Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BUCOLIC COMEDY: THREE POOR WITCHES, by EDITH SITWELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BUCOLIC COMEDY: THREE POOR WITCHES, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Whirring, walking / on the tree-top
Last Line: Where quilted dark with tree shade joins.


WHIRRING, walking
On the tree-top,
Three poor witches
Mow and mop.
Three poor witches
Fly on switches
Of a broom,
From their cottage room.
Like goat's beard rivers,
Black and lean,
Are Moll and Meg,
And Myrrhaline.
"Of those whirring witches, Meg"
(Bird-voiced fire screams)
"Has one leg;
Moll has two, on tree-tops see,
Goat-foot Myrrhaline has three!"
When she walks
Turned to a wreath
Is every hedge;
She walks beneath
Flowered trees like water
Splashing down;
Her rich and dark silk
Plumcake gown
Has folds so stiff
It stands alone
Within the fields
When she is gone.
And when she walks
Upon the ground
You'd never know
How she can bound
Upon the tree-tops, for she creeps
With a snail's slow silver pace;
Her milky silky wrinkled face
Shows no sign of her disgrace.
But walking on each
Leafy tree-top, --
Those old witches,
See them hop!
Across the blue-leaved
Mulberry tree
Of the rustling
Bunched sea,
To China, thick trees whence there floats
From wrens' and finches' feathered throats
Songs. The North Pole is a tree
With thickest chestnut flowers. . . . We see
Them whizz and turn
Through Lisbon, churn
The butter-pats to coins gold,
Sheep's milk to muslin, thin and cold.
Then one on one leg,
One on two,
One on three legs
Home they flew
To their cottage; there one sees
And hears no sound but wind in trees;
One candle spills out thick gold coins
Where quilted dark with tree shade joins.





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