Rail and Road

MARCH Many-weathers, bluff and affable,
The usher and the pursuivant of Spring,
Had sent his North wind blaring through the world —
A mundane wind that held the earth, and puffed
The smoke of urban fire and furnace far
Afield. An ashen canopy of cloud.
The dense immobled sky, high-pitched above
The wind's terrestrial office, overhung
The city when the morning train drew out.
Leaping along the land from town to town,
Its iron lungs respired its breath of steam,
Its resonant flanges, and its vertebral
Loose-jointed carcase of a centipede
Gigantic, hugged and ground the parallel
Adjusted metals of its destined way
With apathetic fatalism, the mark
Of all machinery. — From Paddington
To Basingstoke the world seemed standing still:
Nothing astir between the firmaments
Except the aimless tumult of the wind,
And clanging travail of the ponderous train
In labour with its journey on the smooth,
The ineludible, the shining rails.
But prompt at Basingstoke an interlude
Began: a reckless youth, possessed with seven
Innocuous devils of self-consciousness
Primeval, bouncing in irruptively,
Lusty-Juventus-wise, annexed the whole
Compartment — as a pendant to the earth.
Already his! Wind-shaven, ruddy: hunched
And big: all knees and knuckles: with a mouth
That opened like a portal: fleshy chops
And turned-up nose widespread, the signature
Of jollity: a shapeless, elvish skull;
His little pig's eyes in their sockets soused
But simmering merrily: just twenty years;
One radiation of nervous energy:
A limber tongue and most unquenchable,
Complacent blaze of indiscretion, soft
As a night-light in a nursery. "Where away?"
Quoth he: and "Hang the weather! I've seen worse,
In my time, for the season". Then: Did we think
The train was doing thirty or forty miles
An hour? Sometimes, by instinct, he could tell
To a mile the rate at which a train went.
This morning, for a wonder, he couldn't trust
His judgment in the matter; — annoying! — Still
A man's form varied, and we must excuse
His inability to gauge our speed.
Good golf about here, — very! Did we play?
And, by the by, talking of golf, he did
A brilliant thing just now: — missing the train
At Farnham on the other line, instead
Of waiting for the next, he tramped across
To Basingstoke, — some decent tale of miles;
His destination being Winchester,
Either line suited,—see? The weather,— yes,
The weather: — healthy, of course; — your moist cold kills;
Your dry cold cures: — to-day it seemed as cold, —
But that must be the wind ; in sheltered roads
It smelt like Spring:—to-morrow, — who could tell
To-morrow's weather?—a funny climate, ours!
Was that a cow there, or a—yes, a cow.
He didn't know how we regarded it.
But he, for his part, took it that the hand
That rocked the cradle ruled the world : to drop
A signature into a ballot-box
Would make no earthly! (Slang, ellipitical.)
Although we must remember, all of us,
This rocking of the cradle was out of date ;
But that he wouldn't canvass: — we were to mind
There must be no mistake: women were women
All the world to nothing: and — mark him — if
They had political enfranchisement.
No one could say—no one at all!—what might
And mightn't happen: not a doubt of that.
Getting along more quickly: forty miles.
He thought: or less, perhaps. He meant to lunch
At Winchester : then hire a trap and drive...
"Instanter to the devil," someone sighed.
All this, and further, an infinitude
Of dislocated prattle, with a smile
Indelible, and such a negligent  
Absorbition^ in self that no appeal,
Except a sheer affront, abuse, or blow,
Could have revealed remotely any gleam
Or shade, to him apparent, of his own
Insipid and grotesque enormity!
When time, distemper or disaster sap
Such individuals, and they see themselves,
In facets of disrupted character.
As others see them, stupid and absurd.
How bad the quarter of an hour must be!
Natheless there are extant a hearty breed.
Incorrigibly cheerful, who behold
Themselves for ever in the best of lights.
And by the pipe and bowl of Old King Cole
They have the best of it! To see ourselves
As others see us may be good enough;
But to love others in their vanities.
And to portray the glorious counterfeit —
In sympathetic ink that sympathy
Alone can read aright, — why that's a gift
Vouchsafed to genius of the rarest strain!
At Lyndhurst-road the coach for Lyndhurst took
The turnpike at its best commercial pace.
And there the sun burst out with moted beams
In handfuls, clenched like sheaves of thunderbolts.
The riven clouds, of homespun slashed and gored,
Displayed through unhemmed slits the turquoise sky,—
As tender as a damsel's bosom-thoughts.
Across the forest's swarthy-purple ridge
A sparse shower twinkled : but the broken bulk
Of vapour, by the sunbeams bundled up.
Slipped o'er the sky-edge and was no more seen.
Like a lithe weapon by gigantic hands
In pastance wielded, keen the brandished wind
Whistled about us all the uphill way
To Lyndhurst, where lofty church o'erlooks
The forest's metes and bounds, its modish spire
A landmark far and wide. But in the glebes
And garden-closes ancient houses — thatched.
Of post-and-panel, and with arching eaves
About their high and deep-set windows — peer
Occultly out of many centuries.
An old-world use and wont, the neighbourhood
And venue of the place are everywhere    
Presumptive, — in the High Street, new and raw
As in the sylvan faubourgs; for a gust
Of burning log and faggot importunes
The passer-by — the forest's bitter-sweet
Aroma, as it turns to genial warmth
And toothsome savour for the villager.