Katherine Mansfield
(1888-1923)
A Little Girl's Prayer
Loneliness
Night-Scented Stock
Now I am a Plant, a Weed...
In the Rangitaki Valley
Sanary
Sea
Sea Song
Out in the Garden
Out in the garden,Out in the windy, swinging dark,
Under the trees and over the flower-beds,
Over the grass and under the hedge border,
Someone is sweeping, sweeping,
Some old gardener.
Out in the windy, swinging dark,
Someone is secretly putting in order,
Someone is creeping, creeping.
A Little Girl's Prayer
Grant me the moment, the lovely momentThat I may lean forth to see
The other buds, the other blooms,
The other leaves on the tree:
That I may take into my bosom
The breeze that is like his brother,
But stiller, lighter, whose faint laughter
Exhoes the joy of the other.
Above on the blue and white cloud-spaces
There are small clouds at play.
I watch their remote, mysterious play-time
In the other far-away.
Grant I may hear the small birds singing
the song that the silence knows...
(The Light and the Shadow whisper together,
The lovely moment grows,
Ripples into the air like water
Away and away without sound,
And the little girl gets up from her praying
On the cold ground)
Loneliness
Now it is Loneliness who comes at nightInstead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed.
Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread,
I watch her softly blowing out the light.
Motionless sitting, neither left or right
She turns, and weary, weary droops her head.
She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight.
So, with the laurel she is garlanded.
Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tide
Breaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied.
A strange wind flows... then silence. I am fain
To turn to Loneliness, to take her hand,
Cling to her, waiting, till the barren land
Fills with the dreadful monotone of rain
Night-Scented Stock
White, white in the milky nightThe moon danced over a tree.
"Wouldn't it be lovely to swim in the lake!"
Someone whispered to me.
"Oh, do-do-do!" cooed someone else,
And clasped her hands to her chin.
"I should so love to see the white bodies--
All the white bodies jump in!"
The big dark house hid secretly
Behind the magnolia and the spreading pear-tree;
But there was a sound of music--music rippled and ran
Like a lady laughing behind her fan,
Laughing and mocking and running away...
"Come into the garden--it's as light as day!"
"I can't dance to that Hungarian stuff,
The rhythm in it is not passionate enough,"
Said somebody. "I absolutely refuse...."
But he took off his socks and his shoes
And round he spun. "It's like Hungarian fruit dishes
Hard and bright--a mechanical blue!"
His white feet flicked in the grass like fishes...
Someone cried: "I want to dance, too!"
But one with a queer Russian ballet head
Curled up on a blue wooden bench instead.
And another, shadowy--shadowy and tall--
Walked in the shadow of the dark house wall,
Someone beside her. It shone in the gloom,
His round grey hat, like a wet mushroom.
"Don't you think perhaps..." piped someone's flute.
"How sweet the flowers smell!" I heard the other say.
Somebody picked a wet, wet pink,
Smelled it and threw it away.
"Is the moon a virgin or is she a harlot?"
Asked somebody. Nobody would tell.
The faces and the hands moved in a pattern
As the music rose and fell,
In a dancing, mysterious, moon-bright pattern
Like flowers nodding under the sea...
The music stopped and there was nothing left of them
But the moon dancing over the tree.
Now I am a Plant, a Weed...
Now I am a plant, a weed,Bending and swinging
On a rocky ledge;
And now I am a long brown grass
Fluttering like flame;
I am a reed;
An old shell singing
For ever the same;
A drift of sedge;
A white, white stone;
A bone;
Until I pass
Into sand again,
And spin and blow
To and fro, to and fro,
On the edge of the sea
In the fading light--
For the light fades.
But if you were to come you would not say:
"She is not waiting here for me;
She has forgotten." Have we not in play
Disguised ourselves as weed and stones and grass
While the strange ships did pass
Gently, gravely, leaving a curl of foam
That uncurled softly about our island home,
Bubbles of foam that glittered on the stone
Like rainbows? Look, darling! No, they are gone.
And the white sails have melted into the sailing sky...
In the Rangitaki Valley
O valley of waving broom,O lovely, lovely light,
O hear of the world, red-gold!
Breast high in the blossom I stand;
It beats about me like waves
Of a magical, golden sea
The barren heart of the world
Alive at the kiss of the sun,
The yellow mantle of Summer
Flung over a laughing land,
Warm with the warmth of her body
Sweet with the kiss of her breath
O valley of waving broom,
O lovely, lovely light,
O mystical marriage of Earth
With the passionate Summer sun!
To her lover she holds a cup
And the yellow wine o'erflows.
He has lighted a little torch
And the whole of the world is ablaze.
Prodigal wealth of love!
Breast high in the blossom I stand.
Sanary
Her little hot room looked over the bayThrough a stiff palisade of glinting palms,
And there she would lie in the heat of the day,
Her dark head resting upon her arms,
So quiet, so still, she did not seem
To think, to feel, or even to dream.
The shimmering, blinding web of sea
Hung from the sky, and the spider sun
With busy frightening cruelty
Crawled over the sky and spun and spun.
She could see it still when she shut her eyes,
And the little boats caught in the web like flies.
Down below at this idle hour
Nobody walked in the dust street;
A scent of a dying mimosa flower
Lay on the air, but sweet--too sweet.
Sea
The Sea called--I lay on the rocks and said:"I am come."
She mocked and showed her teeth,
Stretching out her long green arms.
"Go away!" she thundered.
"Then tell me what I am to do," I begged.
"If I leave you, you will not be silent,
But cry my name in the cities
And wistfully entreat me in the plains and forests;
All else I forsake to come to you--what must I do?"
"Never have I uttered your name," snarled the Sea.
"There is no more of me in your body
Than the little salt tears you are frightened of shedding.
What can you know of my love on your brown rock
pillow....
Come closer."
Sea Song
I will think no more of the sea!Of the big green waves
And the hollowed shore,
Of the brown rock caves
No more, no more
Of the swell and the weed
And the bubbling foam.
Memory dwells in my far away home,
She has nothing to do with me.
She is old and bent
With a pack
On her back.
Her tears all spent,
Her voice, just a crack.
With an old thorn stick
She hobbles along,
And a crazy song
Now slow, now quick,
Wheeks in her throat.
And every day
While there's light on the shore
She searches for something;
Her withered claw
Tumbles the seaweed;
She pokes in each shell
Groping and mumbling
Until the night
Deepens and darkens,
And covers her quite,
And bids her be silent,
And bids her be still.
The ghostly feet
Of the whispery waves
Tiptoe beside her.
They follow, follow
To the rocky caves
In the white beach hollow...
She hugs her hands,
She sobs, she shrills,
And the echoes shriek
In the rocky hills.
She moans: "It is lost!
Let it be! Let it be!
I am old. I'm too cold.
I am frightened... the sea
Is too loud... it is lost,
It is gone..." Memory
Wails in my far away home.