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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WINTER, by EDITH SITWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Dagobert lay in front of the fire Last Line: And ripens not in the heart or head! Subject(s): Winter | |||
DAGOBERT lay in front of the fire . . . Each thin flame seemed a feathery spire 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 kings and queens on the nursery wall Seem chain-armoured fish in the moat, and all The frost-flowers upon the window-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 and 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 you hear them scamper like mice In the wainscoting -- trembling, neat and nice. 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 shuffled cards like the tail of a bird Unfolding its shining plumes are heard. . . . The maid in her powder-closet soon Beneath the fire of 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 spices. But her ladyship stamps with her stick . . . "Grown cold Are my small feet, from my chilly gold -- Unwarmed by buds of the lamb's wool . . . go And gather for me the soft polar snow To line with that silver chilly-sweet The little slippers upon my feet -- With snow clear-petalled as lemon blossom -- Crystal-clear -- perfumed as Venus' bosom." * * * * * Can this be 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! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LOOKING EAST IN THE WINTER by JOHN HOLLANDER WINTER DISTANCES by FANNY HOWE WINTER FORECAST by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN AT WINTER'S EDGE by JUDY JORDAN CHAMBER MUSIC: 34 by JAMES JOYCE AN OLD WOMAN: 2. HARVEST by EDITH SITWELL |
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