The Cloudberry

Give me no coil of daemon flowers-
Pale Messalines that faint and brood
Through the spent and secret twilight hours
On their strange feasts of blood.

Five me wild things of moss and peat-
The gipsy flower that bravely goes,
The heather's little hard, brown feet,
And the black eyes of sloes.

But most of all the cloudberry
That offers in her clean, white cup
The melting snows-the cloudberry!
Where the great winds go up

To the hushed peak whose shadow fills
The air with silence calm and wide-
She lives, the Dian of the hills,
And the streams course beside.

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Shrift

I am not true, but you would pardon this
If you could see the tortured spirit take
Its place beside you in the dark, and break
Your daily food of love and kindliness.
You'd guess the bitter thing that treachery is,
Furtive and on its guard, asleep, awake,
Fearing to sin, yet fearing to forsake,
And daily giving Christ the Judas kiss.

But piteous amends I make each day
To recompense the evil with the good;
With double pang I play the double part
Of all you trust and all that I betray.
What long atonement makes my penitent blood,
To what sad tryst goes my unfaithful heart!

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Possession

MOST blessed one, how can I let thee go?
Canst thou forswear the nightingale its tune--
Stay the young sea from following his moon--
Bid hyacinth put out her blue light? Oh,
Thou art not mine but Me! and being so
How canst thou bid my year stop short of June,
Or hold my feet from following thine so soon,
Or bid me build on Heaven's overthrow?
Nay, how can I put off thy presence? Where
Should my soul serve without thy sanctities?
I kneel beside thee, I who am a child
In thy man's hand, cling to thee spent and wild
Until my face is hidden in my hair,
And I fall weeping, weeping, at they knees!

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

For Fasting Days

Are you my songs, importunate of praise?
Be still, remember for your comforting
That sweeter birds have had less leave to sing
Before men piped them from their lonely ways.

Greener leaves than yours are lost in every spring
Rubies far redder thrust your eager rays
Into the blindfold dark for many days
Before men chose them for a finger-ring.

Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive not
The passing fashion's prize, for dole or due-
Men's summer-sweet unrecognition-grieve not:
Oh, stoop not to them! Better far that you
Should go unsung than sing as you believe not,
Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Lady Hamilton

Men wondered why I loved you, and none guessed
How sweet your slow, divine stupidity,
Your look of earth, your sense of drowsy rest,
So rich, so strange, so all unlike my sea.
After the temper of my sails, my lean
Tall masts, you were the lure of harbour hours,--
A sleepy landscape warm and very green,
Where browsing creatures stare above still flowers.
These salt hands holding sweetness, the leader led,
A slave, too happy and crazed to rule,
Sea land-locked, brine and honey in one bed,
And Englands's man your servant and your fool!
My banqueting eyes foreswore my waiting ships;
I was a silly landsman at your lips.

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

To

Between two common days this day was hung
When Love went to the ending that was his;
His seamless robe was rent, his bow was wrong,
He took at last the sponge's bitter kiss.

A simple day the dawn has watched unfold
Before the night had borne the death of love;
You took the bread I blessed, and love was sold
Upon your lips, and paid the price thereof.

I changed then, as when soul from body slips,
And casts its passion and its pain aside;
I pledged you with most spiritual lips,
And gave you hands that you had crucified.
You who betrayed, kissed, crucified, forgot,
You walked with Christ, poor fool, and knew it not!

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Change

CHANGE shall accustom me in after years
To kingdom's builded on life's overthrow;
Onward with other poets I shall go,
Unpraised of thee. though praised of all my peers,
Until the vine that thou hast quckened, bears
Its fruit in others' hands; until I grow
So different from myself I shall not know
This poor young desperate heart, nor these wild tears.
But though I change, thou shalt not change with me,
Thy shrine shall stand unaltered and unmoved,
And if we meet again I shall but see
The features of a stranger, thou wilt be
Wholly what once thou wert to me, Beloved
And not what time and men have made of thee

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Now

TAKE as you will, slake, solace, and possess
While Youth, with laughter, scatters tears that fall
Sudden and shaken sometimes at your call;
Pledge me in passion and in gentleness,--
In praise and prayer, I would not give you less,
Be less unconquerably true in all,
Take my young kisses,--my young spirit's thrall,
Forbid not Now's imperishable "Yes"!
When I am old, and cold, and wise, and grown
As far beyond as you outstrip me now,--
Nor plead, nor pant, nor challenge nor protest;
Oh, come not then, all these years less your own;
Too old to love, too wise to heed your vow,
Too cold to feel your cold hand upon my breast.

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

After

WHEN, on an empty night in later years
Thou ponderest over sorrowful sweet things,
While troubling with cold hands the muted strings
Of Memory's lute now silent in thine ears,
These words shall sweep with soft descent of tears--
Shall wound the air with sudden thrust of wings
Bringing the Past to thee as Winter brings
To naked boughs the colour April wears.
Thou shalt read over, in less fortunate days,
Forgotten pages till thy heart be moved
To sudden pity and to passionate praise
Of what thou didst not heed nor understand;
Letting the book drop from thy trembling hand,
"Once," thou shalt say and pause . . . "How I was loved!"

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Tintagel

DEAD man! will you ride with me,
As you rode that night of yore,
Will you ride with me, once more
To Tintagel by the sea?

When those savage words were said--
Words that challenged destiny--
To Tintagel by the sea,
Through the sweating night we fled!

Hearts, that raged with storm and sea,
Thundered through the scream of rain;
Laugh and ride with me again,
Take my kisses thirstily!

Clutch the cloak that flies apart,
Grip the stallion with your knee:
Let my wild, black tresses be
Once more pinioned on your heart.

[...] Read more

poem by Muriel Stuart
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!