THE TAILOR

Few footsteps stray when dusk droops o’er
The tailor’s old stone-lintelled door. 
There sits he stitching half asleep,
Beside his smoky tallow dip. 
“Click, click,” his needle hastes, and shrill
Cries back the cricket beneath the sill. 
Sometimes he stays, and over his thread
Leans sidelong his old tousled head;
Or stoops to peer with half-shut eye
When some strange footfall echoes by;
Till clearer gleams his candle’s spark
Into the dusty summer dark. 
Then from his crosslegs he gets down,
To find how dark the evening is grown;
And hunched-up in his door he will hear
The cricket whistling crisp and clear;
And so beneath the starry grey
Will mutter half a seam away.

MARTHA

“Once ... once upon a time ...” 
  Over and over again,
Martha would tell us her stories,
  In the hazel glen.

Hers were those clear grey eyes
  You watch, and the story seems
Told by their beautifulness
  Tranquil as dreams.

She would sit with her two slim hands
  Clasped round her bended knees;
While we on our elbows lolled,
  And stared at ease.

Her voice and her narrow chin,
  Her grave small lovely head,
Seemed half the meaning
  Of the words she said.

“Once ... once upon a time ...” 
  Like a dream you dream in the night,
Fairies and gnomes stole out
  In the leaf-green light.

And her beauty far away
  Would fade, as her voice ran on,
Till hazel and summer sun
  And all were gone: 

All fordone and forgot;
  And like clouds in the height of the sky,
Our hearts stood still in the hush
  Of an age gone by.

THE SLEEPER

As Ann came in one summer’s day,
  She felt that she must creep,
So silent was the clear cool house,
  It seemed a house of sleep. 
And sure, when she pushed open the door,
  Rapt in the stillness there,
Her mother sat, with stooping head,
  Asleep upon a chair;
Fast—­fast asleep; her two hands laid
  Loose-folded on her knee,
So that her small unconscious face
  Looked half unreal to be: 
So calmly lit with sleep’s pale light
  Each feature was; so fair
Her forehead—­every trouble was
  Smoothed out beneath her hair. 
But though her mind in dream now moved,
  Still seemed her gaze to rest—­
From out beneath her fast-sealed lids,
  Above her moving breast—­
On Ann; as quite, quite still she stood;
  Yet slumber lay so deep
Even her hands upon her lap
  Seemed saturate with sleep. 
And as Ann peeped, a cloudlike dread
  Stole over her, and then,
On stealthy, mouselike feet she trod,
  And tiptoed out again.

THE KEYS OF MORNING