Covering Wings

Katherine Mansfield 1888 (Wellington) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, Île-de-France)




Love! Love! Your tenderness,
Your beautiful, watchful ways
Grasp me, fold me, cover me;
I lie in a kind of daze,
Neither asleep nor yet awake,
Neither a bud nor flower.
Brings to-morrow
Joy or sorrow,
The black or the golden hour?

Love! Love! You pity me so!
Chide me, scold me--cry,
"Submit--submit!  You must not fight!"
What may I do, then?  Die?
But, oh my horror of quiet beds!
How can I longer stay!
"One to be ready,
Two to be steady,
Three to be off and away!"

Darling heart--your gravity!
Your sorrowful, mournful gaze--
"Two bleached roads lie under the moon,
At the parting of the ways."
But the tiny, tree-thatched, narrow lane,
Isn't it yours and mine?
The blue-bells ring
Hey, ding-a-ding, ding!
And buds are thick on the vine.
Love! Love! Grief of my heart!
As a tree droops over a stream
You hush me, lull me, dark me,
The shadow hiding the gleam.
Your drooping and tragical boughs of grace
Are heavy as though with rain.
Run! Run!
Into the sun!
Let us be children again.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

55 sec read
68

Quick analysis:

Scheme XABAXCDDC DEXEXFBBF BAXAGHIIHXJBJXGKKX
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 960
Words 186
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 9, 9, 18

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. more…

All Katherine Mansfield poems | Katherine Mansfield Books

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