Low on her little stool she sits
To make a nursing lap,
And cares for nothing but the form
Her little arms enwrap.
With hairless skull that gapes apart,
A broken plaster ball,
One chipped glass eye that squints askew,
And ne’er a nose at all-
No raddle left on grimy cheek,
No mouth that one can see-
It scarce discloses, at a glance,
What it was meant to be.
But something in the simple scheme
As it extends below
(It is the “tidy” from my chair
That she is rumpling so)-
A certain folding of the stuff
That winds the thing about
(But still permits the sawdust gore
To trickle down and out)-
The way it curves around her waist,
On little knees outspread-
Implies a body frail and dear,
Whence one infers a head.
She rocks the scarecrow to and fro,
With croonings soft and deep,
A lullaby designed to hush
The bunch of rags to sleep.
I ask what rubbish has she there.
“My dolly,” she replies,
But tone and smile and gesture say,
“My angel from the skies.”
Ineffable the look of love
Cast on the hideous blur
That somehow means a precious face,
Most beautiful, to her.
The deftness and the tenderness
Of her caressing hands . . . . . .
How can she possibly divine
For what the creature stands?
Herself a nurseling, that has seen
The summers and the snows
Of scarce five years of baby life.
And yet she knows-she knows.
Just as a puppy of the pack
Knows unheard huntsman’s call,
And knows it is a running hound
Before it learns to crawl.
Just as she knew, when hardly born,
The breast unseen before,
And knew-how well!-before they touched,
What milk and mouth were for.
So, by some mystic extra-sense
Denied to eyes and ears,
Her spirit communes with its own
Beyond the veil of years.
She hears unechoing footsteps run
On floors she never trod,
Sees lineaments invisible
As is the face of God-
Forms she can recognise and greet,
Though wholly hid from me.
Alas! a treasure that is not,
And that may never be.
The majesty of motherhood
Sits on her baby brow;
Before her little three-legged throne
My grizzled head must bow.
That dingy bundle in her arms
Symbols immortal things-
A heritage, by right divine,
Beyond the claims of kings.
A few random poems:
- Aliens poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Robert Burns: On The Late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations Thro’ Scotland: Collecting The Antiquities Of That Kingdom
- The Snowy Spring Is Raging Mad poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Ольга Берггольц – Как на озёрном хуторе
- A Farewell poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- The Beekeeper’s Daughter by Sylvia Plath
- To John Keats poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Are You Content? by William Butler Yeats
- Demon And Beast by William Butler Yeats
- Oonts by Rudyard Kipling
- Новелла Матвеева – Я, говорит, не воин
- Beauty by Tony Hoagland
- Grass is a taut crew; poem – Amy Michelle Mosier poems | Poems and Poetry
- Thompson’s Lunch Room – Grand Central Station poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Epitaph for William Nicol, High School, Edinburgh by Robert Burns
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Apologetic Postscript Of A Year Later by Robert Louis Stevenson
- An English Breeze by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Air Of Diabelli’s by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Se Ipsum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Quintilianum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Piscatorem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Olum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Nepotem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Martialem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Magistrum Ludi by Robert Louis Stevenson
- About The Sheltered Garden Ground by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Valentine’s Song by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Good Play by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Good Boy by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Upon Her Eyes by Robert Herrick
- The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home by Robert Herrick
- To Youth by Robert Herrick
- SOFT MUSIC by Robert Herrick
- The Bride-Cake by Robert Herrick
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Ada Cambridge (1844 – 1926), also known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian author and poetess. She wrote more than 25 works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.