by Edith Nesbit
To know the true from the true-seeming.
We wish that all your life may be
A life of selfless brave endeavour —
That for reward the fates allow
Such love as lines your soft nest now
To warm the years for you, when we,
Who wish you this, are cold for ever.
JANUARY
WHILE yet the air is keen, and no bird sings,
Nor any vaguest thrills of heart declare
The presence of the springtime in the air,
Through the raw dawn the shepherd homeward brings
The wee white lambs — the little helpless things —
For shelter, warmth, and comfortable care.
Without his help how hardly lambs would fare —
How hardly live through winter’s hours to spring’s!
So let me tend and minister apart
To my new hope, which some day you shall know:
It could not live in January wind
Of your disdain; but when within your heart
The bud and bloom of tenderness shall grow,
Amid the flowers my hope may welcome find.
CHILDREN’S PLAYGROUNDS IN THE CITY
THIS is a place where men laid their dead,
Each with his life-tale of good or ill;
Here prayers were murmured and hot tears shed,
And passionate anguish moaned its fill.
Silent now is each voice that cried,
And the tears that were wept have all been dried
In the dust; and dust are the hearts that bled
With hopeless longing for hearts grown still.
Dead and forgotten! for Death, requiter
Of love, taught Memory how to forget!
The love that remembered them died. Grow brighter,
Oh, dim grave-garden, with dead hearts set!
Room for the small flying feet to pass,
The feet of the children over the grass!
The dead, if they knew it, would feel them lighter
Than the weight of a stone that no tears make wet.
We must die too, and the grief that will live
Must die as surely — death comes to all;
But you who come after — let Nature give
To our graves her tears, to our dust her pall:
Let her hide us away in her cold broad breast,
Let us be forgotten, and be at rest,
And over our heads let the great world strive,
And the children’s voices carol and call.
If your heart on the flower of remembrance is set,
There is one way to pluck it — and only one:
Dare you ask your country not to forget
A name that needs to be graved on stone?
By grief, strife, sacrifice, scorn of fame,
You may grave on the people’s hearts your name,
Or your name may die, and your soul live yet
In the cause you died for — the work you have done.
THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA
FOR A PICTURE BY E. BURNE JONES
I
Habes tota quod mente petisti
Infelix.
IN deep vague spaces of the lonely sea
She deemed her soulless life was almost fair,
Yet ever dreamed that in the upper air
Lay happiness — supreme in mystery;
Then saw him — out of reach as you I see —
Worshipped his strength, the brown breast broad and bare,
The arms that bent the oar, and grew aware
Of what life means, and why it is good to be;
And yearned for him with all her body sweet,
Her lithe cold arms, and chill wet bosom’s beat,
Vowed him her beauty’s unillumined shrine:
So I — seeing you above me — turn and tire,
Sick with an empty ache of long desire
To drag you down, to hold you, make you mine!
II
Attained at last — the lifelong longing’s prize!
Raped from the world of air where warm loves glow,
She bears him through her water-world below;
Yet in those strange, glad, fair, mysterious eyes
The shadow of the after-sorrow lies,
And of the coming hour, when she shall know
What she has lost in having gained him so,
And whether death life’s longing satisfies.
She shall find out the meaning of despair,
And know the anguish of a granted prayer,
And how, all ended, all is yet undone.
So I — I long for what, far off, you shine,
Not what you must be ere you could be mine,
That which would crown despair if it were won.
TO HIS LADY, IMPLORING HER TO BE TRUE
MISTRESS of me, mistress of all the arts
And charms that sway men’s hot ungoverned hearts,
Receive their tribute — smile at their defeat;
I do not ask that you should spare them, sweet.
Only I ask that in the secret shrine
No prayers be heard, no offering laid, but mine.
Each man who sees your eyes must needs lay down
Low at your feet the votive myrtle crown:
Let them bring crowns to die beneath your feet;
I, only I, must bring the crown you wear
Shadowing the sombre glory of your hair.
AT THE FEAST
EVOLVING, changing, onwards still we press —
We must advance, invent, construct, possess;
No matter what a price we have to pay,
We must obtain perfection, and no less —
Perfection in our luxuries, the hours,
Fulfilled of sweetness, must be slaves of ours;
Our air be rich with music and soft light,
And all our halls be odorous with flowers.
How our least want may best be satisfied,
How not a pleasure may be left untried;
How to appease each longing and desire,
This we have learned, and something else beside.
Yes, we have learned to know, and not to shrink
From knowing, to what depths our brothers sink;
And we have learned the lesson ‘not to feel,’
And we have learned the lesson ‘not to think.’
We must have learned it; otherwise, to-night,
When, sped by wine and feasting, time takes flight,
When perfect music searches for our soul,
And all these flowers unfold for our delight,
We should not hear the music, but, instead,
Hear that wild, bitter, heart-sick cry for bread,
And in the lamps that light our lavish feast,
Should see but tapers burning for the dead.
We should not see the myriad blossoms waste,
The bloom of them would be thrust back, displaced
By the white faces of the starving children —
Wasted and wan, who might have been flower-faced.
Oh, not to think! To think and not to care!
Oh, woman hearts, still do these flowers seem fair?
Can music drown the little piteous voices?
Can you not see the little faces there?
For ‘faring sumptuously every day,’
For raiment soft and music on our way,
We give — the tortured lives of little children:
For such a purchase, what a price to pay!
SPRING SONG
THE spring is here, and the long nights grow
Less bitterly cold than awhile ago;
Our rags serve their purpose now, and keep
Warmth enough in us to let us sleep.
The rain that trickles down our walls
No longer seems to freeze as it falls;
There was dust, not mud, on our feet to-day;
There’s some
green in a flower-pot over the way;
The sky-strip over the court’s changed hue,
From dull yellow-grey to clear grey-blue;
Through our broken windows no more the storm
Laughs and shrieks as we try to keep warm,
But through dusty panes the long sunbeams peer,
For the spring is here.
Small joy the greenness and grace of spring
To grey hard lives like our own can bring.
A drowning man cares little to think
Of the lights on the waves where he soon must sink.
The greenest garments the spring can wear
Are black already with our despair:
Earth will be one with us soon — shall we care
If snow or sunshine be over us there,
Or if wintry the world be we found so drear,
Or if spring be here?
In the western half of our Christian town
The Winter only pretends to frown,
And when his undreaded rage is done,
The ‘London season’ they say is begun.
With wine, feast, revelling, laugh and song,
The hours rose-garlanded dance along,
The whirl of wickedness wilder grows
In this western camp of our bitter foes;
They fight with each other — the victors take
The largest share of the wealth we make;
They spend on their horses, their women, their wives,
The money wrung from our blasted lives:
It is theirs to enjoy — it is ours to pay.
Do they never dream of a reckoning day,
When the lives they have wrecked shall be counted up,
And measured the blood that has brightened their cup,
When we who have worked shall take payment due,
And they for their work shall have payment too?
Do they dream of that coming hour? Not they!
Their feet flit fast down the smooth steep way,
They see not the waiting snakes that hide
In the hothouse flowers at their life-path’s side,
They know no justice, no pity, no fear —
But the spring is here!
Yes — here! In the hope we had almost lost,
That has sprung to bud after long years’ frost;
In this fire in our veins that cries, ‘Give youth,
Love, manhood, life, for the Right and the Truth;’
In our steady purpose, for Freedom’s sake,
Through custom, privilege, ‘fate,’ to break;
In the brains of the thinkers, the arms of the men
Who will strike, and strike, and still strike again,
Till they cut our way to the land of flowers,
And the summer of freedom at last is ours —
In these is the spring. The winter was sore —
It is over and done, and will come no more.
The fruit will grow with the changing year,
Though only the blossoms now appear;
For the sake of the fruit the blossoms are dear,
And the spring is here — the spring is here.
NEW YEAR
IN the coming year enfolded
Bright and sad hours lie,
Waiting till you reach and live them
As the year rolls by.
In the happy hours and radiant
I would like to be
Somewhere out of sight, forgotten,
Your delight to see.
But when you are tired and saddened,
Vexed with life, dismayed,
I would steal your grief, and lay it
Where my own is laid —
Bleed my heart out in your service
If, set free from pain,
You, through me, found life worth living,
Glad and fair again.
A STAR IN THE EAST
FOR THE ART EXHIBITION AT ST. JUDE’S, WHITECHAPEL
LIKE a fair flower springing fresh, sweet, and bright,
Through prison stones; or like one perfect song
Heard in a dream on one remembered night,
When waking worlds were dumb with grief and wrong;
Like the one kiss that links — first kiss and last —
The inevitable future spent apart
With the immutable divided past:
So in the east shines out this star of Art.
The narrow-shouldered, pale-faced girl and boy
Nestle against Art’s new-found, love-warm breast,
And feel vague stirrings of a far-off joy,
Which life has never for themselves possessed,
And dimly guess at wonders hardly known —
Even as dreams — and weep glad tears to see
A loveliness that is at once life’s own,
And yet is something life can never be.
Not worse will work the flying busy hand
Because the soul has drunk a cup of pleasure,
Has picked up on its leaden-coloured strand
Some little jewel of Art’s splendid treasure,
Nor will less work be done because men see
That work is not the only thing in life,
Because they have been glad at heart and free
A little space ‘mid sorrow, sin, and strife.
And this sweet draught may banish men’s content?
For this we pray and strive — not all in vain —
That men may reach such heights of discontent
As never to fall back to peace again
Where no peace is — nor rest from strife and prayers,
But tread firm-footed up the thorny way,
Till all that spring of art and joy is theirs
Whereof they taste so small a draught to-day.
PARTING
WHEN hides the sun behind a bank of cloud,
Though well we know the sun is shining still,
No less the shadow falls on down and hill,
And the bright hues grow dull as brows grief-bowed.
So, when thou goest from me into the crowd,
Though well I know thy love through good and ill
Shines steadfastly, thy going seems to fill
The world with shade — turn sunshine to a shroud.
But when through clouds the sun returns to bless
Hill, field, and wood with his divine caress,
Ah, how the colours start to life again!
So after absence, when thou comest back
Bright grows the whole thought-world that was so black,
And my heart sings to feel the sunshine then.
TWO CHRISTMAS EVES
I
THE white snow veils the earth’s brown face,
Strong frost has bound the veil in place —
Under the wide, clear, dark-blue sky
All choked with snow the hollows lie,
Dead-white the fields — once summer sweet —
And woodlands where we used to meet:
We don’t meet now, we never part.
Ever together, heart to heart,
We’ve worked, lost often, seldom won,
Seen pleasures ended, pains begun,
Have done our best, and faced, we two,
Almost the worst that Fate could do —
Yet not Fate’s uttermost of ill,
Since here we are — together still!
For me you left, my dearest, best,
Your girlhood’s safe warm sheltered nest;
For me gave up all else that could
Have made your woman-life seem good.
You thought a man’s whole heart was worth
Just all the other wealth of earth;
I thought my painter’s brush would be
A magic wand for you and me.
What dreams we had of fame and gold,
Of Art-that never could withhold
From me, who loved her so, full powers
To make my lo
ve for her serve ours,
To shape and build a palace fair
Of radiant hours, and place you there!
Art turned away her face from us,
And all the dreaming’s ended — thus!
Our garret’s cold; the wind is keen,
And cuts these rotten boards between.
There is no lock upon the door,
No carpet on the uneven floor,
No curtain to the window where
Through frost-blanched panes the moon’s cold stare
Fronts us. She’s careless — used to see
This world of ours, and misery!
Why, how you shiver! Oh, my sweet,
How cold your hands are, and your feet!
How hot this face of yours I kiss!
How could our love have led to this?
What devil is there over all
That lets such things as this befall?
It was not want of striving. Love,
Bear witness for me how I strove,
Worked till I grew quite sick and faint,
Worked till I could not see to paint
Because my eyes were sore and wet,
Yet never sold one picture yet.
We would have worked — yes, there’s the sting —
We would have worked at anything!
Our hands asked work. There’s work somewhere,
That makes it all more hard to bear;
Yet we could never understand
Where is the work that asks our hand!
There’s no more firing, and the cold
Is biting through your shawl’s thin fold,
And both the blankets have been sold.
Nestle beside me, in my arm,
And let me try to keep you warm.
We pawned the table and the bed,
To get our last week’s fire and bread,
And now the last crust’s eaten. Well,
There’s nothing left to pawn or sell!
Our rent is due on Monday too,
How can we pay it — I and you?
What shall we do? What shall we do?
And we are — what was that you said?
You are so tired ? Your dearest head
Is burning hot, and aching so?
Ah, yes! I know it is — I know!
You’re tired and weak and faint and ill,
And fevers burn and shiverings chill
This world of mine I’m holding here.
If I could suffer only, dear —
But all the burdens on you fall,
And I sit here, and bear it all!
And other men and other wives,
Who never worked in all their lives —
No, nor yet loved as we have, sweet —