Ballad of Another Ophelia
   
        
OH the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,      
Lamps in a wash of rain      
Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard,      
Oh tears on the window pane!
         
Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,           5   
Full of disappointment and of rain,      
Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples      
Of autumn tell the withered tale again.
          
All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,      
Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,           10   
Cluck, my marigold bird, and again      
Cluck for your yellow darlings.
         
For the grey rat found the gold thirteen      
Huddled away in the dark,      
Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen,           15   
Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.
          
Once I had a lover bright like running water,      
Once his face was laughing like the sky;      
Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter      
On the buttercups, and the buttercups was I.           20
       
What, then, is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom?      
What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen?      
’Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom;      
What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men!
         
Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom,           25   
And her shift is lying white upon the floor,      
That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm,      
Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store.
         
Oh the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples,      
Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct!           30   
And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples,      
Did you see the wicked sun that winked!

Restlessness
   
    
At the open door of the room I stand and look at the night,      
Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight,      
Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room.      
I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light,      
And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might           5   
Mate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb.          
I will go out to the night, as a man goes down to the shore      
To draw his net through the surf’s thin line, at the dawn before      
The sun warms the sea, little, lonely and sad, sifting the sobbing tide.      
I will sift the surf that edges the night, with my net, the four           10   
Strands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and my feet, sifting the store      
Of flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied.
          
I will catch in my eyes’ quick net      
The faces of all the women as they go past,      
Bend over them with my soul, to cherish the wet           15   
Cheeks and wet hair a moment, saying: “Is it you?”      
Looking earnestly under the dark umbrellas, held fast      
Against the wind; and if, where the lamplight blew      
Its rainy swill about us, she answered me      
With a laugh and a merry wildness that it was she           20   
Who was seeking me, and had found me at last to free      
Me now from the stunting bonds of my chastity,      
How glad I should be!
          
Moving along in the mysterious ebb of the night      
Pass the men whose eyes are shut like anemones in a dark pool;           25   
Why don’t they open with vision and speak to me, what have they in sight?      
Why do I wander aimless among them, desirous fool?      
I can always linger over the huddled books on the stalls,      
Always gladden my amorous fingers with the touch of their leaves,      
Always kneel in courtship to the shelves in the doorways, where falls           30   
The shadow, always offer myself to one mistress, who always receives.
         
But oh, it is not enough, it is all no good.      
There is something I want to feel in my running blood,      
Something I want to touch; I must hold my face to the rain,      
I must hold my face to the wind, and let it explain           35   
Me its life as it hurries in secret.      
I will trail my hands again through the drenched, cold leaves      
Till my hands are full of the chillness and touch of leaves,      
Till at length they induce me to sleep, and to forget.

A Baby Asleep After Pain
   
    
  AS a drenched, drowned bee      
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,      
  So clings to me      
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears      
  And laid against her cheek;           5   
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm      
Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk.      
  My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,      
Like a burden she hangs on me.      
  She has always seemed so light,           10   
But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain      
Even her floating hair sinks heavily,      
  Reaching downwards;      
As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee      
  Are a heaviness, and a weariness.

Anxiety
   
        
The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,      
  The crisping steam of a train      
Melts in the air, while two black birds      
  Sweep past the window again.
         
Along the vacant road, a red           5   
  Bicycle approaches; I wait      
In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy      
  To leap down at our gate.
         
He has passed us by; but is it      
  Relief that starts in my breast?           10   
Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still      
  She has no rest.

The Punisher
   
    
I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells,      
Scooped them up with small, iron words,      
    Dripping over the runnels.
         
The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still   
I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys           5   
    Glitter and spill.
         
Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came      
Hovering about the Judgment which stood in my eyes,      
    Whirling a flame.
    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
      
The tears are dry, and the cheeks’ young fruits are fresh           10   
With laughter, and clear the exonerated eyes, since pain      
    Beat through the flesh.
         
The Angel of Judgment has departed again to the Nearness.      
Desolate I am as a church whose lights are put out.      
    And night enters in drearness.           15
      
The fire rose up in the bush and blazed apace,      
The thorn-leaves crackled and twisted and sweated in anguish;      
    Then God left the place.
         
Like a flower that the frost has hugged and let go, my head      
Is heavy, and my heart beats slowly, laboriously,           20   
    My strength is shed.

The End
   
    
If I could have put you in my heart,      
If but I could have wrapped you in myself,      
How glad I should have been!      
And now the chart      
Of memory unrolls again to me           5   
The course of our journey here, before we had to part.
          
And oh, that you had never, never been      
Some of your selves, my love, that some      
Of your several faces I had never seen!      
And still they come before me, and they go,           10   
And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.
          
And oh, my love, as I rock for you to-night,      
And have not any longer any hope      
To heal the suffering, or make requite      
For all your life of asking and despair,           15   
I own that some of me is dead to-night.
      
 

The Bride
   
   
My love looks like a girl to-night,      
    But she is old.      
The plaits that lie along her pillow      
    Are not gold,      
But threaded with filigree,           5   
    And uncanny cold.
         
She looks like a young maiden, since her brow      
    Is smooth and fair,      
Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed,      
    She sleeps a rare           10   
Still winsome sleep, so still, and so composed.
         
Nay, but she sleeps like a bride, and dreams her dreams      
    Of perfect things.      
She lies at last, the darling, in the shape of her dream,      
    And her dead mouth sings           15   
By its shape, like the thrushes in clear evenings.

The Virgin Mother
   
   
My little love, my darling,      
You were a doorway to me;      
You let me out of the confines      
Into this strange countrie,      
Where people are crowded like thistles,           5   
Yet are shapely and comely to see.
         
My little love, my dearest      
Twice have you issued me,      
Once from your womb, sweet mother,      
Once from myself, to be           10   
Free of all hearts, my darling,      
Of each heart’s home-life free.
         
And so, my love, my mother,      
I shall always be true to you;      
Twice I am born, my dearest,           15   
To life, and to death, in you;      
And this is the life hereafter      
Wherein I am true.
         
I kiss you good-bye, my darling,      
Our ways are different now;           20   
You are a seed in the night-time,      
I am a man, to plough      
The difficult glebe of the future      
For God to endow.
          
I kiss you good-bye, my dearest,           25   
It is finished between us here.      
Oh, if I were calm as you are,      
Sweet and still on your bier!      
O God, if I had not to leave you      
Alone, my dear!           30
       
Let the last word be uttered,      
Oh grant the farewell is said!      
Spare me the strength to leave you      
Now you are dead.      
I must go, but my soul lies helpless           35   
Beside your bed.

At the Window
   
        
The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters      
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter;      
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.
         
Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede,      
Winding about their dimness the mist’s grey cerements, after           5   
The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to bleed.
         
The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as they pass      
To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two dark-filled eyes      
That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window glass.

Drunk
   
    
Too far away, oh love, I know,      
To save me from this haunted road,      
Whose lofty roses break and blow      
On a night-sky bent with a load
         
Of lights: each solitary rose,           5
Each arc-lamp golden does expose      
Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows      
Night blenched with a thousand snows.         

Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,      
White lilac; shows discoloured night           10   
Dripping with all the golden lees      
Laburnum gives back to light.
         
And shows the red of hawthorn set      
On high to the purple heaven of night,      
Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,           15   
Blood shed in the noiseless fight.
         
Of life for love and love for life,      
Of hunger for a little food,      
Of kissing, lost for want of a wife      
Long ago, long ago wooed.
   .   .   .   .   .   .           20   
Too far away you are, my love,      
To steady my brain in this phantom show      
That passes the nightly road above      
And returns again below.
         
The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees           25   
  Has poised on each of its ledges      
An erect small girl looking down at me;      
White-night-gowned little chits I see,      
  And they peep at me over the edges      
Of the leaves as though they would leap, should I call           30   
  Them down to my arms;      
“But, child, you’re too small for me, too small      
  Your little charms.”
          
White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,      
  Some other will thresh you out!           35   
And I see leaning from the shades      
A lilac like a lady there, who braids      
  Her white mantilla about      
Her face, and forward leans to catch the sight      
    Of a man’s face,           40   
Gracefully sighing through the white      
    Flowery mantilla of lace.
         
And another lilac in purple veiled      
  Discreetly, all recklessly calls   
In a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailed           45   
Her forth from the night: my strength has failed      
  In her voice, my weak heart falls:      
Oh, and see the laburnum shimmering      
   Her draperies down,      
As if she would slip the gold, and glimmering           50   
    White, stand naked of gown.
   .   .   .   .   .   .
      
The pageant of flowery trees above      
  The street pale-passionate goes,      
And back again down the pavement, Love      
  In a lesser pageant flows.           55
   
Two and two are the folk that walk,      
  They pass in a half embrace      
Of linkèd bodies, and they talk      
  With dark face leaning to face.
         
Come then, my love, come as you will           60   
  Along this haunted road,      
Be whom you will, my darling, I shall      
  Keep with you the troth I trowed.