Ruth Manning-Sanders

When I went down the gallery,
A million shapes of clay
Stood in the selfsame way
Upon their pedestàls of ebony,
...

Low in the road under the withering hedge
They stand, the woman drearyand thin shouldered.
The three small ragged boys,—and the white faces
They lift to the high hedge are blotched with cold.
...

Coming up the path behold
A pedlar bent and very old.
With round dark eye,
A black bag in his small right hand.
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For me, your lover, life is a great room
Scattered with your belongings, and I see
Nothing you have not touched, and whoso comes
Carries your messages, and who departs
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As we sat in dim firelight,
You and I, when starless night
Pressed against the cottage wall,
And the flames wrought webs of dreaming,
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Now we in the small stable watched with Death,
Death that stood hesitant, where rusty gold
Old Stalwart's flanks gleamed dimly mid a throng
Of crowding shadows; for the storm-lamp burned
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Little ones, guileless ones,
So fair and dainty.
All the guests are gathered here.
Come and acquaint ye.
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Good-night, good-night, the log bums low.
The nodding shadows nod more slow.
Lift, and fall, and die ;
The night hangs drear.
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Out of the clear starlight,
Into a tunnel of night.
Muffling closie, falling steep.
Boughs stir above the place.
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Naked you come, and naked go.
Nor hold of too great worth
The riches and the fame
And the green ways of earth.
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Enter, magician,—now the world is thine,
Robbed of its bitterness. Within this room
The regal sunlight, sifted froni the gloom.
Heaps up its dazzling radiance. Here the fine.
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Now everything was wrong, and all our souls
Shrivelled to tired old dwarfs, whose sunken gaze
No torch of hope could light to kindly blaze :
So sat they mute and helpless, though live coals
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Now where the candles hke two praying angels.
Slim, white, and golden aureoled, keep back
The endless leagues of night.
She in a luminous ring
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She, with her old witch-face turned upward, stares,
Frowning intent, her small hands still and folded
Upon her snow-white pinafore that shields
The fine red dress.—for this is Sunday evening.
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On to the grey and gaping floor, and through
The broken window in the rough white wall,
In long beams of moted radiance
Falls light ; across the piled disordered bench.
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Hobbling, hobbling, hobbling,
I am hobbling after you.
Up the sunny little street
Where your merry morning feet
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Once in a golden hour
Spring brought a sign to you,
For the dark house door stood open.
And peeping through,
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Now for you again—
Scanty blades and shrivelled clover.
Dead leaves strewing a sad field over,
Where you tread pools of rain,
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When from the baby's hand they took,
With a large gentleness.
The tiptoe-proferred grass, and bent
Their great dark eyes to express
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Out in a night of cold and gloom
I spied a little lirelit room;
I heard the flare of flickering flame,
Through the half-open door there came
...