Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Leaves of Life (1888). II. Among His Books

Edith (Nesbit) Bland (1858–1924)

A SILENT room—gray with a dusty blight

Of loneliness;

A room with not enough of life or light

Its form to dress.

Books enough though! The groaning sofa bears

A goodly store—

Books on the window-seat, and on the chairs,

And on the floor.

Books of all sorts of soul, all sorts of age,

All sorts of face—

Black-letter, vellum, and the flimsy page

Of commonplace.

All bindings, from the cloth whose hue distracts

One’s weary nerves,

To yellow parchment, binding rare old tracts

It serves—deserves.

Books on the shelves, and in the cupboard books,

Worthless and rare—

Books on the mantelpiece—where’er one looks

Books everywhere!

Books! books! the only things in life I find

Not wholly vain.

Books in my hands—books in my heart enshrined—

Books in my brain.

My friends are they: for children and for wife

They serve me too;

For these alone, of all dear things in life,

Have I found true.

They do not flatter, change, deny, deceive—

Ah no—not they!

The same editions which one night you leave

You find next day.

You don’t find railway novels where you left

Your Elzevirs!

Your Aldines don’t betray you—leave bereft

Your lonely years!

And yet this common book of Common Prayer

My heart prefers.

Because the names upon the fly-leaf there

Are mine and hers.

It’s a dead flower that makes it open so—

Forget-me-not—

The Marriage Service … well, my dear, you know

Who first forgot.

Those were the days when in the choir we two

Sat—used to sing—

When I believed in God, in love, in you—

In everything.

Through quiet lanes to church we used to come,

Happy and good,

Clasp hands through sermon, and go slowly home

Down through the wood.

Kisses? A certain yellow rose no doubt

That porch still shows,

Whenever I hear kisses talked about

I smell that rose!

No—I don’t blame you—since you only proved

My choice unwise,

And taught me books should trusted be and loved,

Not lips and eyes!

And so I keep your book—your flower—to show

How much I care

For the dear memory of what, you know,

You never were.