WINTER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3773, 6 July 1926, Page 74

WINTER.

•Dagobert lay in front of the fire . . . Each thin flame seemed a feathery sp\re Of the grasses that like goslings quack On the Castle walls: "bring Gargotte back.’* . But Gargotte the goose-girl, bright as hail, Has faded into a fairy tale. The frost-flowers upon the windows-panes Grown fertilate from the fire’s gold grains Ripen to gold-freckled strawberries Raspberries, glassy-pale gooseberries (We never could touch them, early or late,--They would chill our hands like the touch of Fate). But Anne was five years old, she must know Reality; in the goose-soft snow She was made to walk with her three tall aunts ~ , . Drooping beneath the snow s cold plants . . # They dread the hour when with book and bell Their Mother, the old fell Countess of L Is disrobed of her wig and embalmed for the night's Sweet mummified dark; her invective affrights The maids till ycu hear them scamper like mice In *the wainscotting—trending, neat and Each clustered bouquet of the snows is Like stephanotis and white roses; The muted airs sing Palestrina In trees like monstrances, grown leaner Than she is; the unripe snow falls Like little tunes on the virginals Whose sound is bright, unripe and sour As small fruits fall’n before their hour . . . The Countess sits and plays fantan Beneath the portrait of great Queen Anne (Who sleeps beneath the strawberry 'bed) And all her maids have scampered, fled. The cards like the tails of a bird Unfolding its shining plumes are heard. The maid in her powder-closet, soon Beneath the fire o' the calm full moon Whose sparkles—rubies, sapphires, spill For her upon the window-sill Will nod her head—grown sleepy, I wis As Alaciel or Semiramis Pasiphae or the Lady Isis— Embalmed in the precious airs like spaces . But her ladyship stamps with her stick . . # “grown cold Are my small feet, from my chilly gold— Unwarmed by buds of the lambs’ wool . , . And gather for me the soft Polar snow To line with that silver chilly sweet The little slippers upon my feet, With enow clear-petalled as lemon-blossom Crystal-clear,—perfumed as Venus’ bosom.” Can this he Eternity?—snow peach-cold— Sleeping and rising and growing old While she lies embalmed in the fire's gold sheen Like a cross wasp in a ripe nectarine, And the golden seed of the fire droops dead And ripens not in the heart or head. —Edith Sitwell, in Rhythmus.