Incompatibilities
If you loved me I could trust you to your fancy's furthest bound
While the sun shone and the wind blew, and the world went round,
To the utmost of the meshes of the devil's strongest net . . .
If you loved me, if you loved me--but you do not love me yet!
I love you--and I cannot trust you further than the door!
But winds and worlds and seasons change, and you will love me more
And more--until I trust you, dear, as women do trust men -
I shall trust you, I shall trust you, but I shall not love you then!
poem by Edith Nesbit
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To Vera, Who Asked A Song
IF I only had time!
I could make you a rhyme.
But my time is kept flying
By smiling and sighing
And living and dying for you.
The song-seed, I sow it,
I water and hoe it,
But never can grow it.
Ah, traitress, you know it!
What is a poor poet to do?
Ah, let me take breath!
I am harried to death
By the loves and the graces
That crowd where your face is
That lurk in your laces and throng.
Call them off for a minute,
Once let me begin it
The devil is in it
If I can not spin it
[...] Read more
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Windflowers
When I was little and good
I walked in the dappled wood
Where light white windflowers grew,
And hyacinths heavy and blue.
The windflowers fluttered light,
Like butterflies white and bright;
The bluebells tremulous stood
Deep in the heart of the wood.
I gathered the white and the blue,
The wild wet woodland through,
With hands too silly and small
To clasp and carry them all.
Some dropped from my hands and died
By the home-road's grassy side;
And those that my fond hands pressed
Died even before the rest.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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In Age
The wine of life was rough and new,
But sweet beyond belief,
And wrong was false, and right was true -
The rose was in the leaf.
In that good sunlight well we knew
The hues of wrong and right;
We slept among the roses through
The long enchanted night.
Now to our eyes, made dim with years,
Right intertwines with wrong.
How can we hear, with these tired ears,
The old, the magic song?
But this we know--wine once was red,
Roses were red and dear;
Once in our ears the truths were said
That now the young men hear!
poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Way Of Love
THE butterfly loves the rose,
He flutters around her bed,
Till the soft curled leaves unclose,
And she raises her darling head.
He whispers of dawn and of dew,
Of love, and the heart of love,
Of worship, timid and true,
And she takes no joy thereof.
But when, through the noon's blind heat,
The arrogant bee flaunts by,
She yields him her heart's hid sweet,
And he leaves her alone, to die.
The depth of her dying bliss
Her grief-white butterfly knows:
And the bee laughs low in the kiss
Of another, a redder rose.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Destroyer
ACROSS the quiet pastures of my soul
The invading army marched in splendid might
My few poor forces fled beyond control,
Scattered, defeated, hidden in the night.
My fields were green, their hedges white with May,
With gold of buttercups made bright and fair,
The careless conquerors did not even stay
To gather one of all the blossoms there.
Only when they had passed, the fields were brown,
The grass and blossoms trampled in the mud:
The flowering hedges withered and torn down,
And no one richer by a single bud.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Destroyer
ACROSS the quiet pastures of my soul
The invading army marched in splendid might
My few poor forces fled beyond control,
Scattered, defeated, hidden in the night.
My fields were green, their hedges white with May,
With gold of buttercups made bright and fair,
The careless conquerors did not even stay
To gather one of all the blossoms there.
Only when they had passed, the fields were brown,
The grass and blossoms trampled in the mud:
The flowering hedges withered and torn down,
And no one richer by a single bud.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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To His lady,
IMPLORING HER TO BE TRUE
MISTRESS of me, mistress of all the arts
And charms that sway men's hot ungoverned hearts,
Receive their tribute--smile at their defeat;
I do not ask that you should spare them, sweet.
Only I ask that in the secret shrine
No prayers be heard, no offering laid, but mine.
Each man who sees your eyes must needs lay down
Low at your feet the votive myrtle crown:
Let them bring crowns to die beneath your feet;
I, only I, must bring the crown you wear
Shadowing the sombre glory of your hair.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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White Magic
This is the room to which she came,
And Spring itself came with her;
She stirred the fire of life to flame,
She called all music hither.
Her glance upon the lean white walls
Hung them with cloth of splendour,
And still the rose she dropped recalls
The graces that attend her.
The same poor room, so dull and bare
Before, in consecration,
She breathed upon its common air
The true transfiguration . . .?
This room the same to which she came
For one immortal minute? -
How can it ever be the same
Since she has once been in it!
poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Beatific Vision
OH God! if I do my duty
And walk in the thorny way,
Will you pay me with heavens of beauty,
Millions of lives away?
Will you give me the music of heaven,
And the joy that none understands,
In place of what life would have given
If I had held out my hands?
I have lived in a narrow prison,
I have writhed 'neath a bitter creed,
And I dare to say that no heaven can pay
The renounced dream and deed,
But when my life's portal closes,
If you have no heaven to spare
God! give me a garden of roses,
And some one to walk with there.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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