Chapter I: HAD a mistress; I loved her

She left me with memories bitter,
Corroding, eating my heart
As the acid eats into the steel
Etching the portrait triumphant.
Intolerable, indelible,
Never to be effaced.

A wife was mine to my heart,
Beautiful flower of my garden,
Lily I worshipped by day,
Scented rose of my nights.
Now the night wind sighing
Blows white rose petals only
Over the bed where she sleeps
Dreamless alone.

I had a son; I loved him.
Mother of God, bear witness
How all my manhood loved him
As thy womanhood loved thy Son!
When he was grown to his manhood
He crucified my heart,
And even as it hung bleeding
He laughed with his bold companions,
Mocked and turned away
With laughter into the night.

Those three I loved and lost;
But there was one who loved me
With all the fire of her heart.
Mine was the sacred altar
Where she burnt her life for my worship.
She was my slave, my servant;
Mine all she had, all she was,
All she could suffer, could be.
That was the love of my life,
I did not say, “She loves me”;
I was so used to her love
I never asked its name,
Till, feeling the wind blow cold
Where all the doors were left open,
And seeing a fireless hearth
And the garden deserted and weed-grown
That once was full of flowers for me,
I said, “What has changed? What is it
That has made all the clocks stop?”
Thus I asked and they answered:
“It is thy mother who is dead.”

And now I am alone.
My son, too, some day will stand
Here, where I stand and weep.
He too will weep, knowing too late
The love that wrapped round his life.
Dear God spare him this:
Let him never know how I loved him,
For he was always weak.
He could not endure as I can.
Mother, my dear, ask God
To grant me this, for my son!

THE NEST

THAT was the skylark we heard
Singing so high,
The little quivering bird
We saw, and the sky.
The earth was drenched with sun,
The sky was drenched with song;
We lay in the grass and listened,
Long and long and long.

I said, “What a spell it is
Has made her rise
To pour out her world of bliss
In that world of skies!”
You said, “What a spell must pass
Between sky and plain,
Since she finds in this world of grass
Her nest again!”

THE OLD MAGIC

GRAY is the sea, and the skies are gray;
They are ghosts of our blue, bright yesterday;
And gray are the breasts of the gulls that scream
Like tortured souls in an evil dream.

There is white on the wings of the sea and sky,
And white are the gulls’ wings wheeling by,
And white, like snow, is the pall that lies
Where love weeps over his memories.

For the dead is dead, and its shroud is wrought
Of good unfound and of wrong unsought;
Yet from God’s good magic there ever springs
The resurrection of holy things.

See—the gold and blue of our yesterday
In the eyes and the hair of a child at play;
And the spell of joy that our youth beguiled
Is woven anew in the laugh of the child.

FAITH

A WALL
Gray and tall,
And a sky of gray,
And a twilight cold;
And that is all
That my eyes behold.
But I know that unseen,
Beyond the wall,
On a lawn of green
White blossoms fall
In the waning light;
And beyond the lawn
Curtains are drawn
From windows bright.
And within she moves with her gracious hands
And the heart that loves and that understands,
Waiting to succour poor souls in need,
And to bind with her blessing the hearts that bleed.

I know it all, though I cannot see;
But the tired-out tramp,
Dirty and ill,
In the evening’s damp,
In the Spring’s clean chill,
Knows not that there
Is the heart to care
For such as I and for such as he.
He slouches along, and sees alone
The gray of the sky and the gray of the stone.

Lord, when my eyes see nothing but grey
In all Thy world that is now so green,
I will bethink me of this spring day
And the house of welcome, known yet unseen;
The wall that conceals
And the faith that reveals.

THE DEATH OF AGNES

NOW that the sunlight dies in my eyes,
And the moonlight grows in my hair,
I who was never very wise,
Never was very fair,
Virgin and martyr all my life,
What has life left to give
Me—who was never mother nor wife,
Never got leave to live?

Nothing of life could I clasp or claim,
Nothing could steal or save.
So when you come to carve my name,
Give me life in my grave.
To keep me warm when I sleep alone
A lie is little to give;
Call me “Magdalen” on my stone,
Though I died and did not live.

IN TROUBLE

IT’S all for nothing: I’ve lost him now.
I suppose it had to be;
But oh, I never thought it of him,
Nor he never thought it of me.
And all for a kiss on your evening out,
And a field where the grass was down . . .
And he ’as gone to God-knows-where,
And I may go on the town.

The worst of all was the thing he said
The night that he went away;
He said he’d ’a married me right enough
If I hadn’t ’a been so gay.
Me—gay! When I’d cried, and I’d asked him not,
But he said he loved me so;
An’ whatever he wanted seemed right to me . . .
An’ how was a girl to know?

Well, the river is deep, and drowned folk sleep sound,
An’ it might be the best to do;
But when he made me a light-o’-love
He made me a mother too.
I’ve had enough sin to last my time,
If ’twas sin as I got it by,
But it ain’t no sin to stand by his kid
And work for it till I die.

But oh! the long days and the death-long nights
When I feel it move and turn,
And cry alone in my single bed
And count what a girl can earn
To buy the baby the bits of things
_He_ ought to ha’ bought, by rights;
And wonder whether he thinks of Us . . .
And if he sleeps sound o’ nights.

GRATITUDE