ARTHUR KETCHUM
OLD LIZETTE ON SLEEP
Bed is the boon for me!
It’s well to bake and sweep,
But hear the word of old Lizette:
It’s better than all to sleep.
Summer and flowers are gay,
And morning light and dew;
But aged eyelids love the dark
Where never a light peeps through.
What!—open-eyed, my dears?
Thinking your hearts will break.
There’s nothing, nothing, nothing, I say,
That’s worth the lying awake!
I learned it in my youth—
Love I was dreaming of!
I learned it from the needle-work
That took the place of love.
I learned it from the years
And what they brought about;
From song, and from the hills of joy
Where sorrow sought me out.
It’s good to dream and turn,
And turn and dream, or fall
To comfort with my pack of bones,
And know of nothing at all!
Yes, never know at all!
If prowlers mew or bark,
Nor wonder if it’s three o’clock
Or four o’clock of the dark.
When the longer shades have fallen
And the last weariness
Has brought the sweetest gift of life,
The last forgetfulness.
If a sound as of old leaves
Stir the last bed I keep,
Then say, my dears: “It’s old Lizette—
She’s turning in her sleep!”
AGNES LEE
MOTHERHOOD
Mary, the Christ long slain, passed silently.
Following the children joyously astir
Under the cedrus and the olive tree,
Pausing to let their laughter float to her.
Each voice an echo of a voice more dear,
She saw a little Christ in every face;
When lo, another woman, gliding near,
Yearned o’er the tender life that filled the place.
And Mary sought the woman’s hand, and spoke:
“I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed
With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke
Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost.
“I, too, have rocked my little one,
O, He was fair!
Yea, fairer than the fairest sun,
And like its rays through amber spun
His sun-bright hair.
Still I can see it shine and shine.”
“Even so,” the woman said, “was mine.”
“His ways were ever darling ways,”—
And Mary smiled,—
“So soft, so clinging! Glad relays
Of love were all His precious days.
My little child!
My infinite star! My music fled!”
“Even so was mine,” the woman said.
Then whispered Mary: “Tell me, thou,
Of thine.” And she:
“O, mine was rosy as a boug
Blooming with roses, sent, somehow,
To bloom for me!
His balmy fingers left a thrill
Within my breast that warms me still.”
Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour,
And said, when Mary questioned, knowing not,
“Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?”
“I am the mother of Iscariot.”
AGNES LEE