Voices by Frances Bellerby

I heard those voices today again:

Voices of women and children, down in that hollow

Of blazing light into which swoops the tree-darkened lane

Before it mounts up into the shadow again.

 
I turned the bend–just as always before

There was no one at all down there in the sunlit hollow;

Only ferns in the wall, foxglove by the hanging door

Of the blind old desolate cottage. And just as before

 
I noticed the leaping glitter of light

Where the steam runs under the lane; in that mine-dark archway

–Water and stones unseen as though in the gloom of night–

Like glittering fish slithers and leaps the light.

 
I waited long at the bend of the lane,

But heard only the murmuring water under the archway.

Yet I tell you, I’ve been to that place again and again,

And always, in summer weather, those voices are plain,

Down near that broken house, just where the tree-darkened lane

Swoops into the hollow of light before mounting to shadow again.