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Candles That Burn
Aline Kilmer
(1919)
To Joyce
Edited for the Web by Steve Spanoudis
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- KENTON and Deborah, Michael and Rose,
- These are fine children as all the world knows;
- But into my arms in my dreams every night
- Come Peter and Christopher, Faith and Delight.
- Kenton is tropical, Rose is pure white,
- Deborah shines like a star in the night;
- Michael's round eyes are as blue as the sea,
- And nothing on earth could be dearer to me.
- But where is the baby with Faith can compare?
- What is the colour of Peterkin's hair?
- Who can make Christopher clear to my sight,
- Or show me the eyes of my daughter Delight?
- When people inquire I always just state:
- "I have four nice children and hope to have eight.
- Though the first four are pretty and certain to please,
- Who knows but the rest may be nicer than these?"
- Aline Kilmer
- I LOVE all my children far more than I thought to;
- They do everything just the way that they ought to,
- And the ones that can talk say their prayers as they're taught to;
- But still every night as I sit at my sewing,
- My mind turned adrift on its own pleasures going,
- Underneath my wild thoughts is a steady prayer flowing:
- St. Brigid, please keep
- My babies asleep!
- St. Rita assists me when things are past bearing,
- St. Christopher helps me when forth I am faring,
- But the care of my children St. Brigid is sharing.
- They are wilful and happy and dear beyond measure,
- No riches could equal the worth of my treasure;
- But in spite of my love and my pride and my pleasure,
- St. Brigid, please keep
- My babies asleep!
- Aline Kilmer
- DEBORAH dear, when you are old,
- Tired and grey, with pallid brow,
- Where will you put the blue and gold
- And radiant rose that tint you now?
- You are so fair, so gay, so sweet!
- How can I bear to watch you grow,
- Knowing that soon those twinkling feet
- Must go the ways all children go?
- Deborah, put the blue and gold
- And rosy beauty that is you,
- Into your heart that it may hold
- Beauty to last your whole life through.
- Then, though the world be tossed and torn,
- Greyer than ashes and as sad,
- Though fate may make your way forlorn,
- Deborah dear, you shall be glad.
- Aline Kilmer
- OVER the limp and sallow grasses,
- Deborah, will you walk with me?
- You may gather gentians in purple masses
- And honeypods from the locust tree.
- Brown leaves cover the partridge berry,
- Holding it safe for your eager hand.
- Barberry bright and cornelian cherry
- Offering scarlet jewels stand.
- I shall dress you up as an elf-queen, twining
- Bittersweet wreaths for your golden head;
- Your leaf-brown cloak with its orange lining
- I shall hang with garlands yellow and red.
- Let us leave this place while the sunlight lingers
- Lest the elves should covet your beauty bright.
- The gentians fall from your tired fingers
- As I carry you home through the fading light.
- Aline Kilmer
- DEBORAH danced, when she was two,
- As buttercups and daffodils do;
- Spirited, frail, naïvely bold,
- Her hair a ruffled crest of gold,
- And whenever she spoke her voice went singing
- Like water up from a fountain springing.
- But now her step is quiet and slow;
- She walks the way primroses go;
- Her hair is yellow instead of gilt,
- Her voice is losing its lovely lilt,
- And in place of her wild, delightful ways
- A quaint precision rules her days.
- For Deborah now is three, and oh,
- She knows so much that she did not know.
- Aline Kilmer
- CANDLES that burn for a November birthday,
- Wreathed round with asters and with goldenrod,
- As you go upward in your radiant dying
- Carry my prayer to God.
- Tell Him she is so small and so rebellious,
- Tell Him her words are music on her lips,
- Tell Him I love her in her wayward beauty
- Down to her fingertips.
- Ask Him to keep her brave and true and lovely,
- Vivid and happy, gay as she is now,
- Ask Him to let no shadow touch her beauty,
- No sorrow mar her brow.
- All the sweet saints that came for her baptising,
- Tell them I pray them to be always near.
- Ask them to keep her little feet from stumbling,
- Her gallant heart from fear.
- Candles that burn for a November birthday,
- Wreathed round with asters and with goldenrod,
- As you go upward in your radiant dying,
- Carry my prayer to God.
- Aline Kilmer
- I KNOW you are too dear to stay;
- You are so exquisitely sweet:
- My lonely house will thrill some day
- To echoes of your eager feet.
- I hold your words within my heart,
- So few, so infinitely dear;
- Watching your fluttering hands I start
- At the corroding touch of fear.
- A faint, unearthly music rings
- From you to Heaven--it is not far!
- A mist about your beauty clings
- Like a thin cloud before a star.
- My heart shall keep the child I knew,
- When you are really gone from me,
- And spend its life remembering you
- As shells remember the lost sea.
- Aline Kilmer
- DEAR, in all your garden I have planted yellow lilies,
- Dainty yellow lilies everywhere you go:
- They are nodding slim and stately down the paths along the hedges,
- Delicately stepping they curtsey in a row.
- So when you walk among them like a lily in your slim-ness,
- With your shining head just bending graciously,
- All the little angels that look down upon your garden
- Will wonder which is lily and which is Dorothy.
- Aline Kilmer
- MICHAEL, come in! Stop crying at the door.
- Come in and see the evil you have done.
- Here is your sister's doll with one leg gone,
- Naked and helpless on the playroom floor.
- "Poor child! poor child! now he can never stand.
- With one leg less he could not even sit!"
- She mourned, but first, with swift avenging hand,
- She smote, and I am proud of her for it.
- Michael, my sympathies are all for you.
- Your cherub mouth, your miserable eyes,
- Your grey-blue smock tear-spattered and your cries
- Shatter my heart, but what am I to do?
- He was her baby and the fear of bears
- Lay heavy on him so he could not sleep
- But in the crook of her dear arm, she swears.
- So, Michael, she was right and you must weep.
- Aline Kilmer
- WHENEVER I light the candles for your birthday
- My memory lights two more,
- Two ghostly candles burning with your candles
- Where hers burned once before.
- Whenever I see you at your birthday table,
- Across from you I see
- A gentle ghost that sits among us laughing,
- Laughing adorably.
- She would have been the gayest at the party,
- She always was the gladdest thing on earth:
- Now she is gayer still, for she is taken
- Into celestial mirth.
- With God and all the saints and all the angels
- She shares her birthday cake.
- So let us keep your birthday candles burning
- Joyously, for her sake.
- Aline Kilmer
- LITTLE white moon of my heart
- Since you have gone away
- I miss your cry when you wake by night,
- Your smile when you wake by day.
- I am glad when the daylight fades
- For my dreams are lovely things;
- Then in the dark you come to me
- On softly fluttering wings.
- When in the afternoon,
- Sailing the cloudless sky,
- Over the shimmering summer earth
- The pale little moon slips by,
- In the curve of her frail white bow
- Your shadowy face I see,
- And I like to think that she has you there
- Bringing you back to me.
- Aline Kilmer
- FLOWER of children, if you knew
- All the things you might be proud of!
- Curls and dimples are a few
- Charms you have a gracious crowd of.
- With your dark, delightful eyes
- You can break a heart or mend it.
- I know you are not really wise,
- But how well you can pretend it!
- Though your wickedness and wit
- Very clever in your sight be,
- Yet you are not, I admit,
- As conceited as you might be.
- Aline Kilmer
- YOU are more blessed than other babies are:
- Your shining eyes grow brighter every day
- With radiance that reminds me of the star
- That showed where Jesus lay.
- I like to think that you are set apart,
- A flower that never sprang from earthly loam,
- A rose of Heaven that nestles in my heart
- And dreams about its home.
- Aline Kilmer
- I WOULD make you cookies
- But you could not eat them;
- I would bring you roses
- But you would not care.
- In your scornful beauty,
- Arrogant and patient,
- Though I'd die to please you
- You lie silent there.
- Your once wanton sister
- Creeps about on tiptoe,
- And your brother hurries
- At your slightest nod:
- Watching at your bedside
- When you sleep I tremble
- Lest before you waken
- You go back to God.
- Aline Kilmer
- A WIND rose in the night,
- (She had always feared it so!)
- Sorrow plucked at my heart
- And I could not help but go.
- Softly I went and stood
- By her door at the end of the hall.
- Dazed with grief I watched
- The candles flaring and tall.
- The wind was wailing aloud:
- I thought how she would have cried
- For my warm familiar arms
- And the sense of me by her side.
- The candles flickered and leapt,
- The shadows jumped on the wall.
- She lay before me small and still
- And did not care at all.
- Aline Kilmer
- WHEN you had been dead a week
- I entered a shining shop,
- And there in a neat pink row
- Lay little dolls made of soap.
- And I thought, "I will take one home.
- How she will laugh to see it!
- How it will bob in her bath
- And slip through her dripping fingers!"
- Only a moment I smiled.
- Only a moment I dreamed it.
- Then my heart stood still with pain
- And I went out into the darkness.
- Aline Kilmer
- THEY told me the one who died would be always near me,
- That I had one child who could never grow old and sad;
- I should always have your beautiful face to cheer me,
- Your voice to make me glad.
- Oh, I have prayed till my heart was weary with praying,
- Hoping, if only in dreams, to feel you near,
- To find the truth in what they were always saying--
- That you would be with me, dear.
- Were they only trying to help me face the morrow?
- Or did they really believe the things they said?
- The only dream 1 have had of you brought but sorrow:
- I dreamed that you were not dead.
- Aline Kilmer
[from 'Forsan Et Haec Olim Meminisse Juvabit' - "Perhaps it will be a joy later to remember these things." --Steve]
- SOMETIME it may be pleasing to remember
- The curls about your brow,
- To talk about your eyes, your smile, your clearness,
- But it is anguish now.
- Often I feel that I must speak and tell them
- Of all your golden ways,
- How all the words you ever spoke were happy.
- Joy-filled your laughing days.
- But though I miss you every empty moment
- Of all my longing years,
- How can I speak about your thrilling beauty
- When all my thoughts are tears?
- Sometime it may be pleasing to remember
- The curls about your brow,
- The way you turned your head, your hands, your laughter,
- But oh, not now, not now!
- Aline Kilmer
- YOUR dying lips were proud and sweet
- And when you turned your head away
- Against the pillow where you lay
- My heart was broken at your feet.
- quivering lips that would be gay,
- What was it that you tried to say?
- There was a thing you would have said,
- There was a word you never spoke;
- It rose between us by your bed.
- There came a look of hurt surprise
- In your unfathomable eyes,
- And then it was that my heart broke.
- So now wherever I may turn
- 1 see your wistful, following eyes;
- I see that anguished question burn
- On lips that laugh in Paradise.
- If I had been in your dear place
- You never would have failed me so!
- You always read upon my face
- Thoughts that myself could scarcely know.
- Oh, how I scorned my fettered soul
- Because it could not leap the space
- That held me from your lovely goal!
- How many a trivial little word
- And things you said to me apart,
- Strange sayings no one else has heard,
- I keep safe buried in my heart.
- But the last thing you would have said,
- I shall not know it: you are dead.
- Aline Kilmer
- YOU say you love to hear the wind
- Like brazen trumpets in the night;
- That all its martial panoply
- Wakes in your soul a wild delight.
- You like to hear upon the roof
- The silver lances of the rain,
- And see the birches' cavalry
- Go sweeping past the window-pane:
- To see tall chestnuts fall like towers,
- While all our happy house is still,
- And like a charge with bayonets
- The cedar trees rush up the hill.
- But I lie trembling in the night,
- As dark and wild as night can be,
- Remembering songs that you have made
- Till through the night you come to me.
- Aline Kilmer
- I SHALL not be afraid any more,
- Either by night or day;
- What would it profit me to be afraid
- With you away?
- Now I am brave. In the dark night alone
- All through the house I go,
- Locking the doors and making windows fast
- When sharp winds blow.
- For there is only sorrow in my heart;
- There is no room for fear.
- But how I wish I were afraid again,
- My dear, my dear!
- Aline Kilmer
- I DO not know which is worse when you are away:
- Long grey days with the lisping sound of the rain
- And then when the lilac dusk is beginning to fall
- The thought that perhaps you may never come back again;
- Or days when the world is a shimmer of blue and gold,
- Sparkling newly all in the dear spring weather,
- When with a heart that is torn apart by pain
- I walk alone in ways that we went together.
- Aline Kilmer
- THE sea that I watch from my window
- Is grey and white;
- I see it toss in the darkness
- All the night.
- My soul swoops down to sorrow
- As the sea-gulls dip,
- And all my love flies after
- Your lonely ship.
- Yet I am not despairing
- Though we must part,
- Nothing can be too bitter
- For my high heart.
- All in the dreary midnight,
- Watching the flying foam,
- I wait for the golden morning
- When you come home.
- Aline Kilmer
- "AND shall you have a Tree," they say,
- "Now one is dead and one away?"
- Oh, I shall have a Christmas Tree!
- Brighter than ever it shall be;
- Dressed out with coloured lights to make
- The room all glorious for your sake.
- And under the Tree a Child shall sleep
- Near shepherds watching their wooden sheep.
- Threads of silver and nets of gold,
- Scarlet bubbles the Tree shall hold,
- And little glass bells that tinkle clear.
- I shall trim it alone but feel you near.
- And when Christmas Day is almost done,
- When they all grow sleepy one by one,
- When Kenton's books have all been read,
- When Deborah's climbing the stairs to bed,
- I shall sit alone by the fire and see
- Ghosts of you both come close to me.
- For the dead and the absent always stay
- With the one they love on Christmas Day.
- Aline Kilmer
- ONCE in my childhood I knew an old garden,
- Shut in by grey pickets and crowded with grass;
- Old flowers grew in it, clove pinks and white lilies,
- And moss roses choked up the path with their mass.
- It lay all alone in the curve of a river
- Where little grey boats floated by on the tide;
- No dwelling was near it, no pathway led to it,
- And harsh river-grasses crept up on each side.
- Speedwell and lavender, small brown chrysanthemums,
- Mixed in great tangles where myrtle ran wild,
- And sweetly mysterious, safe though unguarded,
- Lay hid in a corner the grave of a child.
- Often I wondered if that child had played there,
- Played there as I, twining wreaths for my hair,
- When the pickets were white and the flowers were tended
- And no little grave held its mystery there.
- Who were the people who once had lived near there
- Making the wilderness bloom like a rose,
- Then left like a dream leaving nothing behind them
- But the grave of a child in a small garden-close?
- Aline Kilmer
- I WALKED with my mother
- Where the tall trees grow,
- And she showed me tiny tables
- Where the elves sit in a row,
- And the bells that ring to call them
- When the night winds blow.
- There were small frosted toadstools,
- And little cups of wine,
- And velvet banks to rest on
- Where moss grew thick and fine,
- And a smooth brown ring for dancing
- Underneath a pine.
- But now when I go walking
- All the way is clear;
- The little bells are silent
- And the moss grown sere,
- And I know that in the moonlight
- Not an elf comes near.
- Aline Kilmer
- KLANG! Kling! the cow-bells ring
- As the cows come home at night.
- Slowly they pass over the grass,
- Black and brown and white.
- Sleepy and slow each one will go
- With daisies and clover in her;
- At the milking stall she'll give them all
- As milk for Kenton's dinner.
- Aline Kilmer
- I WENT back to a place I knew
- When I was very, very small;
- The same old yellow roses grew
- Against the same old wall.
- Each thing I knew was in its place;
- The well, the white stones by the road,
- The box-hedge with its cobweb lace,
- And a small spotted toad.
- And yet the place seemed changed and still;
- The house itself had shrunk, I know.
- And then my eyes began to fill
- For I had always loved it so!
- Aline Kilmer
- TO-DAY I played with flowers,
- The yellow, yellow daisies,
- The rainbow morning-glories
- And lilies pale and grand.
- They held their dainty skirts out,
- They bowed among the grasses,
- And danced a tilting minuet
- Shadowy hand in hand.
- Aline Kilmer
- WHEN I was small I used to play
- In an old garden bright with flowers.
- I often used to run away
- From home, and play in there for hours.
- There were two ladies who lived there,
- Dressed all in black with creamy laces.
- They had soft snowy puffs of hair
- And wrinkled, pleasant, dim old faces.
- They had such kind and pretty ways!
- They used to tell me lovely stories,
- And let me on warm sunny days
- Blow bubbles with great morning-glories.
- I wonder if they know how much
- I think of them now I am older.
- I often seem to feel the touch
- Of soft old hands upon my shoulder.
- Aline Kilmer
- BROWN hill I have left behind,
- Why do you haunt me so?
- You never were warm and kind
- And I was glad to go.
- Is it because there lies,
- Up in your cold brown breast,
- One who brought joy to my eyes
- And to my heart brought rest?
- Never again shall I see
- The flash in her answering eye.
- Never again shall the heart in me
- Stir as she passes by.
- Hill, you are proud and cold,
- Haughty and high your face;
- Is it, O hill, because you hold
- Her in your grim embrace?
- Aline Kilmer
- I HAVE two children: one who came
- When on my head
- Life shed its joys without a thought
- Of pain or dread;
- And one when ashes of despair
- Blackened my bread.
- My child of joy has sombre eyes
- Like Mimer's well;
- Surely the secrets of the world
- Those lips could tell;
- And wisdom on his infant soul
- Untimely fell.
- My child of woe has laughing eyes
- Like dancing light;
- A leaping flame of innocence
- Has burned her white;
- And in her face I dare not look,
- It is so bright.
- My little pagan's life should hold
- Joy without taint;
- Under the gleaming sword of pain
- His soul might faint:
- Not all the powers of Hell could daunt
- My happy saint!
- Aline Kilmer
- "IN THE long border on the right
- I shall plant larkspur first," she thinks.
- "Peonies and chrysanthemums
- And then sweet-scented maiden pinks.
- "The border on the left shall hold
- Nothing but masses of white phlox.
- Forget-me-nots shall edge this one,
- The one across be edged with box.
- "The sun-dial in the centre stands.
- There morning-glories bright shall twine.
- And in the strip at either end
- Shall grow great clumps of columbine.
- "There is no garden in the world
- So beautiful as mine," she dreams.
- Rising, she walks the little space
- To where her narrow window gleams.
- She gazes through the dingy pane
- To where the street is noisy still,
- And tends with pitiable care
- A tulip on the window-sill.
- Aline Kilmer
- WHEN you go up to die
- Some not far distant day,
- I wonder will you try
- To tear your mask away,
- And look life in the eyes
- For once without disguise?
- Behind your mask may hide
- What treacherous, covered fires!
- What hidden, torturing pride!
- What sorrows, what desires!
- Whatever there may be
- There will be none to see.
- Yet I think when you meet
- Death coming through the skies,
- Calmly his face you'll greet,
- Coldly, without surprise;
- Then die without a moan,
- Still masked although alone.
- Aline Kilmer
- YOU were no more to me than many others,
- I never thought you beautiful or bright,
- And yet I find your memory returning
- Many a night.
- Again I hear your strange, heart-broken laughter,
- Laughter more pitiful than any tears;
- Again I see your gallant head uplifted
- Through heavy years.
- You held so tight the fragile toy you wanted,
- And when it broke you would not let it go;
- You would not let us guess your heart broke with it--
- You played you did not know.
- Now you are gone we see how well you suffered,
- We see the valiant way you struggled on.
- Can you forgive our foolish condescension,
- Now you are gone?
- Aline Kilmer
- I WHO have never known sorrow
- Wait for it morning and evening;
- For the footstep of grief on my threshold,
- The drip of tears on my hearthstone,
- The pitiless hours of lonely, uncomforted woe.
- Never a life without sorrow!
- But, oh, when will mine be upon me?
- When will the years seem long
- That now slip happily by me?
- The light of the skies be dimmed
- To eyes that are weary with weeping?
- Aline Kilmer
- WHEN I was young I was so sad!
- I was so sad! I did not know
- Why any living thing was glad
- Vhen one must some day sorrow so.
- But now that grief has come to me
- My heart is like a bird set free.
- I always knew that it would come;
- I always felt it waiting there:
- Its shadow kept my glad voice dumb
- And crushed my gay soul with despair.
- But now that I have lived with grief
- I feel an exquisite relief.
- Athletes who know their proven strength,
- Ships that have shamed the hurricane:
- These are my brothers, and at length
- I shall come back to joy again.
- However hard my life may be
- I know it shall not conquer me.
- Aline Kilmer
- SORROW to see the spring!
- Why do we smile when she wakes the rose?
- For sleep is sweeter as every one knows,
- And cruel the wakening.
- Hark to a weary sound!
- It is the sap that swells like tears
- In the heart of trees that are grey with years,
- And falls like tears to the ground.
- Futile the brave display,
- The pitiful challenge of bud and leaf,
- The proud pretence that is yet so brief
- And dies, like spring, in a day.
- Sorrow to see the spring!
- Why are we glad at the birth of the rose?
- For death is better as every one knows,
- And life is a bitter thing.
- Aline Kilmer
- I SHALL not run upstairs again,
- And oh, the foolish grief I feel!
- I must go carefully or pain
- Will thrust me through with its bright steel.
- I never thought that I should care
- When the first shadow fell on me.
- I planned lace caps for my white hair
- And hoped to grow old gracefully.
- I thought that when Age came I'd stand
- (If Age should really come at all!)
- And greet him with extended hand
- As my last partner at a ball.
- But now when you with easy grace
- Run up ahead or wait for me,
- Such bitterness is in my face
- I turn my head lest you should see.
- Aline Kilmer
- EARLY one morning as I went a-walking
- I met an old lady so stately and tall,
- The red of her cheeks gave a quiver of pleasure
- Like the sight of red hollyhocks by a grey wall.
- Fragrance of lavender clung to her, telling
- Of linen piled high on immaculate shelves;
- You could fancy her tending her garden or strolling
- Among the proud roses that grow by themselves.
- When I am sorrowful, dreading the future,
- Dreaming of days when my hair shall be grey,
- It cheers me to think of that lovely old lady,
- Lavender-haunted and hollyhock-gay.
- Aline Kilmer
- SWEET and humble and gladly poor,
- The Grace of God came in at my door.
- Sorrow and death were mine that day,
- But the Grace of God came in to stay;
- The Grace of God that spread its wings
- Over all sad and pitiful things.
- Sorrow turned to the touch of God,
- Death became but His welcoming nod.
- Grey-eyed, comforting, strong and brave,
- You came to ask but instead you
- Quickly you came and went, you two,
- But the Grace of God stayed after you.
- Aline Kilmer
- OVER the green and level land
- My sad eyes wander without hope;
- Here no rejoicing mountains stand,
- No strong and friendly slope.
- But ever when I close my eyes
- Tall mountains rear their stately forms.
- Against the sky I watch them rise,
- Serene in calm or storms.
- One in the distance rises blue,
- Haloed by morning's earliest beams.
- This was the peak my childhood knew,
- About her clung my dreams.
- Over her pallor fell the snow,
- The hot sun scorched her fertile breast,
- But in the summer lightning's glow
- I always loved her best.
- She bowed her purple head in pain
- As clouds rolled up from threatening space,
- And let a veil of silver rain
- Slip down across her weeping face.
- Aline Kilmer
- WHEN I met you an hour ago
- My heart was heavy and chill;
- Now, from your word of praise,
- It is glowing still.
- Ah, vanitas vanitatum!
- What the Preacher said was true!
- I always thought my eyes were grey
- But now I know they are blue.
- Aline Kilmer
- FIELIA goes sadly and sits in the door;
- She spins or she stares at the white sanded floor.
- She has never a visitor all the day long,
- And she sings very softly this foolish old song:
- "Green Gravel, Green Gravel, your grass is so green!
- The sweetest, the sweetest that ever was seen!
- Fidelia, Fidelia, your sweetheart is dead;
- He sent you this letter to turn back your head."
- But when it is evening she wanders away
- And watches the children who come out to play.
- The children are happy, they dance in a ring,
- And over and over they merrily sing:
- "Green Gravel, Green Gravel, your grass is so green!
- The sweetest, the sweetest that ever was seen!"
- She wants to sing with them and join in their fun
- But when she comes near them away they all run.
- So late in the evening she dances alone
- And sings rather drearily round a white stone:
- "Fidelia, Fidelia, your sweetheart is dead;
- He sent you this letter to turn back your head."
- Aline Kilmer
- WHERE are you flying, White Moth, to-night,
- Bearing a pale little soul away,
- A sad little soul that quivers with fright
- As the moonbeams over your frail wings play?
- Peace! I conjure you, fly no more,
- Come no nearer the beckoning flame.
- Wan little soul from an unknown shore,
- Not by chance to my light you came.
- Somewhere I have known your silver wings,
- Somewhere I have thrilled to your lonely flight.
- I am sad with the ache of forgotten things;
- Leave me alone in peace to-night.
- Aline Kilmer
- GAY Peter rode by the grey tower
- And a face leaned laughing down,
- With hair that gleamed from a gold net
- And eyes of angel-brown.
- "She is fair," he said as he saw her,
- "Tender and good and gay.
- So pure that I am all unworthy,"
- And sighing he rode away.
- Gay Peter married a good maid
- Because of her bold blue eyes,
- But ever he dreamed of the lady
- Pure as the frosty skies.
- Everywhere he wandered
- He thought of a heart-shaped face
- Set like a star in a dark sky
- As his soul s abiding place.
- But up in her tower the lady
- Bit her honey-coloured hands and cried:
- "Shall I never get out of the grey tower?
- Shall I never get out?" she sighed.
- But no one guessed who passed there
- That her goodness all was lies,
- That she had the heart of a honey-witch
- Behind her angel eyes.
- Aline Kilmer
- "IF EVER thou gavest meat or drink,
- Every nighte and alle;
- The fire shall never make thee shrink,
- And Christe receive thy saule."
- For meat and drink that you have given
- God will find you a place in Heaven.
- For the kind words that you have spoken
- God will not let your soul be broken.
- Bread on the waters you have cast
- And God will save your soul at last.
- Wherever you go--and the world is wide--
- My prayers shall be ever at your side.
- For I, perverse and foolish, too,
- Know the dark ways your soul went through.
- You who were given the greatest grace
- Cast it away with a tortured face.
- But if I see the good in you
- Will God in His mercy not see it, too?
- Will God not make you clean and whole
- And Christ receive your silly poor soul?
- Aline Kilmer
- THE moon reached in cold hands across the sill
- And touched me as I lay sleeping;
- And in my sleep I thought of sorrowful things:
- I wakened, and I lay weeping.
- I could hear on the beach below the small waves break
- And fall on the silver shingle,
- And the sound of a footstep passing in the street
- Where lamplight and moonlight mingle.
- And I said: "All day I can turn my face to the sun
- And lead my thoughts to laughter;
- But I hope in my heart that I never shall sleep again
- Because of the pain thereafter."
- The moon's pale fingers wandered across my face
- And the arm where my hot cheek rested,
- And because of the tears in my eyes I could not see
- Where the black waves rocked moon-crested.
- Aline Kilmer
- THERE is a mirror in my room
- Less like a mirror than a tomb,
- There are so many ghosts that pass
- Across the surface of the glass.
- When in the morning I arise
- With circles round my tired eyes,
- Seeking the glass to brush my hair
- My mother's mother meets me there.
- If in the middle of the day
- I happen to go by that way,
- I see a smile I used to know--
- My mother, twenty years ago.
- But when I rise by candlelight
- To feed my baby in the night,
- Then whitely in the glass I see
- My dead child's face look out at me.
- Aline Kilmer
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