Transcriber's Notes.

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. I have taken the liberty of adding an additional reference to the CONTENTS page in order to provide a direct link to the "By the Same Author" information at the end of the book. The indentation of the lines of the poem "Coal and Candlelight" reverse at lines 12/13. This is an obvious typographical error and has been corrected.

COAL
AND
CANDLELIGHT

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
BREAD AND CIRCUSES
THE BODLEY HEAD

COAL AND CANDLELIGHT
AND OTHER VERSES
BY
HELEN PARRY EDEN

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXVIII

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London.

TO E. A. P.

BEYOND all boundaries and pales

You led me hillward. With the clouds

We two were driven and the gales

That filled your soul's delightful sails

Shook my faint spirit's shrouds.

There where the æons still emboss

Cromlech and cairn and tufa crown

With lichen cold and stag-horn moss

And callous suns cross and recross,

You paused, and I looked down

And saw the straight strait Roman road,

The entangling lanes, our wayward track

And vestiges of all who strode

On the old quest with the old load

Beckoned me back and back.

Sweet wood-smoke climbing up the fell

Met me half-way as down I won,

And met me too the climbing bell

That bids the world kneel to a knell,

A knell ascending to the sun.

The holy bell shall tune my note,

The stars shall touch my thatch at night,

Within my spirit's dark stream shall float

A planet, meek as a child's boat,

That mocked your utmost height.

Yet I am yours—your pace is stamped

On mine, o'er mine your spirit broods—

Who tread the sanctuary hushed and lamped

With strides that took the heath and tramped

Your hopeless altitudes.

NOTE

THESE verses have been, for the most part,

already printed in England or America.

Five numbers are included by special permission of

the proprietors of Punch. All published in England

concerning the war are reprinted in their

original order.

H. P. E.

Begbroke, 1918.

CONTENTS

COAL AND
CANDLELIGHT

THE DISTRACTION

BETSEY, 'tis very like that I shall be—

When death shall wreak my life's economy—

Repaid with pains for contemplating thee

Unwisely out of season. With the rest

We knelt at Mass, not yet disperst and blest,

Waiting the imminent "Ite missa est."

And I, who turned a little from the pure

Pursuit of mine intention to make sure

My child knelt undistracted and demure,

Did fall into that sin. And ere the close

Of the grave Canon's "Benedicat vos ..."

Had scanned her hair and said, "How thick it grows

Over the little golden neck of her!"

So doth the mother sway the worshipper

And snatch the holiest intervals to err.

Nor piety constrained me, nor the place;

But I commended, 'gainst the light's full grace,

The little furry outline of her face.

SIR BAT-EARS

SIR BAT-EARS was a dog of birth

And bred in Aberdeen,

But he favoured not his noble kin

And so his lot is mean,

And Sir Bat-ears sits by the alms-houses

On the stones with grass between.

Under the ancient archway

His pleasure is to wait

Between the two stone pine-apples

That flank the weathered gate;

And old, old alms-persons go by,

All rusty, bent and black

"Good day, good day, Sir Bat-ears!"

They say and stroke his back.

And old, old alms-persons go by,

Shaking and wellnigh dead,

"Good night, good night, Sir Bat-ears!"

They say and pat his head.

So courted and considered

He sits out hour by hour,

Benignant in the sunshine

And prudent in the shower.

(Nay, stoutly can he stand a storm

And stiffly breast the rain,

That rising when the cloud is gone

He leaves a circle of dry stone

Whereon to sit again.)

A dozen little door-steps

Under the arch are seen,

A dozen agèd alms-persons

To keep them bright and clean;

Two wrinkled hands to scour each step

With a square of yellow stone—

But print-marks of Sir Bat-ears' paws

Bespeckle every one.

And little eats an alms-person,

But, though his board be bare,

There never lacks a bone of the best

To be Sir Bats-ears' share.

Mendicant muzzle and shrewd nose,

He quests from door to door;

Their grace they say, his shadow grey

Is instant on the floor—

Humblest of all the dogs there be,

A pensioner of the poor.

COAL AND CANDLELIGHT

... ἔχω δέ τοι ὄσσ' ἑν ὀνείρῳ φαίνονται.—
Theocritus, ix. Idyll.

BEFORE they left their mirth's warm scene

And slept, I heard my children say

That moonlight, like a duck's egg, green,

Outside the enfolding curtains lay.

But hearth-bound by maternal choice,

The fire-side's eremite, I know

The nightfall less by sight than voice—

How wake the huffing winds, and how

More full the flooded stream descends,

In unarrested race of sound,

The lasher where the river bends

To circle in our garden ground.

Within I harbour, hap what hap

Without, and o'er my baby brood:

Who, newly slumbering on my lap,

Stirs in resentful quietude.

Her little shawl-swathed fists enfold

One cherished forefinger of mine;

Her callow hair with Tuscan gold

Is pencilled in the candle-shine;

Her cheeks' sweet heraldry, exprest

Each evening since her happy birth,

Is argent to her mother's breast

And gules to the emblazoning hearth;

Only the lashes of her eyes

Some ancient discontent impairs,

Which, for their abdicated skies,

Are pointed with forgotten tears.

And so, as simple as a bird,

She nestles—there is no child else

To rouse her with a reckless word

Or clink her rattle's fallen bells:

All, long dismissed with wonted prayers,

Such apostolic vigils keep,

No sound descends the darkened stairs

To question the allure of sleep.

Only their fringèd towels veil

The fender's interwoven wire,

And, parted in the midst, exhale

Domestic incense towards the fire.

Betwixt the hobs (their lease of light,

But not of heat, devolved to dark)

The elm-logs simmer, hoary white

Or ruddy-scaled with saurian bark.

'Twas the third George whose lieges planned

That grate, and all its iron caprice

Of classic garlands, nobly spanned

By that triumphant mantelpiece—

A very altar for the bright

Tame element its pomp installs

'Twixt flat pilasters, fluted, white,

And lion-bedizened capitals.

Here portly topers met of old

To serve their comfortable god

And praise the heroes wigged and jowled,

Of that pugnacious period.

Now in their outworn husk of state

Our frugal comfort oddly dwells—

(As recluse crabs accommodate

Their contours to discarded shells)

A dozen childish perquisites

Await my liberated hands

And lovelier usurpation sits

Enthroned above the fading brands,

Two lonely tapers criss-cross rays

Cancel the dusky wall and shine

To halo with effulgent haze

The Genius of this Georgian shrine.

Mary, who through the centuries holds

Her crown'd Son in her hand, amid

Her mantle's black Byzantine folds

More tenderly displayed than hid,

O'er this tramontane hearth presides

Oracular of Heaven and Rome—

Where Peter is the Church abides,

Where Mary and Her Son, the home.

All day she blesses my employ

Where surge and eddy round my knee,

Swayed by a comfit or a toy,

The battles of eternity.

And that regard of Hers and His,

Hallowing the truce of night, endows

The weariest vigilant head with bliss;

And sanctifies such sleeping brows

As hers I carry from the haunt

Of waning warmth, the empty bars,

Up the great staircase, 'neath the gaunt

North window with its quarrelled stars,

To the quiet cradle. Slumber on,

Small heiress of celestial peace,

The glitter of the world is gone,

Et lucet lux in tenebris.

TREES

I WANDER in the open fields

Amazed, for there is no one by,

To see the bowery-hanging trees

So sympathetic with the sky;

Where sheets of daisies on the grass

Lie like Our Lord's discarded shrouds,

Whence He is risen grow the elms

And etch their verges on the clouds.

But when I walk the causey'd town

Whose citizens with tedious breath

Make certain day by day that tomb

Which shuts the Godhead underneath,

I sorrowing tread the cobbled way

Their strait-rankt chestnut-rows between,

Where myriad blossoms hardly light

One sombre pyramid of green.

SIMKIN

TO the sheer summit of the town,

Up from the marshes where the mill is,

The High Street clambers, looking down

On willows, weirs and water-lilies;

What goblin homes those gradients bear,

Doors that for all their new defacements

Date darkly, windows that outwear

The centuries shining on their casements!

When Simkin shows you up the street

To pay a bill or post a letter,

Your urgency infects his feet,

He speeds as well as you, or better;

Moulding his Lilliputian stride

To your swift footfall's emulation

He walks unwavering by your side

Until you reach your destination.

Simkin, the urchin with the shock

Of curls rush-hatted, plainly preaches

The Age of Reason in a smock

And Liberty in holland breeches,

Yet all obediently he'll ramp

Against the counter, pressing closer

To watch you lick a ha'penny stamp

Or see you settle with the grocer.

But once your steps retrace the town

And "Home's" the goal your folly mentions

A thousand projects of his own

Engage the sum of his attentions—

As when, precariously superb,

He mounts with two-year-old activity

The great stone horse-block by the kerb

Time-worn to glacial declivity.

Then debonair and undebarred

By the old hound, its casual sentry,

He dallies in "The Old George" yard

And greets the jackdaw in the entry;

Retracted to the street, he gains

A sombre door no sunshine mellows,

The smithy, where there glows and wanes

Fire, at the bidding of the bellows.

A-tip-toe at the infrequent shops

Toys or tin kettles he appraises,

Seeds in bright packets, lollipops,

Through the dim oriels' greenish glazes:

Then with two sturdy hands he shakes

The stripling sycamore that dapples

With shade the side-walk and awakes

Some ancient memory of apples.