Many Voices | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]

from the 1922 Hutchinson and Co. edition.
MANY VOICES
Contents:

The Return
For Dolly--Who does not Learn her Lessons
Questions

The Daisies
The Touchstone
The December Rose
The Fire

Song
A Parting
The Gift of Life
Incompatibilities
The Stolen
God--Lazarus to Dives
Winter
Sea-shells
Hope
The Prodigal's
Return
The Skylark
Saturday Song
The Champion
The Garden
Refused
These Little Ones
The Despot
The Magic Ring

Philosophy
The Whirligig of Time
Magic
Windflowers
As it is

Before Winter
The Vault--after Sedgmoor
Surrender
Values

In the People's Park
Wedding Day
The Last Defeat
May Day

Gretna Green
The Eternal
The Point of View: I
The Point of View:
II
Mary of Magdala
The Home-coming
Age to Youth
In Age

White Magic
From the Portuguese
The Nest
The Old Magic

Faith

The Death of Agnes
In Trouble
Gratitude
At the Last

Fear
The Day of Judgment
A Farewell
In Hospital
Prayer in
Time of War
At Parting
Invocation
To Her: In Time of War
The
Fields of Flanders
Spring in War-time
The Mother's Prayer

Inasmuch as ye did it not
POEM: THE RETURN
The grass was gray with the moonlit dew,
The stones were white as I
came through;
I came down the path by the thirteen yews,
Through
the blocks of shade that the moonlight hews.
And when I came to the
high lych-gate
I waited awhile where the corpses wait;
Then I came
down the road where the moonlight lay
Like the fallen ghost of the
light of day.
The bats shrieked high in their zigzag flight,
The owls' spread wings
were quiet and white,
The wind and the poplar gave sigh for sigh,

And all about were the rustling shy
Little live creatures that love the
night -
Little wild creatures timid and free.
I passed, and they were
not afraid of me.
It was over the meadow and down the lane
The way to come to my

house again:
Through the wood where the lovers talk,
And the
ghosts, they say, get leave to walk.
I wore the clothes that we all must
wear,
And no one saw me walking there,
No one saw my pale feet
pass
By my garden path to my garden grass.
My garden was hung
with the veil of spring -
Plum-tree and pear-tree blossoming;
It lay
in the moon's cold sheet of light
In garlands and silence, wondrous
and white
As a dead bride decked for her burying.
Then I saw the face of my house
Held close in the arms of the
blossomed boughs:
I leaned my face to the window bright
To feel if
the heart of my house beat right.
The firelight hung it with fitful gold;

It was warm as the house of the dead is cold.
I saw the settles, the
candles tall,
The black-faced presses against the wall,
Polished
beechwood and shining brass,
The gleam of china, the glitter of glass,

All the little things that were home to me -
Everything as it used to
be.
Then I said, "The fire of life still burns,
And I have returned whence
none returns:
I will warm my hands where the fire is lit,
I will warm
my heart in the heart of it!"
So I called aloud to the one within:

"Open, open, and let me in!
Let me in to the fire and the light -
It is
very cold out here in the night!"
There was never a stir or an
answering breath -
Only a silence as deep as death.
Then I beat on the window, and called, and cried.
No one heard me,
and none replied.
The golden silence lay warm and deep,
And I
wept as the dead, forgotten, weep;
And there was no one to hear or
see -
To comfort me, to have pity on me.
But deep in the silence something stirred -
Something that had not
seen or heard -
And two drew near to the window-pane,

Kissed in
the