOMA ROSANDIĆ 15
Some of these poems have already appeared in _The London Mercury_, _The Observer_, _Country Life_, _The Woman’s Leader_, _The Anglo-French Review_; to the editors of these papers I am indebted for permission to republish.
ALL her youth is gone, her beautiful youth outworn, Daughter of tarn and tor, the moors that were once her home No longer know her step on the upland tracks forlorn Where she was wont to roam.
All her hounds are dead, her beautiful hounds are dead, That paced beside the hoofs of her high and nimble horse, Or streaked in lean pursuit of the tawny hare that fled Out of the yellow gorse.
All her lovers have passed, her beautiful lovers have passed, The young and eager men that fought for her arrogant hand, And the only voice which endures to mourn for her at the last Is the voice of the lonely land.
HE sat among the shadows lost, And heard the careless voice speak on Of life when he was gone from home, Of days that he had made his own, Familiar schemes that he had known, And dates that he had cherished most As star-points in the year to come, And he was suddenly alone, Thinking (not bitterly, But with a grave regret) that he Was in that room a ghost.
He sat among the shades apart, The careless voice he scarcely heard. In that arrested hour there stirred Shy birds of beauty in his heart.
The clouds of March he would not see Across the sky race royally, Nor yet the drift of daffodil He planted with so glad a hand, Nor yet the loveliness he planned For summer’s sequence to fulfil, Nor trace upon the hill The annual waking of the land, Nor meditative stand To watch the turning of the mill.
He would not pause above the Weald With twilight falling dim, And mark the chequer-board of field, The water gleaming like a shield, The oast-house in the elms concealed, Nor see, from heaven’s chalice-rim, The vintaged sunset brim, Nor yet the high, suspended star Hanging eternally afar.