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The Veil, and Other Poems

Chapter 38: THE QUIET ENEMY
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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.

THE QUIET ENEMY

HEARKEN—NOW the hermit bee
Drones a quiet thren dy;
Greening on the stagnant pool
The criss-cross light slants silken-cool;
In the venomed yew tree wings
Preen and flit. The linnet sings.
Gradually the brave sun
Drops to a day's journey done;
In the marshy flats abide
Mists to muffle midnight-tide.
Puffed within the belfry tower
Hungry owls drowse out their hour....
Walk in beauty. Vaunt thy rose.
Flaunt thy transient loveliness.
Pace for pace with thee there goes
A shape that hath not come to bless.
I thine enemy?... Nay, nay.
I can only watch and wait
Patient treacherous time away,
Hold ajar the wicket gate.