Complete Novels of E Nesbit
Page 616
“When no green leaves overhead
Shadow the paths where we tread!”
I said “It still will be dear
If we still meet,
O my sweet!”
See how the seasons are kind!
See this December forget
How to be weary and wet!
Hardly our June I regret,
Winter so comely I find
Since you are here,
O my dear!
Sweetheart, I sometimes believe,
Love, not the sun, makes us glad;
Even the mists were not sad
If your soft hand-clasp I had.
Hearts sing, though skies mourn and grieve,
All weather’s fair
If you’re there!
Someday a home there shall be,
Love shall be sun of it, sweet!
Joy shall be full and complete —
Sound of small voices and feet;
While, like the sunshine, for me,
You light up life —
You — my wife!
BEFORE PARTING.
Now surely is the hour come for farewell,
Now, with the lessened light and darkened days.
Who now would tread the wild hill’s pathless ways?
We found so fair when Spring and Summer’s spell
Made blind our hearts this parting to foretell.
Yet why, while wan and wintry sunlight stays
On perished gold of Autumn fields, delays
Your heart to speak, while both our hearts rebel?
Together we have gathered through the year
All that the year could give us of its best,
Is it not meet our parting should be here,
Now in the season drear of death and rest?
Yet since together we its joys have known
How shall each meet the strange New Year alone.
Caris Brooke.
LANDSCAPE AND SONG
CONTENTS
Landscape and Song I.
Landscape and Song II.
Landscape and Song III.
Landscape and Song IV.
Landscape and Song V.
Landscape and Song VI.
Landscape and Song VII.
Landscape and Song VIII.
Landscape and Song IX.
Landscape and Song X.
Landscape and Song XI.
Landscape and Song XII.
Landscape and Song XIII.
Landscape and Song I.
What dreams the flower cups enfold
Within their fragrant leaves,
Of meadow-ways grown fair with spring,
Soft mists that April weaves;
And cottage gardens where the scent
Of flowers is with the wood-smoke blent.
The ceaseless ripple of the brook,
Babbling against the broken arch,
The little firwood’s tasselled spires,
The cloud of verdure on the larch;
The gold-green glimmer of the woods,
Where tender twilight always broods.
C. Brooke.
Landscape and Song II.
There is dew for the flow’ret,
And honey for the bee,
And bowers for the wild bird,
And love for you and me.
There are tears for the many,
And pleasures for the few,
But let the world pass on, dear,
There’s love for me and you.
Hood.
Landscape and Song III.
THE ROSE IN OCTOBER.
O late and sweet, too sweet, too late!
What nightingale will sing to thee?
The empty nest, the shivering tree,
The dead leaves by the garden gate,
And cawing crows for thee will wait,
O sweet and late!
Where wert thou when the soft June nights
Were faint with perfume, glad with song?
Where wert thou when the days were long
And steeped in Summer’s young delights?
What hopest thou now but checks and slights,
Brief days, lone nights?
Stay, there’s a gleam of Winter wheat
Far on the hill; down in the woods
A very heaven of stillness broods;
And through the mellow sun’s worn heat,
Lo! tender pulses round thee beat,
O late and sweet!
Landscape and Song IV.
There’s beauty all around our paths, if but our
watchful eyes
Can trace it midst familiar things and through
their lowly guise;
We may find it when a hedgerow showers its
blossoms o’er our way,
Or a cottage window sparkles forth in the last
red light of day.
F. Hemans.
Landscape and Song V.
HALF covered with last year’s leaves,
She peeped from her russet bed;
The great bare branches of the trees
Were tossed and swayed overhead;
The hedge looked barren and prickly,
Without the sign of a leaf;
Over the flower there bowed a heart
Grown cold with the snows of grief.
The violet’s fragile petals
Enfolded a heart of gold,
And a deeper wealth of perfume,
Than the tiny cup could hold;
So the great wind roaring above
Sent a tiny zephyr down,
To drift aside the sheltering bloom,
And bereave her of her crown.
It stole the familiar scent,
To give to the burdened heart
With only a cold north wind
In the world to take its part;
The flower died in the bleak March air,
And the heart went on its way;
The violet’s life was blooming there,
And melting the snows away.
Caris Brooke.
Landscape and Song VI.
Yet nature holds a gracious hand,
Her ancient ways pursuing;
And spreads the charms we loved of old,
To aid the heart’s renewing.
Here her long crests of fringèd crag
Allure the skyward swallows;
Here the still dove’s low love-note floats
Above her leafy hollows.
Here its calm strength her hillside rears,
From heaving slopes of clover;
Here still the pewit pipes and flits
Within his furzy cover.
Here hums the wild-bee in the thyme,
Here glows the royal heather;
And youth comes back upon the breeze,
And youth’s unclouded weather.
F.T. Palgrave.
Landscape and Song VII.
AN APPEAL.
Dear, do not die!
Of cypresses and grassy graves sing I —
I hang with wreaths of song death’s grief-grown cross,
And weep, to music, for Life’s infinite loss,
And make the sweetest verse of bitterest woe,
— I know the way because I love you so;
But I have written griefs that I have known
In other’s heart’s blood, never in my own.
If you died what more could be sung or said?
I could not sing of Death if you were dead.
Dear, do not love!
Do not love me, keep still aloof, above!
While you and Love in far-off glory stand
Clear sounds the voice, and harp responds to hand.
But if you loved me — if you came quite near
And set Love ‘mid life’s common things and dear —
Mute would the voice be, Love would be too fair
To waste upon the wide world’s empty air,
And, songless, I should dr
oop and vainly pine —
I could not sing of Love if you were mine! E. Nesbit.
Landscape and Song VIII.
I know the way she went
Home with her maiden
posy,
For her feet have touch’d
the meadows
And left the daisies
rosy.
Tennyson.
Landscape and Song IX.
A golden radiance shines,
And day declines;
Red in the dying sun,
Day’s course is run;
And weary labourers have home-
ward gone,
Their day’s work done.
The cornfield now is still,
To-morrow will
Bring back the men who reap:
But now asleep
The woods and fields and
meadows seem to lie —
Restful as I.
E. Nesbit.
Landscape and Song X.
As a twig trembles which a bird
Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;
I only know she came and went.
As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,
The blue dome’s measureless content,
So my soul held that moment’s heaven; —
I only know she came and went.
As at one bound, our swift Spring heaps
The orchard full of bloom and scent,
So clove her May my wintry sleeps; —
I only know she came and went.
An angel stood and met my gaze
Through the low doorway of my tent;
The tent is struck, the vision stays; —
I only know she came and went.
Oh, when the room grows
slowly dim,
And life’s last oil is
nearly spent,
One gush of light these
eyes will brim,
Only to think she came
and went.
J.R. Lowell.
Landscape and Song XI.
EVENING SONG.
Waking, I dream of thy life that shall be
Never by sorrow made weary;
Earth shall be soft with love for thee,
Down-lined the nest of my dearie.
Millions of flowers to gladden thy way,
Springing from seeds that my heart sets to-day.
Sleep, darling baby, baby!
Sleeping, dream thou of the Spirit of Spring —
Of sweets and of scents she is bringing;
Just for the flowers’ sake thrushes will sing,
Flowers blow for love of the singing.
In the world’s harmony take thou thy part,
So shall the springtide bloom in thy heart!
Sleep, darling baby, baby!
E. Nesbit.
Landscape and Song XII.
Now comes the first chill whisper of the end
While yet the woods are green and skies are
blue;
While under loads of corn great waggons bend,
And sunshine makes us glad the whole day through.
The trees are full of leaf and of delight,
Yet through them sighs the forecast of the time
When the lean branches shall be wondrous, white
With winter’s lovely radiant frost and rime.
The fallen leaves as yet are hardly missed,
The rest will fade — until the woods are bare,
And the dim glades where summer lovers kissed,
Forget how leafy and divine they were.
And in our souls come whispers of despair,
“Failure again — failure for evermore!
Leaves only for one summer’s space are fair,
No flower can live to see the fruit it bore.”
Yet every spring millions of flowers have birth,
And every autumn brings its fruits and sheaves;
But when the fruit and grain make glad the earth,
Dead are the flowers, and falling are the leaves.
Though all our lives we see our dear dreams die, —
Each noble dream brings fruit. It may not be
The fruit we hoped it would be followed by,
But the fruit lasts to all eternity.
No seed is lost — in earth’s brown bosom cast;
No deed is lost — of all the deeds we do;
Each grows to fruit — is harvested at last,
Haply in shape undreamed of, fair, and new.
And, though we die before the end be won,
Our deeds live on; and other men
will cry,
Seeing the end of what
we have begun,
“Still lives the fruit
for which the flowers
had to die!”
E. Nesbit.
Landscape and Song XIII.
Birds, joyous birds, of the wander-
ing wing!
Whence is it ye come with the
flowers of Spring?
“We come from the shores of the
green old Nile,
From the land where the roses of
Sharon smile,
And each worn wing hath regained
its home
Under peasants’ roof-trees or
monarch’s dome.”
And what have ye found in the monarch’s dome,
Since last ye traversed the blue sea’s foam?
“We have found a change, we have found a pall,
And a gloom o’ershadowing the banquet’s hall,
And a mark on the floor as of life-drops spilt, —
Naught looks the same, save the nest we built.”
O joyous birds! it hath still
been so;
Through the halls of kings
doth the tempest go!
But the huts of the hamlet
lie still and deep,
And the hills o’er their
quiet a vigil keep:
Say, what have ye found in
the peasant’s cot,
Since last ye parted from
that sweet spot? —
“A change we have found there — and many a change!
Faces and footsteps, and all things strange!
Gone are the heads of the silvery hair,
And the young that were, have a brow of care.
And the place is hushed where the children played —
Naught looks the same, save the nest we made.”
F. Hemans.
LAYS AND LEGENDS: SECOND SERIES
CONTENTS
BRIDAL BALLAD.
THE GHOST.
THE MODERN JUDAS.
THE SOUL TO THE IDEAL.
A DEATH-BED.
THE LOST SOUL AND THE SAVED.
AT THE PRISON GATE.
THE DEVIL’S DUE.
LOVE IN JUNE.
THE GARDEN.
PRAYER UNDER GRAY SKIES.
A GREAT INDUSTRIAL CENTRE.
LONDON’S VOICES SPEAK TO TWO SOULS — WHO THUS REPLY:
THE SICK JOURNALIST.
TWO LULLABIES.
BABY SONG.
LULLABY.
AN EAST-END TRAGEDY.
HERE AND THERE.
MOTHER.
A BALLAD OF CANTERBURY.
MORNING.
THE PRAYER.
THE RIVER MAIDENS.
ON THE MEDWAY.
THE BETROTHAL.
A TRAGEDY.
LOVE.
THE DESIRE OF THE MOTH FOR THE STAR.
WORSHIP.
SPLENDIDE MENDAX.
LOVE SONG.
THE QUARREL.
CHANGE.
THE MILL.
RONDEAU.
A MÉSALLIANCE.
THE LAST THOUGHT.
APOLLO AND THE MEN OF CYMÉ.
AT THE PRIVATE VIEW.
A DIRGE IN GRAY.
TH
E WOMAN’S WORLD.
THE LIGHTHOUSE.
TO A YOUNG POET.
THE TEMPTATION.
THE BALLAD OF SIR HUGH.
FEBRUARY.
APRIL.
JUNE.
JULY.
NOVEMBER.
ROCHESTER CASTLE.
RUCKINGE CHURCH.
RYE.
THE BALLAD OF THE TWO SPELLS.
IN MEMORIAM
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.
RONDEAU TO AUSTIN DOBSON.
RONDEAU TO W. E. HENLEY.
TO WALTER SICKERT.
OLD AGE.
TO
ALICE HOATSON,
HELEN MACKLIN,
AND
CHARLOTTE WILSON,
In token of indebtment.
BRIDAL BALLAD.
“Come, fill me flagons full and fair
Of red wine and of white,
And, maidens mine, my bower prepare —
It is my wedding night.
“And braid my hair with jewels bright,
And make me fair and fine —
This is the day that brings the night
When my desire is mine.”
They decked her bower with roses blown,
With rushes strewed the floor,
And sewed more jewels on her gown
Than ever she wore before.
She wore two roses in her face,
Two jewels in her e’en,
Her hair was crowned with sunset rays,
Her brows shone white between.
“Tapers at the bed’s foot,” she saith,
“Two tapers at the head!”
It seemed more like the bed of death
Than like a bridal bed.
He came; he took her hands in his,
He kissed her on the face;
“There is more heaven in thy kiss
Than in our Lady’s grace”.
He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,
He kissed her three times o’er;
He kissed her brow, he kissed her eyes,
He kissed her mouth’s red flower.
“O Love, what is it ails thy knight?
I sicken and I pine;
Is it the red wine or the white,
Or that sweet kiss of thine?”
“No kiss, no wine or white or red,
Can make such sickness be,
Lie down and die on thy bride-bed
For I have poisoned thee.
“And though the curse of saints and men
Upon me for it be,
I would it were to do again
Since thou wert false to me.
“Thou shouldst have loved or one or none,