E. Nesbit

“ His devastating legions went.
The Spring’s bright banners came: there woke
Millions of little growing folk
Who thrilled to know the winter done,
Gave thanks, and strove towards the sun.
Not so the elect; reserved, and slow
To trust a stranger-sun and grow,
They hesitated, cowered and hid,
Waiting to see what others did.
Yet even they, a little, grew,
Put out prim leaves to day and dew,
And lifted level formal heads
In their appointed garden beds. ”

“ The terror that walketh by night, and the horror by day,
The legions of Evil, alert and awake and aware,
Press round him each hour; and I pray here alone, far away.
God! call up Thy legions to fight on the side of my love,
Let the seats of the mighty be cast down before him, O Lord,
Send strong wings of angels to shield him beneath and above,
Let glorious Michael unsheath his implacable sword. ”

“ To be your Queen and wear my crown this May-day bright,
Hand in hand straying, it must be only playing,
And playtime ends at sunset, and then good-night.
“For I have heard of maidens who laughed and went a-maying,
Went out queens and lost their crowns and came back slaves.
I will be no young man’s slave, submitting and obeying,
Bearing chains as those did, even to their graves.”
“If you come a-maying, a-straying, a-playing,
We will pluck the little flowers, enough for you and me;
And when the day dies, end our one day’s playing,
Give a kiss and take a kiss and go home free.” ”

“ I will bethink me of this spring day
And the house of welcome, known yet unseen;
The wall that conceals
And the faith that reveals.
p. 73THE DEATH OF AGNES Now that the sunlight dies in my eyes,
And the moonlight grows in my hair,
I who was never very wise,
Never was very fair,
Virgin and martyr all my life,
What has life left to give
Me—who was never mother nor wife,
Never got leave to live?
Nothing of life could I clasp or claim,
Nothing could steal or save.
So when you come to carve my name,
Give me life in my grave.
To keep me warm when I sleep alone
A lie is little to give ”

“ To loose my soul to your breath,
To bare my heart to your life—
It is death, it is death, it is death!
I am not your wife.
The hours will come and will go,
But never again such an hour
When the tides immortal flow
And life is a flood, a flower . . .
Wait for the ring; it is strong,
It has a magic of might
To make all that was splendid and wrong
Sordid and right.
p. 41PHILOSOPHY The sulky sage scarce condescends to see
This pretty world of sun and grass and leaves;
To him ’tis all illusion—only he
Is real amid the visions he perceives. ”

“ They sang upon our wedding day!
. . . . .
Mr.-à-Field, go forth, go forth,
Go east and west and south and north;
You’ll always find the furze in flower,
Find every hour the lovers’ hour,
And, by my faith in love and rhyme,
The skylark singing all the time!
p. 33SATURDAY SONG They talk about gardens of roses,
And moonlight over the sea,
And mountains and snow
And sunsetty glow,
But I know what is best for me.
The prettiest sight I know,
Worth all your roses and snow,
Is the blaze of light on a Saturday night,
When the barrows are set in a row. ”

“ Borne on the shield of day.
Night had endured so long,
And now the Day grew strong
With lance of light to hold
The Night at bay.
So on my life’s dull night
The splendour of your light
Traversed the dusky shield
And shone forth golden bright.
Your colours I have worn
Through all the fight forlorn,
And these, with life, I yield,
To-night, to Night.
p. 54MAY DAY “Will you go a-maying, a-maying, a-maying,
Come and be my Queen of May and pluck the may with me?
The fields are full of daisy buds and new lambs playing,
The bird is on the nest, dear, the blossom’s on the tree.” ”

“ Thou hast dreamed of the night and the wood of lost leaves;
It was always noon, June, and red roses in sheaves,
Unlock the blind lids, and behold the light-bearer
Who holds, like a monstrance, the sun in his hands. ”

“ For your arm-bearing soul.
My soul bears arms too, but the scroll’s rolled tight,
Yet the one strip of faded brightness shown
Proclaims that when ’twas splendid in the light
Its blazon matched your own.
p. 64IN AGE The wine of life was rough and new,
But sweet beyond belief,
And wrong was false, and right was true—
The rose was in the leaf.
In that good sunlight well we knew
The hues of wrong and right;
We slept among the roses through
The long enchanted night.
Now to our eyes, made dim with years,
Right intertwines with wrong. ”

“ And a lily that lives a day!
p. 14THE DAISIES In the great green park with the wooden palings—
The wooden palings so hard to climb,
There are fern and foxglove, primrose and violet,
And green things growing all the time;
And out in the open the daisies grow,
Pretty and proud in their proper places,
Millions of white-frilled daisy faces,
Millions and millions—not one or two.
And they call to the bluebells down in the wood:
“Are you out—are you in? We have been so good
All the school-time winter through,
But now it’s playtime,
The gay time, the May time;
We are out and at play. ”

“ Are full of soldiers from that far, fierce fray
Where life knows death, and where poor glory meets
Full-face with shame, and weeps and turns away.
And in the broken, trampled foreign wood
Is horror, and the terrible scent of blood,
And love shines tremulous, like a drowning star,
Under the shadow of the wings of war.
1916.
p. 82PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR Now Death is near, and very near,
In this wild whirl of horror and fear,
When round the vessel of our State
Roll the great mountain waves of hate.
God! We have but one prayer to-day—
O Father, teach us how to pray. ”

“ There are neat little beds of geraniums and fuchsia
With never a happy weed between.
There’s a neat little grass plot, bald in places,
And very dusty to touch;
A respectable man comes once a week
To keep the garden weeded and swept,
To keep it as we don’t want it kept.
He cuts the grass with his mowing-machine,
And we think he cuts it too much. ”

“ Dust of hard highways will veil the starry glimmer,
Tired hands will lay the folded magic by.
Storm winds will blow through those enchanted closes,
Fairies be crushed where weed and briar grow strong . ”

“ WHO DOES NOT LEARN HER LESSONS You see the fairies dancing in the fountain,
Laughing, leaping, sparkling with the spray;
You see the gnomes, at work beneath the mountain,
Make gold and silver and diamonds every day ”

“ Life is a sea of windy spray,
Cold, fierce and free:
An isle enchanted is to-day
For you and me.
Forget night, sea, and desert: take
The gift supreme,
And, of life’s brief relenting, make
A deathless dream.
p. 24INCOMPATIBILITIES If you loved me I could trust you to your fancy’s furthest bound
While the sun shone and the wind blew, and the world went round,
To the utmost of the meshes of the devil’s strongest net . . . ”

“ Records of what the heart and soul achieve.
This, only this we yield, my love, my friend,
To Fate’s implacable eyes and withering breath.
We still are yours and mine, though, by Time’s theft,
My arms are empty and your arms bereft.
It is not hard to part—not harder than Death;
And each of us must face Death in the end!
p. 81IN HOSPITAL Under the shadow of a hawthorn brake,
Where bluebells draw the sky down to the wood,
Where, ’mid brown leaves, the primroses awake
And hidden violets smell of solitude ”

“ God! hold our hands on the reckoning day,
Lest all we owe them we should repay.
1915.
p. 87SPRING IN WAR-TIME Now the sprinkled blackthorn snow
Lies along the lovers’ lane
Where last year we used to go—
Where we shall not go again.
In the hedge the buds are new,
By our wood the violets peer—
Just like last year’s violets, too,
But they have no scent this year.
Every bird has heart to sing
Of its nest, warmed by its breast;
We had heart to sing last spring,
But we never built our nest.
Presently red roses blown
Will make all the garden gay . . . ”

“ And dies for the Summer, dies for the Queen.
p. 37THE GARDEN REFUSED There is a garden made for our delight,
Where all the dreams we dare not dream come true.
I know it, but I do not know the way.
We slip and tumble in the doubtful night,
Where everything is difficult and new,
And clouds our breath has made obscure the day. ”

“ With the coffin lying black and full the other side the wall;
And “You warm my heart,” I told him, “if there’s any fire in men!”
And he got his two arms round me, and I felt the fire then.
And I warmed my heart at the fire.
p. 21SONG Now the Spring is waking,
Very shy as yet,
Busy mending, making
Grass and violet.
Frowsy Winter’s over:
See the budding lane!
Go and meet your lover:
Spring is here again!
Every day is longer
Than the day before;
Lambs are whiter, stronger,
Birds sing more and more ”

“ Nought’s to seek now, gain, attain, discover.
All is over.
p. 23THE GIFT OF LIFE Life is a night all dark and wild,
Yet still stars shine:
This moment is a star, my child—
Your star and mine.
Life is a desert dry and drear,
Undewed, unblest ”

“ And you gave me the rose of the world to wear.
That was the time to live for! Flowers,
Sunshine and starshine and magic hours,
Summer about me, Heaven above,
And all seemed immortal, even Love.
Well, the mortal rose of your love was worth
The pains of death and the pains of birth;
And the thorns may be sharper than death—who knows?—
That crowd round the stem of a deathless rose.
p. 51IN THE PEOPLE’S PARK Many’s the time I’ve found your face
Fresh as a bunch of flowers in May,
Waiting for me at our own old place
At the end of the working day. ”