Betrothed
I DID not think to love her. As we go
We pluck a hedge-rose blushing in its sheath,
Fresh, and at hand; and not the less we know
That where rich garden blossoms take the breath
With eddying sweets and wear a thousand hues
We shall be fain to linger and to choose.
And who indeed
Would pass the garden by to choose the weed,
The little wayside rose we hold and lose?
Fair; and so loving. With the young surprise
Of children who still newly understand
Their right and wrong out of their mother's eyes,
She watches for my thought. Her trustful hand
Creeps into mine and rests. Ah, little one,
Hadst thou loved less I had not been undone;
My wayside rose.
I love thee, sweet: some hopes have found their close
Ere yet their aim; some joys ceased unbegun.
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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The First Spring Day
THE sunshine died long ago,
Stifled out long ago,
And the waste of the world was grey,
And night was the best to know,
For night was to doze and forget the day,
To be warm and forgetting and still,
And need not the sun and know not the chill:
But oh, for the day that was darkened so!
Why gaze on a barren heaven,
Void and unchanging heaven,
On a barren earth in the grime,
And not a poor blossom given,
No thing that was thinking of sunshine time,
For a promise, a praise of the past?
And so one forgot the sunshine at last;
And sleep could avail, but what to have striven?
The sunshine wakes once anew,
Wakes and is born anew,
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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Not Love
I HAVE not yet I could have loved thee, sweet;
Nor know I wherefore, thou being all thou art,
The engrafted thought in me throve incomplete,
And grew to summer strength in every part
Of root and leaf, but hath not borne the flower.
Love hath refrained his fullness from my heart.
I know no better beauty, none with power
To hold mine eyes through change and change as thine,
Like southern skies that alter with each hour,
And yet are changeless, and their calm divine
From light to light hath motionlessly passed,
With only different loveliness for sign.
I know no fairer nature, nor where, cast
On the clear mirror of thine own young truth,
The imaged things of Heaven lie plainer glassed;
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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The Old Love
I
You love me, only me. Do I not know?
If I were gone your life would be no more
Than his who, hungering on a rocky shore,
Shipwrecked, alone, observes the ebb and flow
Of hopeless ocean widening forth below,
And is remembering all that was before.
Dear, I believe it, at your strong heart's core
I am the life; no need to tell me so.
And yet--Ah, husband, though I be more fair,
More worth your love, and though you loved her not,
(Else must you have some different, deeper name
For loving me), dimly I seem aware,
As though you conned old stories long forgot,
Those days are with you--hers--before I came.
II
The mountain traveller, joyous on his way,
Looks on the vale he left and calls it fair,
Then counts with pride how far he is from there,
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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A Bird and flower upon the tree
A bird and flower upon the tree,
Sweet peony and oriole,
Each of them a perfect soul,
Song and sweetness manifest
The bird and flower we love the best
Side by side on the tall tree.
'Flower who art sunlight and fire, flower who art perfume and joy,
Sweetest of sweet,
Ah for the gift withheld!
Ah for the given gift's alloy!
Why must thy spirit exhale only in beauty and breath?
Ah for the voice thou hast not! I by thy side on the tree,
Telling the world of love, pain, and all raptures that be,
Raptures of laughter and life, raptures of tears and death,
Singing my heart to heaven, singing to earth at my feet;
Silence in thee.'
'Bird who art dew-drops and flame, bird who art rapture and song,
Sweetest of sweet,
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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Autumn’s Warnings
SOFT voices of the woods, that make
The summer air a harmony,
Winged whispers through the leaves where wake
Long wind-wafts dying in a sigh,
Replies of birds from brake to brake,
Plash of the runnel on its stones,
Soft voices, sweet for summer's sake,
There is a word in all your tones,
A word that not till now ye spake,
'Goodbye, goodbye.'
And yet, see, dearest, overhead
The branches bar a sultry sky,
No earliest fleck of tanned or red
'Mid all the leafage far and nigh,
And, with their serried curves outspread,
The fresh green fern-fronds know no frost.
Nought gone; but still some grace is dead:
Nought changed; but still some hope is lost:
Listen, and every voice has said
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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Where Home Was
'TWAS yesterday; 'twas long ago:
And for this flaunting grimy street,
And for this crowding to and fro,
And thud and roar of wheels and feet,
Were elm-trees and the linnet's trill,
The little gurgles of the rill,
And breath of meadow-flowers that blow
Ere roses make the summer sweet.
'Twas long ago; 'twas yesterday:
Our peach would just be new with leaves,
The swallow pair that used to lay
Their glimmering eggs beneath our eaves
Would flutter busy with their brood,
And, haply, in our hazel-wood,
Small village urchins hide at play,
And girls sit binding blue-bell sheaves.
Was the house here, or there, or there?
No landmark tells. All changed; all lost;
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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The Swallows
AH! swallows, is it so?
Did loving lingering summer, whose slow pace
Tarried among late blossoms, loth to go,
Gather the darkening cloud-wraps round her face
And weep herself away in last week's rain?
Can no new sunlight waken her again?
'Yes,' one pale rose a-blow
Has answered from the trellised lane;
The flickering swallows answer 'No.'
From out the dim grey sky
The arrowy swarm breaks forth and specks the air,
While, one by one, birds wheel and float and fly,
And now are gone, then suddenly are there;
Till lo, the heavens are empty of them all.
Oh, fly, fly south, from leaves that fade and fall,
From shivering flowers that die;
Free swallows, fly from winter's thrall,
Ye who can give the gloom good-bye.
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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Her Memories
NOT by her grave: thither I bid them take
Fresh garlands of the flowers that pleased her best,
And lay them by the headstone, for my sake,
My token and remembrance with the rest:
But here, where in the brightening of the west
I see her mountains grow into the sky,
Her native world, and mine because of her,
Here, where that low sigh of the pinewood's stir,
That was her dearest music, fills all sound
,I am with her;
And always, always, past comes passing by,
Lost in her grave, but here as if half found.
Not by her grave: it is too still, too cold,
And save my loss is nothing with me there.
What memories have I there of her of old?
They came not there, the dear lost days that were;
Not she lies there, but only my despair;
Not she, but death and all my loneliness.
What memories save all memories love must shun?
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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No News From The War
I.— At The Camp.
'IS she sitting in the meadow
Where the brook leaps to the mill,
Leaning low against the poplar,
Dreamily and still?
Now, with joined hands, grave, now smiling,
Gathering now and then
From her lap her woodland darlings,
Pale sweet cyclamen?
Sitting as she sat that evening,
Trying to feel that sweet same
Who was waiting me and knew not,
Feel as when I came?
Feel again the strange shy newness,
The betrothing one first kiss?
Oh, my own, you are remembering
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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