Charlotte Mew – The Changeling

Toll no bell for me, dear Father dear Mother,

Waste no sighs;

There are my sisters, there is my little brother

Who plays in the place called Paradise,

Your children all, your children for ever;

But I, so wild,

Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never,

Never, I know, but half your child!

In the garden at play, all day, last summer,

Far and away I heard

The sweet "tweet-tweet" of a strange new-comer,

The dearest, clearest call of a bird.

It lived down there in the deep green hollow,

My own old home, and the fairies say

The word of a bird is a thing to follow,

So I was away a night and a day.

One evening, too, by the nursery fire,

We snuggled close and sat roudn so still,

When suddenly as the wind blew higher,

Something scratched on the window-sill,

A pinched brown face peered in--I shivered;

No one listened or seemed to see;

The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered,

Whoo--I knew it had come for me!

Some are as bad as bad can be!

All night long they danced in the rain,

Round and round in a dripping chain,

Threw their caps at the window-pane,

Tried to make me scream and shout

And fling the bedclothes all about:

I meant to stay in bed that night,

And if only you had left a light

They would never have got me out!

Sometimes I wouldn't speak, you see,

Or answer when you spoke to me,

Because in the long, still dusks of Spring

You can hear the whole world whispering;

The shy green grasses making love,

The feathers grow on the dear grey dove,

The tiny heart of the redstart beat,

The patter of the squirrel's feet,

The pebbles pushing in the silver streams,

The rushes talking in their dreams,

The swish-swish of the bat's black wings,

The wild-wood bluebell's sweet ting-tings,

Humming and hammering at your ear,

Everything there is to hear

In the heart of hidden things.

But not in the midst of the nursery riot,

That's why I wanted to be quiet,

Couldn't do my sums, or sing,

Or settle down to anything.

And when, for that, I was sent upstairs

I did kneel down to say my prayers;

But the King who sits on your high church steeple

Has nothing to do with us fairy people!

'Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother,

Learned all my lessons and liked to play,

And dearly I loved the little pale brother

Whom some other bird must have called away.

Why did they bring me here to make me

Not quite bad and not quite good,

Why, unless They're wicked, do They want, in spite,

to take me

Back to Their wet, wild wood?

Now, every nithing I shall see the windows shining,

The gold lamp's glow, and the fire's red gleam,

While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us

are whining

In the hollow by the stream.

Black and chill are Their nights on the wold;

And They live so long and They feel no pain:

I shall grow up, but never grow old,

I shall always, always be very cold,

I shall never come back again!

Charlotte Mew – I Have Been Through The Gates

His heart to me, was a place of palaces and pinnacles and shining towers;

I saw it then as we see things in dreams,--I do not remember how long I slept;

I remember the tress, and the high, white walls, and how the sun was always on the

towers;

The walls are standing to-day, and the gates; I have been through the gates, I have

groped, I have crept

Back, back. There is dust in the streets, and blood; they are empty; darkness is over

them;

His heart is a place with the lights gone out, forsaken by great winds and the heavenly

rain, unclean and unswept,

Like the heart of the holy city, old blind, beautiful Jerusalem;

Over which Christ wept

Charlotte Mew – Monsieur Qui Passe

A purple blot against the dead white door

In my friend's rooms, bathed in their vile pink light,

I had not noticed her before

She snatched my eyes and threw them back to me:

She did not speak till we came out into the night,

Paused at this bench beside the klosk on the quay.

God knows precisely what she said--

I left to her the twisted skein,

Though here and there I caught a thread,--

Something, at first, about "the lamps along the Seine,

And Paris, with that witching card of Spring

Kept up her sleeve,--why you could see

The trick done on these freezing winter nights!

While half the kisses of the Quay--

Youth, hope,-the whole enchanted string

Of dreams hung on the Seine's long line of lights."

Then suddenly she stripped, the very skin

Came off her soul,-a mere girl clings

Longer to some last rag, however thin,

When she has shown you-well-all sorts of things:

"If it were daylight-oh! one keeps one's head--

But fourteen years!--No one has ever guessed--

The whole thing starts when one gets to bed--

Death?-If the dead would tell us they had rest!

But your eyes held it as I stood there by the door--

One speaks to Christ-one tries to catch His garment's hem--

One hardly says as much to Him--no more:

It was not you, it was your eyes--I spoke to them."

She stopped like a shot bird that flutters still,

And drops, and tries to run again, and swerves.

The tale should end in some walled house upon a hill.

My eyes, at least, won't play such havoc there,--

Or hers--But she had hair!--blood dipped in gold;

And there she left me throwing back the first odd stare.

Some sort of beauty once, but turning yellow, getting old.

Pouah! These women and their nerves!

God! but the night is cold!

Charlotte Mew – Sea Love

Tide be runnin' the great world over:

'Twas only last June month I mind that we

Was thinkin' the toss and the call in the breast of the lover

So everlastin' as the sea.

Heer's the same little fishes that sputter an swim,

Wi' the moon's old glim on the grey, wet sand;

An' him no more to me mor me to him

Than the wind goin' over my hand.

Charlotte Mew – To A Child In Death

You would have scoffed if we had told you yesterday

Love made us feel, or so it was with me, like some great bird

Trying to hold and shelter you in its strong wing: --

A gay little shadowy smile would have tossed us back such a solemn word,

And it was not for that you were listening When so quietly you slipped away

With half the music of the world unheard.

What shall we do with this strange summer, meant for you, --

Dear, if we see the winter through What shall be done with spring -- ?

This, this is the victory of the grave; here is death's sting.

That it is not strong enough, our strongest wing.

But what of His who like a Father pitieth?

His Son was also, once, a little thing,

The wistfullest child that ever drew breath,

Chased by a sword from Bethlehem and in the busy house at Nazereth

Playing with little rows of nails, watching the carpenter's hammer swing,

Long years before His hands and feet were tied

And by a hammer and three great nails He died,

Of youth, of spring, Of sorrow, of loneliness, of victory the King,

Under the shadow of that wing.