Louise Morey Bowman

“ Deep searching eyes that seek the “golden West”—
wild eyes that hold the primal hunger lure,
young eyes that hold the secrets of the dawn,
sad eyes that hold the fury of the night—
We’ll have to stand the dirty docks I think,
and the crowded station—
holding a daffodil to your nose to smell
you’ll soon forget the nose and the daffodil! [Pg 35]
What’s that you’re murmuring?
“It’s all like a magic casement opening out
on perilous seas....” Bless you for those kind words!
Though that’s John Keats that sees our docks—not you! ”

“ Elves have been grinding, keen and bright,
Weird, tiny knives of nerves and wits.
Upon my heart an Elf-king sits ...
A cruel, Lilliputian mite ...
And by my breath he flies a kite
Of hope in life or hope in death.
He tugs and scowls with all his might ...
The kite depends on my frail breath.
I watch the earthly colours bright,
Painted upon that fluttering kite.
.......
Little boys fly gay kites
And play with marbles ...
Little boys laugh and shout
In the wind and the sunshine....
.......
Little Boy ... oh little Boy ... were you ever an Elf-king? ”

“ Let us go too from the docks with lightened hearts,
groping our way on upward through the slums.
Listen to the lilt and whimsical chattering
of alien tongues.
“And have not charity”—“Through a glass darkly” ... see?
We’ve dropped our classic daffodils and trod
upon them! But we’ve really seen—something.
To-day.
What else does the Mountain see?
Churches! Hotels! Domes, palaces and towers,
Steep hilly streets, shops, hovels, factories.
Limestone tradition!
Romance! Romance! Raw gold! ”

“ Voicing the thought that draws my heart-strings tight. (2)
What Life could give you is not yours to take
Nor mine to give—and yet to-night I wake
Remembering your giving. But the note
Of that moon-haunted robin must not shake
My calm belief that you—austere, remote—
Need nothing I can ever mar or make.
[Pg 86]
THE WITCH
THEY—the good people—heard her song
From out of the wood that grows thick in the valley.
She had climbed to the hill-top that rises, blue,
Out of the wood as one comes through. ”

“ And his heart-strings are drawn tight and knotted
With tiny, weak, slipping knots
Tied by feeble, damp fingers ...
Slipping ... slipping ... oh slipping!
But what does that matter?
For Time has come to the help of the gray wraith ...
Grave, gray Father Time with a handful of moments—
Dust? Ashes?...
He has set the rose-shrouded sundial in shadow.
.......
Now the broad marble seat is empty
Except where gray wraith has sunk down in the moonlight
Victorious. [Pg 21]
Ah! ... the lady had dropped her bright, apple-green scarf,
And it stirs like a sinuous, long snake. ”

“ How it all lies, before our modern eyes,
So grim.
Dressed in that rigid livery of nature’s gloom that suits it best.
Hear their stern hymn ...
Dignified, slow,
Sung in proud, solemn majesty of menace and woe.
“Our days as grass ... all earth is but a tomb” ... [Pg 26]
What unfathomed gloom ...
Smouldering! (2)
Keen bitter winds have stripped the great elm trees,
And swept the one long street
Ruthlessly neat;
Quite bare of all the withered, dead, brown leaves,
Except for small dry heaps that meet,
Trembling and mournfully rustling,
Caught
In the corners of the neat, white, picket fences ”

“ Now all she had written on the smooth gray stone
Were the strange magic things (O the deep blue wings!)
That happen in a wild, singing wood.
But they said “She hasn’t lived as a virgin should ...
When she dies she shall lie on the hill for good.” ”

“ Dirt? Well you certainly can’t expect a city’s docks,
or a great station at an entrance port,
to be like a Quaker meeting-house
on a seventh-day noon.
Docks! There’s a magical word! Not unpoetical
let me tell you, if you’ll only close your eyes
and use that “inward eye” your Wordsworth used
for daffodils. My God! you’d think he had secured that “eye”
to be hereafter used for “daffodils,” and “solitude” and “thrills,”
exclusively!
Come now! Just try it on for once to-day
with river docks filled with the motley throng ...
old world and new. ”

“ Where white lilies and roses bloom.
Wine of pale silver-green drenches the garden.
The little gray wraith huddles mournfully,
Silently watching.
.......
On that broad marble seat to-day
Sat a beautiful lady ...
Through the hot golden hours of the long afternoon ...
Oh a beautiful lady!
With a warm wicked beauty of white, and of rose,
And of ebony.
Over her white breasts a long green scarf falling ...
Wet, bright, apple-green. ”

“ HOKKU
*“‘Hokku’ (seventeen-syllable poem) in Japanese mind might be compared with a tiny star, I dare say, carrying the whole sky at its back. It is like a slightly-open door, where you may steal into the realm of poesy. It is simply a guiding lamp. Its value depends on how much it suggests.” ”

“ Her beads of old carved amber ... all her rare
Fragile soft richness, like the berries there
With their pale amber bloom. I loved her so....
I wished that every body there could know....
“Why don’t you eat your berries, Child?” ... then low
I bent my head to hide two burning tears
Of yearning love. How strange those vague cold fears
My child heart knew that day ... what long long years
Since those last lovely hours of ecstasy
When she made Beauty live and thrill for me.
[Pg 43]
[Pg 45]
Songs of Women
BLUE MOON
OH I was young an’ feared o’ pain
When I went hot-lovering down the lane. ”

“ But candles to burn at his feet and his head.
Nor the living nor dead
Can’t get on without me!
And very very soon they’ll summon us three!”
“For the Feast!” grins the butcher
Wagging his head.
“For the Feast!” says the baker,
“They’ll soon need bread!”
“Men can’t do without we!”
They say, all three.
So the butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker,
Watch the procession from the small green dell
Where they can all three see
Exceedingly well.
So the procession
Passed through the wood to the blue sea shore,
And they buried the king
Where the blue waves sing ...
And the young king rules no more. ”

“ And bit them with strong white teeth.
“I am Eve! I am Eve in the garden ... [Pg 20]
Come! Adam!”
And he followed ... poor, passionate lover ...
To the seat by the heavy white lilies and roses.
(Oh far far away lie the wise castle windows
Behind the rose gardens and lime trees!)
But after the lovers ... after them, swiftly, swiftly,
Like a fleeting gray shadow,
Speeds the little gray wraith ...
With feeble weak fingers of dampness
Pulling with tremulous touch at his heart-strings ...
Pricking like impotent tiny thorns ”

“ Above them from the rafters hang thin strings and strings,
Innumerable strings
Of dull, dried apples!
Nothing is here akin to the oranges at all ...
Nothing in all
This colourless, inanimate hoard ... nothing’s akin [Pg 30]
Except that vague, enduring richness, so alluring,
That we smell,
When the small bell,
Over the door tinkles ... and we come in ...
Out of the keen, pure coldness of the wind. (6)
So ... ”

“ Yet I knew well his grapes brought visions fair
Of mellow summer lands with temperate air.
“Grapes are like men—can’t ripen everywhere....
Men all need sun, and right loam I suppose;
But if one strikes deep roots ... as a rule ... he grows!”
He smiled his smile and cut a late white rose. RED CURRANTS
“Well! ”

“ And the small, gray wraith noiselessly moans and shudders.
But what matter?
For the long night passes.
Only the green scarf lies harmlessly, softly,
On the empty marble seat where the little gray wraith sits
And watches,
Victorious ...
Though the green wine of moonlight is drenching
The perilous garden.
[Pg 22]
[Pg 25]
Oranges
ORANGES
A SMALL New England village in the hills: ...
The date?
Oh, many, many years ago ... the season very late ...
November!
The conquering colours that a year must always hold
Have vanished. ”

“ A-curlin’ right up on his shoulder an’ purrin’
The only live thing in the room that was stirrin’.
Oh I tell you that kitten was more than just—cat!
Love was usin’ that kitten,
I felt sure of that.
Back an’ forth she went playin’
Between those old twins
An’ the room still so quiet you might have heard pins
A-droppin’. I burst right out.
“Luddy” I said “You two men! Why that kitten’s
Possessed of the dead! ”