Frost Song
HERE where the bee slept and the orchis lifted
Her honeying pipes of pearl, her velvet lip,
Only the swart leaves of the oak lie drifted
In sombre fellowship.
Here where the flame-weed set the lands alight,
Lies the bleak upland, webbed and crowned with white.
Build high the logs, O love, and in thine eyes
Let me believe the summer lingers late.
We shall not miss her passive pageantries,
We are not desolate,
When on the sill, across the window bars,
Kind winter flings her flowers and her stars.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Stars
Now in the West the slender moon lies low,
And now Orion glimmers through the trees,
Clearing the earth with even pace and slow,
And now the stately-moving Pleiades,
In that soft infinite darkness overhead
Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread.
And all the lonelier stars that have their place,
Calm lamps within the distant southern sky,
And planet-dust upon the edge of space,
Look down upon the fretful world, and I
Look up to outer vastness unafraid
And see the stars which sang when earth was made.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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To Timarion
HAD I the thrush's throat, I could not sing you
Songs sweeter than his own. And I'm too poor
To lay the gifts that other lovers bring you
Low at your silver door.
Such as I have, I give. See, for your taking
Tired hands are here, and feet grown dark with dust.
Here's a lost hope, and here a heart whose aching
Grows greater than its trust.
Sleep on, you will not hear me. But to-morrow
You will remember in your fragrant ways,
Finding the voice of twilight and my sorrow
Lovelier than all men's praise.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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The Hearer
'SING of the things we know and love.'
But the singer made reply,
'There are greater lands to tell you of
And stars to steer you by.'
So he sang of worlds austere and strange,
Of seas so wildly wide
That only the journeying swan might range
The marches of the tide.
Men heard the thunder and the rain,
The tempest in his song,
They turned to their hearth fires again
And thought the night too long.
And only one man dared to hear
The deeds that singer told;
Against the stars he swung his spear
And died ere he was old.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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The Wife
Living, I had no might
To make you hear,
Now, in the inmost night,
I am so near
No whisper, falling light,
Divides us, dear.
Living, I had no claim
On your great hours.
Now the thin candle-flame,
The closing flowers,
Wed summer with my name, --
And these are ours.
Your shadow on the dust,
Strength, and a cry,
Delight, despair, mistrust, --
All these am I.
Dawn, and the far hills thrust
To a far sky.
[...] Read more
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Christ In The Museum
BRONZE bells and incense burners, and a flight
Of birds born out of iron, and fine as spray;
A dial that told the longest summer day
How sure, how swift the night:
And o'er the silent treasury, so high
No lips may kiss, no grieving hands have clung,
Numbered and ticketed, the Christ is hung.
The many pass Him by,
None pause. Here come no agonies, no dreams.
Nothing is here to hurt Him, nor to wake.
Year after year the golden iris gleams
A little paler by her lacquered lake,
And the dust gathers on the hands, the side,
The lonely head of Love the crucified.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Dream River
WIND-SILVERED willows hedge the stream,
And all within is hushed and cool.
The water, in an endless dream,
Goes sliding down from pool to pool.
And every pool a sapphire is,
From shadowy deep to sunlit edge,
Ribboned around with irises
And cleft with emerald spears of sedge.
O, every morn the winds are stilled,
The sunlight falls in amber bars.
O, every night the pools are filled
With silver brede of shaken stars.
O, every morn the sparrow flings
His elfin trills athwart the hush,
And here unseen at eve there sings
One crystal-throated hermit-thrush.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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A Child’s Song
WHEN the Child played in Galilee,
He had no wine-clear maple leaves,
No west winds singing of the sea
Over the frosted sheaves;
But with pale myrrh His head was bound
And crowned.
When the Child lived in Nazareth,
He watched the golden anise seed,
With daisies white in the wind's breath,
And hyssop flowering for His need,
While the late crocus from the sod
Flamed for her God.
When the Child dwelt in Palestine,
Over the brooks the willow grew,
Olive and aspen, oak and pine,
Sweet sycamore and yew,
But one dark Tree of all the seven
Stood high as heaven.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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When It is Finished
WHEN it is finished, Father, and we set
The war-stained buckler and the bright blade by,
Bid us remember then what bloody sweat,
What thorns, what agony
Purchased our wreaths of harvest and ripe ears,
Whose empty hands, whose empty hearts, whose tears
Ransomed the days to be.
We leave them to Thee, Father, we've no price,
No utmost treasure of the seas and lands,
No words, no deeds, to pay their sacrifice.
Only while England stands,
Their pearl, their pride, their altar, not their grave,
Bid us remember in what days they gave
All that mankind may give
That we might live.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Adam and Eve
When the first dark had fallen around them
And the leaves were weary of praise,
In the clear silence Beauty found them
And shewed them all her ways.
In the high noon of the heavenly garden
Where the angels sunned with the birds,
Beauty, before their hearts could harden,
Had taught them heavenly words.
When they fled in the burning weather
And nothing dawned but a dream,
Beauty fasted their hands together
And cooled them at her stream.
And when day wearied and night grew stronger,
And they slept as the beautiful must,
Then she bided a little longer,
And blossomed from their dust.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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