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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Mary Carolyn Davies

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Portrait of a House

Mary Carolyn Davies

FAR from a town

I know a house that’s a girl’s dream come true.

And there is one room done in blue,

In queer still blues, with shades drawn down.

In a room near

Are candles, thick as a man’s arm,

Of yellow wax, and then a warm

Great golden bowl of burning bloom;

And past, there is a little room

For tea, and being glad and proud

One is alive. There is a crowd

Of tall flowers shaken as with fear

Outside a door. And walking by

Three great windows filled with sky,

We came to a Chinese room

Where a Buddha sits in gloom.

He is as still as witchery

But in his eyes weird things I see,

Like the waiting to be wild

In the eyes of a young child.

Past this room are wonders still—

Altar vestures from Brazil,

Blue and silver ones and red;

She loves old rich things. She said,

“Cream or lemon in your tea?”

In a strange laughing voice. She has

Dusk eyes, I think, or maybe blue,

And a heart for telling secrets to.

A bear-skin out of Russia yawns

On her wide hall. There have been dawns

A-many on her waiting lawns.

The rocky cliffside, glacier-scarred,

And mountain trails are in her yard.

The widest river of the west

Goes past her door. There is a jest

In all she does, and a greatness too.

And little gardens hidden where

Her guests find them unaware.

Gravely in the court beyond

Her gardeners have made a pond

Where waterlilies were, and where

They are gone now, except two rare

And perfect ones, like trembling young

Shy things; and deep and red among

The lily roots the goldfish go

In a discontented row,

Breaking and wheeling. A white wall

Bears bowls of trailing vines. There fall

Out of the air great seagulls. High

Cliffs and rough crags break up the sky,

Across the river; and beyond

The level lawn, the level pond,

The mountain rises menacing;

And a great waterfall comes down

Like a sullen tiger’s spring.

I have watched her calm eyes cling

To the waterfall—while slow

And sweet she spoke, in her still way,

Of books and men that we two know.

Prisoner in her house she dwells,

As do we all. Our rooms are cells.

Loveliness is only bars

To shut out faces from the stars.