“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.
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