Collected Poems, 1901–1918

Volume 1

COLLECTED POEMS

COLLECTED POEMS

1901-1918

BY

WALTER DE LA MARE

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1920

Copyright, 1920

BY

Henry Holt and Company

CONTENTS

POEMS: 1906

THE LISTENERS: 1914

MOTLEY: 1919

Shadow

POEMS: 1906

TO HENRY NEWBOLT

LYRICAL POEMS

SHADOW

EVEN the beauty of the rose doth cast, When its bright, fervid noon is past, A still and lengthening shadow in the dust, Till darkness come And take its strange dream home.

The transient bubbles of the water paint 'Neath their frail arch a shadow faint; The golden nimbus of the windowed saint, Till shine the stars, Casts pale and trembling bars.

The loveliest thing earth hath, a shadow hath, A dark and livelong hint of death, Haunting it ever till its last faint breath. Who, then, may tell The beauty of heaven's shadowless asphodel?

Unregarding

UNREGARDING

PUT by thy days like withered flowers In twilight hidden away: Memory shall upbuild thee bowers Sweeter than they.

Hoard not from swiftness of thy stream The shallowest cruse of tears: Pools still as heaven shall lovelier dream In future years.

Squander thy love as she that flings Her soul away on night; Lovely are love's far echoings, Height imto height.

O, make no compact with the sun, No compact with the moon! Night falls full-cloaked, and light is gone Sudden and soon.

They Told Me

THEY TOLD ME

THEY told me Pan was dead, but I Oft marvelled who it was that sang Down the green valleys languidly Where the grey elder-thickets hang.

Sometimes I thought it was a bird My soul had charged with sorcery; Sometimes it seemed my own heart heard Inland the sorrow of the sea.

But even where the primrose sets The seal of her pale loveliness, I found amid the violets Tears of an antique bitterness.

Sorcery

SORCERY

"WHAT voice is that I hear Crying across the pool?" " It is the voice of Pan you hear, Crying his sorceries shrill and clear, In the twilight dim and cool."

"What song is it he sings, Echoing from afar; While the sweet swallow bends her wings. Filling the air with twitterings, Beneath the brightening star?"

The woodman answered me, His faggot on his back:— "Seek not the face of Pan to see; Flee from his clear note summoning thee To darkness deep and black!"

"He dwells in thickest shade. Piping his notes forlorn Of sorrow never to be allayed; Turn from his coverts sad Of twilight unto morn!"

The woodman passed away Along the forest path; His ax shone keen and grey In the last beams of day: And all was still as death: -—

Only Pan singing sweet Out of Earth's fragrant shade; I dreamed his eyes to meet, And found but shadow laid Before my tired feet.

Comes no more dawn to me, Nor bird of open skies. Only his woods' deep gloom I see Till, at the end of all, shall rise, Afar and tranquilly, Death's stretching sea.

The Children of Stare

THE CHILDREN OF STARE

WINTER is fallen early On the house of Stare; Birds in reverberating flocks Haunt its ancestral box; Bright are the plenteous berries In clusters in the air.

Still is the fountain's music. The dark pool icy still, Whereupon a small and sanguine sun Floats in a mirror on. Into a West of crimson, From a South of daffodil.

'Tis strange to see young children In such a wintry house; Like rabbits' on the frozen snow Their tell-tale footprints go; Their laughter rings like timbrels 'Neath evening ominous:

Their small and heightened faces Like wine-red winter buds; Their frolic bodies gentle as Flakes in the air that pass, Frail as the twirling petal From the briar of the woods.

Above them silence lours. Still as an arctic sea; Light fails; night falls; the wintry moon Glitters; the crocus soon Will ope grey and distracted On earth's austerity:

Thick mystery, wild peril. Law like an iron rod: — Yet sport they on in Spring's attire, Each with his tiny fire Blown to a core of ardour By the awful breath of God.

Age

AGE

THIS ugly old crone — Every beauty she had When a maid, when a maid. Her beautiful eyes, Too youthful, too wise, Seemed ever to come To so lightless a home, Cold and dull as a stone. And her cheeks — who would guess Cheeks cadaverous as this Once with colours were gay As the flower on its spray? Who would ever believe Aught could bring one to grieve So much as to make Lips bent for love's sake So thin and so grey? Youth, come away! As she asks in her lone, This old, desolate crone. She loves us no more; She is too old to care For the charms that of yore Made her body so fair.

Past repining, past care. She lives but to bear One or two fleeting years Earth's indiflerence: her tears Have lost now their heat; Her hands and her feet Now shake but to be Shed as leaves from a tree; And her poor heart beats on Like a sea — the storm gone.

The Glimpse

THE GLIMPSE

Art thou asleep? or have thy wings Wearied of my unchanging skies? Or, haply, is it fading dreams Are in my eyes?

Not even an echo in my heart Tells me the courts thy feet trod last, Bare as a leafless wood it is, The summer past.

My inmost mind is like a book The reader dulls with lassitude, Wherein the same old lovely words Sound poor and rude.

Yet through this vapid surface, I Seem to see old-time deeps; I see, Past the dark painting of the hour, Life's ecstasy.

Only a moment; as when day Is set, and in the shade of night, Through all the clouds that compassed her, Stoops into sight

Pale, changeless, everlasting Dian, Gleams on the prone Endymion, Troubles the dulness of his dreams: And then is gone.

Remembrance

REMEMBRANCE

THE sky was like a waterdrop In shadow of a thorn, Clear, tranquil, beautiful, Dark, forlorn.

Lightning along its margin ran; A rumour of the sea Rose in profundity and sank Into infinity.

Lofty and few the elms, the stars In the vast boughs most bright; I stood a dreamer in a dream In the unstirring night.

Not wonder, worship, not even peace Seemed in my heart to be: Only the memory of one, Of all most dead to me.

Treachery

TREACHERY

SHE had amid her ringlets bound Green leaves to rival their dark hue; How could such locks with beauty bound Dry up their dew, Wither them through and through?

She had within her dark eyes lit Sweet fires to burn all doubt away; Yet did those fires, in darkness lit, Burn but a day, Not even till twilight stay.

She had within a dusk of words A vow in simple splendour set; How, in the memory of such words, Could she forget That vow — the soul of it?

In Vain

IN VAIN

I KNOCKED upon thy door ajar, While yet the woods with buds were grey; Nought but a little child I heard Warbling at break of day.

I knocked when June had lured her rose To mask the sharpness of its thorn; Knocked yet again, heard only yet Thee singing of the morn.

The frail convolvulus had wreathed Its cup, but the faint flush of eve Lingered upon thy Western wall; Thou hadst no word to give.

Once yet I came; the winter stars Above thy house wheeled wildly bright; Footsore I stood before thy door —- Wide open into night.

The Miracle

THE MIRACLE

WHO beckons the green ivy up Its solitary tower of stone? What spirit lures the bindweed's cup Unfaltering on? Calls even the starry lichen to climb By agelong inches endless Time?

Who bids the hollyhock uplift Her rod of fast-sealed buds on high; Fling wide her petals — silent, swift, Lovely to the sky? Since as she kindled, so she will fade, Flower above flower in squalor laid.

Ever the heavy billow rears All its sea-length in green, hushed wall; But totters as the shore it nears, Foams to its fall; Where was its mark? on what vain quest Rose that great water from its rest?

So creeps ambition on; so climb Man's vaunting thoughts. He, set on high, Forgets his birth, small space, brief time, That he shall die;

Dreams blindly in his dark, still air; Consumes his strength; strips himself bare;

Rejects delight, ease, pleasure, hope, Seeking in vain, but seeking yet, Past earthly promise, earthly scope, On one aim set: As if, like Chaucer's child, he thought All but "O Alma!" nought.

Keep Innocency

KEEP INNOCENCY

LIKE an old battle, youth is wild With bugle and spear, and counter cry, Fanfare and drummery, yet a child Dreaming of that sweet chivalry, The piercing terror cannot see.

He, with a mild and serious eye Along the azure of the years, Sees the sweet pomp sweep hurtling by; But he sees not death's blood and tears, Sees not the plunging of the spears.

And all the strident horror of Horse and rider, in red defeat, Is only music fine enough To lull him into slmnber sweet In fields where ewe and lambkin bleat.

O, if with such simplicity Himself take arms and suffer war; With beams his targe shall gilded be, Though in the thickening gloom be far The steadfast light of any star!

Though hoarse War's eagle on him perch, Quickened with guilty lightnings—there It shall in vain for terror search, Where a child's eyes beneath bloody hair Gaze purely through the dingy air.

And when the wheeling rout is spent, Though in the heaps of slain he lie; Or lonely in his last content; Quenchless shall burn in secrecy The flame Death knows his victors by.

The Phantom

THE PHANTOM

WILT thou never come again, Beauteous one? Yet the woods are green and dim, Yet the birds' deluding cry Echoes in the hollow sky, Yet the falling waters brim The clear pool which thou wast fain To paint thy lovely cheek upon. Beauteous one!

I may see the thorny rose Stir and wake The dark dewdrop on her gold; But thy secret will she keep Half-divulged — yet all untold, Since a child's heart woke from sleep.

The faltering sunbeam fades and goes; The night-bird whistles in the brake; The willows quake; Utter darkness walls; the wind Sighs no more. Yet it seems the silence yearns But to catch thy fleeting foot; Yet the wandering glowworm burns

Lest her lamp should light thee not— Thee whom I shall never find; Though thy shadow lean before, Thou thyself return'st no more— Never more.

All the world's woods, tree o'er tree. Come to nought. Birds, flowers, beasts, how transient they, Angels of a flying day. Love is quenched; dreams drown in sleep; Ruin nods along the deep: Only thou immortally Haimtest on This poor earth in Time's flux caught; Hauntest on, pursued, unwon, Phantom child of memory, Beauteous one!

Voices

VOICES

WHO is it calling by the darkened river Where the moss lies smooth and deep, And the dark trees lean unmoving arms, Silent and vague in sleep, And the bright-heeled constellations pass In splendour through the gloom; Who is it calling o'er the darkened river In music, "Come!"?

Who is it wandering in the summer meadows Where the children stoop and play In the green faint-scented flowers, spinning The guileless hours away? Who touches their bright hair? who puts A wind-shell to each cheek, Whispering betwixt its breathing silences, "Seek! seek!"?

Who is it watching in the gathering twilight Wlien the curfew bird hath flown On eager wings, from song to silence, To its darkened nest alone? Who takes for brightening eyes the stars, For locks the still moonbeam, Sighs through the dews of evening peacefully Falling, "Dream!"?

Thule

THULE

IF thou art sweet as they are sad Who on the shores of Time's salt sea Watch on the dim horizon fade Ships bearing love to night and thee;

If past all beacons Hope hath lit In the dark wanderings of the deep They who unwilling traverse it Dream not till dawn unseal their sleep;

Ah, cease not in thy winds to mock Us, who yet wake, but cannot see Thy distant shores; who at each shock Of the waves' onset faint for thee!

The Birthnight: To F.

THE BIRTHNIGHT: TO F.

DEAREST, it was a night That in its darkness rocked Orion's stars; A sighing wind ran faintly white Along the willows, and the cedar boughs Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across The starry silence of their antique moss: No sound save rushing air Cold, yet all sweet with Spring, And in thy mother's arms, couched weeping there, Thou, lovely thing.

The Death-Dream

THE DEATH-DREAM

WHO, now, put dreams into thy slumbering mind? Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned, Spake so thy spirit speech should understand, And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal, Like dawn distraught upon unhappy days, To prove nought, nothing? Was it Time's large voice Out of the inscrutable future whispered so? Or but the horror of a little noise Earth wakes at dead of night? Or does Love know When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even In sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse? Or, haply, was it I who out of dream Stole but a little where shadows course, Called back to thee across the eternal stream?

"Where Is Thy Victory?"

"WHERE IS THY VICTORY?"

NONE, none can tell where I shall be When the unclean earth covers me; Only in surety if thou cry Where my perplexed ashes lie, Know, 'tis but death's necessity That keeps my tongue from answering thee.

Even if no more my shadow may Lean for a moment in thy day; No more the whole earth lighten, as if, Thou near, it had nought else to give: Surely 'tis but Heaven's strategy To prove death immortality.

Yet should I sleep — and no more dream, Sad would the last awakening seem, If my cold heart, with love once hot, Had thee in sleep remembered not: How could I wake to find that I Had slept alone, yet easefully?

Or should in sleep glad visions come: Sick, in an alien land, for home Would be my eyes in their bright beam;

Awake, we know 'tis not a dream; Asleep, some devil in the mind Might truest thoughts with false enwind.

Life is a mockery if death Have the least power men say it hath. As to a hound that mewing waits, Death opens, and shuts to, his gates; Else even dry bones might rise and say,— "'Tis ye are dead and laid away."

Innocent children out of nought Build up a universe of thought, And out of silence fashion Heaven: So, dear, is this poor dying even, Seeing thou shalt be touched, heard, seen, Better than when dust stood between.

Foreboding

FOREBODING

THOU canst not see him standing by — Time — with a poppied hand Stealing thy youth's simplicity, Even as falls unceasingly His waning sand.

He will pluck thy childish roses, as Summer from her bush Strips all the loveliness that was; Even to the silence evening has Thy laughter hush.

Thy locks too faint for earthly gold, The meekness of thine eyes, He will darken and dim, and to his fold Drive, 'gainst the night, thy stainless, old Innocencies;

Thy simple words confuse and mar, Thy tenderest thoughts delude. Draw a long cloud athwart thy star, Still with loud timbrels heaven's far Faint interlude.

Thou canst not see; I see, dearest; O, then, yet patient be, Though love refuse thy heart all rest, Though even love wax angry, lest Love should lose thee?

Vain Finding

VAIN FINDING

EVER before my face there went Betwixt earth's buds and me A beauty beyond earth's content, A hope — half memory: Till in the woods one evening — Ah! eyes as dark as they, Fastened on mine unwontedly, Grey, and dear heart, how grey!

Napoleon

NAPOLEON

"WHAT is the world, soldiers? It is I: I, this incessant snow, This northern sky; Soldiers, this solitude Through which we go Is I."

England

ENGLAND

NO lovelier hills than thine have laid My tired thoughts to rest: No peace of lovelier valleys made Like peace within my breast.

Thine are the woods whereto my soul, Out of the noontide beam, Flees for a refuge green and cool And tranquil as a dream.

Thy breaking seas like trumpets peal; Thy clouds — how oft have I Watched their bright towers of silence steal Into infinity!

My heart within me faints to roam In thought even far from thee: Thine be the grave whereto I come, And thine my darkness be.

Truce

TRUCE

FAR inland here Death's pinions mocked the roar Of English seas; We sleep to wake no more, Hushed, and at ease; Till sound a trump, shore on to echoing shore, Rouse from a peace, unwonted then to war, Us and our enemies.

Evening

EVENING

WHEN twilight darkens, and one by one, The sweet birds to their nests have gone; When to green banks the glow-worms bring Pale lamps to brighten evening; Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl Through the dewy air to prowl.

Hawking the meadows swiftly he flits, While the small mouse atrembling sits With tiny eye of fear upcast Until his brooding shape be past, Hiding her where the moonbeams beat, Casting black shadows in the wheat.

Now all is still: the field-man is Lapped deep in slumbering silentness. Not a leaf stirs, but clouds on high Pass in dim flocks across the sky, Puffed by a breeze too light to move Aught but these wakeful sheep above.

O what an arch of light now spans These fields by night no longer Man's!

Their ancient Master is abroad, Walking beneath the moonlight cold: His presence is the stillness, He Fills earth with wonder and mystery.

Night

NIGHT

ALL from the light of the sweet moon Tired men lie now abed; Actionless, full of visions, soon Vanishing, soon sped.

The starry night aflock with beams Of crystal light scarce stirs: Only its birds — the cocks, the streams, Call 'neath heaven's wanderers.

All silent; all hearts still; Love, cunning, fire fallen low: When faint morn straying on the hill Sighs, and his soft airs flow.

The Universe

THE UNIVERSE

I HEARD a little child beneath the stars Talk as he ran along To some sweet riddle in his mind that seemed A-tiptoe into song.

In his dark eyes lay a wild universe, — Wild forests, peaks, and crests; Angels and fairies, giants, wolves and he Were that world's only guests.

Elsewhere was home and mother, his warm bed: — Now, only God alone Could, armed with all His power and wisdom, make Earths richer than his own.

O Man! — thy dreams, thy passions, hopes, desires! — He in his pity keep A homely bed where love may lull a child's Fond Universe asleep!

Gloria Mundi

GLORIA MUNDI

UPON a bank, easeless with knobs of gold, Beneath a canopy of noonday smoke, I saw a measureless Beast, morose and bold, With eyes like one from filthy dreams awoke, Who stares upon the daylight in despair For very terror of the nothing there.

This beast in one flat hand clutched vulture-wise A glittering image of itself in jet, And with the other groped about its eyes To drive away the dreams that pestered it; And never ceased its coils to toss and beat The mire encumbering its feeble feet.

Sharp was its hunger, though continually It seemed a cud of stones to ruminate, And often like a dog let glittering lie This meatless fare, its foolish gaze to sate; Once more convulsively to stoop its jaw, Or seize the morsel with an envious paw.

Indeed, it seemed a hidden enemy Must lurk within the clouds above that bank, It strained so wildly its pale, stubborn eye, To pierce its own foul vapours dim and dank;

Till, wearied out, it raved in wrath and foam, Daring that Nought Invisible to come.

Ay, and it seemed some strange delight to find In this unmeaning din, till, suddenly, As if it heard a rumour on the wind, Or far away its freer children cry, Lifting its face made-quiet, there it stayed, Till died the echo its own rage had made.

That place alone was barren where it lay; Flowers bloomed beyond, utterly sweet and fair; And even its own dull heart might think to stay In livelong thirst of a clear river there, Flowing from unseen hills to unheard seas, Through a still vale of yew and almond trees.

And then I spied in the lush green below Its tortured belly. One, like silver, pale, With fingers closed upon a rope of straw, That bound the Beast, squat neck to hoary tail; Lonely in all that verdure faint and deep, He watched the monster as a shepherd sheep.

I marvelled at the power, strength, and rage Of this poor creature in such slavery bound; Tettered with worms of fear; forlorn with age; Its blue wing-stumps stretched helpless on the ground; While twilight faded into darkness deep, And he who watched it piped its pangs asleep.

Idleness

IDLENESS

I SAW old Idleness, fat, with great cheeks Puffed to the huge circumference of a sigh, But past all tinge of apples long ago. His boyish fingers twiddled up and down The filthy remnant of a cup of physic That thicked in odour all the while he stayed. His eyes were sad as fishes that swim up And stare upon an element not theirs Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down, Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream. His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it; And never were such meagre puppets made The slaves of such a tyrant, as his thoughts Of that obese epitome of ills. Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself; And when upon the wan green of his eye I marked the gathering lustre of a tear. Thought I myself must weep, until I caught A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch His pallid features at his misery. And laugh did I, to see the little snares He had set for pests to vex him: his great feet Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool

To seat such elephantine parts as his; Ay, and the book he read, a Hebrew Bible; And, to incite a gross and backward wit, An old, crabbed, wormed, Greek dictionary; and A foxy Ovid bound in dappled calf.

Goliath

GOLIATH

STILL as a mountain with dark pines and sun He stood between the armies, and his shout Rolled from the empyrean above the host: "Bid any little flea ye have come forth, And wince at death upon my finger-nail!" He turned his large-boned face: and all his steel Tossed into beams the lustre of the noon; And all the shaggy horror of his locks Rustled like locusts in a field of corn. The meagre pupil of his shameless eye Moved like a cormorant over a glassy sea. He stretched his limbs, and laughed into the air, To feel the groaning sinews of his breast, And the long gush of his swollen arteries pause: And, nodding, wheeled, towering in all his height. Then, like a wind that hushes, gazed and saw Down, down, far down upon the untroubled green A shepherd-boy that swung a little sling. Goliath shut his lids to drive that mote, Which vexed the eastern azure of his eye, Out of his vision; and stared down again. Yet stood the youth there, ruddy in the flare Of his vast shield, nor spake, nor quailed, gazed up, As one might scan a mountain to be scaled.

Then, as it were, a voice unearthly still Cried in the cavern of his bristling ear, "His name is Death!" . . . And, like the flush That dyes Sahara to its lifeless verge, His brows' bright brass flamed into sudden crimson; And his great spear leapt upward, lightning-like, Shaking a dreadful thunder in the air; Spun betwixt earth and sky, bright as a berg That hoards the sunlight in a myriad spires, Crashed: and struck echo through an army's heart. Then paused Goliath, and stared down again. And fleet-foot Fear from rolling orbs perceived Steadfast, unharmed, a stooping shepherd-boy Frowning upon the target of his face. And wrath tossed suddenly up once more his hand; And a deep groan grieved all his strength in him. He breathed; and, lost in dazzling darkness, prayed — Besought his reins, his gloating gods, his youth: And turned to smite what he no more could see. Then sped the singing pebble-messenger, The chosen of the Lord from Israel's brooks, Fleet to its mark, and hollowed a light path Down to the appalling Babel of his brain. And like the smoke of dreaming Soulfriere Dust rose in cloud, spread wide, slow silted down Softly all softly on his armour's blaze.

Falstaff

CHARACTERS FROM SHAKESPEARE

FALSTAFF

’TWAS in a tavern that with old age stooped And leaned rheumatic rafters o'er his head — A blowzed, prodigious man, which talked, and stared, And rolled, as if with purpose, a small eye Like a sweet Cupid in a cask of wine. I could not view his fatness for his soul. Which peeped like harmless lightnings and was gone; As haps to voyagers of the summer air. And when he laughed, Time trickled down those beams, As in a glass; and when in self-defence He puffed that paunch, and wagged that huge, Greek head, Nosed like a Punchinello, then it seemed An hundred widows swept in his small voice, Now tenor, and now bass of drummy war. He smiled, compact of loam, this orchard man; Mused like a midnight, webbed with moonbeam snares Of flitting Love; woke — and a King he stood, Whom all the world hath in sheer jest refused For helpless laughter's sake. And then, forfend! Bacchus and Jove reared vast Olympus there;

And Pan leaned leering from Promethean eyes. "Lord!" sighed his aspect, weeping o'er the jest, "What simple mouse brought such a mountain forth?"

Macbeth

MACBETH

ROSE, like dim battlements, the hills and reared Steep crags into the fading primrose sky; But in the desolate valleys fell small rain, Mingled with drifting cloud. I saw one come, Like the fierce passion of that vacant place, His face turned glittering to the evening sky; His eyes, like grey despair, fixed satelessly On the still, rainy turrets of the storm; And all his armour in a haze of blue. He held no sword, bare was his hand and clenched, As if to hide the inextinguishable blood Murder had painted there. And his wild mouth Seemed spouting echoes of deluded thoughts. Around his head, like vipers all distort, His locks shook, heavy-laden, at each stride. If fire may burn invisible to the eye; O, if despair strive everlastingly; Then haunted here the creature of despair, Fanning and fanning flame to lick upon A soul still childish in a blackened hell.

Banquo

BANQUO

WHAT dost thou here far from thy native place? What piercing influences of heaven have stirred Thy heart's last mansion all-corruptible to wake, To move, and in the sweets of wine and fire Sit tempting madness with unholy eyes? Begone, thou shuddering, pale anomaly! The dark presses without on yew and thorn; Stoops now the owl upon her lonely quest; The pomp runs high here, and our beauteous women Seek no cold witness — O, let murder cry, Too shrill for human ear, only to God. Come not in power to wreak so wild a vengeance! Thou knowest not now the limit of man's heart; He is beyond thy knowledge. Gaze not then, Horror enthroned lit with insanest light!

Mercutio

MERCUTIO

ALONG an avenue of almond-trees Came three girls chattering of their sweethearts three. And lo! Merculio, with Byronic ease, Out of his philosophic eye cast all A mere flowered twig of thought, whereat — Three hearts fell still as when an air dies out And Venus falters lonely o'er the sea. But when within the further mist of hloom His step and form were hid, the smooth child Ann Said, "La, and what eyes he had!" and Lucy said, "How sad a gentleman!" and Katherine, "I wonder, now, what mischief he was at." And these three also April hid away, Leaving the Spring faint with Mercutio.

Juliet's Nurse

JULIET'S NURSE

In old-world nursery vacant now of children, With posied walls, familiar, fair, demure, And facing southward o'er romantic streets, Sits yet and gossips winter's dark away One gloomy, vast, glossy, and wise, and sly: And at her side a cherried country cousin. Her tongue claps ever like a ram's sweet bell; There's not a name but calls a tale to mind — Some marrowy patty of farce or melodram; There's not a soldier but hath babes in view; There's not on earth what minds not of the midwife: "O, widowhood that left me still espoused!" Beauty she sighs o'er, and she sighs o'er gold; Gold will buy all things, even a sweet husband, Else only Heaven is left and — farewell youth! Yet, strangely, in that money-haunted head, The sad, gemmed crucifix and incense blue Is childhood once again. Her memory Is like an ant-hill which a twig disturbs, But twig stilled never. And to see her face, Broad with sleek homely beams; her babied hands, Ever like 'lighting doves, and her small eyes —- Blue wells a-twinkle, arch and lewd and pious —- To darken all sudden into Stygian gloom,

And paint disaster with uplifted whites, Is life's epitome. She prates and prates — A waterbrook of words o'er twelve small pebbles. And when she dies — some grey, long, summer evening, When the bird shouts of childhood through the dusk, 'Neath night's faint tapers — then her body shall Lie stiff with silks of sixty thrifty years.