Winter / Edith Nesbit

Hold your hands to the blaze;

Winter is here

With the short cold days,

Bleak, keen and drear.

Was there ever a day

With hawthorn along the way

Where you wandered in mild mid-May

With your dear?

Windflowers / Edith Nesbit

When I was little and good

I walked in the dappled wood

Where light white windflowers grew,

And hyacinths heavy and blue.

White Magic / Edith Nesbit

This is the room to which she came,

And Spring itself came with her;

She stirred the fire of life to flame,

She called all music hither.

Her glance upon the lean white walls

Hung them with cloth of splendour,

And still the rose she dropped recalls

The graces that attend her.

Where Do We Fly? / Edith Nesbit

Where do we fly, under deep dark sky?

Over the moors we go,

Over the pool where quiet and cool

Bulrush and sedges grow--

And what was the loveliest thing we met?

Ah--we forget!

What O'Clock? / Edith Nesbit

What o'clock is it, children dear?

Ask of the dandelions here!

Blow, blow, blow, and away they go--

But they do not tell us the time you know!

Wedding Day / Edith Nesbit

The enchanted hour,

The magic bower,

Where, crowned with roses,

Love love discloses.

Values / Edith Nesbit

Did you deceive me? Did I trust

A heart of fire to a heart of dust?

What matter? Since once the world was fair,

And you gave me the rose of the world to wear.

To Her: In Time Of War / Edith Nesbit

Once I made for you songs,

Rondels, triolets, sonnets;

Verse that my love deemed due,

Verse that your love found fair.

Now the wide wings of war

Hang, like a hawk's, over England,

Shadowing meadows and groves;

And the birds and the lovers are mute.

These Little Ones / Edith Nesbit

"What of the garden I gave?"

God said to me;

"Hast thou been diligent to foster and save

The life of flower and tree?

How have the roses thriven,

The lilies I have given,

The pretty scented miracles that Spring

And Summer come to bring?

The Whirligig of Time / Edith Nesbit

Before your feet,

My love, my sweet,

Behold! your slave bows down;

And in his hands

From other lands

Brings you another crown.

The Vault--After Sedgmoor / Edith Nesbit

You need not call at the Inn;

I have ordered my bed:

Fair linen sheets therein

And a tester of lead.

No musty fusty scents

Such as inn chambers keep,

But tapestried with content

And hung with sleep.

The Touchstone / Edith Nesbit

There was a garden, very strange and fair

With all the roses summer never brings.

The snowy blossom of immortal Springs

Lighted its boughs, and I, even I, was there.

There were new heavens, and the earth was new,

And still I told my heart the dream was true.

The Swans Along the Water Glide / Edith Nesbit

The swans along the water glide,

Unfettered and yet side by side--

So should true lovers ever be,

Together ever--ever free.

A chain upon the white swan's neck,

What were it good for--save to break?

And swans who wear and break a chain

Swim never side by side again.

The Stolen God / Edith Nesbit

LAZARUS TO DIVES

We do not clamour for vengeance,

We do not whine for fear;

We have cried in the outer darkness

Where was no man to hear.

We cried to man and he heard not;

Yet we thought God heard us pray;

But our God, who loved and was sorry -

Our God is taken away.

The Skylark / Edith Nesbit

". . . a dripping shower of notes from the softening blue. It is the skylark come."--Robert A Field, in the New Age.

"It is the skylark come." For shame!

Robert-a-Cockney is thy name:

Robert-a-Field would surely know

That skylarks, bless them, never go!

The Return / Edith Nesbit

The grass was gray with the moonlit dew,

The stones were white as I came through;

I came down the path by the thirteen yews,

Through the blocks of shade that the moonlight hews.

And when I came to the high lych-gate

I waited awhile where the corpses wait;

Then I came down the road where the moonlight lay

Like the fallen ghost of the light of day.

The Prodigal's Return / Edith Nesbit

I reach my hand to thee!

Stoop; take my hand in thine;

Lead me where I would be,

Father divine.

I do not even know

The way I want to go,

The way that leads to rest:

The Point of View / Edith Nesbit

I

There was never winter, summer only: roses,

Pink and white and red,

Shining down the warm rich garden closes;

Quiet trees and lawns of dappled shadow,

Silver lilies, whisper of mignonette,

Cloth-of-gold of buttercups outspread;

Good gold sun that kissed me when we met,

Shadows of floating clouds on sunny meadow.

The Old Magic / Edith Nesbit

Gray is the sea, and the skies are gray;

They are ghosts of our blue, bright yesterday;

And gray are the breasts of the gulls that scream

Like tortured souls in an evil dream.

The Nest / Edith Nesbit

That was the skylark we heard

Singing so high,

The little quivering bird

We saw, and the sky.

The earth was drenched with sun,

The sky was drenched with song;

We lay in the grass and listened,

Long and long and long.