SURELY you’ve trodden straight To the very door! Surely you took your fate Faultlessly. Now it’s too late To say more. It is evident you were right, That man has a course to go A voyage to sail beyond the charted seas. You have passed from out of sight And my questions blow Back from […]

WHEN we came out of the wood Was a great light! The night uprisen stood In white. I wondered, I looked around It was so fair. The bright Stubble upon the ground Shone white Like any field of snow; Yet warm the chase Of faint night-breaths did go Across my face! White-bodied and warm the […]

THE sun is bleeding its fires upon the mist That huddles in grey heaps coiling and holding back. Like cliffs abutting in shadow a drear grey sea Some street-ends thrust forward their stack. On the misty waste-lands, away from the flushing grey Of the morning the elms are loftily dimmed, and tall As if moving […]

OBJECTOR. THE hours have tumbled their leaden, monotonous sands And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the West. I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands; To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours I detest. I force my cart through the sodden filth that is pressed Into ooze, and […]

THE WANING MOON looks upward; this grey night Slopes round the heavens in one smooth curve Of easy sailing; odd red wicks serve To show where the ships at sea move out of sight. The place is palpable me, for here I was born Of this self-same darkness. Yet the shadowy house below Is out […]

THE CHILD like mustard-seed Rolls out of the husk of death Into the woman’s fertile, fathomless lap. Look, it has taken root! See how it flourisheth. See how it rises with magical, rosy sap! As for our faith, it was there When we did not know, did not care; It fell from our husk like […]

THE SUN SHINES, The coltsfoot flowers along the railway banks Shine like flat coin which Jove in thanks Strews each side the lines. A steeple In purple elms, daffodils Sparkle beneath; luminous hills Beyond–and no people. England, Oh Danae To this spring of cosmic gold That falls on your lap of mould! What then are […]

There was a woman who loved her husband, but she could not live with him. The husband, on his side, was sincerely attached to his wife, yet he could not live with her. They were both under forty, both handsome and both attractive. They had the most sincere regard for one another, and felt, in […]

I “I’m getting up, Teddilinks,” said Mrs Whiston, and she sprang out of bed briskly. “What the Hanover’s got you?” asked Whiston. “Nothing. Can’t I get up?” she replied animatedly. It was about seven o’clock, scarcely light yet in the cold bedroom. Whiston lay still and looked at his wife. She was a pretty little […]

WHEN we were children our father often worked on the night-shift. Once it was spring-time, and he used to arrive home, black andtired, just as we were downstairs in our night-dresses. Then nightmet morning face to face, and the contact was not always happy. Perhaps it was painful to my father to see us gaily […]

The mistress ofthe British School stepped down from her school gate, and instead of turning to the left as usual, she turned to the right. Two women who were hastening home to scramble their husbands’ dinners together—it was five minutes to four—stopped to look at her. They stood gazing after her for a moment; then […]

I The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the […]

I The two large fields lay on a hillside facing south. Being newly cleared of hay, they were golden green, and they shone almost blindingly in the sunlight. Across the hill, half-way up, ran a high hedge, that flung its black shadow finely across the molten glow of the sward. The stack was being built […]

‘Well, Mabel, and what are you going to do with yourself ?’ asked Joe, with foolish flippancy. He felt quite safe himself. Without listening for an answer, he turned aside, worked a grain of tobacco to the tip of his tongue, and spat it out. He did not care about anything, since he felt safe […]

SINCE every family has its black sheep, it almost follows that every man must have a sooty uncle. Lucky if he hasn’t two. However, it is only with my mother’s brother that we are concerned. She had loved him dearly when he was a little blond boy. When he grew up black, she was always […]

There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they […]

I It was a mile nearer through the wood. Mechanically, Syson turned up by the forge and lifted the field-gate. The blacksmith and his mate stood still, watching the trespasser. But Syson looked too much a gentleman to be accosted. They let him go in silence across the small field to the wood. There was […]

I A wind was running, so that occasionally the poplars whitened as if a flame flew up them. The sky was broken and blue among moving clouds. Patches of sunshine lay on the level fields, and shadows on the rye and the vineyards. In the distance, very blue, the cathedral bristled against the sky, and […]

[Note: monkey nuts is another name for peanuts, often used colloquially to indicate a thing or a person of little value. ] At first Joe thought the job O. K. He was loading hay on the trucks, along with Albert, the corporal. The two men were pleasantly billeted in a cottage [Note: Soldiers on leave […]

I They had marched more than thirty kilometres since dawn, along the white, hot road where occasional thickets of trees threw a moment of shade, then out into the glare again. On either hand, the valley, wide and shallow, glittered with heat; dark green patches of rye, pale young corn, fallow and meadow and black […]