Shadow by Robin Hyde
Hear me whisper, whisper to you
Through these empty rooms,
See my dress in the ripple
Of the shot-silk evening glooms,
Think my hands on the spinet
When a quiet breeze stirs
And a tortured phoenix evening
Burns in the brooding firs.
See my face lifted to you again
Praying for some small boon
Less to your clear endeavour
Than the white jest of the moon.
Dead world, dead lady,
And your own heart a-dying …
Hush … turn away swiftly …
It’s not I you hear crying.
Haunted Garden by Robin Hyde
The primulas are scanted of colour here,
They are as young lips knowing too little of love;
And the dusky weight of the laurel boughs above
Is a stern crown plaited for young brows lessoned in care.
Yea, and the scarlet shallop anemones
Bend in the wind for the warm white lute-string beach,
For the Orphic meadows no longing of mine can reach,
Who am prisoner here in the warded house of the trees.
But the small white poisonous flowers crumble into my days,
And the steel-bright arc of the fountain-drops pierces my heart.
I am as one who stumbles the yew-tree maze,
Where ever dreamer and dream are thrust further apart,
Till the little pools of starlight shine chill with danger,
Till the breath of the earth is a rising pearl-white smoke,
And he dare not stretch forth his hand, to touch the cloak
Of her who waits by the fountain, the motionless stranger.
And dusk is a statue, and thought is a chrysophrase set
Bleak on a brow half-seen through the leaning blue trees;
And the frail eve weighted by robes of sarcenet
Rests her sceptre of dreaming across her knees.
Heavy her spell upon heart, upon outstretched hands —
Only the ghost-world’s silver freights again
The barren orchard with blossom, limns the tall standing grain,
The watchful glistening spears of enchanted lands.
The Dusk Folk by Robin Hyde
We are the oldest people, who have watched the world change.
Sun-glow and star pass by us, and these are no longer strange;
Nor is it strange when the moonrise, with delicate pointed hands,
Gathers our thoughts like blossoms, and binds them with crystal bands.
We are the folk of twilight. The ways of our going are clear
As the little lattice of fire traced on the frosty mere;
Silver the locks of our hair, but deep are our hidden eyes
As the black tarn in the crags, where a quivering water lies.
We are the wings of a dream that brushed you in sleep, and was gone,
The silver fruits of the isle you have hungered to look upon;
We are the thought of your heart, and the shadowy shrill
Ghost of challenge that rises from the throat of the daffodil.
Darkling, I Listen 