by Edith Nesbit
Yet still through every hour of every year
We have sought to win and failed to win the dower
Of perfect insight, and to gain the power
To see what we are, and not what we appear.
Yet you desire such knowledge — would possess,
You say, completion of love; if that were won
— Ah! by it might not haply be undone
The little measure of joy we knew before?
Though we should swear we loved each other more,
How surely we should love each other less!
HOPES
A PRINCESS, sleeping in enchanted bowers,
Earth springs to waking at Spring’s voice and kiss,
And after winter’s cold, unlovely hours,
Laughs out to find how beautiful she is.
Spring flings a song across the field and fold,
And sighs it through the glad wood’s tangled ways;
And million, million tales of love are told,
And dreams are dreamed of undivided days.
In hollows where so late but dead leaves lay,
Through the dead leaves the primroses push up;
And wind-flowers fleck the copse, and fields are gay
With daisies and the budding buttercup.
So in our hearts, though thick the dead leaves lie
Of grief — heaped up by winds of old despair —
May there not be a spring-time by-and-by,
When flowers of joy shall blossom even there?
So long has Winter held our hearts in his,
We dare not dream of Spring and all her flowers?
Ah! the undreamed-of happiness it is
That comes — the dreamed-of joy is never ours!
When late the trees were brown and hedges bare,
And keen east wind cut sharp as human pain,
Did the Earth guess how soon she would be fair
With Spring’s dear dainty loveliness again?
We do not guess of joy, but hope alone —
Like life’s mysterious force that thrills the earth —
Lives in our souls, unrecognised, unknown,
Till time shall bring unhoped-for joy to birth.
A BROWN STUDY
LET them sing of their primrose and cowslip,
Their daffodil-gold-coloured hair,
Their bluebells, blue eyes, and white violets,
All the pale dreamy things they find fair;
Give me stir of brown leaves in the sunshine,
The whir of brown wings through the wheat,
The rush of brown hares through the clover,
And the light in brown eyes of my sweet!
Gold hair? Well, I never could love it,
Yet gold, I suppose, has its worth;
The head that I love is as dusky
As the breast of our mother, the earth;
With a gleam like the shine of wet seaweed,
Round pools that the tide has left clear,
And warm like the breast of a linnet,
And as brown, is the hair of my dear.
From the edge of the cliff we look downwards
On the shore, and the bay, and the town,
And brown is the short turf we lean on,
The fishing-boats’ sails are all brown:
The sky may be blue — that’s the background, —
But the picture itself, to be fair,
However it’s shaded and varied,
Should be brown as the dress that you wear.
A lark bursts to sudden sweet singing —
That tuft of brown grass is his home —
And now, a brown speck, he is rising
Against the clear windy sky-dome;
And he sings — how I know? Love instructs me
To know all his notes, what they mean —
That it isn’t the colour I care for,
But yourself, oh, my gipsy, my queen!
Ah! the lark knows my heart — I his language;
It’s my heart he sings out to the skies;
It is you that I love, and what matter
The colour of hair or of eyes?
No doubt I should love you as dearly
Were your hair like an apricot’s down,
And your eyes like the grey of the morning;
But I’m glad, all the same, that they’re brown.
A GOOD-BYE
FAREWELL! How soon unmeasured distance rolls
Its leaden clouds between our parted souls!
How little to each other now are we —
And once how much I dreamed we two might be!
I, who now stand with eyes undimmed and dry
To say good-bye —
To say good-bye to all sweet memories,
Good-bye to tender questions, soft replies;
Good bye to hope, good-bye to dreaming too,
Good-bye to all things dear — good-bye to you,
Without a kiss, a tear, a prayer, a sigh —
Our last good-bye.
I had no chain to bind you with at all;
No grace to charm, no beauty to enthral;
No power to hold your eyes with mine, and make
Your heart on fire with longing for my sake,
Till all the yearning passed into one cry:
‘Love, not good-bye!’
Ah, no — I had no strength like that, you know;
Yet my worst weakness was to love you so!
So much too well — so much too well — or ill —
Yet even that might have been pardoned still —
It would have been had I been you — you I!
But now — good-bye!
How soon the bitter follows on the sweet!
Could I not chain your fancy’s flying feet?
Could I not hold your soul — to make you play
To-morrow in the key of yesterday — ?
Dear — do you dream that I would stoop to try?
Ah, no — Good-bye!
UNTIL THE DAWN
WHEN head and hands and heart alike are weary;
When Hope with folded wings sinks out of sight;
When all thy striving fails to disentangle
From out wrong’s skein the golden thread of right;
When all thy knowledge seems a marsh-light’s glimmer,
That only shows the blackness of the night;
In the dark hour when victory seems hopeless,
Against thy lance when armies are arrayed,
When failure writes itself upon thy forehead,
By foes outnumbered and by friends betrayed;
Still stand thou fast, though faith be bruised and wounded,
Still face thy future, still be undismayed!
While one true man speaks out against injustice,
While through men’s chorused ‘Right!’ clear rings his ‘Wrong!’
Freedom still lives. One day she will reward him
Who trusted in her though she tarried long,
Who held her creed, was faithful till her coming,
Who, for her sake, strove, suffered, and was strong.
She will bring crowns for those who love and serve her;
If thou canst live for her, be satisfied;
If thou canst die for her, rejoice! Our brothers
At least shall crown our graves and say, ‘These died
Believing in the sun when night was blackest,
And by our dawn their faith is justified!’
ALL ROUND THE YEAR
CONTENTS
RESURGAM.
MARCH VIOLETS.
HOP PICKING.
HALLOWE’EN.
THE LOVER TO HIS LASS.
BEFORE PARTING.
All round the year the changing suns and rains
Beat on men’s work — to wreck and to decay —
But nature builds more perfectly than they,
Her changing unchanged sea resists, remains.
All round t
he year new flowers spring up to shew
How gloriously life is more strong than death;
And in our hearts are seeds of love and faith,
Ah, sun and showers, be kind, and let them grow.
RESURGAM.
Swift pass the hours, or lengthened by our hearts
Uncertain measurement of time,
And when we dream the year has just awoke,
We wake to find her in her prime.
We sadden with the dying Autumn leaves,
Yet falling seeds their promise bring;
Through long dark Winter days we only wait
A resurrection in the coming Spring.
Within each hour the precious minutes lie
Like seeds awaiting Spring’s first breath,
God’s harvest-time shall show us if they bear
The flowers of life or death.
Caris Brooke.
Cold is the earth, the flowers below,
Fearful of Winter’s hand, lie curled;
But Spring will come again you know,
And glorify the world.
Dark is the night, no stars or moon;
But at its blackest night is done;
All after hastens to the noon,
The triumph of the sun!
And life is short, and love is brief —
Be patient! There will be — they say
New life, divine beyond belief,
Somewhere, somehow, some day!
E. Nesbit.
MARCH VIOLETS.
This busy, dusty wind that blows
Along the cruel streets,
Right to the heart of violets goes,
And robs them of their sweets.
And as along the cruel street
The keen wind robs the flowers,
So the cold kindness that we meet
Blights these poor hearts of ours.
But if you tend with warmth, you know,
Your violets, they give
Sweet scent again, as if to show
How glad they are to live.
We think if some one loved us too
Our hearts would break to prove
By all that we could say or do,
How glad we were to love!
E. Nesbit.
Dream footsteps wandering past us in our sleep,
A restless presence stirring with the light,
The cry of waters where the snow was white,
A violet’s whisper where dead leaves lay deep;
The dim wood’s music makes a sudden leap,
Broken notes, blending in a wild delight,
And lo! the whole world changes in our sight.
Promise is ended — we must turn and reap
Fulfilment, for the Spring with all her wealth
Is with us, and compels us to her will.
Yet if the sun-dawn we should shun by stealth
Yearning for shadows and the darkened hours,
Sweet Lord, be pitiful, remembering still
One lieth low beneath the budding flowers.
Caris Brooke.
Never a hand on the cottage door
To call me forth in the evening light,
My days grow old, and I watch no more
The cowslips gold and the may-buds white.
Primroses nestle beneath the hedge
Where we kissed and wept and said good-bye —
For twenty years I have watched them bud,
For twenty years I have seen them die.
Yet now that the Spring once more has turned
The sea to silver, the earth to gold,
I shall watch no more from the primrose lane,
Where I waited and watched in the days of old.
Yet the children weave me their daisy chains,
The woodland music is sweet and clear,
Though the footsteps have wandered beyond recall,
That I watched and waited so long to hear!
Caris Brooke.
The swans along the water glide,
Unfettered and yet side by side —
So should true lovers ever be,
Together ever — ever free.
A chain upon the white swan’s neck,
What were it good for — save to break?
And swans who wear and break a chain
Swim never side by side again.
My best beloved, the Spring is fair,
The woods are green and life is good,
Come out with me and let us tread
By field and fold and sweet wet wood —
The wind-flower blanches all the copse,
With hyacinth the hedge is blue,
And every wakened leaf is fair,
But not so fair as you!
The black-birds sing on hazel boughs
Beneath the overarching trees,
The cuckoo’s distant song is borne
Across the meadow by the breeze,
The thrush’s song is sweetest far
But saddens as the hours go by.
You hear? The nightingale’s in love,
But not so much as I!
E. Nesbit.
Girdled with gold my little lady’s bower
Stands at the portals of a world in flower,
And down her ways the changing blossoms mark
How the Spring grows each day from dawn to dark.
When forth she moves, her dainty foot is set,
On cowslip, hyacinth and violet,
And all day long the woodland minstrels sing
Changes of measure for her pleasuring.
And all night long a passionate music stirs
Without her walls — the darkened belt of firs;
Hushed in their waving boughs the low winds brood,
Murmuring the sea’s song for an interlude.
Caris Brooke.
The last bright relic of the moon’s full gold
Burns on the swiftly flowing river’s breast;
No sound but restless dipping of strong oars
To break the charm of nature’s perfect rest.
Far off the town’s faint mingled clamours stir,
And through the silence of the nearer light
The incense of the evening mist floats up —
The day’s last lingering love-word to the night.
A sudden shiver of regretful change
Sighs through the whispering boughs that overhead
Sway in the wind’s breath: down the red sun dips,
And in the twilight’s arms the day lies dead.
Then rain, and after, moonshine cold and fair,
And scent of earth, sweet with the evening rain,
And slow soft speech beneath the rain-washed trees,
Ah, that such things should never come again!
Oh listening trees, where are the words we spoke?
Where are our sighs, wind whom those sighs caressed?
Oh! what a fate is ours, too swift, too sad,
If such an hour goes by with all the rest!
E. Nesbit.
What o’clock is it, children dear?
Ask of the dandelions here!
Blow, blow, blow, and away they go —
But they do not tell us the time you know!
Say, what month is it, children dear?
We think it is August because we hear
The swing of the sickle, restless and slow,
And that’s a sign of the month, you know.
Where are you going, children dear?
Where the lane winds deep and the stream runs clear —
There are plenty of beautiful ways to go —
But only one way that two only know.
Where are we going, children dear?
To a beautiful country that’s very near,
Hand in hand is the way to go
Up into fairyland you know.
E. Nesbit.
HOP PICKING.
Ah me, how pleasant to go down
From the
forlorn and faded town
To Kentish wood and fold and lane,
And breathe God’s blessed air again;
Where glorious yellow corn-fields blaze
And nuts hang over woodland ways.
To pick the sweet keen-scented hops,
(See from each pole a dream-wreath drops)
To toil all day in pure clear air,
Laughter and sunshine everywhere —
With reddening woods and sweet wet soil
And well-earned rest and honest toil.
Where do we fly, under deep dark sky?
Over the moors we go,
Over the pool where quiet and cool
Bulrush and sedges grow —
And what was the loveliest thing we met?
Ah — we forget!
We remember though all the firelit glow
Of a great hearth’s gleam and glare,
And we looked for a space at each happy face
And the love that was written there.
And that, of all we have looked on yet —
We least forget!
HALLOWE’EN.
Oh what a day! all yellow and gray,
And so dark, so dreary, so foggy and thick,
That if I should meet
In the street
My sweet —
I might pass her by!
Risk that? Not I!
Take me home out of danger then! Quick, feet, quick.
Not Summer’s crown of scent the red rose weaves
Nor hawthorn blossom over bloom-strewn grass,
Nor violet’s whisper when the children pass,
Nor lilac perfume in the soft May eves,
Nor new-mown hay, crisp scent of yellow sheaves,
Nor any scent that Spring-time can amass
And Summer squander, such a magic has
As scent of fresh wet earth and fallen leaves.
For sometimes lovers in November days,
When earth is grieving for the vanished sun,
Have trod dead leaves in chill and wintry ways,
And kissed and dreamed eternal Summer won;
Look back, look back! through memories’ deepening haze,
See — two who dreamed that dream, and you were one.
THE LOVER TO HIS LASS.
Dearest, the Winter is here!
“It will be sad,” so you said,
