Part 2

One evening, too, by the nursery fire, We snuggled close and sat round so still, When suddenly as the wind blew higher, Something scratched on the window-sill. A pinched brown face peered in--I shivered; No one listened or seemed to see; The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered, Whoo--I knew it had come for me; Some are as bad as bad can be! All night long they danced in the rain, Round and round in a dripping chain, Threw their caps at the window-pane, Tried to make me scream and shout And fling the bedclothes all about: I meant to stay in bed that night, And if only you had left a light They would never have got me out. Sometimes I wouldn’t speak, you see, Or answer when you spoke to me, Because in the long, still dusks of Spring You can hear the whole world whispering; The shy green grasses making love, The feathers grow on the dear, grey dove, The tiny heart of the redstart beat, The patter of the squirrel’s feet, The pebbles pushing in the silver streams, The rushes talking in their dreams, The swish-swish of the bat’s black wings, The wild-wood bluebell’s sweet ting-tings, Humming and hammering at your ear, Everything there is to hear In the heart of hidden things, But not in the midst of the nursery riot, That’s why I wanted to be quiet Couldn’t do my sums, or sing, Or settle down to anything. And when, for that, I was sent upstairs I _did_ kneel down to say my prayers; But the King who sits on your high church steeple Has nothing to do with us fairy people!

’Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother, Learned all my lessons and liked to play, And dearly I loved the little pale brother Whom some other bird must have called away. Why did They bring me here to make me Not quite bad and not quite good, Why, unless They’re wicked, do They want, in spite, to take me Back to their wet, wild wood? Now, every night I shall see the windows shining, The gold lamp’s glow, and the fire’s red gleam, While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us are whining In the hollow by the stream. Black and chill are Their nights on the wold; And They live so long and They feel no pain: I shall grow up, but never grow old, I shall always, always be very cold, I shall never come back again!

KEN

The town is old and very steep, A place of bells and cloisters and grey towers, And black clad people walking in their sleep-- A nun, a priest, a woman taking flowers To her new grave; and watched from end to end By the great Church above, through the still hours: But in the morning and the early dark The children wake to dart from doors and call Down the wide, crooked street, where, at the bend, Before it climbs up to the park, Ken’s is the gabled house facing the Castle wall.

When first I came upon him there Suddenly, on the half-lit stair, I think I hardly found a trace Of likeness to a human face In his. And I said then If in His image God made men, Some other must have made poor Ken-- But for his eyes which looked at you As two red, wounded stars might do.

He scarcely spoke, you scarcely heard, His voice broke off in little jars To tears sometimes. An uncouth bird He seemed as he ploughed up the street, Groping, with knarred, high-lifted feet And arms thrust out as if to beat Always against a threat of bars.

And oftener than not there’d be A child just higher than his knee Trotting beside him. Through his dim Long twilight this, at least, shone clear, That all the children and the deer, Whom every day he went to see Out in the park, belonged to him.

“God help the folk that next him sits He fidgets so, with his poor wits.” The neighbours said on Sunday nights When he would go to Church to “see the lights!” Although for these he used to fix His eyes upon a crucifix In a dark corner, staring on Till everybody else had gone. And sometimes, in his evil fits, You could not move him from his chair-- You did not look at him as he sat there, Biting his rosary to bits. While pointing to the Christ he tried to say “Take it away.”

Nothing was dead: He said “a bird” if he picked up a broken wing, A perished leaf or any such thing Was just “a rose”; and once when I had said He must not stand and knock there any more, He left a twig on the mat outside my door.

Not long ago The last thrush stiffened in the snow, While black against a sullen sky The sighing pines stood by. But now the wind has left our rattled pane To flutter the hedge-sparrow’s wing, The birches in the wood are red again And only yesterday The larks went up a little way to sing What lovers say Who loiter in the lanes to-day; The buds begin to talk of May With learned rooks on city trees, And if God please With all of these We too, shall see another Spring.

But in that red brick barn upon the hill I wonder--can one own the deer, And does one walk with children still As one did here-- Do roses grow Beneath those twenty windows in a row-- And if some night When you have not seen any light They cannot move you from your chair What happens there? I do not know.

So, when they took Ken to that place, I did not look After he called and turned on me His eyes. These I shall see--

À QUOI BON DIRE

Seventeen years ago you said Something that sounded like Good-bye; And everybody thinks that you are dead, But I.

So I, as I grow stiff and cold To this and that say Good-bye too; And everybody sees that I am old But you.

And one fine morning in a sunny lane Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear That nobody can love their way again While over there You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair.

THE QUIET HOUSE

When we were children old Nurse used to say, The house was like an auction or a fair Until the lot of us were safe in bed. It has been quiet as the country-side Since Ted and Janey and then Mother died And Tom crossed Father and was sent away. After the lawsuit he could not hold up his head, Poor Father, and he does not care For people here, or to go anywhere.

To get away to Aunt’s for that week-end Was hard enough; (since then, a year ago, He scarcely lets me slip out of his sight--) At first I did not like my cousin’s friend, I did not think I should remember him: His voice has gone, his face is growing dim And if I like him now I do not know. He frightened me before he smiled-- He did not ask me if he might-- He said that he would come one Sunday night, He spoke to me as if I were a child.

No year has been like this that has just gone by; It may be that what Father says is true, If things are so it does not matter why: But everything has burned and not quite through. The colours of the world have turned To flame, the blue, the gold has burned In what used to be such a leaden sky. When you are burned quite through you die.

Red is the strangest pain to bear; In Spring the leaves on the budding trees; In Summer the roses are worse than these, More terrible than they are sweet: A rose can stab you across the street Deeper than any knife: And the crimson haunts you everywhere-- Thin shafts of sunlight, like the ghosts of reddened swords have struck our stair As if, coming down, you had spilt your life.

I think that my soul is red Like the soul of a sword or a scarlet flower: But when these are dead They have had their hour.

I shall have had mine, too, For from head to feet, I am burned and stabbed half through, And the pain is deadly sweet.

The things that kill us seem Blind to the death they give: It is only in our dream The things that kill us live.

The room is shut where Mother died, The other rooms are as they were, The world goes on the same outside, The sparrows fly across the Square, The children play as we four did there, The trees grow green and brown and bare, The sun shines on the dead Church spire, And nothing lives here but the fire, While Father watches from his chair Day follows day The same, or now and then, a different grey, Till, like his hair, Which Mother said was wavy once and bright, They will all turn white.

To-night I heard a bell again-- Outside it was the same mist of fine rain, The lamps just lighted down the long, dim street, No one for me-- I think it is myself I go to meet: I do not care; some day I _shall_ not think; I shall not _be_!

ON THE ASYLUM ROAD

Theirs is the house whose windows--every pane-- Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass: Sometimes you come upon them in the lane, The saddest crowd that you will ever pass.

But still we merry town or village folk Throw to their scattered stare a kindly grin, And think no shame to stop and crack a joke With the incarnate wages of man’s sin.

None but ourselves in our long gallery we meet, The moor-hen stepping from her reeds with dainty feet, The hare-bell bowing on his stem, Dance not with us; their pulses beat To fainter music; nor do we to them Make their life sweet.

The gayest crowd that they will ever pass Are we to brother-shadows in the lane: Our windows, too, are clouded glass To them, yes, every pane!

JOUR DES MORTS (CIMETIÈRE MONTPARNASSE)

Sweetheart, is this the last of all our posies And little festivals, my flowers are they But white and wistful ghosts of gayer roses Shut with you in this grim garden? Not to-day, Ah! no! come out with me before the grey gate closes It is your fête and here is your bouquet!

THE FOREST ROAD

The forest road, The infinite straight road stretching away World without end: the breathless road between the walls Of the black listening trees: the hushed, grey road Beyond the window that you shut to-night Crying that you would look at it by day-- There is a shadow there that sings and calls But not for you. Oh! hidden eyes that plead in sleep Against the lonely dark, if I could touch the fear And leave it kissed away on quiet lids-- If I could hush these hands that are half-awake, Groping for me in sleep I could go free. I wish that God would take them out of mine And fold them like the wings of frightened birds Shot cruelly down, but fluttering into quietness so soon, Broken, forgotten things; there is not grief for them in the green Spring When the new birds fly back to the old trees. But it shall not be so with you. I will look back. I wish I knew that God would stand Smiling and looking down on you when morning comes, To hold you, when you wake, closer than I, So gently though: and not with famished lips or hungry arms: He does not hurt the frailest, dearest things As we do in the dark. See, dear, your hair-- I must unloose this hair that sleeps and dreams About my face, and clings like the brown weed To drowned, delivered things, tossed by the tired sea Back to the beaches. Oh! your hair! If you had lain A long time dead on the rough, glistening ledge Of some black cliff, forgotten by the tide, The raving winds would tear, the dripping brine would rust away Fold after fold of all the loveliness That wraps you round, and makes you, lying here, The passionate fragrance that the roses are. But death would spare the glory of your head In the long sweetness of the hair that does not die: The spray would leap to it in every storm, The scent of the unsilenced sea would linger on In these dark waves, and round the silence that was you-- Only the nesting gulls would hear--but there would still be whispers in your hair; Keep them for me; keep them for me. What _is_ this singing on the road That makes all other music like the music in a dream-- Dumb to the dancing and the marching feet; you know, in dreams, you see Old pipers playing that you cannot hear, And ghostly drums that only seem to beat. This seems to climb: Is it the music of a larger place? It makes our room too small: it is like a stair, A calling stair that climbs up to a smile you scarcely see, Dim, but so waited for; and _you_ know what a smile is, how it calls, How if I smiled you always ran to me. Now you must sleep forgetfully, as children do. There is a Spirit sits by us in sleep Nearer than those who walk with us in the bright day. I think he has a tranquil, saving face: I think he came Straight from the hills: he may have suffered there in time gone by, And once, from those forsaken heights, looked down, Lonely himself, on all the lonely sorrows of the earth. It is his kingdom--Sleep. If I could leave you there-- If, without waking you, I could get up and reach the door--! We used to go together.--Shut, scared eyes, Poor, desolate, desperate hands, it is not I Who thrust you off. No, take your hands away-- I cannot strike your lonely hands. Yes, I have struck your heart, It did not come so near. Then lie you there Dear and wild heart behind this quivering snow With two red stains on it: and I will strike and tear Mine out, and scatter it to yours. Oh! throbbing dust, You that were life, our little wind-blown hearts! The road! the road! There is a shadow there: I see my soul, I hear my soul, singing among the trees!

MADELEINE IN CHURCH

Here, in the darkness, where this plaster saint Stands nearer than God stands to our distress, And one small candle shines, but not so faint As the far lights of everlastingness I’d rather kneel than over there, in open day Where Christ is hanging, rather pray To something more like my own clay, Not too divine; For, once, perhaps my little saint Before he got his niche and crown, Had one short stroll about the town; It brings him closer, just that taint And anyone can wash the paint Off our poor faces, his and mine!

Is that why I see Monty now? equal to any saint, poor boy, as good as gold, But still, with just the proper trace Of earthliness on his shining wedding face; And then gone suddenly blank and old The hateful day of the divorce: Stuart got his, hands down, of course Crowing like twenty cocks and grinning like a horse: But Monty took it hard. All said and done I liked him best,-- He was the first, he stands out clearer than the rest. It seems too funny all we other rips Should have immortal souls; Monty and Redge quite damnably Keep theirs afloat while we go down like scuttled ships.-- It’s funny too, how easily we sink, One might put up a monument, I think To half the world and cut across it “Lost at Sea!” I should drown Jim, poor little sparrow, if I netted him to-night-- No, it’s no use this penny light-- Or my poor saint with his tin-pot crown-- The trees of Calvary are where they were, When we are sure that we can spare The tallest, let us go and strike it down And leave the other two still standing there. I, too, would ask Him to remember me If there were any Paradise beyond this earth that I could see.

Oh! quiet Christ who never knew The poisonous fangs that bite us through And make us do the things we do, See how we suffer and fight and die, How helpless and how low we lie, God holds You, and You hang so high, Though no one looking long at You, Can think You do not suffer too, But, up there, from your still, star-lighted tree What can You know, what can You really see Of this dark ditch, the soul of me!

We are what we are: when I was half a child I could not sit Watching black shadows on green lawns and red carnations burning in the sun, Without paying so heavily for it That joy and pain, like any mother and her unborn child were almost one. I could hardly bear The dreams upon the eyes of white geraniums in the dusk, The thick, close voice of musk, The jessamine music on the thin night air, Or, sometimes, my own hands about me anywhere-- The sight of my own face (for it was lovely then) even the scent of my own hair, Oh! there was nothing, nothing that did not sweep to the high seat Of laughing gods, and then blow down and beat My soul into the highway dust, as hoofs do the dropped roses of the street. I think my body was my soul, And when we are made thus Who shall control Our hands, our eyes, the wandering passion of our feet, Who shall teach us To thrust the world out of our heart; to say, till perhaps in death, When the race is run, And it is forced from us with our last breath “Thy will be done”? If it is Your will that we should be content with the tame, bloodless things. As pale as angels smirking by, with folded wings. Oh! I know Virtue, and the peace it brings! The temperate, well-worn smile The one man gives you, when you are evermore his own: And afterwards the child’s, for a little while, With its unknowing and all-seeing eyes So soon to change, and make you feel how quick The clock goes round. If one had learned the trick-- (How does one though?) quite early on, Of long green pastures under placid skies, One might be walking now with patient truth. What did we ever care for it, who have asked for youth, When, oh! my God! this is going or has gone?

There is a portrait of my mother, at nineteen, With the black spaniel, standing by the garden seat, The dainty head held high against the painted green And throwing out the youngest smile, shy, but half haughty and half sweet. Her picture then: but simply Youth, or simply Spring To me to-day: a radiance on the wall, So exquisite, so heart-breaking a thing Beside the mask that I remember, shrunk and small, Sapless and lined like a dead leaf, All that was left of oh! the loveliest face, by time and grief!

And in the glass, last night, I saw a ghost behind my chair-- Yet why remember it, when one can still go moderately gay--? Or could--with any one of the old crew, But oh! these boys! the solemn way They take you and the things they say-- This “I have only as long as you” When you remind them you are not precisely twenty-two-- Although at heart perhaps--God! if it were Only the face, only the hair! If Jim had written to me as he did to-day A year ago--and now it leaves me cold-- I know what this means, old, old, _old_! _Et avec ça--mais on a vécu, tout se paie._

That is not always true: there was my Mother--(we at least the dead are free!) Yoked to the man that Father was; yoked to the woman I am, Monty too; The little portress at the Convent School, stewing in hell so patiently; The poor, fair boy who shot himself at Aix. And what of me--and what of me? But I, I paid for what I had, and they for nothing. No, one cannot see How it shall be made up to them in some serene eternity. If there were fifty heavens God could not give us back the child who went or never came; Here, on our little patch of this great earth, the sun of any darkened day, Not one of all the starry buds hung on the hawthorn trees of last year’s May, No shadow from the sloping fields of yesterday; For every hour they slant across the hedge a different way, The shadows are never the same.

“Find rest in Him” One knows the parsons’ tags-- Back to the fold, across the evening fields, like any flock of baa-ing sheep: Yes, it may be, when He has shorn, led us to slaughter, torn the bleating soul in us to rags, For so He giveth His beloved sleep. Oh! He will take us stripped and done, Driven into His heart. So we are won: Then safe, safe are we? in the shelter of His everlasting wings-- I do not envy Him his victories, His arms are full of broken things.