Book: Poems of the Past and the Present

Preface

HEREWITH I tender my thanks to the editors and proprietors of The Times, the Morning Post, the Daily Chronicle, the Westminster Gazette, Literature, and the Graphic, Cornhill, Sphere, and other papers, for permission to reprint from their pages such of the following pieces of verse as have already been published.
   
     Of the subject-matter of this volume- even that which is in other than narrative form - much is dramatic or impersonative even where not explicitly so. Moreover, that portion which may be regarded as individual comprises a series of feelings and fancies written down in widely differing moods and circumstances, and at various dates. It will probably be found, therefore, to possess little cohesion of thought or harmony of colouring. I do not greatly regret this. Unadjusted impressions have their value, and the road to a true philosophy of a life seems to lie in humbly recording diverse readings of its phenomena as they are forced upon us by chance and change.


August 1901                                                T.H.

• The To-be-forgotten

  I
  I heard a small sad sound,

  33 lines
• The Darkling Thrush

  I leant upon a coppice gate
  When Frost was spectre-gray,

  32 lines, 1 comment
• The Ruined Maid

  "O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
  Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

  24 lines, 5 comments
• Genoa And The Mediterranean.

  O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
    Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee

  22 lines
• Embarcation

  Southampton Docks: October 1899
  Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,

  15 lines
• The Bridge Of Lodi

  When of tender mind and body
    I was moved by minstrelsy,

  117 lines
• A Wife In London

  December 1899
            I

  26 lines, 1 comment
• Rome: Building A New Street In The Ancient Quarter.

  These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry
  Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;

  15 lines, 1 comment
• Architectural Masks

  I
  There is a house with ivied walls,

  18 lines
• A Commonplace Day

  The day is turning ghost,
  And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,

  42 lines
• The Church-Builder

  The church flings forth a battled shade
  Over the moon-blanched sward:

  95 lines
• In The Old Theatre, Fiesole

  I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline
  Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,

  15 lines
• Between Us Now

  Between us now and here--
  Two thrown together

  24 lines
• Rome: At the Pyramid Of Cestius. (Near The Graves Of Shelley & Keats)

  Who, then, was Cestius,
        And what is he to me? -

  28 lines, 1 comment
• V.R. 1819-1901 (A Reverie.)

  Moments the mightiest pass calendared,
  And when the Absolute

  14 lines
• The Mother Mourns.

  When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
  And sedges were horny,

  88 lines
• Departure

  While the far farewell music thins and fails,
  And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -

  15 lines
• The Sick God.

  On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam,
  On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam:

  55 lines
• The Colonel's Soliloquy

  "The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .
  It's true I've been accustomed now to home,

  36 lines
• Shelley's Skylark.

  Somewhere afield here something lies
  In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust

  24 lines, 3 comments
• The Going Of The Battery [Wive's Lament November 2nd 1899]

  O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough -
  Light in their loving as soldiers can be -

  47 lines
• Rome: On The Palatine.

  We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,
  And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,

  16 lines
• At The War Office, London.

  Last year I called this world of gain-givings
  The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly

  14 lines
• Rome: The Vatican-Sala Delle Muse.

  I sat in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day,
  And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,

  24 lines
• A Christmas Ghost Story

  South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
  A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.

  12 lines
• Zermatt To The Matterhorn.

  Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
  Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,

  15 lines
• The Dead Drummer.

  They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
  Uncoffined--just as found:

  21 lines
• On An Invitation To The United States

  My ardours for emprize nigh lost
  Since Life has bared its bones to me,

  16 lines
• The Souls Of The Slain.

    The thick lids of Night closed upon me
        Alone at the Bill

  142 lines
• I Said To Love

  I said to Love,
  "It is not now as in old days

  31 lines, 3 comments
• Song Of The Soldier's Wives.

  At last!  In sight of home again,
        Of home again;

  42 lines
• At A Lunar Eclipse.

  Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
  Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine

  14 lines

• By me, right now

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