Exit
Exit
Original Text
Wilson MacDonald, Out of the Wilderness
(Ottawa: Graphic Publishers, 1926): 129-31.
1Easily to the old
2 Opens the hard ground:
3But when youth grows cold,
4 And red lips have no sound,
5Bitterly does the earth
6 Open to receive
7And bitterly do the grasses
8 In the churchyard grieve.
9Cold clay knows how to hold
10 An agèd hand;
11But how to comfort youth
12 It does not understand.
13Even the gravel rasps
14 In a dumb way
15When youth comes homing
16 Before its day.
17Elizabeth’s hair was made
18 To warm a man’s breast,
19Her lips called like roses
20 To be caressed;
21But grim the Jester
22 Who gave her hair to lie
23On the coldest lover
24 Under the cold sky.
25But Elizabeth never knew,
26 Nor will learn now,
27How the long wrinkle comes
28 On the white brow;
29Nor will she ever know,
30 In her robes of gloom,
31How chill is a dead child
32 From a warm womb.
33O clay, so tender
34 When a flower is born!
35Press gently as she dreams
36 In her bed forlorn.
37They who come early
38 Must weary of their rest--
39Lie softly, then, as light
40 On her dear breast.
41Unflowered is her floor,
42 Her roof is unstarred.
43Is this then the ending--
44 Here, shuttered and barred?
45Nay, not the ending;
46 She will awake
47Or the heart of the earth
48 That enfolds her will break.
49Easily to the old
50 Opens the hard ground:
51But when youth grows cold,
52 And red lips have no sound,
53Bitterly does the earth
54 Open to receive
55And bitterly do the grasses
56 In the churchyard grieve.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire / Sharine Leung
RPO Edition
2011
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