Body And Soul
Through the Museum
I stroll, and see
Goblets fashioned in Arcady,
Spears from the Islands, and robes from Tyre—
Gew-gaws of pomp and of old desire.
On one of the walls
A looking glass
Catches my image as I pass.
Austerely from mirrored eyes, I see
The soul of the past look out at me.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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I had a lover who betrayed me
I had a lover who betrayed me.
First he implored and then gainsaid me.
Hopeless I dared no more importune.
I found new friends, a kinder fortune.
Silence, indifference did greet me.
Twice in long years he's chanced to meet me.
Yet when I see him I discover
I was inconstant, he the lover.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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I thought I heard something move in the house
I thought I heard something move in the house
When I was alone in bed.
And I was afraid . . . and I was afraid . . .
I lay—I quaked for dread.
Then all of a sudden the rain began
And I knew that the sound I'd heard
Was only the sound of the coming of rain.
Me, I've the heart of a bird!
poem by Lesbia Harford
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Into old rhyme
Into old rhyme
The new words come but shyly.
Here's a brave man
Who sings of commerce dryly.
Swift-gliding cars
Through town and country winging,
Like cigarettes,
Are deemed unfit for singing.
Into old rhyme
New words come tripping slowly.
Hail to the time
When they possess it wholly.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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The Tyrant
When I was a child,
I felt the fairies' power.
Of a sudden my dry life
Would burst into flower.
The skies were my path,
The sun my comrade fair,
And the night was a dark rose
I wore in my hair.
But thou camest, love,
Who madest me unfree.
I will dig myself a grave
And hide there from thee.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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I dreamt last night
I dreamt last night
That spring had come.
Across green fields I saw a blur
Of crimson-blossomed plum.
I've never known
So fair a thing.
And yet I wish it were a dream
Of some forgotten spring.
Today the sun
Our workroom blest
And there was hard young wattle pinned
On our forewoman's breast.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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O man, O woman, grievest so?
O man, O woman, grievest so?
Art shut away from all delight,
And must thou leave this garden plot?
O Eve, O Adam, question not.
The God is kind who would be cruel.
He does not know the hearts he made.
Turn unreluctant to the shade,
To bitterest struggle, darkest night;
man, O woman, happier so.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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Buddha In The Workroom
Sometimes the skirts I push through my machine
Spread circlewise, strong petalled lobe on lobe,
And look for the rapt moment of a dream
Like Buddha's robe.
And I, caught up out of the workroom's stir
Into the silence of a different scheme,
Dream, in a sun-dark, templed otherwhere
His alien dream.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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Beauty And Terror
Beauty does not walk through lovely days.
Beauty walks with horror in her hair.
Down long centuries of pleasant ways
Men have found the terrible most fair.
Youth is lovelier in death than life,
Beauty mightier in pain than joy.
Doubly splendid burn the fires of strife,
Brighter in the brightness they destroy.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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Last night, in a dream
Last night, in a dream, I felt the peculiar anguish
Known to me of old;
And there passed me, not much changed, my earliest lover,
Smiling, suffering, cold.
This morning, I lay with closed lids under the blankets,
Lest with night depart
The truthful dream which restored to me with my lover
My passionate heart.
poem by Lesbia Harford
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