Charlotte Mew

“ KEN
THE town is old and very steep,
⁠A place of bells and cloisters and grey towers,
And black clad people walking in their sleep—
⁠A nun, a priest, a woman taking flowers
⁠To her new grave; and watched from end to end
⁠By the great Church above, through the still hours:⁠
⁠But in the morning and the early dark
The children wake to dart from doors and call
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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ So exquisite, so heart-breaking a thing
Beside the mask that I remember, shrunk and small,
Sapless and lined like a dead leaf,
All that was left of oh! the loveliest face, by time and grief!
And in the glass, last night, I saw a ghost behind my chair—
Yet why remember it, when one can still go moderately gay—?
Or could—with any one of the old crew,
But oh! these boys! the solemn way
They take you, and the things they say—
This "I have only as long as you"
When you remind them you are not precisely twenty-two—
Although at heart perhaps—God! ”

“ IT is the clay that makes the earth stick to his spade;
⁠He fills in holes like this year after year;
The others have gone; they were tired, and half afraid,
⁠But I would rather be standing here;
There is nowhere else to go. I have seen this place
⁠From the windows of the train that's going past
Against the sky. This is rain on my face—
⁠It was raining here when I saw it last.
There is something horrible about a flower;
⁠This, broken in my hand, is one of those
He threw in just now: it will not live another hour;
⁠There are thousands more: you do not miss a rose. ”

“ There is something new in the old heavenly air of Spring—
The smell of beasts, the smell of dust—The Enchanted Thing!
All my life long I shall see moonlight on the fern
And the black trunks of trees. Only the hair
Of any woman can belong to God. ”

“ Striking the leafless poplar boughs as he went by,
Like some poor, stray dog by the wayside lying dead,
We left behind us the old world of dread,
I and the wind as we strode whistling on under the Winter sky. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the race is run,
And it is forced from us with our last breath
"Thy will be done"?
If it is Your will that we should be content with the tame, bloodless things,
As pale as angels smirking by, with folded wings,
Oh! I know Virtue, and the peace it brings!
The temperate, well-worn smile
The one man gives you, when you are evermore his own:
And afterwards the child's, for a little while,
With its unknowing and all-seeing eyes
So soon to change, and make you feel how quick
The clock goes round. If one had learned the trick—
(How does one though?) ”

“ Just so the long days come and go,
⁠Yet this one sin I will not tell
Though Mary's heart is as frozen snow
And all nights are cold for one warmed too well.
⁠But, oh! ma Doué! the nights of Hell! ”

“ So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
We chased her, flying like a hare
Before our lanterns. To Church-Town
All in a shiver and a scare
We caught her, fetched her home at last
And turned the key upon her, fast.
She does the work about the house
As well as most, but like a mouse:
Happy enough to chat and play
With birds and rabbits and such as they,
So long as men-folk keep away.
"Not near, not near!" her eyes beseech
When one of us comes within reach.
The women say that beasts in stall
Look round like children at her call. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Dim, but so waited for; and you know what a smile is, how it calls,
How if I smiled you always ran to me.
Now you must sleep forgetfully, as children do.
There is a Spirit sits by us in sleep
Nearer than those who walk with us in the bright day. ”

“ While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us are whining
In the hollow by the stream.
Black and chill are Their nights on the wold;
And They live so long and They feel no pain:
I shall grow up, but never grow old,
I shall always, always be very cold,
I shall never come back again! ”

“ And Tom crossed Father and was sent away.
After the lawsuit he could not hold up his head,
⁠Poor Father, and he does not care
⁠For people here, or to go anywhere.
To get away to Aunt's for that week-end
⁠Was hard enough ”

“ Contributors: — Lascelles Abercrombie — Gordon Bottomley — Francis Brett Young — W. H. Davies — Walter De La Mare — John Drinkwater — John Freeman — Wilfrid Wilson Gibson — Robert Graves — D. H. Lawrence — Harold Monro — Robert Nichols — J. D. C. Pellow — Siegfried Sassoon — Edward Shanks — Fredegond Shove — J. C. Squire — W. J. Turner.
The object of the volumes of "Georgian Poetry" is to provide a convenient survey of the work of some poets of the newer generation. ”

“ SPRING MORNING. By Frances Cornford. (Woodcuts by G. Raverat.) Second Thousand. 1/3 net. THE OLD SHIPS. By James Elroy Flecker. Third Thousand. 1/- net.
CHILDREN OF LOVE. By Harold Monro. Third Thousand. 8d. net. ”