Part 1

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Diacritical marks, where missing from the original table of contents, have been added so that the titles listed in the contents exactly match the poem titles from the main text.

THE FARMER’S BRIDE

The Original Edition of THE FARMER’S BRIDE, consisting of seventeen of the poems included in this volume, was first published in 1916.

THE FARMER’S BRIDE

By CHARLOTTE MEW

[_A new Edition with eleven new Poems_]

LONDON THE POETRY BOOKSHOP 35 DEVONSHIRE STREET, THEOBALD’S ROAD, W.C. 1921

Printed in England at The Westminster Press, Harrow Road, London, W.

THE AUTHOR begs to thank the Editors of _The Nation_, _The Westminster Gazette_, _The New Weekly_, _The Englishwoman_, _The Egoist_, _The Graphic_, _The Athenæum_, and _The Monthly Chapbook_ for permission to reprint some of the poems in this book.

To ----

He asked life of thee, and thou gavest him a long life: even for ever and ever.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE FARMER’S BRIDE 11 FAME 13 THE NARROW DOOR 14 THE FÊTE 15 BESIDE THE BED 20 IN NUNHEAD CEMETERY 21 THE PEDLAR 24 PÉCHERESSE 25 THE CHANGELING 27 KEN 29 À QUOI BON DIRE 32 THE QUIET HOUSE 33 ON THE ASYLUM ROAD 36 JOUR DES MORTS (CIMETIÈRE MONTPARNASSE) 37 THE FOREST ROAD 38 MADELEINE IN CHURCH 40 EXSPECTO RESURRECTIONEM 47 ON THE ROAD TO THE SEA 48 THE SUNLIT HOUSE 50 THE SHADE-CATCHERS 51 LE SACRÉ-CŒUR (MONTMARTRE) 52 SONG 53 SATURDAY MARKET 54 ARRACOMBE WOOD 55 SEA LOVE 56 THE ROAD TO KÉRITY 57 I HAVE BEEN THROUGH THE GATES 58 THE CENOTAPH 59

THE FARMER’S BRIDE

Three Summers since I chose a maid, Too young maybe--but more’s to do At harvest-time than bide and woo. When us was wed she turned afraid Of love and me and all things human; Like the shut of a winter’s day. Her smile went out, and ’twasn’t a woman-- More like a little frightened fay. One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

“Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said, ’Should properly have been abed; But sure enough she wasn’t there Lying awake with her wide brown stare. So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down We chased her, flying like a hare Before our lanterns. To Church-Town All in a shiver and a scare We caught her, fetched her home at last And turned the key upon her, fast.

She does the work about the house As well as most, but like a mouse: Happy enough to chat and play With birds and rabbits and such as they, So long as men-folk keep away. “Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech When one of us comes within reach. The women say that beasts in stall Look round like children at her call. _I’ve_ hardly heard her speak at all.

Shy as a leveret, swift as he, Straight and slight as a young larch tree, Sweet as the first wild violets, she, To her wild self. But what to me? The short days shorten and the oaks are brown, The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky, One leaf in the still air falls slowly down, A magpie’s spotted feathers lie On the black earth spread white with rime, The berries redden up to Christmas-time. What’s Christmas-time without there be Some other in the house than we!

She sleeps up in the attic there Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down, The soft young down of her, the brown, The brown of her--her eyes, her hair, her hair!

FAME

Sometimes in the over-heated house, but not for long, Smirking and speaking rather loud, I see myself among the crowd, Where no one fits the singer to his song, Or sifts the unpainted from the painted faces Of the people who are always on my stair; They were not with me when I walked in heavenly places; But could I spare In the blind Earth’s great silences and spaces, The din, the scuffle, the long stare If I went back and it was not there? Back to the old known things that are the new, The folded glory of the gorse, the sweet-briar air, To the larks that cannot praise us, knowing nothing of what we do And the divine, wise trees that do not care Yet, to leave Fame, still with such eyes and that bright hair! God! If I might! And before I go hence Take in her stead To our tossed bed, One little dream, no matter how small, how wild. Just now, I think I found it in a field, under a fence-- A frail, dead, new-born lamb, ghostly and pitiful and white. A blot upon the night, The moon’s dropped child!

THE NARROW DOOR

The narrow door, the narrow door On the three steps of which the café children play Mostly at shop with pebbles from the shore, It is always shut this narrow door But open for a little while to-day.

And round it, each with pebbles in his hand, A silenced crowd the café children stand To see the long box jerking down the bend Of twisted stair; then set on end, Quite filling up the narrow door Till it comes out and does not go in any more.

Along the quay you see it wind, The slow black line. Someone pulls up the blind Of the small window just above the narrow door-- _“Tiens! que veux-tu acheter?”_ Rénée cries, _“Mais, pour quat’sous, des oignons,”_ Jean replies And one pays down with pebbles from the shore.

THE FÊTE

To-night again the moon’s white mat Stretches across the dormitory floor While outside, like an evil cat The _pion_ prowls down the dark corridor, Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite For getting leave to sleep in town last night. But it was none of us who made that noise, Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies Out of the ivy--he will say it was us boys-- _Seigneur mon Dieu!_ the _sacré_ soul of spies! He would like to catch each dream that lies Hidden behind our sleepy eyes: Their dream? But mine--it is the moon and the wood that sees; All my long life how I shall hate the trees!

In the _Place d’Armes_, the dusty planes, all Summer through Dozed with the market women in the sun and scarcely stirred To see the quiet things that crossed the Square--, A tiny funeral, the flying shadow of a bird, The hump-backed barber Célestin Lemaire, Old madame Michel in her three-wheeled chair, And filing past to Vespers, two and two, The _demoiselles_ of the _pensionnat_. Towed like a ship through the harbour bar, Safe into port, where _le petit Jésus_ Perhaps makes nothing of the look they shot at you: _Si, c’est défendu, mais que voulez-vous?_ It was the sun. The sunshine weaves A pattern on dull stones: the sunshine leaves The portraiture of dreams upon the eyes Before it dies: All Summer through The dust hung white upon the drowsy planes Till suddenly they woke with the Autumn rains. It is not only the little boys Who have hardly got away from toys, But I, who am seventeen next year, Some nights, in bed, have grown cold to hear That lonely passion of the rain Which makes you think of being dead, And of somewhere living to lay your head As if you were a child again, Crying for one thing, known and near Your empty heart, to still the hunger and the fear That pelts and beats with it against the pane.

But I remember smiling too At all the sun’s soft tricks and those Autumn dreads In winter time, when the grey light broke slowly through The frosted window-lace to drag us shivering from our beds. And when at dusk the singing wind swung down Straight from the stars to the dark country roads Beyond the twinkling town, Striking the leafless poplar boughs as he went by, Like some poor, stray dog by the wayside lying dead, We left behind us the old world of dread, I and the wind as we strode whistling on under the Winter sky.

And then in Spring for three days came the Fair Just as the planes were starting into bud Above the caravans: you saw the dancing bear Pass on his chain; and heard the jingle and the thud. Only four days ago They let you out of this dull show To slither down the _montagne russe_ and chaff the man _à la tête de veau_-- Hit, slick, the bull’s eye at the _tir_, Spin round and round till your head went queer On the _porcs-roulants. Oh! là là! la fête!_ _Va pour du vin, et le tête-a-tête_ With the girl who sugars the _quafres! Pauvrette_, How thin she was; but she smiled, you bet, As she took your tip--“One does not forget The good days, Monsieur.” Said with a grace, But _sacrébleu!_ what a ghost of a face! And no fun too for the _demoiselles_ Of the _pensionnat_, who were hurried past, With their _“Oh, que c’est beau--Ah, qu’elle est belle!”_ A lap-dog’s life from first to last! The good nights are not made for sleep, nor the good days for dreaming in, And at the end in the big Circus tent we sat and shook and stewed like sin!

Some children there had got--but where? Sent from the south, perhaps--a red bouquet Of roses, sweetening the fetid air With scent from gardens by some far away blue bay. They threw one at the dancing bear; The white clown caught it. From St. Rémy’s tower The deep, slow bell tolled out the hour; The black clown, with his dirty grin Lay, sprawling in the dust, as She rode in.

She stood on a white horse--and suddenly you saw the bend Of a far-off road at dawn, with knights riding by, A field of spears--and then the gallant day Go out in storm, with ragged clouds low down, sullen and grey Against red heavens: wild and awful, such a sky As witnesses against you at the end Of a great battle; bugles blowing, blood and dust-- The old _Morte d’Arthur_, fight you must--. It died in anger. But it was not death That had you by the throat, stopping your breath. She looked like Victory. She rode my way.

She laughed at the black clown and then she flew A bird above us, on the wing Of her white arms; and you saw through A rent in the old tent, a patch of sky With one dim star. She flew, but not so high-- And then she did not fly; She stood in the bright moonlight at the door Of a strange room, she threw her slippers on the floor-- Again, again You heard the patter of the rain, The starving rain--it was this Thing, Summer was this, the gold mist in your eyes;-- Oh God! it dies, But after death--, To-night the splendour and the sting Blows back and catches at your breath, The smell of beasts, the smell of dust, the scent of all the roses in the world, the sea, the Spring, The beat of drums, the pad of hoofs, music, the dream, the dream, the Enchanted Thing!

At first you scarcely saw her face, You knew the maddening feet were there, What called was that half-hidden, white unrest To which now and then she pressed Her finger tips; but as she slackened pace And turned and looked at you it grew quite bare: There was not anything you did not dare:-- Like trumpeters the hours passed until the last day of the Fair.

In the _Place d’Armes_ all afternoon The building birds had sung “Soon, soon,” The shuttered streets slept sound that night, It was full moon: The path into the wood was almost white, The trees were very still and seemed to stare: Not far before your soul the Dream flits on, But when you touch it, it is gone And quite alone your soul stands there.

Mother of Christ, no one has seen your eyes: how can men pray Even unto you? There were only wolves’ eyes in the wood-- My Mother is a woman too: Nothing is true that is not good, With that quick smile of hers, I have heard her say;-- I wish I had gone back home to-day; I should have watched the light that so gently dies From our high window, in the Paris skies, The long, straight chain Of lamps hung out along the Seine: I would have turned to her and let the rain Beat on her breast as it does against the pane;-- Nothing will be the same again;-- There is something strange in my little Mother’s eyes, There is something new in the old heavenly air of Spring-- The smell of beasts, the smell of dust--_The Enchanted Thing!_

All my life long I shall see moonlight on the fern And the black trunks of trees. Only the hair Of any woman can belong to God. The stalks are cruelly broken where we trod, There had been violets there, I shall not care As I used to do when I see the bracken burn.

BESIDE THE BED

Someone has shut the shining eyes, straightened and folded The wandering hands quietly covering the unquiet breast: So, smoothed and silenced you lie, like a child, not again to be questioned or scolded; But, for you, not one of us believes that this is rest.

Not so to close the windows down can cloud and deaden The blue beyond: or to screen the wavering flame subdue its breath: Why, if I lay my cheek to your cheek, your grey lips, like dawn, would quiver and redden, Breaking into the old, odd smile at this fraud of death.

Because all night you have not turned to us or spoken It is time for you to wake; your dreams were never very deep: I, for one, have seen the thin, bright, twisted threads of them dimmed suddenly and broken, This is only a most piteous pretence of sleep!

IN NUNHEAD CEMETERY

It is the clay that makes the earth stick to his spade; He fills in holes like this year after year; The others have gone; they were tired, and half afraid, But I would rather be standing here;

There is nowhere else to go. I have seen this place From the windows of the train that’s going past Against the sky. This is rain on my face-- It was raining here when I saw it last.

There is something horrible about a flower; This, broken in my hand, is one of those He threw in just now: it will not live another hour; There are thousands more: you do not miss a rose.

One of the children hanging about Pointed at the whole dreadful heap and smiled This morning, after THAT was carried out; There is something terrible about a child.

We were like children, last week, in the Strand; That was the day you laughed at me Because I tried to make you understand The cheap, stale chap I used to be Before I saw the things you made me see.

This is not a real place; perhaps by-and-by I shall wake--I am getting drenched with all this rain: To-morrow I will tell you about the eyes of the Crystal Palace train Looking down on us, and you will laugh and I shall see what you see again.

Not here, not now. We said “Not yet Across our low stone parapet Will the quick shadows of the sparrows fall.” But still it was a lovely thing Through the grey months to wait for Spring With the birds that go a-gypsying In the parks till the blue seas call. And next to these, you used to care For the lions in Trafalgar Square, Who’ll stand and speak for London when her bell of Judgment tolls-- And the gulls at Westminster there were The old sea-captains’ souls. To-day again the brown tide splashes, step by step, the river stair, And the gulls are there!

By a month we have missed our Day: The children would have hung about Round the carriage and over the way As you and I came out.

We should have stood on the gulls’ black cliffs and heard the sea And seen the moon’s white track, I would have called, you would have come to me And kissed me back.

You have never done that: I do not know Why I stood staring at your bed And heard you, though you spoke so low, But could not reach your hands, your little head. There was nothing we could not do, you said, And you went, and I let you go!

Now I will burn you back, I will burn you through, Though I am damned for it we two will lie And burn, here where the starlings fly To these white stones from the wet sky--; Dear, you will say this is not I-- It would not be you, it would not be you!

If for only a little while You will think of it you will understand, If you will touch my sleeve and smile As you did that morning in the Strand I can wait quietly with you Or go away if you want me to-- God! What is God? but your face has gone and your hand! Let me stay here too.

When I was quite a little lad At Christmas time we went half mad For joy of all the toys we had, And then we used to sing about the sheep The shepherds watched by night; We used to pray to Christ to keep Our small souls safe till morning light--; I am scared, I am staying with you to-night-- Put me to sleep.

I shall stay here: here you can see the sky; The houses in the streets are much too high; There is no one left to speak to there; Here they are everywhere, And just above them fields and fields of roses lie-- If he would dig it all up again they would not die.

THE PEDLAR

Lend me, a little while, the key That locks your heavy heart, and I’ll give you back-- Rarer than books and ribbons and beads bright to see, This little Key of Dreams out of my pack.

The road, the road, beyond men’s bolted doors, There shall I walk and you go free of me, For yours lies North across the moors, And mine South. To what sea?

How if we stopped and let our solemn selves go by, While my gay ghost caught and kissed yours, as ghosts don’t do, And by the wayside this forgotten you and I Sat, and were twenty-two?

Give me the key that locks your tired eyes, And I will lend you this one from my pack, Brighter than coloured beads and painted books that make men wise: Take it. No, give it back!

PÉCHERESSE

Down the long quay the slow boats glide, While here and there a house looms white Against the gloom of the waterside, And some high window throws a light As they sail out into the night.

At dawn they will bring in again To women knitting on the quay Who wait for him, their man of men; I stand with them, and watch the sea Which may have taken mine from me.

Just so the long days come and go. The nights, ma Doué! the nights are cold! Our Lady’s heart is as frozen snow, Since this one sin I have not told; And I shall die or perhaps grow old

Before he comes. The foreign ships Bring many a one of face and name As strange as his, to buy your lips, A gold piece for a scarlet shame Like mine. But mine was not the same.

One night was ours, one short grey day Of sudden sin, unshrived, untold. He found me, and I lost the way To Paradise for him. I sold My soul for love and not for gold.

He bought my soul, but even so, My face is all that he has seen, His is the only face I know, And in the dark church, like a screen, It shuts God out; it comes between;

While in some narrow foreign street Or loitering on the crowded quay, Who knows what others he may meet To turn his eyes away from me? Many are fair to such as he!

There is but one for such as I To love, to hate, to hunger for; I shall, perhaps, grow old and die, With one short day to spend and store, One night, in all my life, no more.

Just so the long days come and go, Yet this one sin I will not tell Though Mary’s heart is as frozen snow And all nights are cold for one warmed too well. But, oh! ma Doué! _the nights of Hell!_

THE CHANGELING

Toll no bell for me, dear Father, dear Mother, Waste no sighs; There are my sisters, there is my little brother Who plays in the place called Paradise, Your children all, your children for ever; But I, so wild, Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never, Never, I know, but half your child!

In the garden at play, all day, last summer, Far and away I heard The sweet “tweet-tweet” of a strange new-comer, The dearest, clearest call of a bird. It lived down there in the deep green hollow, My own old home, and the fairies say The word of a bird is a thing to follow, So I was away a night and a day.