MANY VOICES

Contents:

The Return
For Dolly--Who does not Learn her Lessons
Questions
The Daisies
The Touchstone
The December Rose
The Fire
Song
A Parting
The Gift of Life
Incompatibilities
The Stolen God--Lazarus to Dives
Winter
Sea-shells
Hope
The Prodigal's Return
The Skylark
Saturday Song
The Champion
The Garden Refused
These Little Ones
The Despot
The Magic Ring
Philosophy
The Whirligig of Time
Magic
Windflowers
As it is
Before Winter
The Vault--after Sedgmoor
Surrender
Values
In the People's Park
Wedding Day
The Last Defeat
May Day
Gretna Green
The Eternal
The Point of View: I
The Point of View: II
Mary of Magdala
The Home-coming
Age to Youth
In Age
White Magic
From the Portuguese
The Nest
The Old Magic
Faith
The Death of Agnes
In Trouble
Gratitude
At the Last
Fear
The Day of Judgment
A Farewell
In Hospital
Prayer in Time of War
At Parting
Invocation
To Her: In Time of War
The Fields of Flanders
Spring in War-time
The Mother's Prayer
Inasmuch as ye did it not




POEM: THE RETURN



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 bats shrieked high in their zigzag flight,
The owls' spread wings were quiet and white,
The wind and the poplar gave sigh for sigh,
And all about were the rustling shy
Little live creatures that love the night -
Little wild creatures timid and free.
I passed, and they were not afraid of me.

It was over the meadow and down the lane
The way to come to my house again:
Through the wood where the lovers talk,
And the ghosts, they say, get leave to walk.
I wore the clothes that we all must wear,
And no one saw me walking there,
No one saw my pale feet pass
By my garden path to my garden grass.
My garden was hung with the veil of spring -
Plum-tree and pear-tree blossoming;
It lay in the moon's cold sheet of light
In garlands and silence, wondrous and white
As a dead bride decked for her burying.