Charlotte Mary Mew

“ But no man can move mountains in a day.
So this hard thing is yet to do.
But first I want your life:—before I die I want to see
The world that lies behind the strangeness of your eyes,
There is nothing gay or green there for my gathering, it may be,
Yet on brown fields there lies
A haunting purple bloom: is there not something in grey skies
And in grey sea?
I want what world there is behind your eyes,
I want your life and you will not give it to me.
Now, if I look, I see you walking down the years,
Young, and through August fields—a face, a thought, a swinging dream perched on a stile ”

“ Oh God! it dies,
But after death—,
To-night the splendour and the sting
Blows back and catches at your breath,
The smell of beasts, the smell of dust, the scent of all the roses in the world, the sea, the Spring,
The beat of drums, the pad of hoofs, music, the dream, the dream, the Enchanted Thing! ”

“ While my gay ghost caught and kissed yours, as ghosts don’t do,
And by the wayside this forgotten you and I
Sat, and were twenty-two?
Give me the key that locks your tired eyes,
And I will lend you this one from my pack,
Brighter than coloured beads and painted books that make men wise:
Take it. No, give it back!
PÉCHERESSE
Down the long quay the slow boats glide,
While here and there a house looms white
Against the gloom of the waterside,
And some high window throws a light
As they sail out into the night. ”

“ He does not hurt the frailest, dearest things
As we do in the dark. See, dear, your hair—
I must unloose this hair that sleeps and dreams
About my face, and clings like the brown weed
To drowned, delivered things, tossed by the tired sea
Back to the beaches. Oh! your hair! If you had lain
A long time dead on the rough, glistening ledge
Of some black cliff, forgotten by the tide,
The raving winds would tear, the dripping brine would rust away
Fold after fold of all the loveliness
That wraps you round, and makes you, lying here,
The passionate fragrance that the roses are. ”

“ Like trumpeters the hours passed until the last day of the Fair.
In the Place d’Armes all afternoon
The building birds had sung “Soon, soon,”
The shuttered streets slept sound that night,
It was full moon:
The path into the wood was almost white,
The trees were very still and seemed to stare:
Not far before your soul the Dream flits on,
But when you touch it, it is gone
And quite alone your soul stands there.
Mother of Christ, no one has seen your eyes: how can men pray
Even unto you? ”

“ Only the nesting gulls would hear—but there would still be whispers in your hair;
Keep them for me; keep them for me. What is this singing on the road
That makes all other music like the music in a dream—
Dumb to the dancing and the marching feet; you know, in dreams, you see
Old pipers playing that you cannot hear,
And ghostly drums that only seem to beat. This seems to climb:
Is it the music of a larger place? It makes our room too small: it is like a stair,
A calling stair that climbs up to a smile you scarcely see,
Dim, but so waited for ”

“ We used to pray to Christ to keep
Our small souls safe till morning light—;
I am scared, I am staying with you to-night—
Put me to sleep.
I shall stay here: here you can see the sky;
The houses in the streets are much too high;
There is no one left to speak to there;
Here they are everywhere,
And just above them fields and fields of roses lie—
If he would dig it all up again they would not die.
THE PEDLAR
Lend me, a little while, the key
That locks your heavy heart, and I’ll give you back—
Rarer than books and ribbons and beads bright to see,
This little Key of Dreams out of my pack. ”

“ And fold them like the wings of frightened birds
Shot cruelly down, but fluttering into quietness so soon,
Broken, forgotten things; there is not grief for them in the green Spring
When the new birds fly back to the old trees. ”

“ Who’ll sell, who’ll buy
(Will you or I
Lie each to each with the better grace) ?
While looking into every busy whore’s and huckster’s face
As they drive their bargains, is the Face
Of God: and some young, piteous, murdered face. ”

“ Down the wide, crooked street, where, at the bend,
Before it climbs up to the park,
Ken’s is the gabled house facing the Castle wall.
When first I came upon him there
Suddenly, on the half-lit stair,
I think I hardly found a trace
Of likeness to a human face
In his. And I said then
If in His image God made men,
Some other must have made poor Ken—
But for his eyes which looked at you
As two red, wounded stars might do. ”

“ Why, if I lay my cheek to your cheek, your grey lips, like dawn, would quiver and redden,
Breaking into the old, odd smile at this fraud of death.
Because all night you have not turned to us or spoken
It is time for you to wake; your dreams were never very deep:
I, for one, have seen the thin, bright, twisted threads of them dimmed suddenly and broken,
This is only a most piteous pretence of sleep!
IN NUNHEAD CEMETERY
It is the clay that makes the earth stick to his spade ”

“ To sit and talk wi’ his shadder till sun went low,
Though what it was all about us’ll never know.
And there baint no mem’ry in the place
Of th’ old man’s footmark, nor his face;
Arracombe Wood do think more of a crow—
’Will be violets there in the Spring: in Summer time the spider’s lace;
And come the Fall, the whizzle and race
Of the dry, dead leaves when the wind gies chase ”