The Seed Shop

HERE in a quiet and dusty room they lie,

Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,

Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry--

Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

Dead that shall quicken at the call of Spring,

Sleepers to stir beneath June's magic kiss,

Though birds pass over, unremembering,

And no bee seek here roses that were his.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams,

A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust

That will drink deeply of a century's streams,

These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,

Sealed in their shells a million roses leap;

Here I can blow a garden with my breath,

And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

Muriel Stuart

Man and his Makers

I AM one of the wind's stories,

I am a poem of the rain,--

A memory of the high moon's glories,

A hint the sunset had of pain.

They dreamed me, as they dreamed all other,

Hawthorn and I, I and the grass,

With sister shade and phantom brother

Across their slumber glide and pass.

Twilight is in my blood, my being

Mingles with trees and ferns and stones,

Thunder and stars my lips are freeing,

And there is sea-rack in my bones.

Those that have dreamed me shall outwake me,

Though I go hence with flowers and weeds;

I am no more to those who make me

Than other falling fruit and seeds.

And though I love them, mourn to leave them,--

Sea, earth and sunset, stars and streams,

My tears, my passing do not grieve them . . .

Other dreams have they, other dreams.

Muriel Stuart

The Wood and the Shore

THE low bay melts into a ring of silver

And slips it on the shore's reluctant finger,

Though in an hour the tide will turn, will tremble,

Forsaking her because the moon persuades him.

But the black wood that leans and sighs above her

No hour can change, no moon can slave or summon,

Though leaning to the tide she hears nor heeds him.

Then comes the dark. From sleepy, shell-strewn beaches,

From long, pale leagues of sand and cold, clear water,

She hears the tide go out toward the moonlight.

The wood still leans . . . weeping she turns to seek him,

And his black hair all night is on her bosom.

Muriel Stuart

A Song for Old Love

THERE shall be a song for both of us that day,

Though fools say you have long outlived your songs,

And when perhaps because your hair is grey

You go unsing, to whom all praise belongs,

And no men kiss your hands, your fragile hands

Folded like empty shells on lonely sands.

And you that were drawn whereat men shouted once,

Are sunset now, with but one worshipper.

Then to your twilight heart this song shall be

Sweeter than those that did your youth announce,

For your brave, beautiful spirit is lovelier

Than once your lovely body was to me.

Your folded hands and your shut eyelids stir

A passion that Time has crowned with sanctity.

Young fools shall wonder why, your youth being over,

You are so sung still, but your heart will know

That he who loved your soul was your true lover,

And the last song alone was worthy you.

Muriel Stuart

The Harebell

YOU give no portent of impermanence

Though before the sun goes you are long gone hence,

Your bright, inherited crown

Withered and fallen down.

It seems that your blue immobility

Has been forever, and must forever be.

Man seems the unstable thing,

Fevered and hurrying.

So free of joy, so prodigal of tears;

Yet he can hold his fevers seventy years,

Out-wear sun, rain and frost

By which you are soon lost.

Muriel Stuart

Indictment

IN women is it Chastity you prize?

The unapproachable white purities,--

The vestal moon forsworn of celibate skies,

The ice that spurns remote and barren seas?

Can Chastity cool your kisses, slake your sighs?

And when, at last, o'ertaken and embraced,

We give you burning lips, wild words and eyes,

In your arms lying, would you have us chaste?

If it were Chastity filled your treasuries,

Possession would be Prize instead of Prey.

You would be wise and clean, and we should go

Free of your lusts and importunities,

Nor trace the dubious paths we take to-day

From your first, careless footsteps in the snow.

Muriel Stuart

Recantation

WHAT once to me was fierce and sweet

Is bitter now: the road my feet

Took once in such gay hardihood

My spirit cannot compass it.

And the old sin I huggled once

Is now grown easy to renounce,

So to the source of power and peace

Backward my erring spirit runs.

Now to the hills whence help may come,

Where wild bees shape their honeycomb,

To a little bed of watercress

I would go back . . . I would go home.

Muriel Stuart

The Fools

BELOW, the street was hoarse with cries,

With groan of carts and scuffling feet,

With laughter worse than blasphemies,

Was choked with dust and blind with heat,

This room was still--too still for peace.

It heard the livid words we said

Of hate and passion, watched us where

I sat, as one beside the dead--

You lay with all your glorious hair

Flung on the crazy bed.

The moment's passion ended brought--

Ah, child, to you what did it bring?

What could it, but one hideous thought

To us so tired of everything,

And hating what we sought?

--So tired of all this grey room meant,

Of life together, shackled cold,

Or bound in flame so different

From the swift, white desire of old,

The old, divine consent.

Poor room, so meanly intimate!

Our dirty clothes sprawled on a chair,

Combs, candle-ends, and grimy plate

Littered the table, paper and hair

Forlornely choked the grate.

And I so passionate, you such

A wild sweet plunderer of bliss

Soon fallen in our own folly's clutch,

Finding how wrong, how mad it is

To know, to love, too much.

You rose, but with no woman's care

For all the beauty that is hers,

Pent up your out-burst storm of hair

And fetched your cloak and found your purse,

And matched my sullen stare.

Wild words so often said before

Escape us in the old fierce way.

You cried, "I shall return no more!"

I said, "I shall no longer stay!"

You closed the grumbling door.

The mirror grinned, "They are still one."

The cupboard gasped, "Their clothes are here."

The ghastly bed said with a leer,

"I shall not sleep alone!"

They knew what took us years to learn,

That Habit terrible and slow

Must Love and Hate alike inurn.

They knew too well I should not go,

They knew you would return.

Muriel Stuart

The Listener

HOLLOW shell, wrinkled leaf,

What were you once?

"I held all the wonder of the seas."

"I all the sun's."

"I only faintly mourn."

"I only fade . . ."

The full heart that questioned them

Listened afraid.

Muriel Stuart

Thèlus Wood

I CAME by night to Thèlus wood,

And though in dark and desperate places

Stubborned with wire and brown with blood

Undaunted April crept and sewed

Her violets in dead men's faces,

And in a soft and snowy shroud

Drew the scarred fields with gentle stitch;

Though in the valley where the ditch

Was hoarse with nettles, blind with mud,

She stroked the golden-headed bud,

And loosed the fern, she dared not here

To touch nor tend this murdered thing;

The wind went wide of it, the year

Upon this breast stopped short of Spring:

Beauty turned back from Thèlus Wood.

From broken brows the dim eyes stared,

Blistered and maimed the wide stumps grinned

From the black mouth of Thèlus bared

In laughter at some monstrous jest.

No creature moved there, weed nor wind.

Huge arms, half-torn from savage breast,

Hung wide, and tangled limbs and faces

Lay, as if giants blind and stark

With violent, with perverse embraces

Groped for each other in the dark.

A moaning rose--not of the wind,

--There was no wind, but hollowly

From its dim bed of mud each tree

Gave forth a sound, till trees and mud

Seemed but a single, sighing mouth,

A wound that spoke with lips uncouth,

And cried to me from Thèlus Wood.

I heard one tree say: "This was I

Who drew great clouds across the sky

To weep against me." This one said:

"I made a gloom where love might lie

All day and dream it night, a bed

Secret and soft, the birds' song had

A twilight sound the whole day there."

One said: "Last night I shook my hair

Before the mirror of the moon."

"I saw a corpse to-day," said one

"That was but buried yester-year."

And one, the smallest, sweetest thing--

A fair child-tree made never stir,

Dead before God had tended her

In the green nurseries of Spring.

She lay, the loveliest, loneliest,

Among the old and ruined trees,

And at each small and broken wrist

The white flowers grew like bandages.

Then from the ruined churchyard where

Old vaults and graves lay turned and tossed

And earth from earth was shaken bare,

Came murmurings of a tongueless host

That to each ghastly brother said:

"Who raised us from our sleep? Is this

The resurrection of the dead?

Upon our bodies no flesh grows,

No bright blood through our temples springs,

No glory spreads, no trumpet blows,

The air is not white and blind with wings.

And yet dragged up before us lie

The woods of Thèlus at our feet,

And strange hills sentinel the sky,

And where the road went yawns a pit.

The world is finished: let us sleep.

God has forgotten: we shall keep

Here a sweet, safe Eternity.

There is no other end than this,

And this is death, and that is peace."

But even as they ceased the stones

Were loosed, the earth shook where I stood,

And from far off the crouching guns

Swung slowly round on Thèlus Wood.

Muriel Stuart