Poems

Poems
Nora French

Nora May French

Poems

THE OUTER GATE[1 - This poem, so distinctly prophetic, was written a year and four months before her death.]

LIFE said: “My house is thine with all its store;
Behold, I open shining ways to thee —
Of every inner portal make thee free:
O child, I may not bar the outer door.
Go from me if thou wilt, to come no more;
But all thy pain is mine, thy flesh of me;
And must I hear thee, faint and woefully,
Call on me from the darkness and implore?”

Nay, mother, for I follow at thy will.
But oftentimes thy voice is sharp to hear,
Thy trailing fragrance heavy on the breath;
Always the outer hall is very still,
And on my face a pleasant wind and clear
Blows straitly from the narrow gate of Death.

RAIN

THE rain was grey before it fell,
And through a world where light had died
There ran a mournful little wind
That shook the trees and cried.

The rain was brown upon the earth,
In turbid stream and tiny seas —
In swift and slender shafts that beat
The flowers to their knees.

The rain is mirror to the sky,
To leaning grass in image clear,
And drifting in the shining pools
The clouds are white and near.

BEST-LOVED

IT was a joy whose stem I did not break —
A little thing I passed with crowded hands,
And gave a backward look for beauty’s sake.

Of all I pulled and wove and flung aside,
Was any hue preferred above the rest?
I only know they pleased me well, and died.

But this – it lives distinct in Memory’s sight,
A little thing, incurving like a pearl.
I think its heart had never seen the light.

THE ROSE[2 - “The Rose” was written for Mr. Porter Garnett on the occasion of his marriage.]

AY, pluck a jonquil when the May’s a-wing!
Or please you with a rose upon the breast,
A sweeter violet chosen from the rest,
To match your mood with blue caprice of spring —
Leave windy vines a tendril less to swing.
Why, what’s a flower? A day’s delight at best,
A perfume loved, a faded petal pressed,
A whimsey for an hour’s remembering.

But wondrous careful must he draw the rose
From jealous earth, who seeks to set anew
Deep root, young leafage, with a gardener’s art —
To plant her queen of all his garden close,
And make his varying fancy wind and dew,
Cloud, rain, and sunshine for one woman’s heart.

BETWEEN TWO RAINS

IT is a silver space between two rains;
The lulling storm has given to the day
An hour of windless air and riven grey;
The world is drained of color; light remains.
Beyond the curving shore a gull complains;
Unceasing, on the bastions of the bay,
With gleam of shields and veer of vaporing spray
The long seas fall, the grey tide wars and wanes.

It is a silver space between two rains:
A mood too sweet for tears, for joy too pale —
What stress has swept or nears us, thou and I?
This hour a mist of light is on the plains,
And seaward fares again with litten sail
Our laden ship of dreams adown the sky.

THE MESSAGE[3 - These lines were in response to a long telegram dispatched at night by a distant friend.]

SO might it brush my cheek with errant wings,
So might it speak with thrilling touch and light
Of answering eyes, of dim, unuttered things —
A moth from hidden gardens of the night.

So, in a land of hills, where twilight lay,