The Veil, and Other Poems

Chapter 36: TIDINGS

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The collection assembles short lyric and narrative poems that blend pastoral observation, eerie wonder, and quiet melancholy. Many pieces evoke nighttime or liminal settings, where imagination and memory animate ordinary scenes into encounters with fairies, spectres, or uncanny beauty. Voices range from whimsical to mournful, moving through snapshots of nature, domestic objects, and human regret, while formal restraint and vivid sensory detail create dreamlike moods. Recurring concerns include the power of perception, the edge between waking and dreaming, and the consolation or peril found in remembrance and fancy.

TIDINGS

LISTEN, I who love thee well

Have travelled far, and secrets tell;

Cold the moon that gleams thine eyes,

Yet beneath her further skies

Rests for thee, a paradise.

I have plucked a flower in proof,
Frail, in earthly light forsooth:
See, invisible it lies
In this palm: now veil thine eyes:
Quaff its fragrancies.

Would indeed my throat had skill
To breathe thee music, faint and still—
Music learned in dreaming deep
In those lands, from Echo's lip ...
'Twould lull thy soul to sleep.