“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.

Sketch of top of church tower

Sketch of fields with trees