MEW, Charlotte

On the Asylum Road

Theirs is the house whose windows—every pane—

Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass:

Sometimes you come upon them in the lane,

The saddest crowd that you will ever pass.

But still we merry town or village folk

Throw to their scattered stare a kindly grin,

And think no shame to stop and crack a joke

With the incarnate wages of man's sin.

None but ourselves in our long gallery we meet.

The moor-hen stepping from her reeds with dainty feet,

The hare-bell bowing on his stem,

Dance not with us; their pulses beat

To fainter music; nor do we to them

Make their life sweet.

The gayest crowd that they will ever pass

Are we to brother-shadows in the lane:

Our windows, too, are clouded glass

To them, yes, every pane!

In Nunhead Cemetery

It is the clay what 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 it in just now; it will not live another hour;

There are thousands more; you do not miss a rose.

…..

We should have stood on the gulls' black cliffs and heard the sea

And seen the moon's white track,

I would have called, you would have come to me

And kissed me back.

You have never done that: I do not know

Why I stood staring at your bed

And heard you, though you spoke so low,

But could not reach your hands, your little head;

There was nothing we could not do, you said,

And you went, and I let you go!

Now I will burn you back, I will burn you through,

Though I am damned for it we two will lie

And burn, here where the starlings fly

To these white stones from the wet sky - ;

Dear, you will say this is not I -

It would not be you, it would not be you!

….


Saturday Market

Bury your heart in some deep green hollow

Or hide it up in a kind old tree;

Better still, give it the swallow

When she goes over the sea.

In Saturday’s Market there’s eggs a ’plenty

And dead-alive ducks with their legs tied down,

Grey old gaffers and boys of twenty—

Girls and the women of the town—

Pitchers and sugar-sticks, ribbons and laces,

Poises and whips and dicky-birds’ seed,

Silver pieces and smiling faces,

In Saturday Market they’ve all they need.

What were you showing in Saturday Market

That set it grinning from end to end

Girls and gaffers and boys of twenty—?

Cover it close with your shawl, my friend—

Hasten you home with the laugh behind you,

Over the down—, out of sight,

Fasten your door, though no one will find you,

No one will look on a Market night.

See, you, the shawl is wet, take out from under

The red dead thing—. In the white of the moon

On the flags does it stir again? Well, and no wonder!

Best make an end of it; bury it soon.

If there is blood on the hearth who’ll know it?

Or blood on the stairs,

When a murder is over and done why show it?

In Saturday Market nobody cares.

Then lie you straight on your bed for a short, short weeping

And still, for a long, long rest,

There’s never a one in the town so sure of sleeping

As you, in the house on the down with a hole in your breast.

Think no more of the swallow,

Forget, you, the sea,

Never again remember the deep green hollow

Or the top of the kind old tree!


Rooms

I remember rooms that have had their part

In the steady slowing down of the heart.

The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,

The little damp room with the seaweed smell,

And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide—

Rooms where for good or for ill—things died.

But there is the room where we (two) lie dead,

Though every morning we seem to wake and might just as well seem to sleep again

As we shall somewhere in the other quieter, dustier bed

Out there in the sun—in the rain.


The Farmer's Bride

Three summer's since I chose a maid,
Too young may be - but more's to do
At harvest time than bide and woo.
When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human;
Like the shut of a winter's day.
Her smile went out, and 'twasn't a woman-
More like a little frightened fay.
One night, in the fall, she runned away.

"Out 'mong the sheep, her be," they said,
Should properly have been abed;
But sure enough she wasn't there
Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
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.
I've hardly heard her speak at all.

Shy as a leveret, swift as he,
Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
Sweet as the first wild violets, she,
To her wild self. But what to me ?

The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,
The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,
One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,
A magpie's spotted feathers lie
On the black earth spread white with rime,
The berries redden up to Christmas- time.
What's Christmas-time without there be
Some other in the house but we.

She sleeps up in the attic there
Alone, poor maid. 'Tis but a stair
Betwixt us. Oh! My God! the down,
The soft young down of her, the brown,
The brown of her - her eyes, her hair ! her hair !

The Call

From our low seat beside the fire

Where we have dozed and dreamed and watched the glow

Or raked the ashes, stopping so

We scarcely saw the sun or rain

Above, or looked much higher

Than this same quiet red or burned-out fire.

Tonight we heard a call,

A rattle on the window pane,

A voice on the sharp air,

And felt a breath stirring our hair,

A flame within us: Something swift and tall

Swept in and out and that was all.

Was it a bright or a dark angel? Who can know?

It left no mark upon the snow,

But suddenly it snapped the chain

Unbarred, flung wide the door

Which will not shut again;

And so we cannot sit here any more.

We must arise and go:

The world is cold without

And dark and hedged about

With mystery and enmity and doubt,

But we must go

Though yet we do not know

Who called, or what marks we shall leave upon the snow.