Coal and Candlelight, and Other Verses

by Helen Parry Eden

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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.

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COAL
AND
CANDLELIGHT

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
BREAD AND CIRCUSES
THE BODLEY HEAD

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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.

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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.

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