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Complete Novels of E Nesbit

Page 629

by Edith Nesbit


  Clear of the stream that ran so fast,

  And feel the flower roots in my hair,

  And in my hands the roots of trees;

  Myself wrapt in the ungrudging peace

  That leaves no pain uncovered anywhere.

  What — this hope left? this way not barred?

  This last best treasure without guard?

  This heaven free — no prayers to pay?

  Fool — are the Rulers of men asleep?

  Thou knowest what tears They bade thee weep,

  But, when peace comes, ’tis thou wilt sleep, not They.

  A PRAYER FOR THE KING’S MAJESTY.

  22nd January, 1901.

  THE Queen is dead. God save the King,

  In this his hour of grief,

  When sorrow gathers memories in a sheaf

  To lay them on his shoulders as he stands

  Inheriting her glories and her lands —

  First gain of his at which his Mother’s voice

  Has not been first to bless and to rejoice —

  A man, set lonely between gain and loss.

  (O words of love the heart remembereth,

  O mighty loss outweighing every gain!)

  A Son whose kingdom Death’s arm lies across,

  A King whose Mother lies alone with Death

  Wrapped in the folds of white implacable sleep.

  O God, who seest the tears Thy children weep,

  O God, who countest each sad heart-beat, see

  How our King needs the grace we ask of Thee!

  Thou knowest how little and how vain a thing

  Is Empire, when the heart is sick with pain —

  God, save the King!

  The Queen is dead. The splendour of her days,

  The sorrow of them both alike merge now

  In the new aureole that lights her brow.

  The clamour of her people’s voice in praise

  Must hush itself to the still voice that prays

  In the holy chamber of Death. Tread softly here,

  A mighty Queen lies dead.

  Her people’s heart wears black,

  The black bells toll unceasing in their ear,

  And on the gold sun’s track

  The great world round

  Like a black ring the voice of mourning goes,

  Till even our ancient foes

  With eyes downbent, and brotherly bared head,

  Keep mourning watch with us. This is the hour

  When Love lends all his power

  To speed grief’s arrows from the bow of Death,

  When sighs are idle breath,

  When tears are fountains vain.

  She will not wake again,

  Not now, not here.

  O great and good and infinitely dear,

  O Mother of your people, sleep is sweet,

  No more Life’s thorny ways will wound your feet.

  O Mother dear, sleep sound!

  When you shall wake,

  Your brows freed from the crown that made them ache

  So many a time, and wear the heavenly crown,

  Then, then you will look down

  On us who love you, and, remembering,

  The love of earth will breathe with us our prayer,

  Our prayer prayed here, joined to your prayer prayed there:

  Who knows what radiant answer it may bring?

  “God save the King!”

  The Queen is dead. God save the King!

  From all ill thought and deed,

  From heartless service and from selfish sway,

  From treason, and the vain imagining

  Of evil counsellors, and the noisome breed

  Of flatterers who eat the soul away,

  God save the King!

  From loss and pain and tears

  Such as her many years

  Brought her; from battle and strife,

  And the inmost hurt of life,

  The wounds that no crown can heal,

  No ermine robes conceal,

  God save the King!

  God, by our memories of his Mother’s face,

  By the love that makes our heart her dwelling-place,

  Grant to our sorrow this desired grace:

  God save the King!

  * * * * * * * * *

  The Queen is dead. God save the King.

  This is no hour when joy has leave to sing;

  Only, amid our tears, we are bold to pray,

  More boldly, in that we pray sorrowing,

  In this most sorrowful day.

  God, who wast of a mortal Mother born,

  Who driest the tears with which Thy children mourn,

  God, save the King!

  Look down on him whose crown is wet with tears

  In which its splendour fades and disappears —

  His tears, our tears, tears out of all her lands.

  The Queen is dead.

  God! strengthen the King’s hands!

  God, save the King!

  TRUE LOVE AND NEW LOVE.

  OVER the meadow and down the lane

  To the gate by the twisted thorn:

  Your feet should know each turn of the way

  You trod so many many a day,

  Before the old love was put out of its pain,

  Before the new love was born.

  Kiss her, hold her and fold her close,

  Tell her the old true tale:

  You ought to know each turn of the phrase, —

  You learned them all in the poor old days

  Before the birth of the new red rose,

  Before the old rose grew pale.

  And do not fear I shall creep to-night

  To make a third at your tryst:

  My ghost, if it walked, would only wait

  To scare the others away from the gate

  Where you teach your new love the old delight,

  With the lips that your old love kissed.

  DEATH.

  NEVER again:

  No child shall stir the inmost heart of her

  And teach her heaven by that first faint stir;

  No little lips shall lie against her breast

  Save the cold lips that now lie there at rest;

  No little voice shall rouse her from her sleep

  And bid her wake to pain:

  Her sleep is calm and deep,

  Call not! refrain.

  Close in her arm

  As though even death drew back before the face

  Of Motherhood in this white stilly place,

  The gathered bud lies waxen white and cold,

  As ever a flower your winter gardens hold.

  She bore the pain, she never wore the crown,

  She worked the bitter charm,

  But all she won thereby is here laid down

  Renounced — for good or harm.

  Dream? Feed your soul

  With dreams, while we must starve our hearts on clay,

  Dream of a glorious white-winged sun-crowned day

  When you shall see her once more face to face

  Beside Christ’s Mother in the blessed place!

  But while you dream, they carry her from here,

  The black bells toll and toll.

  Oh God! if only she cannot see or hear,

  Not hear those ghoul-like bells that crowd so near,

  Not see that cold clay hole.

  IN MEMORY OF SARETTA DEAKIN.

  Who Died on October 25th, 1899.

  THERE was a day,

  A horrible Autumn day,

  When from her home, the home she made for ours

  And that day made a nightmare of white flowers

  And folk in black who whispered pityingly,

  They carried her away;

  And left our hearts all cold

  And empty, yet with such a store to hold

  Of sodden grief the slow drops still ooze out,

  And, falling on all fair things, they wither these.

  Tears
came with time — but not with time went by.

  And still we wander desolate about

  The poor changed house, the garden and the croft,

  Warm kitchen, sunny parlour, with the soft

  Intolerable pervading memories

  Of her whose face and voice made melodies,

  Sweet unforgotten songs of mother-love —

  Dear songs of all the little joys that were.

  We see the sun, and have no joy thereof,

  Because she gathered in her dying hands

  And carried with her to the fair far lands

  The flower of all our joy, because she went

  Out of the garden where her days were spent,

  And took the very sun away with her.

  The cross stands at her head.

  Over her breast, that loving mother-breast,

  Close buds of pansies purple and white are pressed.

  It seems a place for rest,

  For happy folded sleep; but ah, not there,

  Not there, not there, our hardest tears are shed,

  But in the house made empty for her sake.

  Here, in the night intolerable, wake

  The hungry passionate pains of Love still strong

  To fight with death the bitter slow night long.

  Then the rich price that poor Love has to pay

  Is paid, slow drop by drop, till the new day

  With thin cold fingers pushes back night’s wings,

  And drags us out to common cruel things

  That sting, and barb their stings with memory.

  O Love — and is the price too hard to give?

  Thine is the splendour of all things that live,

  And this thy pain the price of life to thee —

  The sacrament that binds to the beloved,

  The chain that holds though mountains be removed,

  The portent of thine immortality.

  So, in the house of pain imprisoned, we

  Endure our bondage, and work out our time,

  Nor seek from out our dungeon walls to climb —

  Bondsmen, who would not, if we could, be free.

  Thank God, our hands still hold Love’s cord — and she —

  Do not her hands still clasp the cord we hold,

  Drawing us near, coiling bright fold on fold,

  Till the far day when it shall draw us near

  To the sight of her — her living hands, her dear

  Tired face, grown weary of watching for our face?

  And we shall hold her, in the happy place,

  And hear her voice, the old same voice we knew —

  “Ah! children, I am tired of wanting you!”

  Or, in some world more beautiful and dear

  Than any she ever even dreamed of here,

  Where time is changed, does she await the day

  She longed for, and so little a while away,

  When all the love we watered with our tears

  Shall bloom, transplanted by the kindly years?

  Dreaming through her new garden does she go,

  Remembering the old garden, long ago,

  Tending new flowers more fair than those that grow

  In this sad garden where such sad flowers blow;

  And, fondly touching bud and leaf and shoot,

  Training her flowers to perfect branch and root,

  Does she sometimes entreat some darling flower

  To wait a little for its opening hour?

  Can you not hear her voice: “Ah, not to-day,

  While my dear flowers, my own, are far away.

  Be patient, bud! to-morrow soon will come:

  Ah! blossom when my little girl comes home!”

  But now. But here.

  The empty house, the always empty place —

  The black remembrance that no night blots out,

  The memories, white, unbearable, and dear

  That no white sunlight makes less cruel and clear?

  The resistless riotous rout

  Of cruel conquering thoughts, the night, the day?

  Love is immortal: this the price to pay.

  Worse than all pain it would be to forget —

  On Love’s brave brow the crown of thorns is set.

  Love is no niggard: though the price be high

  Into God’s market Love goes forth to buy

  With royal meed God’s greatest gifts and gain,

  Love offers up his whole rich store of pain,

  And buys of God Love’s immortality.

  FOR DOROTHY, 18th August, 1900.

  A PARTING.

  I WILL not wake you, dear; no tears shall creep

  To chill the still bed where you lie asleep;

  No cry, no word, shall break the sanctity

  Of the great silence where God lets you lie.

  I will not tease your grave with flower or stone;

  You are tired, my heart; you shall be left alone.

  And even the kisses that my lips must lay

  Upon the mould of the triumphant clay

  Shall be so soft — like those a mother lays

  Upon her sleeping baby’s little face —

  You will not feel my kisses, will not hear;

  You are tired: sleep on, I will not wake you, dear!

  But when the good day comes, you will hear me cry,

  “Ah, make a little place where I can lie!”

  And half awakened, you will feel me creep

  Into the folds of your familiar sleep,

  And draw them round us, with a tender moan,

  “How could you let me sleep so long alone?”

  MANY VOICES

  CONTENTS

  THE RETURN

  FOR DOLLY WHO DOES NOT LEARN HER LESSONS

  QUESTIONS

  THE DAISIES

  THE TOUCHSTONE

  THE DECEMBER ROSE

  THE FIRE

  SONG. NOW THE SPRING IS WAKING

  A PARTING

  THE GIFT OF LIFE

  INCOMPATIBILITIES

  THE STOLEN GOD.

  WINTER

  SEA-SHELLS

  HOPE

  THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN

  THE SKYLARK

  SATURDAY SONG

  THE CHAMPION

  THE GARDEN REFUSED

  THESE LITTLE ONES

  THE DESPOT

  THE MAGIC RING

  PHILOSOPHY

  THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME

  MAGIC

  WINDFLOWERS

  AS IT IS

  BEFORE WINTER

  THE VAULT

  SURRENDER

  VALUES

  IN THE PEOPLE’S PARK

  WEDDING DAY

  THE LAST DEFEAT

  MAY DAY

  GRETNA GREEN

  THE ETERNAL

  THE POINT OF VIEW: I.

  THE POINT OF VIEW: II.

  MARY OF MAGDALA

  THE HOME-COMING

  AGE TO YOUTH

  IN AGE

  WHITE MAGIC

  FROM THE PORTUGUESE

  THE NEST

  THE OLD MAGIC

  FAITH

  THE DEATH OF AGNES

  IN TROUBLE

  GRATITUDE

  AT THE LAST

  FEAR

  THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

  A FAREWELL

  IN HOSPITAL

  PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR

  AT PARTING

  INVOCATION

  TO HER: IN TIME OF WAR

  THE FIELDS OF FLANDERS

  SPRING IN WAR-TIME

  THE MOTHER’S PRAYER

  INASMUCH AS YE DID IT NOT . . .

  To

  my dear

  Daughter in law

  and

  Daughter in love,

  GERTRUDE BLAND

  I, E. NESBIT,

  DEDICATE

  THIS BOOK

  Jesson St. Mary’s,

  Romney, 1922.

  THE RETURN

  The grass was gray wit
h the moonlit dew,

  The stones were white as I came through;

  I came down the path by the thirteen yews,

  Through the blocks of shade that the moonlight hews.

  And when I came to the high lych-gate

  I waited awhile where the corpses wait;

  Then I came down the road where the moonlight lay

  Like the fallen ghost of the light of day.

  The bats shrieked high in their zigzag flight,

  The owls’ spread wings were quiet and white,

  The wind and the poplar gave sigh for sigh,

  And all about were the rustling shy

  Little live creatures that love the night —

  Little wild creatures timid and free.

  I passed, and they were not afraid of me.

  It was over the meadow and down the lane

  The way to come to my house again:

  Through the wood where the lovers talk,

  And the ghosts, they say, get leave to walk.

  I wore the clothes that we all must wear,

  And no one saw me walking there,

  No one saw my pale feet pass

  By my garden path to my garden grass.

  My garden was hung with the veil of spring —

  Plum-tree and pear-tree blossoming;

  It lay in the moon’s cold sheet of light

  In garlands and silence, wondrous and white

  As a dead bride decked for her burying.

  Then I saw the face of my house

  Held close in the arms of the blossomed boughs:

  I leaned my face to the window bright

  To feel if the heart of my house beat right.

  The firelight hung it with fitful gold;

  It was warm as the house of the dead is cold.

  I saw the settles, the candles tall,

  The black-faced presses against the wall,

  Polished beechwood and shining brass,

  The gleam of china, the glitter of glass,

  All the little things that were home to me —

  Everything as it used to be.

  Then I said, “The fire of life still burns,

  And I have returned whence none returns:

  I will warm my hands where the fire is lit,

  I will warm my heart in the heart of it!”

  So I called aloud to the one within:

  “Open, open, and let me in!

  Let me in to the fire and the light —

  It is very cold out here in the night!”

  There was never a stir or an answering breath —

  Only a silence as deep as death.

  Then I beat on the window, and called, and cried.

  No one heard me, and none replied.

  The golden silence lay warm and deep,

  And I wept as the dead, forgotten, weep;

  And there was no one to hear or see —

 

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