To ----

    Between two common days this day was hung
    When Love went to the ending that was his;
    His seamless robe was rent, his brow was wrung,
    He took at last the sponge's bitter kiss.

    A simple day the dawn had watched unfold
    Before the night had borne the death of love;
    You took the bread I blessed, and love was sold
    Upon your lips, and paid the price thereof.

    I changed then, as when soul from body slips,
    And casts its passion and its pain aside;
    I pledged you with most spiritual lips,
    And gave you hands that you had crucified.
    You who betrayed, kissed, crucified, forgot,
    You walked with Christ, poor fool, and knew it not!

Muriel Stuart

Muriel Stuart was a British poet who gained prominence during the early 20th century. She was highly regarded for her contributions to Georgian poetry, a movement characterized by its eclectic and modernist styles. Stuart's work often grappled with themes of nature, love, and the human condition, reflecting the changing societal landscapes of her time. In addition to her poetry, she penned essays and other literary works, cementing her status as an influential literary figure.

Muriel Stuart

Lady Hamilton.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

The Tryst.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

The Father.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

Shrift.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

English

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Forgotten Dead, I Salute You.

    Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
    Night has gone out beneath the hill
    Many sweet times; before our eyes
    Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
    The magic that we call the rose.
    The gentle history of the rain
    Has been unfolded, traced and lost
    By the sharp finger-tips of frost;
    Birds in the hawthorn build again;
    The hare makes soft her secret house;
    The wind at tourney comes and goes,
    Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;
    The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:
    He knew the beauty of all those
    Last year, and who remembers him?

    Love sometimes walks the waters still,
    Laughter throws back her radiant head;
    Utterly beauty is not gone,
    And wonder is not wholly dead.

Muriel Stuart

The Father.

    The evening found us whom the day had fled,
    Once more in bitter anger, you and I,
    Over some small, some foolish, trivial thing
    Our anger would not decently let die.
    But dragged between us, shamed and shivering,
    Until each other's taunts we scarcely heard,
    Until we lost the sense of all we said,
    And knew not who first spoke the fatal word.
    It seemed that even every kiss we wrung
    We killed at birth with shuddering and hate,
    As if we feared a thing too passionate.
    However close we clung
    One hour, the next hour found us separate,
    Estranged, and Love most bitter on our tongue.
    To-night we quarrelled over one small head,
    Our fruit of last year's maying, the white bud
    Blown from our stormy kisses and...

Muriel Stuart

Shrift.

    I am not true, but you would pardon this
    If you could see the tortured spirit take
    Its place beside you in the dark, and break
    Your daily food of love and kindliness.
    You'd guess the bitter thing that treachery is,
    Furtive and on its guard, asleep, awake,
    Fearing to sin, yet fearing to forsake,
    And daily giving Christ the Judas kiss.

    But piteous amends I make each day
    To recompense the evil with the good;
    With double pang I play the double part
    Of all you trust and all that I betray.
    What long atonement makes my penitent blood,
    To what sad tryst goes my unfaithful heart!

Muriel Stuart

Leda.

    Do you remember, Leda?


    There are those who love, to whom Love brings
    Great gladness: such thing have not I.
    Love looks and has no mercy, brings
    Long doom to others.    Such was I.
    Heart breaking hand upon the lute,
    Touching one note only ... such were you.
    Who shall play now upon that lute
    Long last made musical by you?
    Sharp bird-beak in the swelling fruit,
    Blind frost upon the eyes of flowers.
    Who shall now praise the shrivelled fruit,
    Or raise the eyelids of those flowers?

    I dare not watch that hidden pool,
    Nor see the wild bird's sudden wing
    Lifting the wide, brown, shaken pool,
    But round me falls that secret wing,
    And in that sharp, perverse, sweet pain

Muriel Stuart

The Tryst.

    I raised the veil, I loosed the bands,
    I took the dead thing from its place.
    Like a warm stream in frozen lands
    My lips went wandering on her face,
            My hands burnt in her hands.

    She could not stay me, being dead;
    Her body here was mine to hold.
    What if her lips had lost their red?
    To me they always tasted cold
            With the cold words she said.

    Did my breath run along her hair,
    And free the pulse, and fire the brain,
    My wild blood wake her wild blood there?
    Her eyelids lifted wide again
            In a blue, sudden stare.

    Beneath my fierce, profane caress
    The whole white length of body moved;
    The drowsy bosom seemed to press
    As if against a breast bel...

Muriel Stuart

In Memory Of Douglas Vernon Cow

    This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.


    To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend,
    As with the gentle fading of the year
    Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end
    Unquestioning draw near,
    Their flowering over, and their fruiting done,
    Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.

    But for June's heart there is no comforting
    When her full-throated rose
    Still quick with buds, still thrilling to the air,
    By some stray wind is tossed,
    Her swelling grain that goes
    Heavy to harvesting
    In a black gale is lost,
    And her round grape that purpled to the wine
    Is pinched by some chance frost.
    Ah, then cry out for that lost, lovely rose,
    For the stricken wheat, ...

Muriel Stuart