Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WHITE MOTH by ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH

Poet Analysis

First Line: IF A LEAF RUSTLED, SHE WOULD START
Last Line: "THEN WROTE ""THAT I HAD DIED INSTEAD!"
Subject(s): MOTHS;
@3If a leaf rustled, she would start:
And yet she died, a year ago.
How had so frail a thing the heart
To journey where she trembled so?
And do they turn and turn in fright,
Those little feet, in so much night?@1

The light above the poet's head
Streamed on the page and on the cloth,
And twice and thrice there buffeted
On the black pane a white-winged moth:
'T was Annie's soul that beat outside
And "Open, open, open!" cried:

"I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned --
I was bewildered and I turned.

"O, it was easy then! I knew
Your window and no star beside.
Look up, and take me back to you!"
-- He rose and thrust the window wide.
'T was but because his brain was hot
With rhyming; for he heard her not.

But poets polishing a phrase
Show anger over trivial things;
And as she blundered in the blaze
Towards him, on ecstatic wings,
He raised a hand and smote her dead;
Then wrote "@3That I had died instead!"



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