Aletterfromagirl meynell ezwa
A letter from a girl to her own old age by Alice Manot. Read for LibriVox.org by Iswa in Belgium in July 2009. Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses, O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses what thy thin fingers touch with her caresses. O mother, for the wait of years that break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee, And from the changes of my heart must make thee. O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven! Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven? And are they calm about the fall of even? Pause near the ending of thy long migration, For this once at an hour of desolation Appeals
to one hour of thy meditation. Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee, Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee. Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander Is but a grey and silent world, But ponder the misty mountains of the morning yonder.
Listen, the mountain winds with rain were fretting, And sudden gleams the mountaintops be setting. I cannot let thee fade to death forgetting. What part of this wild heart of mine I know not Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not, And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not? Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it Tell what the way was when thou didst begin
it And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it. I have not read this letter of divining To make a glory of thy silent pining, A triumph of thy mute and strange declining. Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded, Only one morning, and the day was clouded, And one old age with all regrets is crowded.
O hush, O hush, thy tears my words are steeping, O hush, hush, hush, so full the fount of weeping. Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping, Pardon the girl, such strange desires beset her. Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter that breaks thy heart, The one who wrote, forget her, The one who now thy faded features gases, With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses, With mourning tears thy mournful twilight blesses.
End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.
