Chapter I: Who Cut Patterns

I who cut patterns,
As every soul must do,
Fret myself with longing
For themes that are new.

All these fashions
Were moulded years gone by,
And, like the mask of politics,
Are coloured with a lie.

Even the treasured love motif,
This thing of you and me,
It must so carefully be cut
To keep us bound, yet free.

And death, the sombre casket
Of centuries of song,
And war, and rivalries and creeds,
These we have used too long.

To-day I found a charming thing
Of silk and golden lace,
And yet, beneath the filigree,
What an old, wrinkled face!

Still, I believe in legends
Of laughter and delight,
And words all coloured with the sun
And perfumed by the night.

And I've a mind to leave the shops
And fashions old and new,
And cut my pattern from a wind,
And baste it up with dew.

I who cut patterns,
As every soul must do,
Fret myself with longing
For themes that are new.

POETESSES

You who loved all lovely things
And wrought in jewelled lines;
You have gone your gracious ways
That are patterned in dim stones
Of perfumed, faint-hued words;
You were a thing so feminine
That even of war you sang in tender notes,
But now another one has come,
Who is herself at war.
Her songs are keen and glittering,
For she has felt the magic fire
That you did long ago;
But now the fire has burned clean through
And forged a sword of steel.
Swinging swords are women's songs
That gleam as hard as diamonds do,
And mean to cut tradition.

And yet those jewelled lines!
Strangely the ancient magic works,
Strangely the same fire lurks
And burns imprisoned there
In your dim, opaled words,
That run like paths in heaven
Paved in mosaic of sweet stones,
And make a scented highway for our feet,
Who wield these swinging swords.

GOING NORTH

GOING NORTH