POEMS

By

MURIEL STUART

AUTHOR OF
"CHRIST AT CARNIVAL,"
"THE COCKPIT OF IDOLS"

1922
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

SONGS IN CAPTIVITY
    By R. H. Sauter

BALLAD OF THE "ROYAL ANN"
    By Crosbie Garstin

POEMS OF ISAAC ROSENBERG

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

TO
CHANGE,
THE IMMORTAL FACTOR OF DELIVERANCE

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Editors of The English Review, The New World, Poetry in America, and to Mr. Cecil Palmer, for several poems included in this volume.

CONTENTS

The Seed Shop
Man and his Makers
The New Aspasia
A Song For Old Love
Sic Transit
Mrs. Effingham's Swan Song
Annunciation
Boys Bathing
Lady Hamilton
White Magic
In the Orchard
The Wood and the Shore
The Tryst
Leda
The Harebell
Words
Shrift
The Thief of Beauty
Forgotten Dead, I Salute You
Madala Goes by the Orphanage
Obsession
Enough
In Memory of Douglas Vernon Cow
The Cloudberry
To ——
For Fasting Days
The Father
Andromeda Unfettered

THE SEED SHOP.

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry—
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

Dead that shall quicken at the call of Spring,
Sleepers to stir beneath June's magic kiss,
Though birds pass over, unremembering,
And no bee seek here roses that were his.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
That will drink deeply of a century's streams,
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells a million roses leap;
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

MAN AND HIS MAKERS.

1.

I am one of the wind's stories,
I am a fancy of the rain,—
A memory of the high noon's glories,
The hint the sunset had of pain.

2.

They dreamed me as they dreamed all other;
Hawthorn and I, I and the grass,
With sister shade and phantom brother
Across their slumber glide and pass.

3.

Twilight is in my blood, my being
Mingles with trees and ferns and stones;
Thunder and stars my lips are freeing,
And there is sea-rack in my bones.

4.

Those that have dreamed me shall out-wake me,
But I go hence with flowers and weeds;
I am no more to those who make me
Than other drifting fruit and seeds.

5.

And though I love them—mourn to leave them—
Sea, earth and sunset, stars and streams,
My tears, my passing do not grieve them...
Other dreams have they, other dreams.

THE NEW ASPASIA.

If I have given myself to you and you,
And if these pale hands are not virginal,
Nor these bright lips beneath your own lips true,
What matters it? I do not stand nor