REUBEN
They rose to go,
But on the doorstep Reuben stopp’d, and rais’d
Slow eyes at last upon the doctor’s face—
“How long?” “Nine months or so—a year—” he stammer’d,
Shut-to the door, and hurried with hard work,
To bar away from quivering kindred depths
That gaze, of mute accepted agony—
Pain without end and with no anodyne
Into the quick of a live human heart
Dealt and receiv’d: thenceforth for evermore
To inhabit there and, like the heart’s own red,
Only with life itself pass out of life.
Meanwhile, their two-mile walk the old pair went—
The other way now, homeward. And still, still,
The sweet light broad and delicately lay,
The young corn rippled and the air came kind,
The birds and lambs, ay, even the very clouds
Of heaven seem’d happy. Back, the way they came,
Slowly they went; the strength of both was ebb’d;
Slowly they went, and not one word the while.
Back, through the work-still’d village, past the elms,
The church, the humming school, the spinney, down
The white road and the tawny pasture lands,
Into the hollow, home. There stood the trees;
Blackie was browsing; and the currants, they
Would leaf next week; the thin blue smoke curl’d up
22
