Pruning Flowering Gums
One summer day, along the street,
Men pruned the gums
To make them neat.
The tender branches, white with flowers,
Lay in the sun
For hours and hours,
And every hour they grew more sweet,
More honey-like
Until the street
Smelt like a hive, withouten bees.
But still the gardeners
Lopped the trees.
Then came the children out of school,
Noisy and separate
As their rule Of being is. The spangled trees
Gave them one heart:
Such power to please
Had all the flowering branches strown
Around for them
To make their own.
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poem by Lesbia Harford
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Lawstudent And Coach
Each day I sit in an ill-lighted room
To teach a boy;
For one hour by the clock great words and dreams
Are our employ.
We read St Agnes' Eve and that more fair
Eve of St Mark
At a small table up against the wall
In the half-dark.
I tell him all the wise things I have read
Concerning Keats.
'His earlier work is overfull of sense
And sensual sweets.'
I tell him all that comes into my mind
From God-knows-where,
Remark, 'In English poets Bertha's type
Is jolly rare.
She's a real girl that strains her eyes to read
And cricks her neck.
Now Madeline could pray all night nor feel
Her body's check.
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poem by Lesbia Harford
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A Parlourmaid
'I want a parlourmaid.'
'Well, let me see
If you were God, what kind of maid she'd be.'
'She would be tall,
She would be fair,
She would have slender limbs,
A delicate air;
And yet for all her beauty
She would walk
Among my guests unseen
And through their talk
Her voice would be the sweet voice of a bird,
Not listened to, though heard.'
'And now I know the girl you have in mind
Tell me her duties, if you'd be so kind.'
'Why, yes!
She must know names of wines
And never taste them—
Must handle fragile cups
And never break them—
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poem by Lesbia Harford
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Adventurers
This morning I got up before the sun
Had seized the hill,
And scrambled heart-hot, noisy, past each one
In sleep laid still.
There they lay helpless under the gold stars,
Good folk and kind,
By sleep the robber spoiled of heavenly wares,
Made deaf and blind.
The leaves cracked, the grass rustled as I passed.
I might have been
Myself the thief. Each minute seemed the last
Of freedom's teen.
But lonely down the hill in Levite's guise
Or priest's, I ran.
I had not proved myself, true loverwise,
Samaritan.
The wind went by me, pulling at my hair.
I left the track.
My last night's purpose terrible and fair
Came sweeping back.
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poem by Lesbia Harford
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Do you remember still the little song
Do you remember still the little song
I mumbled on the hill at Aura, how
I told you it was made for Katie's sake
When I was fresh from school and loving her
With all the strength of girlhood? And you said
You liked my song, although I didn't know
How it began at first and gabbled then
In a half voice, because I was too shy
To speak aloud, much less to speak them out —
Words I had joined myself — in the full voice
And with the lilt of proper poetry.
You could have hardly heard me. Here's the girl,
The little girl from school you never knew.
She made this song. Read what you couldn't hear.
How bright the windows are
When the dear sun shineth.
They strive to reflect the sun,
To be bright like the sun,
To give heat like the sun.
My heart too has its chosen one
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poem by Lesbia Harford
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In The Public Library
Standing on tiptoe, head back, eyes and arm
Upraised, Kate groped to reach the higher shelf.
Her sleeve slid up like darkness in alarm
At gleam of dawn. Impatient with herself
For lack of inches, careless of her charm,
She strained to grasp a volume; then she turned
Back to her chair, an unforgetful Eve
Still snatching at the fruit for which she yearned
In Eden. She read idly to relieve
The forehead where her daylong studies burned,
Tales of an uncrowned queen who fed her child
On poisons, till death lurked, in act to spring,
Between the girl's breasts; who with soft mouth smiled
With soft eyes tempted the usurping King
Then dealt him death in kisses. Kate had piled
Her books three deep before her and across
This barricade she watched an old man nod
Over a dirty paper, until loss
Of life seemed better than possession. Shod
With kisses death might skid like thistle floss
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poem by Lesbia Harford
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We climbed that hill,
We climbed that hill,
The road flushed red in pride
At being beauty's boundary. Either side
Stretched beauty, beauty ever, beauty still.
For on the left
Rose sandhills bound together by the deft
Long fingers of sea-grass,
Humped like the Punch and Judy of a farce,
Comical, cleft
With gaps for wind to pass,
Spotted
With dark
Clumped tea-tree, stark
With rushes, fierce with burrs,
Blotted
With purple earth,
Stains, remnants, marks of birth
On too-exuberant beauty.
On the right
Long paddocks stooped under a cloudy sky.
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poem by Lesbia Harford
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