Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Leaves of Life (1888). II. Among His BooksEdith (Nesbit) Bland (18581924)
A
Of loneliness;
A room with not enough of life or light
Its form to dress.
A goodly store—
Books on the window-seat, and on the chairs,
And on the floor.
All sorts of face—
Black-letter, vellum, and the flimsy page
Of commonplace.
One’s weary nerves,
To yellow parchment, binding rare old tracts
It serves—deserves.
Worthless and rare—
Books on the mantelpiece—where’er one looks
Books everywhere!
Not wholly vain.
Books in my hands—books in my heart enshrined—
Books in my brain.
They serve me too;
For these alone, of all dear things in life,
Have I found true.
Ah no—not they!
The same editions which one night you leave
You find next day.
Your Elzevirs!
Your Aldines don’t betray you—leave bereft
Your lonely years!
My heart prefers.
Because the names upon the fly-leaf there
Are mine and hers.
Forget-me-not—
The Marriage Service … well, my dear, you know
Who first forgot.
Sat—used to sing—
When I believed in God, in love, in you—
In everything.
Happy and good,
Clasp hands through sermon, and go slowly home
Down through the wood.
That porch still shows,
Whenever I hear kisses talked about
I smell that rose!
My choice unwise,
And taught me books should trusted be and loved,
Not lips and eyes!
How much I care
For the dear memory of what, you know,
You never were.