Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TROY PARK: 3. MADEMOISELLE RICHARDE, by EDITH SITWELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TROY PARK: 3. MADEMOISELLE RICHARDE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Beside the haunted lake where nereids seem
Last Line: And she has her own resting-place at last.


BESIDE the haunted lake where nereids seem
Court ladies in a dark deserted dream,
Who were perfected in their glacial chill
By Mademoiselle Richarde, I wandered still;
Among the enchanted waters that seem green
Deep mirrors, their cold beauty's shade is seen. . . .
A swan-like waterfall now dies
Singing its cold elegies.
An air sighs without memory and lost . . .
The leaves are cold and seeking like a ghost.

* * * * *

There are sad ghosts whose living was not life
But a small complaining, dying without strife,
A little reading by sad candlelight
Of some unowned, uncared-for book, a slight
Rustling then, a settling down to sleep.
And cold unutterable Darkness deep
Has soothed them and has smoothed their eyelids fast,
And they have their own resting-place at last
Who longed for this from hopeless distances . . .
Poor unloved creatures whose existences
Were spent upon the surface of another's
Life; the Darkness seems like their own mother's
Touch; they are so used to fireless life, so old
That they would scarcely know the grave is cold;
But life had so forgotten this poor dead
That death had left them still unburied.
He had no room for them in all his grace
Though they would only need a little place;
Age shrinks our hearts and makes our bodies wane
Until we seem a little child again --
But not the children that we used to be,
Blind to the heaven childish eyes can see.

* * * * *

Yet there are those who do not feel the cold;
And Mademoiselle Richarde was thus, -- both old
And sharp, content to be the cold wind's butt;
A tiny spider in a gilded nut,
She lived and rattled in the emptiness
Of other people's splendours; her rich dress
Had muffled her old loneliness of heart.
This was her life; to live another's part,
To come and go unheard, a ghost unseen
Among the courtly mirrors glacial green,
Placed just beyond her reach for fear that she
Forget her loneliness, her image see
Grown concrete, not a ghost by cold airs blown.
So each reflection blooms there but her own;
She sits at other people's tables, raises
Her hands at other people's joys and praises
Their cold amusements, drawing down the blinds
Over her face for other's griefs, -- the winds
Her sole friends now, grown grey and grim as she,
They have forgotten how to hear or see.
And her opinions are not her own,
But meaningless half words by cold airs blown
Through keyholes . . . words that were not meant for her.
"Madame la Duchesse said, 'The spring winds stir!'"
(Madame la Duchesse, old and gold japanned,
Whirled like a typhoon over the grey land
In her wide carriage, while a dead wind grieves
Among those seeking ghosts, the small grey leaves.)
So now, like Echo, she is soundless fleet
Save for the little talk she can repeat, --
Small whispers listened for at courtly doors.
She swims across the river-dark vast floors
To fires that seem like rococo gilt carving,
Nor ever knows her shrunken heart is starving,
Till, crumbling into dust, grown blind and dumb
With age, at last she hears her sole friend come,
Consoling Darkness smooths her eyelids fast
And she has her own resting-place at last.





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