Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  ‘Give me my ghosts, my ghosts again!’

  THE DEAD TO THE LIVING

  Work while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

  IN the childhood of April, while purple woods

  With the young year’s blood in them smiled,

  I passed through the lanes and the wakened fields,

  And stood by the grave of the child.

  And the pain awoke that is never dead

  Though it sometimes sleeps, and again

  It set its teeth in this heart of mine,

  And fastened its claws in my brain:

  For it seemed so hard that the little hands

  And the little well-loved head

  Should be out of reach of my living lips,

  And be side by side with the dead —

  Not side by side with us who had loved,

  But with these who had never seen

  The grace of the smile, the gold of the hair,

  And the eyes of my baby-queen.

  Yet with trees about where the brown birds build,

  And with long green grass above,

  She lies in the cold sweet breast of earth

  Beyond the reach of our love;

  Whatever befalls in the coarse loud world,

  We know she will never wake.

  When I thought of the sorrow she might have known,

  I was almost glad for her sake. . . .

  Tears might have tired those kiss-closed eyes,

  Grief hardened the mouth I kissed;

  I was almost glad that my dear was dead

  Because of the pain she had missed.

  Oh, if I could but have died a child

  With a white child-soul like hers,

  As pure as the wind-flowers down in the copse,

  Where the soul of the spring’s self stirs;

  Or if I had only done with it all,

  And might lie by her side unmoved!

  I envied the very clods of earth

  Their place near the child I loved!

  And my soul rose up in revolt at life,

  As I stood dry-eyed by her grave,

  When sudden the grass of the churchyard sod

  Rolled back like a green smooth wave;

  The brown earth looked like the brown sea rocks,

  The tombstones were white like spray,

  And white like surf were the curling folds

  Of the shrouds where the dead men lay;

  For each in his place with his quiet face

  I saw the dead lie low,

  Who had worked and suffered and found life sad,

  So many sad years ago.

  Unchanged by time I saw them lie

  As when first they were laid to rest,

  The tired eyes closed, the sad lips still,

  And the work-worn hands on the breast.

  There were some who had found the green world so grey,

  They had left it before their time,

  And some were little ones like my dear,

  And some had died in their prime;

  And some were old, they had had their fill

  Of bitter unfruitful hours,

  And knew that none of them, none, had known

  A flower of a hope like ours!

  Through their shut eyelids the dead looked up,

  And without a voice they said:

  ‘We lived without hope, without hope we died,

  And hopeless we lie here dead;

  And death is better than life that draws

  Pain in, as it draws in breath,

  If life never dreams of a coming day

  When life shall not envy death.

  Through the dark of our hours and our times we lived,

  Uncheered by a single ray

  Of such hope as lightens the lives of you

  Who are finding life hard to-day;

  With our little lanterns of human love

  We lighted our dark warm night —

  But you in the chill of the dawn are set

  With your face to the eastern light.

  Freedom is waiting with hands held out

  Till you tear the veil from her face —

  And when once men have seen the light of her eyes,

  And felt her divine embrace,

  The light of the world will be risen indeed,

  And will shine in the eyes of men,

  And those who come after will find life fair,

  And their lives worth living then!

  Will you strive to the light in your loud rough world,

  That these things may come to pass,

  Or lie in the shadow beside the child,

  And strive to the sun through the grass?’

  ‘My world while I may,’ I cried; ‘but you

  Whose lives were as dark as your grave?’

  ‘We too are a part of the coming light,’

  They called through the smooth green wave.

  Their white shrouds gleamed as the flood of green

  Rolled over and hid them from me —

  Hid all but the little hands and the hair,

  And the face that I always see.

  THE SPHINX

  THIS mystery of golden hair,

  Of eyes and lips and bosom fair,

  Is not — if one could really see —

  Mere flesh and blood, like you and me:

  This is a sphinx whose still lips say

  This one thing ever, day by day,

  To all who cross her in life’s ways:

  ‘Which is the way to love?’ she says.

  For every man who meets her eyes

  In their deep depths the question lies;

  And vainly would he seek to fly

  Or put the wordless challenge by,

  Unless within his soul be set

  Some true-love vow as amulet:

  This clasping, let him flee her spell,

  Nor trust its guardian powers too well.

  Nothing seems good to think about

  But just to find that secret out;

  We bring her fruits of earnest hours,

  And offer choice of passion-flowers,

  Of crowns, of heart’s blood, of heart’s ache,

  Our hopes we spurn, our joys forsake,

  While she looks down upon our pain

  Without compassion or disdain.

  She does not will to question thus —

  Fate made her just to torture us;

  Nor can she tell you, if she will,

  Aught of your guesses, good or ill.

  But if you fail to answer well,

  Your own foiled heart prepares your hell,

  And all your days you walk alone,

  And curse the done and the undone.

  She does not bid you for her sake

  Your soul to wreck, your life to break,

  Nor would she choose it for her part.

  Only for ever in your heart

  The haunting question must abide,

  And clamour morn and eventide,

  Until no single note your ear

  Of all life’s harmonies can hear.

  Yet to some man it will be given

  To find the key that opens heaven;

  For him, beloved by all the Fates,

  Answer as well as question waits

  In those unwakened eyes of hers,

  And when their calm that answer stirs,

  From her stone sleep the sphinx will wake

  Into a woman, for his sake.

  What though one’s whole life’s light grows night

  With that unanswered question’s blight?

  One’s one poor chance is richly worth

  The richest certainties of earth!

  Myself would rather die, I know —

  Starved, just because I want her so —

  Than feast in highest heaven of bliss

  On any other woman’s kiss.

  Such spells she has, I would not choose

  One look or touch of
hers to lose,

  Though every touch and look have power

  To sting me to my dying hour;

  Though every breath of hers should bring

  Frost on life’s bud and blossoming,

  What soul could ask a dearer death

  Than to be withered by her breath?

  QUIETA NE MOVETE

  IF one should wake one’s frozen faith

  In sunlight of her radiant eyes,

  Bid it forget its dream of death,

  In this new dream of Paradise,

  Bid it forget the long, slow pain,

  The agony when, all in vain,

  It fought for life, and how one swore,

  Once cold, it should not waken more;

  If hope one buried long ago

  Should thrill beneath those smiles of hers,

  Should in one’s sere life stir and grow,

  As in brown woods the young spring stirs;

  If, breaking icy bonds of grief,

  One’s soul should start to bud and leaf,

  It might forget in that springtide

  How last year’s leaves fell off and died.

  If from warm faith and hope set high

  A lovely living child was born,

  With lips more pure than starlit sky,

  And eyes as clear as summer morn,

  Child-love might grow till one forgot

  Old love, that was and now is not —

  Forgot that far-off time of tears,

  And all these desolated years.

  And yet of faith, hope, love, one knows

  So well what end the years will make,

  If one should dig beneath Time’s snows

  And wake them now for her sweet sake.

  New life may mean new joy; but then,

  What lives again may die again,

  And to that second death there may

  Be no new resurrection-day.

  MICROCOSM

  SHE and I — we kissed and vowed

  That should be which could not be;

  Just as if mere vows endowed

  Love with immortality!

  Ah, had vows but kept us true,

  As we thought them sure to do!

  She and I — such tiny parts

  Of the Evolution-plan —

  Yet can hold within our hearts

  All the misery of man:

  All the ages did prepare,

  All we are and all we bear.

  She and I — mere counters, toys

  Nature uses for her game —

  Pity that we long for joys,

  And feel sorrows all the same!

  Just as though our wills were free,

  As we dreamed them — I and she!

  THE HUSBAND OF TO-DAY

  EYES caught by beauty, fancy by eyes caught;

  Sweet possibilities, question, and wonder —

  What did her smile say? What has her brain thought?

  Her standard, what? Am I o’er it or under?

  Flutter in meeting — in absence dreaming;

  Tremor in greeting — for meeting scheming;

  Caught by the senses, and yet all through

  True with the heart of me, sweetheart, to you.

  Only the brute in me yields to the pressure

  Of longings inherent — of vices acquired;

  All this, my darling, is folly — not pleasure,

  Only my fancy — not soul — has been fired.

  Sense thrills exalted, thrills to love-madness;

  Fancy grown sad becomes almost love-sadness;

  And yet love has with it nothing to do,

  Love is fast fettered, sweetheart, to you.

  Lacking fresh fancies, time flags — grows wingless;

  Life without folly would fail — fall flat;

  But the love that lights life, and makes death’s self stingless —

  You, and you only, have wakened that.

  Sweet are all women, you are the best of them;

  You are so dear because dear are the rest of them;

  After each fancy has sprung, grown, and died,

  Back I come ever, dear, to your side.

  The strongest of passions — in joy — seeks the new,

  But in grief I turn ever, sweetheart, to you.

  THE WIFE OF ALL AGES

  I DO not catch these subtle shades of feeling,

  Your fine distinctions are too fine for me;

  This meeting, scheming, longing, trembling, dreaming,

  To me mean love, and only love, you see;

  In me at least ’tis love, you will admit,

  And you the only man who wakens it.

  Suppose I yearned, and longed, and dreamed, and fluttered,

  What would you say or think, or further, do?

  Why should one rule be fit for me to follow,

  While there exists a different law for you?

  If all these fires and fancies came my way,

  Would you believe love was so far away?

  On all these other women — never doubt it —

  ’Tis love you lavish, love you promised me!

  What do I care to be the first, or fiftieth?

  It is the only one I care to be.

  Dear, I would be your sun, as mine you are,

  Not the most radiant wonder of a star.

  And so, good-bye! Among such sheaves of roses

  You will not miss the flower I take from you;

  Amid the music of so many voices

  You will forget the little songs I knew —

  The foolish tender words I used to say,

  The little common sweets of every day.

  The world, no doubt, has fairest fruits and blossoms

  To give to you; but what, ah! what for me?

  Nay, after all I am your slave and bondmaid,

  And all my world is in my slavery.

  So, as before, I welcome any part

  Which you may choose to give me of your heart.

  TWO VOICES

  COUNTRY

  ‘SWEET are the lanes and the hedges, the fields made red with the clover,

  With tall field-sorrel, and daisies, and golden buttercups glowing;

  Sweet is the way through the woods, where at sundown maiden and lover

  Linger by stile or by bank where wild clematis is growing.

  Fair is our world when the dew and the dawn thrill the half-wakened roses,

  Fair when the corn-fields grow warm with poppies in noonlight gleaming,

  Fair through the long afternoon, when hedges and hay-fields lie dreaming,

  Fair as in lessening light the last convolvulus closes

  ‘Scent of geranium and musk that in cottage windows run riot,

  Breath from the grass that is down in the meadows each side the highway,

  Slumberous hush of the churchyard where we one day may lie quiet,

  Murmuring wind through the leaves bent over the meadow byway,

  Deeps of cool shadow, and gleams of light on high elm-tops shining,

  Such peace in the dim green brake as the town, save in dreams, knows never,

  But in, through, under it all, the old pain follows us ever —

  Ever the old despair, the old unrest and repining.

  ‘Dark is the City’s face; but her children who know her find her

  Mother to them who are brothers, mindful of brotherhood’s duty;

  To each of us, lonely, unhelped, the grave would be warmer, kinder,

  Than the cold unloving face of our world of blossom and beauty.

  Poverty deep and dark cowers under the thatch with the swallows,

  Cruel disease lies hid in the changeful breast of the waters,

  Drink sets snares for our sons, and shame digs graves for our daughters,

  Want and care crush the flower of a youth that no life-fruit follows.

  ‘What are the woodland sweets — the meadow’s fair flowery treasure —

  When we are hungry and sad, and stu
pid with work and with sorrows?

  Leisure for nothing but sleep, and with heart but for sleep in our leisure;

  The work of to-day still the same as yesterday’s work, and to-morrow’s.

  Ever the weary round — the treadmill of innocent lives —

  Hopeless and helpless, and bowing our backs like a hound’s to the lashes;

  What can seem fair to the eyes that are smarting and sore with the ashes

  Blown from the fires that consume the souls of our children and wives?

  ‘Dreams sometimes we have had of an hour when we might speak plainly,

  Raise the mantle and show how the iron eats into our bosom,

  The rotting root of the Nation, the worm at the heart of its blossom,

  Dreaming we said, “We will speak, when the time for it comes, not vainly.”

  Ah — but the time comes never — Life, we are used to bear it,

  Starved are our brains and grow not, our hands are fit but for toiling,

  If we stretched them out their touch to our masters’ hand would be soiling;

  Weak is our voice with disuse — too weak for our lords to hear it!’

  CITY

  ‘So has the spark died out that the torch of hope dropped among you?

  So is the burden bound more fast to the shrinking shoulder?

  Far too faint are your cries to be heard by the men who wrong you?

  And if they heard they are high, and the air as men rise grows colder!

  Yet you are men though so weak, and in mine and workshop your brothers,

  Stronger in head, and in heart not less sad, for deliverance are striving;

  These will stand fast, and will face the cruel unjust and ungiving,

  And you in our ranks shall be ‘listed, our hands fast clasped in each other’s!

  ‘For in the night of our sorrow cold lights are breaking and brightening

  Out in the eastern sky; through the drifting clouds, wind-driven,

  Over the earth new gleams and glories are laughing and lightening,

  Clearer the air grows each moment, brighter the face of the heaven.

  Turn we our face to the east — oh, wind of the dawn, blow to us

  Freshness and strength and resolve! The star of old faith grows paler

  Before the eyes of our Freedom, though still wrath’s red mists veil her,

  For this is our battle day; revenge, like our blood, runs through us.

  ‘This is our vengeance day. Our masters, made fat with our fasting,

  Shall fall before us like corn when the sickle for harvest is strong:

  Old wrong shall give might to our arm — remembrance of wrong shall make lasting

  The graves we will dig for the tyrants we bore with too much and too long.