 | Dirge for Aoine and other poems |  |
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MATER DOLOROSA
A Winter Song
Earth takes but little pleasure to remember—
Being a widow now, that was a wife—
How sweet May was, how bountiful September,
What wayward music April's chanter blew.
Her leaping fires of life
Burn down beneath the fall of frosty dew,
And dwindle slowly to the last red ember
That is December.
Being a widow now, that was a wife—
How sweet May was, how bountiful September,
What wayward music April's chanter blew.
Her leaping fires of life
Burn down beneath the fall of frosty dew,
And dwindle slowly to the last red ember
That is December.
She knows not how it went, the Linus-song
Whose burden the brown reapers bore along
As they brought home the sheaves.
Nay, though the thistle yielded figs, from thorn
Though purple grapes were born,
She would not wonder. She is past surprise;
The certainty of grief is in her eyes,
And that she once was glad she scarce believes.
Whose burden the brown reapers bore along
As they brought home the sheaves.
Nay, though the thistle yielded figs, from thorn
Though purple grapes were born,
She would not wonder. She is past surprise;
The certainty of grief is in her eyes,
And that she once was glad she scarce believes.
She dares not pray for summer to return.
Against her eyelids burn
The tears that fall not,—for what use are tears?
Above her head a naked plane-tree rears
Wild arms of all despair,
Reaching out blindly through the frosty air
For its beloved leaves that rotting lie
Where Winter with his ménie has passed by.
Against her eyelids burn
The tears that fall not,—for what use are tears?
Above her head a naked plane-tree rears
Wild arms of all despair,
Reaching out blindly through the frosty air
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Where Winter with his ménie has passed by.
Under the touch of their empoisoned spears,
The fair and gallant wood
That all the summer-time green-coated stood,
Stands naked to the bone, and wrings its hands
Above the altered lands.
Earth watches while her little children die—
The frozen wasp, the starving butterfly.
She has no tears for them, but in her heart
Knife-edged the Seven Sorrows wake and start.
The fair and gallant wood
That all the summer-time green-coated stood,
Stands naked to the bone, and wrings its hands
Above the altered lands.
Earth watches while her little children die—
The frozen wasp, the starving butterfly.
She has no tears for them, but in her heart
Knife-edged the Seven Sorrows wake and start.
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