The House of the Trees & Other Poems

A. Ethelwyn Wetherald

Ethelwyn Wetherald

The House of the Trees & Other Poems

The House of the Trees

OPE your doors and take me in,

Spirit of the wood;

Wash me clean of dust and din,

Clothe me in your mood.

Take me from the noisy light

To the sunless peace,

Where at midday standeth Night,

Signing Toil’s release.

All your dusky twilight stores

To my senses give;

Take me in and lock the doors,

Show me how to live.

Lift your leafy roof for me,

Part your yielding walls,

Let me wander lingeringly

Through your scented halls.

Ope your doors and take me in,

Spirit of the wood;

Take me—make me next of kin

To your leafy brood.

The Sun on the Trees

THE sun within the leafy woods

Is like a midday moon,

So soft upon these solitudes

Is bent the face of noon.

Loosed from the outside summer blaze

A few gold arrows stray;

A vagrant brilliance droops or plays

Through all the dusky day.

The gray trunk feels a touch of light,

While, where dead leaves are deep,

A gleam of sunshine golden white

Lies like a soul asleep.

And just beyond dank-rooted ferns,

Where darkening hemlocks sigh

And leaves are dim, the bare road burns

Beneath a dazzling sky.

Moonlight

WHEN I see the ghost of night

Stealing through my window-pane,

Silken sleep and silver light

Struggle for my soul in vain;

Silken sleep all balmily

Breathes upon my lids oppressed,

Till I sudden start to see

Ghostly fingers on my breast.

White and skyey visitant,

Bringing beauty such as stings

All my inner soul to pant

After undiscovered things,

Spare me this consummate pain!

Silken weavings intercreep

Round my senses once again,

I am mortal—let me sleep.

Pine Needles

HERE where the pine tree to the ground

Lets slip its fragrant load,

My footsteps fall without a sound

Upon a velvet road.

O poet pine, that turns thy gaze

Alone unto the sky,

How softly on earth’s common ways

Thy sweet thoughts fall and lie!

So sweet, so deep, seared by the sun,

And smitten by the rain,

They pierce the heart of every one

With fragrance keen as pain.

Or if some pass nor heed their sweet,

Nor feel their subtle dart,

Their softness stills the noisy feet,

And stills the noisy heart.

O poet pine, thy needles high

In starry light abode,

And now for footsore passers-by

They make a velvet road.

The Sound of the Axe

WITH the sound of an axe on the light wind’s tracks

For my only company,

And a speck of sky like a human eye

Blue, bending over me,

I lie at rest on the low moss pressed,

Whose loose leaves downward drip;

As light they move as a word of love

Or a finger to the lip.

’Neath the canopies of the sunbright trees

Pierced by an Autumn ray,

To rich red flakes the old log breaks

In exquisite decay.

While in the pines where no sun shines

Perpetual morning lies.

What bed more sweet could stay her feet,

Or hold her dreaming eyes?

No sound is there in the middle air

But sudden wings that soar,

As a strange bird’s cry goes drifting by—

And then I hear once more

That sound of an axe till the great tree cracks,

Then a crash comes as if all

The winds that through its bright leaves blew

Were sorrowing in its fall.

The Prayer of the Year

LEAVE me Hope when I am old,

Strip my joys from me,

Let November to the cold

Bare each leafy tree;

Chill my lover, dull my friend,

Only, while I grope

To the dark the silent end,

Leave me Hope!

Blight my bloom when I am old,

Bid my sunlight cease;

If it need be from my hold

Take the hand of Peace.

Leave no springtime memory,

But upon the slope

Of the days that are to be,

Leave me Hope!

The Hay Field

WITH slender arms outstretching in the sun

The grass lies dead;

The wind walks tenderly, and stirs not one

Frail, fallen head.

Of baby creepings through the April day

Where streamlets wend,

Of childlike dancing on the breeze of May,

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