Lays and Legends (Second Series)

I writhed, and could not get away.
There might have been no flowering may
In all the world – life looked so gray
With dust of railways, choking quite
Dream and delight.

When, lo! your white book came my way,
With scent of honey-buds and hay,
Starshine and day-dawns pure and bright,
The rose blood-red, the may moon-white.
I owe you – would I could repay —
Dream and delight.

TO WALTER SICKERT

(In return for a sight of his picture "Red Clover".)

There is a country far away from here —
A world of dreams – a fair enchanted land —
Where woods bewitched and fairy forests stand,
And all the seasons rhyme through all the year.

The greenest meadows, deepest skies, are there;
There grows the rose of dreams, that never dies;
And there men's heads and hands and hearts and eyes
Are never, as here, too tired to find them fair.

Thither, when life becomes too hard to bear,
The poet and the painter steal away
To watch those glories of the night and day
Which here the days and nights so seldom wear.

In that brave land I, too, have part and lot.
Dim woods, lush meadows, little red-roofed towns,
Walled flowery gardens, wide gray moors and downs;
Sedge, meadow-sweet, and wet forget-me-not;

The Norman church, with whispering elm trees round;
A certain wood where earliest violets grow;
One wide still marsh where hidden waters flow;
The cottage porch with honey-buds enwound —

These are my portion of enchanted ground,
To these the years add somewhat in their flight;
Some wood or field, deep-dyed in heart's delight,
Becomes my own – treasure to her who found.

To my dream fields your art adds one field more,
A field of red, red clover, blossoming,
Where the sun shines, and where more skylarks sing
Than ever in any field of mine before.

OLD AGE

Between the midnight and the morn
When wake the weary heart and head,
Troops of gray ghosts from lands forlorn
Keep tryst about my sleepless bed.

I hear their cold, thin voices say:
"Your youth is dying; by-and-by
All that makes up your life to-day,
Withered by age, will shrink and die!"

Will it be so? Will age slay all
The dreams of love and hope and faith —
Put out the sun beyond recall,
And lap us in a living death?

Will hearts grown old forget their youth?
And hands grown old give up the strife?
Shall we accept as ordered truth
The dismal anarchy of life?

Better die now – at once be free
Of hope and fear – renounce the whole:
For of what worth would living be
Should one – grown old – outlive one's soul?

Yet see: through curtains closely drawn
Creeps in the exorcising light;
The sacred fingers of the dawn
Put all my troop of ghosts to flight.

And then I hear the brave Sun's voice,
Though still the skies are gray and dim:
"Old age comes never – Oh, rejoice —
Except to those who beckon him.

"All that youth's dreams are nourished by,
By that shall dreams in age be fed —
Thy noble dreams can never die
Until thyself shall wish them dead!"

INDEX.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lays and legends, by Edith Nesbit

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