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THREE POEMS

WHEN I AM OLD

I still shall love the spring when I am old.
The whisper of April rain

Through grey-green days, upon my window-pane,
Shall speak as now of mornings bright and fine-
The days of gold,

When sticky buds, bursting with leafy wonder,
Turn every one into a gay cockade,

Worn tilted up or tilted under

Those twisty April branches, bare of shade.

Though every April night is a green frame
For lovers, they but fit the old design
Earth never has outworn;

And without envy I shall say,

Nodding my head, "It used to be the same

In my own day!"

Seiffert, Marjorie atte

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UTO A CHILD

Beauty, the dream that I have dreamed so much

Comes true in your quick smile,

And on your cheek I see her touch

And sometimes in your eyes awhile

Immortal Beauty's fleeting image lies.

Dear child, in whose veins beat

The marching centuries of lovers' feet,
All those brave, ardent ghosts in you arise-
The souls who, loving Beauty, gave you birth
With a chain of passion binding Beauty to earth,

A captured dream-these souls breathe with your breath,
Living again in Beauty that knows no death.

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TO A POET

Strangely you say

The uttermost life has for you

In your own day

Blossoms and dies-there can ensue

No further power,

Longing, achievement, or unrest,

Beyond the hour

Earth takes your body to her breast.

So you devise

A diamond immortality,

And crystallize

Your soul in metric jewellery.

Well, let it shine,

Quaint relic of a past which lingers.

Children of mine

May touch it with warm, living fingers!

Marjorie Allen Seiffert

THE SILVER MUSIC

In Chepstow stands a castle

My love and I went there.

The foxgloves on the wall all heard

Her footsteps on the stair.

The sun was high in heaven,
And the perfume in the air
Came from purple cat's-valerian
But her footsteps on the stair
Made a sound like silver music
Through the perfume in the air.

Oh I'm weary for the castle,
And I'm weary for the Wye;
And the flowered walls are purple,
And the purple walls are high,
And above the cat's-valerian
The foxgloves brush the sky.
But I must plod along the road
That leads to Germany.

And another soldier fellow

Shall come courting of my dear;
And it's I shall not be with her
With my lips beside her ear.
For it's he shall walk beside her

In the perfume of the air
To the silver, silver music

Of her footstep on the stair.

Hueffer, Find Mader

THE SANCTUARY

Shadowed by your dear hair, your dear kind eyes
Look on wine-purple seas, whitened afar
With marble foam, where the dim islands are.
We sit forgetting. For the great pines rise
Above dark cypress to the dim white skies

So clear and black and still-to one great star.
The marble dryads and the veined white jar
Gleam from the grove. Glimmering, the white owl flies
In the dark shade.

If ever life was harsh

Here we forget-or ever friends turned foes.

The sea cliffs beetle down above the marsh
And through sea-holly the black panther goes.
And in the shadows of this secret place

Your kind, dear eyes shine in your dear, dear face.

Ford Madox Hueffer

IS IT WORTH WHILE

Dear, were you ever here?

It has all grown so faint

Just reminders,

Like the squeak of a bat, the chirp of a starling on the rim

of the chimney outside,

As I lie in bed of a morning;

The cry of a new-born kitten,

Or the crawling of a beetle on a slate,

As I sit out in the warm summer evenings.

Yet there are traces

Less intangible. .

There is the dear little amateur letter-box

You put in yourself for me,

The knots you made for me in the hammock cords,

The marks of your burnt cigarette-ends

That blemish the corners of tables and shelves.

Well, well! . . .

One throws away garments, one destroys photographs
That remind one.

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Is it worth while to give up a house

Because of such slight aura

As these?

4

Violet Hunt

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