The Skeleton In The Cupboard

Just this one day in all the year
Let all be one, let all be dear;
Wife, husband, child in fond embrace,
And thrust the phantom from its place.
No bitter words, no frowning brow,
Disturb the Christmas festal, now
The skeletons behind the door.

Nor let the child, with looks askance,
Find out its sad inheritance
From souls that held no happiness,
Of home, where love is seldom guest;
But in his coming years retain
This one sweet night that had no pain;
The skeletons behind the door.

In vain you raise the wassail bowl,
And pledge your passion, soul to soul.
You hear the sweet bells ring in rhyme,
You wreath the room for Christmas time
In vain.    The solemn silence falls,
The death watch ticks within the walls;
The skeleton taps on the door.

Then let him back into his place,
Let us sit out the old disgrace;
Nor seek the phantom now to lay,
That haunted us through every day;
For plainer is the ghost; useless
Is this pretence of happiness;
The skeleton taps on the door.

Dora Sigerson Shorter

Dora Sigerson Shorter was an Irish poet and sculptor born in Dublin in 1866. She was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival, a movement that aimed to promote Irish literature and culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was also a close friend of W.B. Yeats and married the writer and journalist Clement King Shorter. Dora's work often dealt with themes of Irish nationalism and folklore, and she published several volumes of poetry before her untimely death in 1918.

Dora Sigerson Shorter

My Neighbours Garden

Dora Sigerson Shorter, Simple Poetry

I Prayed So Eagerly

Dora Sigerson Shorter, Simple Poetry

The Blow Returned

Dora Sigerson Shorter, Simple Poetry

English

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At Christmas Time

For that old love I once adored
I decked my halls and spread my board
            At Christmas time.
With all the winters flowers that grow
I wreathed my room, and mistletoe
Hung in the gloom of my doorway,
Wherein my dear lost love might stray
            When joy-bells chime.

What phantom was it entered there
And drank his wine and took his chair
            At Christmas time?
With holly boughs and mistletoe
He crowned his head, and at my woe
And tears I shed laughed long and loud;
Get back, O phantom! to thy shroud
            When joy-bells chime.

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All Souls Eve

I cried all night to you,
        I called till day was here;
Perhaps you could not come,
        Or were too tirèd, dear.

Your chair I set by mine,
        I made the dim hearth glow,
I whispered, When he comes
        I shall not let him go.

I closed the shutters tight,
        I feared the dawn of day,
I stopped the busy clock
        That timed your hours away.

Loud howled my neighbours dog,
        O glad was I to hear.
The dead are going by,
        Now you will come, my dear,

To take the chair by mine-
        Until the cock would crow-
O, if it be you came
        And could not let me know,

For once a shadow passed
        Behind me in the room,
I thought your loving eyes
        Would...

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Grandpa's Christmas

In his great cushioned chair by the fender
    An old man sits dreaming to-night,
His withered hands, licked by the tender
    Warm rays of the red anthracite,
Are folded before him, all listless;
    His dim eyes are fixed on the blaze,
While over him sweeps the resistless
    Flood-tide of old days.

He hears not the mirth in the hallway,
    He hears not the sounds of good cheer,
That through the old homestead ring alway
    In the glad Christmas-time of the year.
He heeds not the chime of sweet voices
    As the last gifts are hung on the tree.
In a long-vanished day he rejoices -
    In his lost Used-to-be.

He has gone back across dead Decembers
    To his childhood's fair land of delight;
And his mother's sweet smile he remembers,

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Christmas Eve

    Friend, old friend in the Manse by the fireside sitting,
        Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log;
    You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,
    Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog.

    Silent here in the south sit I; and, leaning,
        One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand;
    Gazes deep in its heart--but ah! its meaning
        Rather I read in the shadows and understand.

    Dear, kind she is; and daily dearer, kinder,
        Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:

Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her
        Lit up a face in the leathern dusk of the shelves.

    Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:
        Yet there is one gives back to the wint...

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The Ballad Of The Fairy Thorn-Tree

This is an evil night to go, my sister,
        To the fairy-tree across the fairy rath,
Will you not wait till Hallow Eve is over?
        For many are the dangers in your path!

I may not wait till Hallow Eve is over,
        I shall be there before the night is fled,
For, brother, I am weary for my lover,
        And I must see him once, alive or dead.

Ive prayed to heaven, but it would not listen,
        Ill call thrice in the devils name to-night,
Be it a live man that shall come to hear me,
        Or but a corpse, all clad in snowy white.

* * * * *

She had drawn on her silken hose and garter,
        Her crimson petticoat was kilted high,
She trod her way amid the bog and brambles,
        Until the fairy-tree she stood near-b...

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A New Year

Behold! a new white world!
        The falling snow
Has cloaked the last old year
        And bid him go.

To-morrow! cries the oak-tree
        To his heart,
My sealèd buds shall fling
        Their leaves apart.

To-morrow! pipes the robin,
        And again
How sweet the nest that long
        Was full of rain.

To-morrow! bleats the sheep,
        And one by one
My little lambs shall frolic
        Neath the sun.

For us, too, let some fair
        To-morrow be,
O Thou who weavest threads
        Of Destiny!

Thou wast a babe on that
        Far Christmas Day,
Let us as children follow
        In Thy way.

So that our hearts grown cold
        Neath time and pain,
With young ...

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