Poems by Muriel Stuart Part 4

None remember him: he lies In earth of some strange-sounding place, Nameless beneath the nameless skies, The wind his only chant, the rain The only tears upon his face; Far and forgotten utterly By living man. Yet such as he Have made it possible and sure For other lives to have, to be; For men to sleep content, secure.

Lip touches lip and eyes meet eyes Because his heart beats not again: His rotting, fruitless body lies That sons may grow from other men.

He gave, as Christ, the life he had-- The only life desired or known; The great, sad sacrifice was made For strangers; this forgotten dead Went out into the night alone.

There was his body broken for you, There was his blood divinely shed That in the earth lie lost and dim.

Eat, drink, and often as you do, For whom he died, remember him.

MADALA GOES BY THE ORPHANAGE.

Unaware of its terror, And but half aware Of the world's beauty near her-- Of sunlight on the stones, And trembling birds in the square, Lightly went Madala-- A rose blown suddenly From Spring's gay mouth; part of the Spring was she.

Warmed to her delicate bones, Cool in its linen her skin, Her hair up-combed and curled, Lightly she flowered on the sin And pain of the Spring-struck world.

Down the street went crazy men, The winter misery of their blood Budding in new pain While beggars whined beside her, While the streets' daughters eyed her,-- Poor flowers that kept midsummer With desperate bloom, and thrust Stale rose at each newcomer, And crime and hunger and l.u.s.t Raged in the noisy dust.

Lightly went Madala, Unshaken still of that spell, Coral beads and jade to buy, While her thoughts roamed easily-- Thoughts like bees in lavender,-- Thoughts gay and fragile as a robin's sh.e.l.l.

Till suddenly she had come To grim age-stubborned wall Behind whose mask of bars Starts up in shame the Foundlings' Hospital.*

At the gates to watch her pa.s.s A caged thing eyed her dumb, Most mercifully unaware Of its own hurt, but Madala Stopped short of Spring that day.

The air grew pinched and wan, A hand came over the sun, Birds huddled, stones went grey.

Her lace and linen white Seemed but her body's sin, Her flesh unscarred and bright Burnt like a leper's skin.

Her mouth was stale with bread Flung her by strangers, she was fed, Housed, fathered by the State, and she had grown A thing belonging to, and loved by, none.

Though the shut mouth said no word, From the caged thing she heard, "Who has wronged me, that this Spring "Gives me nothing and you everything, "Who alike were made, "Who beckon the same dreams?

"You buy coral and jade, "I sew long hungry seams "To pay for charity..."

Then Madala's heart, afraid, Cried the first selfish cry: "Is it my fault? Can I "Help what the world has done?

"Can the flower in the shade "Blame the flower in the sun?"

Then quick the caged thing said, As if to ask pardon that its words had made Madala's spring so spoiled for her that day: "But there's a way, a way!

"If flowers would share their Spring "There'd be suns.h.i.+ne enough for all the flowers.

"Such suns.h.i.+ne you could bring, "Such joy that swings and flies "With posies your hours through, "So just beyond my hours.

"If I could walk with you-- "Not in pitiful two by two "Flayed by free children's eyes, "Your sister for an hour to be, "It would double joy and woo "Spring back to you, and more than Spring to me."

Then something quaked in Madala, Quaked with magic, quaked with awe.

Love-quickening, she became a part Of this caged thing, she was aware Of strange lips tugging at her heart.

So clear the way was! Tenderer Grew her eyes, and as they grew, Back to the flowers rushed the dew, The earth filled out with the sun, The cold birds in the square Unbundled and preened upon Their twigs in the softening air; The cold wind dwindled and dropped, And love and the world were one.

Nearer drew Madala, At the dumb thing she smiled, And Spring that a child had stopped Came back from the eyes of a child.

* Guilford Street, London, the gates of which face the street.

OBSESSION.

I will not have roses in my room again, Nor listen to sonnets of Michael Angelo To-night nor any night, nor fret my brain With all the trouble of things that I should know.

I will be as other women--come and go Careless and free, my own self sure and sane, As I was once ... then suddenly you were there With your old power ... roses were everywhere And I was listening to Michael Angelo.

ENOUGH.

_Did he forget?_ ... I do not remember, All I had of him once I still have to-day; He was lovely to me as the word "amber,"

As the taste of honey and as the smell of hay.

What if he forget if I remember?

What more of love have you than I to say?

I have and hold him still in the word "amber,"

Taste of honey brings him, he comes back with the hay.

IN MEMORY OF DOUGLAS VERNON COW

This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.

To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend, As with the gentle fading of the year Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end Unquestioning draw near, Their flowering over, and their fruiting done, Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.

But for June's heart there is no comforting When her full-throated rose Still quick with buds, still thrilling to the air, By some stray wind is tossed, Her swelling grain that goes Heavy to harvesting In a black gale is lost, And her round grape that purpled to the wine Is pinched by some chance frost.

Ah, then cry out for that lost, lovely rose, For the stricken wheat, and for the finished vine!

Such were you who sleep now, who have foregone So many of Life's rich secrets almost learned; Winning so much, so much as yet unwon, Yet to be dared, to discover, to reveal.

Quick still with ardour, hand still at the wheel On wide and unsailed seas, eyes turning still Towards the morning, while the keen brain burned To the imperative will.

Upon your summer Death seems to set his heel, Writes on the page "No more,"

And brings the sign of sunset, shuts the door And the house is dark and the tired mourners sleep.

Yet says he too, "Though quiet at last you lie, "And have done with laughter and strife and joy and care, "You have honour with your peace; and still you keep "Fullness of life and of felicity.

"You have seen the Grail. What need you of grey hair?

"There are those who daily die, "Who have long out lived their welcome in the world, "Who are old and sad and tired and fain to cease "From the crowded earth, and the hours in tumult whirled, "Urgent and vain. You are not such as these "Who have striven for laurels, and never knew the shade "Upon their brows, who would persuade the rose, "And never have come near it; till the head "Bows and the heart breaks, and the spirit knows "Only its failure, dim and featureless,-- "Its weariness of all things dreamed and done, "When love and grief alike seem emptiness "And fame and man's unrecognition one."

The full tide took you. You went out with the sun, Not in the cringing ebb, not in the grey And tremulous twilight, when each lonely one To its last loneliness must creep away.

Your genius has won its rich repose, Full laurelled, wearing still the unfaded rose.

And as those who bid good-bye at snowdrop time Bear with them broken promises of Spring, So you in triumph,--in the glory men had in you, In Love's full wors.h.i.+pping,-- High summer thoughts, untouched of Winter's rime, Went forth with honour, having fulfilled your Spring.

The hands that built you felt you flower from her prayer, True to her vision true; Fearless and fine, shaped from her fas.h.i.+oning; Hands empty now, and yet not all unfilled, Having built and fired the generous heart and brain, Of the man you were; whose fervent spirit willed You to the service and healing and help of men.

These things are hers, not to be lost nor changed With changes of death; for though the body die The golden deed is stamped eternally With the head of G.o.d. The new and alien years Leave it still bright, unaltered, unestranged.

Almost too proud, and too profound for tears Is the high memory that the desolate heart Shrines and is dumb, yet may for ever keep Unforbidden, the imperishable part, And what Love held, awake, he holds, asleep.

THE CLOUDBERRY.

Give me no coil of daemon flowers-- Pale Messalines that faint and brood Through the spent secret twilight hours On their strange feasts of blood.

Give me wild things of moss and peat-- The gipsy flower that bravely goes, The heather's little hard, brown feet, And the black eyes of sloes.

But most of all the cloudberry That offers in her clean, white cup The melting snows--the cloudberry!