Those dropping rooms are haunted by a death,
A something like a worm gnawing a brain,
That bids me heed what bitter lesson saith
The blind wind beating on the widow-pane.
None dwells in those old rooms: none ever can:
I pass them through at night with hidden head;
Lock’d rotting rooms her eyes must never scan,
Floors that her blessed feet must never tread.
Haunted old rooms: rooms she must never know,
Where death-ticks knock and mouldering panels glow.
C. L. M.
In the dark womb where I began
My mother’s life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.
Down in the darkness of the grave
She cannot see the life she gave.
For all her love, she cannot tell
Whether I use it ill or well,
Nor knock at dusty doors to find
Her beauty dusty in the mind.
If the grave’s gates could be undone,
She would not know her little son,
I am so grown. If we should meet
She would pass by me in the street,
Unless my soul’s face let her see
My sense of what she did for me.
What have I done to keep in mind
My debt to her and womankind?
What woman’s happier life repays
Her for those months of wretched days?
For all my mouthless body leeched
Ere Birth’s releasing hell was reached?
What have I done, or tried, or said
In thanks to that dear woman dead?
Men triumph over women still,
Men trample women’s rights at will,
And man’s lust roves the world untamed.
* * * *
O grave, keep shut lest I be shamed.