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 moonlight and kissed again,?And looked, through my face, to the moon-shroud, spread?Over the garlanded garden bed;?And--"How ghostly the moonlight is!" she said.
Back through the garden, the wood, the lane,?I came to mine own place again.?I wore the garments we all must wear,?And no one saw me walking there.?No one heard my thin feet pass?Through the