Once I forgot all, everything,
In any day of fall or spring;
And even when I went to bed.
The little prayer I should have said.
I cannot now forget at all
Anything of spring or fall; —
The splutter of wind within a hedge;
Or smell of hyssop from the edge
Of a hot field; the field itself
Dry as a bone upon a shelf;
Or deer that fleet across a wood;
Or an old woman in a hood.
My prayers rise up, each like a spear,
So sharp that God cannot but hear.
Old women think of old roofs, and the things
That made these comely in the ancient sun ;
Old men think of their wars, their wayfarings done.
Both of first love; of fair, dispersed springs.
Old women and old men — God rest them all! —
To hear the dark, slow waters lap about;
To see their last of candle spluttering out; —
It is too poor an ending to befall.
But ours this golden earth from sky to sky ;
And all my thoughts of you, and yours of me;
About us memorable April set. —
Sudden I feel the fleet years tumbling by;
Age stares at me behind each rosy tree! —
Oh, snatch me to your heart ! I would forget.
I wish I had not got a cold,
The wind is big and wild,
I wish that I was very old,
Not just a little child.
Somehow the day is very long
Just keeping here, alone;
I do not like the big wind’s song,
He’s growling for a bone.
He’s like an awful dog we had
Who used to creep around
And snatch at things--he was so bad,
With just that horrid sound.
I’m sitting up and nurse has made
Me wear a woolly shawl;
I wish I was not so afraid;
It’s horrid to be small.
Love! Love! Your tenderness,
Your beautiful, watchful ways
Grasp me, fold me, cover me;
I lie in a kind of daze,
Neither asleep nor yet awake,
Neither a bud nor flower.
Brings to-morrow
Joy or sorrow,
The black or the golden hour?
Love! Love! You pity me so!
Chide me, scold me--cry,
“Submit--submit! You must not fight!”
What may I do, then? Die?
But, oh, my horror of quiet beds!
How can I longer stay!
“One to be ready,
Her little hot room looked over the bay
Through a stiff palisade of glinting palms,
And there she would lie in the heat of the day,
Her dark head resting upon her arms,
So quiet, so still, she did not seem
To think, to feel, or even to dream.
The shimmering, blinding web of sea
Hung from the sky, and the spider sun
With busy frightening cruelty
Crawled over the sky and spun and spun.
She could see it still when she shut her eyes,
And the little boats caught in the web like flies.
Down below at this idle hour
Nobody walked in the dusty street
A scent of dying mimosa flower
Lay on the air, but sweet--too sweet.
By my bed, on a little round table
The Grandmother placed a candle.
She gave me three kisses telling me they were three dreams
And tucked me in just where I loved being tucked.
Then she went out of the room and the door was shut.
I lay still, waiting for my three dreams to talk;
But they were silent.
Suddenly I remembered giving her three kisses back.
Perhaps, by mistake, I had given my three little dreams.
I sat up in bed.
The room grew big, oh, bigger far than a church.
The wardrobe, quite by itself, as big as a house.
And the jug on the washstand smiled at me:
It was not a friendly smile.
I looked at the basket-chair where my clothes lay folded:
The Sea called--I lay on the rocks and said:
“I am come.”
She mocked and showed her teeth,
Stretching out her long green arms.
“Go away!” she thundered.
“Then tell me what I am to do,” I begged.
“If I leave you, you will not be silent,
But cry my name in the cities
And wistfully entreat me in the plains and forests;
All else I forsake to come to you--what must I do?”
“Never have I uttered your name,” snarled the Sea.
“There is no more of me in your body
Than the little salt tears you are frightened of shedding.
What can you know of my love on your brown rock pillow....
Come closer.”
The dawn whiteness.
A bank of slate-grey cloud lying heavily over it.
The moon, like a hunted thing, dropping into the cloud.
The millway path looks like a wraith,
The lock is black as ink,
And silently in stream and sky
The stars begin to blink.
I see them pass along the grass
With slow and solemn tread:
Aoibheall, their queen, is in between--
A corpse is at their head!
They wander on with faces wan,
And dirges sad as wind.
I know not, but it may be that
The dead's of human kind.
The houses of the city no longer hum and play:
They lie like careless drowsy giants, dumb, estranged.
One presses to his breast his toy, a lighted pane:
One stirs uneasily: one is cold in death.
And the late moon, fearfully peering over an immense shoulder,
Sees, in the shadow below, the unpeopled hush of a street.
Pale green-white, in a gallop across the sky,
The clouds retreating from a perilous affray
Carry the moon with them, a heavy sack of gold;
Sharp arrows, stars between them shoot and play.
The wind, as it strikes the sand,
Clutches with rigid hands
And tears from them
Thin ribbons of pallid sleet,
Long stinging hissing drift,
Which it trails up inland.
I lean against the bitter wind:
My body plunges like a ship.
Out there I see grey breakers rise,
Their ravelled beards are white,
And foam is in their eyes.
My heart is blown from me to-night
Dust hangs clogged so thick
The air has a dusty taste:
Spider threads cling to my face,
From the broad pine-beams.
There is nothing living here,
The house below might be quite empty,
No sound comes from it.
The old broken trunks and boxes,
Cracked and dusty pictures,
Legless chairs and shattered tables,
Seem to be crying
Softly in the stillness
Because no one has brushed them.
No one has any use for them, now,
Yet I often wonder
If these things are really dead: