Like many poets who cannot write plays, she is surcharged with dramatic energy. But, to use a familiar phrase, it is action in character rather than character in action which marks her work most impressively, and the latter is the essential element for the footlights. Shakespeare, Rostand, and Barrie have both, and are naturally therefore great dramatists. Two of the most of Miss Branch's poems are Lazarus Ora Pro Nobis. These are fruitful subjects for poetry, the man who came back from the grave and the passionate woman buried alive. In the short piece Lazarus, cast into the form of dialogue Lazarus answers the question put to him by Tennyson in In Memoriam.
Where wert thou, brother, those four days?
Various members of the group, astounded at his resurrection, try in vain to have their curiosity satisfied. What do the dead do? Are they happy? Has my baby grown? What overpowering motive brought you back from peace to live once more in sorrow?
This last question Lazarus answers in a positive but unexpected way.
A great desire led me out alone
From those assured abodes of perfect bliss….
And by the way I went came seeking earth,
Seeing before my eyes one only thing—
The Crowd
What was it, Lazarus? Let us share that thing!
What was it, brother, thou didst see?
Lazarus
A cross.
Another dynamic poem, glowing with passion, is Ora Pro Nobis. It is difficult to select passages from it, for it is sustained in power and beauty from the first line to the last; yet some idea of it: form and colour may be obtained by citation. A little girl was put into a convent with only two ways of passing the time; stitching and praying. She has never seen her face—she never will see for no mirror is permitted; but she sees one day the reflection of its beauty in the hungry eyes of a priest.
Long years I dwelt in that dark hall,
There was no mirror on the wall,
I never saw my face at all,
(Hail Mary.)
In a great peace they kept me there,
A straight white robe they had me wear,
And the white bands about my hair.
I did not know that I was fair.
(Hail Mary.)…
The sweet chill fragrance of the snow,
More fine than lilies all aglow
Breathed around—he saw me so,
In garments spun of fire and snow.
(Holy Mother, pray for us.)
His hands were on my face and hair,
His high, stern eyes that would forswear
All earthly beauty, saw me there.
Oh, then I knew that I was fair!
(Mary, intercede for us.)…
Then I raised up to God my prayer,
I swept its strong and circling air,
Betwixt me and the great despair.
(Sweet Mary, pray for us.)
But when before the sacred shrine
I knelt to kiss the cross benign,
Mary, I thought his lips touched mine.
(Ave Maria, Ora Pro Nobis.)
Although some of her poems have an intensity almost terrible, Anna Branch has written household lyrics as beautiful in their uncrowded simplicity as an eighteenth century room. The Songs for My Mother, celebrating her clothes, her her words, her stories breathe the unrivalled perfume of tender memories. And if Lazarus is a sword, two of her most original pieces are poppy-seeds, To Nature and
THE SILENCE OF THE POETS
I better like that shadowed side of things
In which the Poets wrote not; when they went
Unto the fullness of their great content
Like moths into the grass with folded wings.
The silence of the Poets with it brings
The other side of moons, and it is spent
In love, in sorrow, or in wonderment.
After the silence, maybe a bird sings.
I have heard call, as Summer calls the swallow,
A leisure, bidding unto ways serene
To be a child of winds and the blue hazes.
"Dream"—quoth the Dreamer—and 'tis sweet to follow!
So Keats watched stars rise from his meadows green,
And Chaucer spent his hours among the daisies.