Читать книгу Poems, and The Spring of Joy - Mary Webb - Страница 49

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They run to meet me, clinging to my dress,

The neighbour’s children. With a wild unrest

And sobbings of a strange, fierce tenderness,

I snatch them to my breast.

But my baby, ah! my baby

Weepeth—weepeth

In the far loneliness of nonentity,

And holds his little spirit hands to me,

Crying ‘Mother!’ and nearer creepeth;

Beats on my heart’s lit window anxiously,

Shivering and sobbing, ‘Mother, let me in!

Give me my rosy dress, my delicate dress

Of apple-blossom flesh, dark eyes like flowers,

And warm mouth kissed by a red anemone.

Give me my toys—the hills, the seas, the sun,

Loud song, wild winds, the morning’s cloudy towers.

Give hands to hold and ears to hear and feet to run.

Give me my lesson books—fear, love and sin—

All hell to brave, all heaven to win!’

Then, shadowy, wild and wan,

A little face peers in,

Except in dreams unknown even to me,

And like a summer cloud is gone.

It is the neighbour’s children, playing near,

With voices ringing clear.

But far in twilight, like a moon-awakened bird,

Was that another, fainter laugh I heard?