MERCY HARVEY
(ST. HILDA’S HALL)
SONG
OH! who hath seen Twilight the solemn-eyed?
When the earth with a weary sigh
Turns unto her, as a widowed bride,
With the light all gone from the sky.
She walketh in solitariness,
Where still, shadowy waters gleam,
But her grey eyes are none the less
As if full of a troubled dream.
H. C. HARWOOD
(BALLIOL)
INCOMPATIBILITY
THERE shall be no more sorrow and no more pain.
Go you to your anger and I to my books again.
You loved me, but never have liked me, the issue was plain,
Woman, if you be woman, you live too late,
Never the man was suckled to be your mate,
Wed with a god and break him in battle with fate.
You are truth, and the world is illusion; faith, it is doubt.
It wraps its disaster in darkness, and you shine out;
And the liquor that drugs to endurance is not for your drought.
Pass on to the waste and the fell! I stay, and forget
Your breasts and your hair and your laughter like suns that are set.
Despise me, forgive me, but leave me. I love you yet.
DEDICATION, OF AN UNWRITTEN MASTERPIECE, TO A WOMAN AS YET UNKNOWN
IF I have laboured seven years,
It was not for your heart.
Mine was the better part
And hope is bright amid the vapourous fears.
You are too close to me to need
The idle compliment
That it was my intent
To build your name above the ages’ greed.
We are comrade adventurers;
Here is my challenge hurled
Against the conspired world;
You will have little time for flatterers,
An equal combatant ... Or so,
While in the dark I groped
Vainly perhaps, I hoped,
And, when at length we meet and love, shall know.
LUISA HEWITT
(HOME STUDENT)
YOU lit your cigarette from mine,
And each increased the other’s glow
Till the blue clouds began to blow
And two red stars began to shine.