Pessimism

I

WHILE baby Spring sticks daisies in her hair,
Or Summer laughs with flushed triumphant face
We crush our heart rebellious at earth's grace,
And smile 'How, like the season, life is fair!'
But when the last leaf falls in the dull air,
And skies grow pale, and fields lie lost a space,
Ere their first furrow ploughs begin to trace,
And pastures shiver desolate and bare--

Oh, then one breathes; at last free from the sway
Of selfish spring--from summer's insolent reign,
One dares to speak the truth--how all life's way
Is blank as autumn skies made grey with rain,
Most blank when most the glad year bade forbear
To mar her grace with our unveiled despair.

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Confession

I HAVEN'T always acted good:
I've taken things not meant for me;
Not other people's drink and food,
But things they never seemed to see.
I haven't done the way I ought
If all they say in church is true,
But all I've had I've fairly bought,
And paid for pretty heavy too.

For days and weeks are very long
If you get nothing new and bright,
And if you never do no wrong
Somehow you never do no right.
The chap that daresent go a yard
For fear the path should lead astray
May be a saint--though that seems hard,
But he's no traveller, any way.

Some things I can't be sorry for,
The things that silly people hate:

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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Christmas Hymn

O CHRIST, born on the holy day,
I have no gift to give my King;
No flowers grow by my weary way;
I have no birthday song to sing.

How can I sing Thy name and praise,
Who never saw Thy face divine;
Who walk in darkness all my days,
And see no Eastern stars a-shine?

Yet, when their Christmas gifts they bring,
How can I leave Thy praise unsung?
How stay from homage to the King,
And hold a silent, grudging tongue?

Lord, I found many a song to sing,
And many a humble hymn of praise

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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Children's Playground In The City

THIS is a place where men laid their dead,
Each with his life-tale of good or ill;
Here prayers were murmured and hot tears shed,
And passionate anguish moaned its fill.
Silent now is each voice that cried,
And the tears that were wept have all been dried
In the dust; and dust are the hearts that bled
With hopeless longing for hearts grown still.

Dead and forgotten! for Death, requiter
Of love, taught Memory how to forget!
The love that remembered them died. Grow brighter,
Oh, dim grave-garden, with dead hearts set!
Room for the small flying feet to pass,
The feet of the children over the grass!
The dead, if they knew it, would feel them lighter
Than the weight of a stone that no tears make wet.

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Daisies

In the great green park with the wooden palings -
The wooden palings so hard to climb,
There are fern and foxglove, primrose and violet,
And green things growing all the time;
And out in the open the daisies grow,
Pretty and proud in their proper places,
Millions of white-frilled daisy faces,
Millions and millions--not one or two.
And they call to the bluebells down in the wood:
'Are you out--are you in? We have been so good
All the school-time winter through,
But now it's playtime,
The gay time, the May time;
We are out and at play. Where are you?'

In the gritty garden inside the railings,
The spiky railings all painted green,
There are neat little beds of geraniums and fuchsia
With never a happy weed between.
There's a neat little grass plot, bald in places,

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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For The New Year

FLUSHED with a crimson sunrise beauty,
The fair new year its promise gave;
Such dreams we had of love, of duty,
Of heights to scale, of foes to brave!
Oh, how hope's fire our future lighted--
How much to do, how much to know,
Yet on its brink we shrank affrighted
A year ago.

And now the year is done--its pleasure
So brief, so bright--its hours of pain;
Some moments' memories we treasure,
Some recollections loathe in vain.
Oh, for a brain where could not waken
Remembrances of purpose crossed,
Of trusts abandoned, aims forsaken,
And chances lost!

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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Love's Suicide

Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.

THIS treasure of love, these passion-flowers,
Dear as desire, are dearly bought:
The sweet unrest of seeing you
For some too-happy hour or two,
Is paid by such a wealth of tears,
Such grief, such bitterness, such fears,
Such wild remorse, such weak regret,
Such tide of longing towards you set,
As poison all my other hours,
And murder every other thought.

I cannot drink joy steeped in fears,
I choose the cold unhurtful days;
The roses you hold out to me
Are red and sweet enough to be
A crown one would so gladly wear
If but one's brows were strong to bear

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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After Death

IF we must part, this parting is the best:
How would you bear to lay
Your head on some warm pillow far away--
Your head, so used to lying on my breast?

But now your pillow is cold;
Your hands have flowers, and not my hands, to hold;
Upon our bed the worn bride-linen lies.
I have put the death-money upon your eyes,
So that you should not wake up in the night.
I have bound your face with white;
I have washed you, yes, with water and not with tears,--
Those arms wherein I have slept so many years,
Those feet that hastened when they came to me,
And all your body that belonged to me.
I have smoothed your dear dull hair,
And there is nothing left to say for you
And nothing left to fear or pray for you;
And I have got the rest of life to bear:
Thank God it is you, not I, who are lying there.

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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A Star In The East

FOR THE ART EXHIBITION AT ST. JUDE'S, WHITECHAPEL

LIKE a fair flower springing fresh, sweet, and bright,
Through prison stones; or like one perfect song
Heard in a dream on one remembered night,
When waking worlds were dumb with grief and wrong;
Like the one kiss that links--first kiss and last--
The inevitable future spent apart
With the immutable divided past:
So in the east shines out this star of Art.

The narrow-shouldered, pale-faced girl and boy
Nestle against Art's new-found, love-warm breast,
And feel vague stirrings of a far-off joy,
Which life has never for themselves possessed,
And dimly guess at wonders hardly known--
Even as dreams--and weep glad tears to see
A loveliness that is at once life's own,
And yet is something life can never be.

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Vain Spell

THE house sleeps dark and the moon wakes white,
The fields are alight with dew;
'Oh, will you not come to me, Love, to-night?
I have waited the whole night through,
For I knew,
O Heart of my heart, I knew by my heart,
That the night of all nights is this,
When elm shall crack and lead shall part,
When moulds shall sunder and shot bolts start
To let you through to my kiss.'

So spake she alone in the lonely house.
She had wrapped her round with the spell,
She called the call, she vowed the vow,
And the heart she had pledged knew well
That this was the night, the only night,
When the moulds might be wrenched apart,
When the living and dead, in the dead of the night,
Might clasp once more, in the grave's despite,

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poem by Edith Nesbit
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