The Listeners | Page 2

into piercing song it
breaks;
Till Peter's pale-green eyes ajar
Dream, wake; wake, dream,
in one brief bar.
And I am sitting, dull and shy,
And she with gaze of vacancy,
And
large hands folded on the tray,
Musing the afternoon away;
Her
satin bosom heaving slow
With sighs that softly ebb and flow,
And
her plain face in such dismay,
It seems unkind to look her way:

Until all cheerful back will come
Her cheerful gleaming spirit home:

And one would think that poor Miss Loo

Asked nothing else, if she

had you.
THE TAILOR
Few footsteps stray when dusk droops o'er
The tailor's old
stone-lintelled door:
There sits he stitching half asleep,
Beside his
smoky tallow dip.
'Click, click,' his needle hastes, and shrill
Cries
back the cricket 'neath the sill.
Sometimes he stays, and o'er his
thread
Leans sidelong his old tousled head;
Or stoops to peer with
half-shut eye
When some strange footfall echoes by;
Till clearer
gleams his candle's spark
Into the dusty summer dark.
Then from
his crosslegs he gets down,
To find how dark the evening's grown;

And hunched-up in his door he'll hear
The cricket whistling crisp and
clear;
And so beneath the starry grey
Will mutter half a seam away.
MARTHA
'Once ... once upon a time ...'
Over and over again,
Martha would
tell us her stories,
In the hazel glen.
Hers were those clear grey eyes
You watch, and the story seems

Told by their beautifulness
Tranquil as dreams.
She'd sit with her two slim hands
Clasped round her bended knees;

While we on our elbows lolled,
And stared at ease.
Her voice and her narrow chin,
Her grave small lovely head,

Seemed half the meaning
Of the words she said.
'Once ... once upon a time ...'
Like a dream you dream in the night,

Fairies and gnomes stole out
In the leaf-green light.
And her beauty far away
Would fade, as her voice ran on,
Till hazel
and summer sun
And all were gone:--

All fordone and forgot;
And like clouds in the height of the sky,

Our hearts stood still in the hush
Of an age gone by.
THE SLEEPER
As Ann came in one summer's day,
She felt that she must creep,
So
silent was the clear cool house,
It seemed a house of sleep.
And
sure, when she pushed open the door,
Rapt in the stillness there,

Her mother sat, with stooping head,
Asleep upon a chair;
Fast--fast
asleep; her two hands laid
Loose-folded on her knee,
So that her
small unconscious face
Looked half unreal to be:
So calmly lit with
sleep's pale light
Each feature was; so fair
Her forehead--every
trouble was
Smooth'd out beneath her hair.
But though her mind in
dream now moved,
Still seemed her gaze to rest
From out beneath
her fast-sealed lids,
Above her moving breast,
On Ann, as quite,
quite still she stood;
Yet slumber lay so deep
Even her hands upon
her lap
Seemed saturate with sleep.
And as Ann peeped, a cloudlike
dread
Stole over her, and then,
On stealthy, mouselike feet she trod,

And tiptoed out again.
THE KEYS OF MORNING
While at her bedroom window once,
Learning her task for school,

Little Louisa lonely sat
In the morning clear and cool,
She slanted
her small bead-brown eyes
Across the empty street,
And saw Death
softly watching her
In the sunshine pale and sweet.
His was a long
lean sallow face,
He sat with half-shut eyes,
Like an old sailor in a
ship
Becalmed 'neath tropic skies.
Beside him in the dust he'd set

His staff and shady hat;
These, peeping small, Louisa saw
Quite
clearly where she sat--
The thinness of his coal-black locks,
His
hands so long and lean
They scarcely seemed to grasp at all
The
keys that hung between:
Both were of gold, but one was small,
And
with this last did he
Wag in the air, as if to say,
'Come hither, child,
to me!'

Louisa laid her lesson book
On the cold window-sill;
And in the
sleepy sunshine house
Went softly down, until
She stood in the
half-opened door,
And peeped; but strange to say,
Where Death just
now had sunning sat
Only a shadow lay;--
Just the tall chimney's
round-topped cowl,
And the small sun behind,
Had with its shadow
in the dust
Called sleepy Death to mind.
But most she thought how
strange it was
Two keys that he should bear,
And that, when
beckoning, he should wag
The littlest in the air.
RACHEL
Rachel sings sweet--
Oh yes, at night,
Her pale face bent
In the
candle-light,
Her slim hands touch
The answering keys,
And she
sings of hope
And of memories:
Sings to the little
Boy that stands

Watching those slim,
Light, heedful hands.
He looks in her face;

Her dark eyes seem
Dark with a beautiful
Distant dream;
And
still she plays,
Sings tenderly
To him of hope,
And of memory.
ALONE
A very old woman
Lives in yon house--
The squeak of the cricket,

The stir of the mouse,
Are all she knows
Of the earth and us.
Once she was young,
Would dance and play,
Like many another

Young popinjay;
And run to her mother
At dusk of day.
And colours bright
She delighted in;
The fiddle to hear,
And to
lift her chin,
And sing as small
As a twittering wren.
But age apace
Comes at last to all;
And a lone house filled
With
the cricket's call;
And the scampering mouse
In the hollow wall.
THE BELLS
Shadow and light both strove to be
The eight bell-ringers' company,


As with his gliding rope in hand,
Counting his changes, each did
stand;
While rang and trembled every stone,
To music by the