Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WILLOW POOL, by JOHN FREEMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WILLOW POOL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Even the willows scarcely shook their leaves
Last Line: "—is there a curse upon the barren woman?"
Subject(s): Willow Trees


EVEN the willows scarcely shook their leaves,
Nor on the water did their shadow shake.
Nothing within the garden seemed awake
Except the flies and gleaming dragon-fly
Arrowing across the seldom-stirring pool.
Hardly the shadow more than sun seemed cool.

Down to the willows walked she silently
Between thin cypresses and fainting flowers—
A girl whose freshness fainted as with hours
Of inward heat. Passing, she pulled the leaf
That touched her, and with nervous fingers tore
A rose, shedding its leaves the garden o'er.

Her face with thought was clouded, or new grief;
The pain of childish years scarce left behind,
Another pain grew deeper in her mind.
And as a following footstep on her ear
Expected fell, she paused within the shade
By the first willow on the long grass laid.

So faced they at length each other. Moving near,
She put her young hand in the mother hand
That held it fast, but not at her command
Might her drooped eyelids lift since once they fell.
So hung they, girl and mother, foreign each
To other's thoughts. At last the girl found speech.

"Mother, since you have asked me again I'll tell.
There has been such a darkness on my mind
These many weeks, as could not be confined
To unseen thought. I felt it in my face,
I heard it in my voice. Week followed week—
I could not forget, and yet I could not speak.

"Till now I had thought the world a little place,
And innocent, within its needed fence:
I was a child of fondness and mere sense,
Fond because you were fond; and all I saw
Was but a garden for my thoughtless eyes,
Arch'd by a parish heaven of gentle skies.

"Neither this earth nor that heaven showed a flaw.
But one day passing by your room I heard
Your voice, my name; then as I paused, a word
Reached me, and I stood senseless, leaning there,
While you spoke quietly to someone, 'Still,
She doesn't need to know, and never will.

"'And God knows,' you went on, 'we are fond of Clare—
Never mother was more fond. She doesn't know:
She calls me mother still. Why should she know?
That was our plan—she should not know. Maybe
Knowledge might slowly work amid her thought,
Estranging her.' And as you moved, I caught

"Another phrase—another flash for me.
'The grandmother died not long ago—a year
Or little more. She used to come and peer
At the girl all unsuspected now and then,
And go away again, half satisfied,
Half sad, turning pathetically aside.

"'Poor soul!' you added. I could not move, and when
Sense came back to my body, I but faltered
Into my room and there lay strange and altered. ...
Forgive me, mother, if my tongue runs wild.
As I lay there, my heart slowly awaking
Pained me to tears; it seemed my heart was breaking.

"Who was I, if no more your very child?
Whose was I, if no more it was to you
That I might turn with 'Mother'? O, and who,
Who was my mother, buried in what earth?
And of my father wondered who and where;
And 'Mother,' 'Father' cried, but heard no 'Clare.'

"And I was yours in all, but not in birth.
It was this strangeness between child and mother
That pierced me as I lay; and then another,
A sharper hurt, plunged deeper in my breast. ...
How shall I say?—but I am a woman now:
Let your heart help mine as I question how."

She stood there, with her head in that unrest
Over the yellow seeding grasses drooped.
In like sad attitude the willows stooped
Under the painful sun. The other kept
Her eyes above the girl's head, gazing on
Leaves that o'er sullen waters dully shone.

And speech too drooped, but thoughts like spiders crept
On shaking webs between each bosom flung;
Half-worded questions died on the girl's tongue,
But with her every breath the web new quivered.
And with thought quickening so, what word is needed?
Could her dumb shaking form shake yet unheeded?

"Mother!" at last she sighed. The other shivered.
"This is the cloud that makes the day so dark
That even your faithful fondness gives no spark
To lighten. Why you were silent now I know;
Why your dear fondness shut me from the past
And kept my secret from me, shut so fast

"These eighteen thoughtless years, that I should grow
Within the shelter of your heart and name,
Nor ever feel, as now, the touch of shame—
An illegitimate child, as yours disguised.
—Your silence, dearer mother, answers me:
Dearer, but never so near again to be."

Stirred then the mother, out of her calm surprised,
Quicker the pulses drummed within each wrist,
And in her temples throbbed; new dulled with mist
Her eyes were; on her cheeks the channels fine
Deepened. All a changed woman now she stood,
Like a tree sighing in its solitude.

"My Clare!" came 'mid the sighs, "Still are you mine.
I am infinitely sad now you have found
Things that long since were thrust deep underground.
Let be now. Speak no more, ask me no more,
Clare—I entreat. Let this ghost slip away
Again, nor shake its chill on every day.

"Forget that you stood startled at the door
And heard what never for your ear was spoken. ...
How in that hearing is your spirit broken!
If words might help—they help not to forget.
Clare, Clare, leave questioning: I cannot bear it;
You have no pang in this except I share it."

Unsteady now her eyes, and the lids wet. ...
"Call me but mother still, be still my Clare."
Unsteady was her voice; and each stood there
Hearing the inward voice that's dulled by words.
Then the girl at her mother's cold hand clutched
And with her quickening palms each finger touched,

Looking across the willows toward the herds
That spotted rising pastures with dark hues.
Thirsty the pastures were for clouds and dews.
The heat, the stillness, and her airless thought
Lay heavy on the girl—long silent now,
Under the drooped leaves of the willow bough.

"Forget, you say. But mother, see, I am caught
In my own mind as in a thicket wood.
Nothing is plain, and save you nothing is good,
There's nothing simple or friendly. And I seem,
For all affection, not yours, not my own,
But something, ignorant, in darkness grown.

"Pity me, mother. Gone is that long dream.
Let me, so roughly awakened, now look through
The past, into cold day:—oh, tell me who
My mortal mother was, who gave me this—
Body and mind, this hunger now to know
What native currents in my spirit flow.

"—O, but unkind indeed my urging is.
It was for my sake that you hid away
From harsher tongues this secret. How shall I say
Such thanks as beats here like a new-caught bird?
No, no. Let me speak yet—let me speak on
What may be said not, once this moment gone.

"I know! Even through your silence I have heard. ...
Yet, mother, still I entreat, even tell me all.
I am sick for certainties. Now tell me all:
I will listen quietly—yes, all. And then
When you have told me all, this sharp hour over,
Myself from that dark all I may recover.

"Easier my heart's fond thanks will flood you then
For the vain tenderness long shed o'er me
That I with knowledge might not clouded be.
Speak, mother, now! "... Softer but clear her tone,
And steadily her head at last she lifted
Bold as a tree, mild yellow leaves wide-drifted.

Answered her mother then, 'twixt whisper and moan,
With fingers straying like those leaves slow falling
When the wind from his western cliffs is calling.
"Clare, it is you that must at last forgive,
And I that must forgiven be. Judge now
When you have heard, and seen my pride brought low.

"... Not till I married did I begin to live.
Youth had for me been desolate and bitter—
No need to tell. And nothing then was sweeter
Than to escape from the dark, sorry home.
My mother dead, my father harsher grew,
And each from each daily apart we drew.

"Motherless I to womanhood had come,
Nor scarcely knew my inner woman's thirst
Till marriage brought first happiness, and first
Desire for another life of my own life,
And many longings mingled in one wild
Passion to suckle my beloved's child.

"Then—then I learned that the all-hungry wife
Might never be the all-satisfied prone mother. ...
I tell you, Clare, what I have told no other.
Speak not till you have heard me, but judge then. ...
So the many longings mingled in despair,
And with despair a closer-creeping fear."

Her breath came quick and unevenly again:
Upon an unseen quaking bridge she hung
Between the far past and thorn'd present flung,
And every word broke echoes cavernous
That shook anew the pillars of her mind
And, falling, left low murmurings behind.

"I cannot tell you more, but it was thus.
Let be. ... Then, one too-sudden tempting day
I heard that a poor widow dying lay
With a few-weeks-old baby; and I went.
Upon your mother's death-bed, your birth-bed,
You slept. I scarce took in a word she said,

"Half envying and half pitifully bent,
Listening without hearing, till she pleaded
With such despair as could not speak unheeded.
' There's no one else for mother when I'm gone,'
She moaned; and I with envy still pierced through
Promised, for close against my knee slept you.

"We talked but little more: and you slept on
Even when I touched you with hand so athirst
To snatch you from that warmth—upcaught and nursed
Against my useless bosom. ... Then but a week
Ere she was dead—your grandmother and I
Alone, when she was buried, standing by.

"—Hush, Clare, no question yet; let me still speak!"
She paused again, then, "For you've yet to hear
One thing. The thing you fear you need not fear.
On you and on your mother fell no shame.
Her own lips told me how your father died
Soldiering in Africa, while at her side

"New-born you lay. ... Death then half welcome came,
She said, with you committed to the care
Of one pledged utterly for you, dear Clare.
Even my own daughter have you seemed to me,
And every pledge, save one, remains unbroken,
And that pledge never in plain words was spoken.

"Ill was it, Clare, to keep in secrecy
From your own ears the story of your birth.
I would have buried it with the scattered earth
Thrown into the grave. Honour was pledged to tell.
But, after, I grew jealous of any other,
And overdreamed I was in truth your mother,

"And you in truth my child. Time served too well.
Except your grandmother no one ever knew,
And she kept timid silence; and time drew
A cloud upon the past and the past died.
It was ill done, but so, Clare, was it done.
Now is it ended—and my grief begun."

FIRST now the wakening willows stirred and sighed
In the late afternoon's slow-changing air.
A wrinkling and unwrinkling everywhere
Upon the water's heavy bosom passed.
Silent the figures in the shade yet stood
Burning and freezing in opposèd mood.

No more the same voice spoke. The girl at last,
Shaking and flushing, cried, "Both dead and living
You have robbed, and in all giving undone your giving.
Dead father and dead mother you have robbed,
And me of spiritual inheritance,
Blinding my heart with alien circumstance."

She paused.... Which of them at her pausing sobbed?
Whose was that shaking and heart-breaking breath?
Then the girl spoke again:—"Could not her death,
Remembered long years after, make you kind?
For all I have lost—tell me, what have you gained?
Why would you speak not until chance constrained?

"Could God give you such power upon my mind?
You used such power upon the helpless dead.
It was cruel to rob her.... Why, to rob the dead,
Men shrink from that, and how could you not shrink?
O, and my father, not dishonoured dying,
Could he offend still, far, far, far off lying?

"O, it was treachery, treachery to sink
Their unshamed memory into the body's grave
That I might never yearn towards them nor lave
Their cold unjealous earth with love and tears.
Did you not think? Had you a heart to feel,
And yet could from both dead and living steal?

"And had you no misgivings and no fears
That what is now should be? What men are they
That blind a harmless linnet, so to stay
Beating within the wires and sing and sing?
Chance has renewed my sight and now I see,
Too clear, too cruel, what you have done to me."

Again she paused, drooped upon heavy wing,
For thought hung leaden on her burning breast;
And when once more she spoke, pain unsuppressed
Darkened her desperate eyes. "Forgive, you said.
Perhaps, long hence, or sick, I may forget,
Or forgive the unforgotten—but not yet."

She ended, and uplifted now her head
With anger such as swift youth may unsheathe
Couched firm, and flashing bare her brows beneath....
Furious is anger in youth's sleepless eye,
Consuming pity and understanding: so
Lives anger. But age stoops o'er ashes low.

HER footsteps rustled the grass. No word, no sigh
Rustled the hollow deepening between
Their silent-pulsing bosoms. Unseeing, unseen
She passed—O anger eating in her breast,
O lonely sorrow, lean and quick despair!
Heard she not then that dumb, entreating "Clare"?

"Clare!" called again that elder hand's unrest.
"Clare!" those unseeing orbs of tears full brimmed.
"Clare!" that bent head. But distance slowly dimmed
Or anger shut the echoes all away.
And now at last the lips called "Clare!" The sound
Gave breath to solitude that sighed all round,

And left a trembling on the fading day
Until again she spoke. "No look, no sign,
No whispered gentleness.... Yet are you mine, yes mine
Beyond any other's. O, whose part in you
Overweighs mine? Moves not my living thought
In yours? Are you not in my image wrought?

"These eighteen years, have they not shaped anew
Your mortal habit? Have I not in you breathed
My breath, and with your spirit my spirit wreathed?
Did not your childish hand at my hand snatch,
Draw me from desolate griefs? Did you not creep
Into my anguished arms and, pressed there, sleep?

"Was any dew of love you did not catch,
So lying at my heart? Whom robbed I then?
O, were it possible to do again
I would not shrink. Once more I'd hold you fast,
Once more I'd wrestle with the dead, once more
Seize you, and clasp you closer than before....

"Gone—and gone unforgiving? Gone—at last.
I feared unloved, unloving age; I feared
Coldness and loneliness. Always I heard
Long hollow echoes if a mother passed
Happy, and fain would be like others human.
—Is there a curse upon the barren woman?"





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