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Best Poems From
AUGUSTA DAVIES WEBSTER
(1837 - 1894)
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49.
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Once
I SET a lily long ago;
I watched it whiten in the sun;
I loved it well, I had but one.
Then summer-time was done,
The wind came and the rain,
My lily bent, lay low.
Only the night-time sees my pain
Alas, my lily long ago!
I had a rose-tree born in May;
I watched it burgeon and grow red,
I breathed the perfume that it shed.
Then summer-time had sped,
The frost came with its sleep
My rose-tree died away.
Only the silence hears me weep
Alas, lost rose-tree! lost, lost May!
The garden's lily blows once more;
The buried rose will wake and climb;
There is no thought of rain and rime
After, next summer-time.
But the heart's blooms are weak;
Once dead for ever o'er.
Not night, not silence knows me seek
My joy that waned and blooms no more.
Augusta Davies Webster
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50.
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One star only for Love's heaven
ONE star only for Love's heaven;
One rose only for Love's breast;
One love only to be given.
Star that gathers all stars' glory
Rose all sweetness of the rest;
Love that is all life's glad story.
Augusta Davies Webster
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51.
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Poulain The Prisoner
I.
BEYOND his silent vault green springs went by,
The river flashed along its open way,
Blithe swallows flitted in their billowy play,
And the sweet lark went quivering up the sky.
With him was stillness and his heart's dumb cry
And darkness of the tomb through hopeless day,
Save that along the wall one single ray
Shifted, through jealous loop-holes, westerly.
One single ray: and where its light could fall
His rusty nail carved saints and angels there,
And warriors, and slim girls with braided hair,
And blossomy boughs, and birds athwart the air.
Rude work, but yet a world. And light for all
Was one slant ray upon a prison wall.
II.
One ray, and in its track hlie lived and wrought,
And in free wideness of the world, I know,
One said, 'Fair sunshine, yet it serves not so,
It needs a tenderer when I shape my thought;'
And, ''Tis too brown and molten in the drought,'
And, ''Tis too wan a greyness in this snow,'
And would have toiled, but wearied and was woe,
While days stole past and had bequeathed him nought.
Maybe in Gisors, round the fortress mead
Gisors where now, when fair-time brings its press,
They seek the prisoner's tower to gaze and guess
And love the work he made in loneliness
One cursed the gloom, and died without a deed,
The while he carved where his one ray could lead.
III.
'Oh loneliness! oh darkness!' so we wail,
Crying to life to give we know not what,
The hope not come, the ecstasy forgot,
The things we should have had and, needing, fail,
Nor know what thing it was for which we ail,
And, like tired travellers to an unknown spot,
Pass listless, noting only 'Yet 'tis not,'
And count the ended day an empty tale.
Ah me! to linger on in dim repose
And feel the numbness over hand and thought,
And feel the silence in the heart, that grows.
Ah me! to have forgot the hope we sought.
One ray of light, and a soul lived and wrought,
And on the prison walls a message rose.
Augusta Davies Webster
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52.
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Questions And Answer
HAD I a heart till that day?
Who knows, who knows?
Ere the leaf burst upwards can any say
'Here is a green thing hidden away
In the lingering new year snows'?
Could I have loved one not her?
Can I tell, can I tell?
When northern seas feel their life, and stir
In their one day's dawn, can they judge and aver
'Some other dawn were as well'?
Could I, she lost, love again?
May be, may be.
The dead man moulders through sun and rain,
While a soul forgets his joy and his pain;
Yet that soul which forgets is still he.
Augusta Davies Webster
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