Alice MacDonald Kipling

“ Grown older now, and wiser, sadder too,
⁠I sing of Love no more; yet is my heart
Love's dwelling place, and shall be safe and true
⁠Until the day that life and I muse part;
And thus it is, although full well I know
Who live for Love may chance to die for Woe. ”

“ THERE was never a day so sad and long
But it wore at length to evensong;
There was never a life so full of grief,
But death came at last to its relief.
There was never a soul so wholly sad,
But it found some moment to be glad ”

“ In silence, where of old Love walked with me,
And laughed and sang and made my youth his own,
Till Love and I seemed one eternally.
But now we part. The years have brought you peace;
To me they bring but sorrow's sharp increase. ”

“ But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,
Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning
Held out his Cypress branch, She followed him,
And Love was left forlorn and wondering
When She, who for his wooing would not stay,
At Death's first whisper rose and went away. ”

“ As Astley lifted the hand to lay it on her breast, he thought how beautiful it must once have been, since now, when there was not the faintest rose-tint to relieve the deathly pallor of it, it was so exquisite. She wore one garment, a long flannel shroud, very straitly made, through which scanty drapery the outline of her slender limbs was distinctly visible, and below which her delicate feet were seen, bare to the ankle. ”

“ I WILL not tell you which I love the best
⁠Of all your sonnets, for in telling this
I should tell more, and all would be confessed,
⁠That I so long have hidden in my breast,
My soul’s sad secret, my heart’s poisoned bliss. ”

“ Wind-Music and the Child
A TUNE that keeps no earthly time or measure,
Rising and falling at the wind's wild pleasure;
Now quick in haste, now slow in languid leisure.
But always very musically sweet
And always sad. ”

“ Glowed once, where now she found all cold and grey.
Then, idly still, scarce knowing what she did,
Fanned the pale ashes with her gentle breath,
Nor thought of fire within the embers hid,
Nor dreamed of life where all lay cold as death. ”

“ Three Singers
YOUTH, Hope, and Love were nestling in her heart,
⁠Like three sweet birds that cheered the Summer earth;
In Life's glad chorus taking equal part,
⁠Filling her days with music and with mirth. ”

“ The thrushes built their nests before the time,
And twittered cheerily the whole day long;
Buds grew to leaves, as if to shelter them.
February's skies had April's tender grace,
When lo! the fields were white, as if with snow,
And all the woods and gardens and hedgerows.
Single, in clusters, opened flower and bud,
The snowdrops bloomed: the world was white with them,
Half hidden in a snowstorm of snowdrops. ”

“ HOW the old Earth is young this sunny day!
⁠Spring wrapt in her green mantle newly donned,
And shod with flowers, comes smiling on her way;
⁠To her soft whisper all the groves respond,
While I alone, what time the woods are gay,
Fade as a leaf, and wither and decay. ”

“ I'M lost to joy: I'm lost to love;
I'm lost to all would make me fain:
I lost my way in the light of day—
⁠God send that I find it soon again!
I'm lost to peace; I'm lost to ease;
⁠I'm lost to all would make me blest ”

“ To escape pursuit, had scorned fatigue and pain,
⁠And climbing ever higher, reached at length
Some topmost pinnacle, whence, looking down,
⁠I saw no glimmer of the household fire,
And caught no echo of familiar tone,
Light, warmth, and music, all for ever gone! ”

“ The wind-flower danced upon its slender stem;
A foot above the ground the young corn stood,
And over all was poured a golden flood
Of warm May sunshine—in its radiant light
The whole world seemed transfigured to the sight. ”

“ Richard Astley, in common with the rest of the profession, availed himself of their services, and many times in the black night his door was opened to those who did not knock, but who were expected and waited for, and who, entering silently, stealthily deposited a dread burden upon the table prepared for its reception. Old and young, men, women, and children, all in turn lay upon that grim table, and Astley’s skilful instruments cut their way to secrets that were destined to benefit the living. ”

“ Summer in the Indian Plains
THE fiery feet of Summer march in haste
⁠Across the fields swept bare of ripened grain,
And all the garden lies a barren waste
⁠Beneath her scorching steps, athirst for rain. ”

“ In his terror of that he cried out for her to awake, and the sound of his cry awoke her with a start.
He had prepared a speech that was to calm and re-assure her when she woke bewildered to find herself so strangely clothed and lodged; but she no more needed calming and re-assuring than an infant too young to know its mother from any other woman. She looked round with a wondering gaze that was almost infantine, and her eye resting upon Astley, she sat up in the bed and asked him in his own language for food. ”

“ Sweet to each sense with sweetness still uncloying,
A growing tree from leafy crown to root,
Is now a withered bough, an empty husk;
No sunbeam cheers it, and no breezes toying
Make music in its leaves from dawn to dusk. ”

“ Love's Hypocrisy
HER lips said "Go"; her shining eyes said "Stay."
How tell which was her meaning, which her will?
How read the riddle of her yea and nay,
And disentangle each, bewildered still ? ”

“ See nothing regal in the mean disguise,
And have no power to pierce the mystery,
And find the Monarch in his majesty.
But, passed, our sight is cleared; all we desire
Of royal pomp and kingly might is shown ”

“ On either side were the huge furnace fires of the black country shedding a lurid light far into the darkness; and the heaps of refuse, which looked grey and dead in the daylight, were now so many glowing hillocks of rod-hot embers. It was more like a dream than any waking sight I had ever had; and more like a vision of purgatory, or even a worse place, than like a dream. The train stopped, and upon inquiring the name of the station, I found that I had passed the station of ———, where I ought to have left the train, and where my friend had arranged to meet me with a carriage. ”

“ Joy Cometh in the Morning
I HAD hoped that the morning sun would rise
To scatter the night of weeping,
And I rose to watch the dawning skies
While the world lay round me sleeping.
But alas for my hope ”

“ And I wholly misdoubt, you perceive,
⁠That laughter must always prove gladness.
Are you sure it is grief when a tear starts?
⁠Can you trust smiles of mirth in all places?
If aught can be falser than human hearts,
⁠It must surely be human faces! ”

“ Nor e'en the gift of your whole self could save
This wand'rer, shipwrecked on the sea of life;
Who, passing by your door, says only this—
"You are no richer, dear, for that day's thrift,
While I am made the poorer for all time." ”

“ Two years passed, and Mary had developed so rapidly that she was much like other women in knowledge and acquirements, but she had no memory of anything before her trance. Astley told her the whole story, and urged her to try to recall something of the time before, but it was in vain, her memory was clean gone. And the present time was so happy that they cared little for the past. She was something belonging so entirely to him, even her life she owed to his care, and loved him so intensely, there being no one in the world whom she knew or loved beside, that he could not fail to be very happy ”

“ Though he was not hard-hearted, it was not unnatural that in time he should grow so much accustomed to the sight of his “subjects” as to feel nothing but a momentary pity as he put aside the clustering curls of infancy, or uncovered the face of a man struck down in the glory of his years.
One night, as many nights before, the stealthy visit was paid, and Astley took his lamp to examine the new subject. Neither strong man nor tender child this time, but a young and beautiful woman. ”

“ Except in jest they had not breathed a sigh,
And save the name, they nothing knew of care.
As I came by they rose and clasped me round:
"Tell us," they said, "for you have older years,
What is this love that each of us has found ”

“ And still he was light enough to swim,
With silver chains I bound him down,
There was never a corpse so hard to drown.
"His black hair lines an eagle's nest
On a sea girt cliff in the lonesome west ”

“ In Captivity
IF these chained feet were free to come and go,
And at their own will wander through this Isle,
Seeking cool shaded paths, and, fast or slow,
Choose their own pace, none following the while ”

“ Night has veiled many sights of woe, the clouds of night have many times been pierced by cries of anguish, bitter cries for faith and patience, going up above the stars right to the feet of God, but night never shrouded deeper woe than this, bitterer cries never pierced the shuddering darkness. ”

“ By the doors of these desolate and ruinous dwellings little children are seen, looking like little savages, even to the colour of their skin, playing their dreary play among the cinders which cover the roads. ”

“ The flat, black ground, intersected by canals, upon whose foul and muddy water slow barges laden with coal or iron are drawn by lean horses, and even in some cases by women with scarcely a trace of their sex visible in dress or feature,—the short wide chimneys pouring forth smoke and flame, the machinery for working coal pits, and the débris from them and from the furnaces, all go to make one of the dreariest pictures conceivable. ”

“ At a time when the difficulty of procuring subjects for anatomical study was very great, and when to procure them honestly was impossible, as the prejudice against dissection was so strong that no one was willing to submit the body of any one connected with him to examination, it is well known that there were men who made it their business to obtain, at no small risk, bodies, generally those of the newly-buried, which they sold to surgeons, medical students, or indeed to any one who stood in need of the ghastly commodity. ”

“ I married an English girl with your wife’s hair and eyes; her height, too, and with her sweet voice. I brought her over here directly after our marriage, and we lived the happiest life in the world for two years—and then she died.”
Astley was silent. He could think of no words of consolation that would not be a mockery to a man who had lost such a wife as Mary.”
“Died,” Holt continued, after a pause, “while I was away from her. ”

“ In these days of constant railway travelling, when a distant town is often practically nearer than a neighbouring village, many who have never visited the black country have obtained a general idea of its characteristics while passing through it ”

“ Perhaps the huts or hovels—built sometimes of mud, sometimes of mud and brick, and always more or less fallen or falling into decay—inhabited by the pitmen and other workmen of the place, are the saddest sight of all. ”

“ This class, known as “body snatchers” and “resurrection men,” has died out, since there is happily now little prejudice against what has been triumphantly proved to be a necessary branch of scientific study ”