Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HER HOUSE, by FRANK ERNEST HILL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HER HOUSE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: She looks below on paved earth - hears the stir
Last Line: It will be long before her house is done.
Subject(s): Houses


She looks below on paved earth -- hears the stir
Such earth was made for, she looks back and faces
These rooms of measured light and spaces
They built and gave to her.
The sunlight stays but briefly on their floors,
And through the windows or the doors
No shade of moving branches falls
In lovely wildness on the walls.

This house was never hers. This house is dust
Strewn upon loveliness. Her house must be
Careless in beauty as a hill or tree,
Lighted and spaced and colored to its trust.

Build her a room that welcomes sky,
Blown petals, swift things going by
That pair their grace with hers; hang curtains there
That love, like butterflies, the air;
Make the walls smooth, but pearled to take
Like flesh all lights that form and break;
Lay pale green floors like still sea over sand,
To match an amber strand
Of hair, or eyes brown-gold.

Build her a place of silences to hold
Her images and questionings.
Make the walls white and give them wings
And curve them to the ceiling. Let the light
Fall golden there by day or blue by night
Through high-arched windows at one end.
Faint on the floor in diamond patterns blend
Marble and moonstone. Let all drapery
Be clear wine-yellow. Set one chair,
Black as a night, star-slender there,
With gleam of agate and of ebony.
And build for her a room that shall display
Symbolized, the gladness she has lent --
The quick bewilderment
At brightness in a world gone gray.
Bring pictures there that catch the glow she wears
(As the moon wears the sunlight), sculptured forms
Living with light like hers that warms
And kindles others, thus becoming theirs.

Build her a room for love -- roofless to noon,
Stars, and the sword-edged moon;
With bright, wild grass about a pool
That lies on henna-colored stone.
Raise walls of yellow marble overgrown
With purple-blossomed vines, and cool
Their passion with white roses. Lay
Thin paths of sea sand. Bring for music there
The dusk of bay trees fingered by slow air
And bird notes high and brief on the blue day.

Broad lies her house on cloud and purple hill,
Pale-bright, and near, and still,
As waiting for a hand to draw its form
Downward to earth, with earth made warm
The glamor of its pulseless dream. But we
Have built instead these boxes of burnt clay,
Prisons to lock all loveliness away
In gray monotony.
We who are masters now of sea, air, earth, --
We speak our longing and it comes to birth;
Our wheels run smooth to do their work of power;
We change their pathways in an hour.
Yet though we talk with stars, and skim great lands
Like light, and hills are wax beneath our hands
We shall build prisons still for loveliness;
It does not die -- we treasure it the less.
We take all beauty as we take the sun . . . .
It will be long before her house is done.





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