Lesbia Harford: Verses about Work

When I go up to work the young blue sea
Has not awaked from dreams:
It fades to meet the blue sky mistily:
It gleams.
I say,
'All day
It will not wake from dreams.'
And yet, when I come back from work, the sea
Has a green sombreness;
As if the hours between were somehow hours
Of stress.
I read
Its need
Of dim forgetfulness.

Each morning I pass on my way to work
A clock in a tower
And I look towards it with anxious eyes
To make sure of the hour.
But the sun gets up at the back of the tower
With a flare and a blaze
Hiding the time and the tower from my sight
In a blissful haze.
'I am the marker of time' says the sun.
Taken unawares,
I believe for the nonce he is lord of the day
And am rid of my cares.

Today is rebels' day. And yet we work—
All of us rebels, until day is done.
And when the stars come out we celebrate
A revolution that's not yet begun.
Today is rebels' day. And men in jail
Tread the old mill-round until day is done.
And when night falls they sit alone to brood
On revolution that's not yet begun.
Today is rebels' day. Let all of us
Take courage to fight on until we're done—
Fight though we may not live to see the hour
The Revolution's splendidly begun.

When I am so worn out I cannot sleep
And yet I know I have to work next day
Or lose my job, I sometimes have recourse
To one long dead, who listens when I pray.
I ask Saint Rose of Lima for the sleep
She went without, three hundred years ago
When, lying on thorns and heaps of broken sherd,
She talked with God and made a heaven so.
Then speedily that most compassionate Saint
Comes with her gift of deep oblivious hours,
Treasured for centuries in nocturnal space
And heavy with the scent of Lima's flowers.

I hate work so
That I have found a way
Of making one small task outlast the day.
I will not leave
The garden and the sun,
In spite of all the work that should be done.
So when I go
To really make my bed
I've made it ten times over in my head.
Then as for meals!
I think I'd rather be
A nervous wreck than make a cup of tea.
The fire's so low
It isn't any good—
While I sit planning to put on some wood.
One thing is sure,
I pity other drones,
God having made me such a lazy-bones.

A lady has a thousand ways
Of doing nothing all her days,
And so she thinks that they're well spent,
She can be idle and content.
But when I have a holiday
I have forgotten how to play.
I could rest idly under trees
When there's some sun or little breeze
Or if the wind should prove too strong
Could lie in bed the whole day long.
But any leisured girl would say
That that was waste of holiday.
Perhaps if I had weeks to spend
In doing nothing without end,
I might learn better how to shirk
And never want to go to work.

He's out of work!
I tell myself a change should mean a chance,
And he must look for changes to advance,
And he, of all men, really needs a jerk.
But I hate change.
I like my kitchen with its pans and pots
That shine like new although we've used them lots.
I wouldn't like a kitchen that was strange.
And it's not true
All changes are for better. Some are worse.
A man had rather work, though work's a curse,
Than mope at home with not a thing to do.
No surer thing
Than that he'll get another job. But soon!
Or else I'll have to change. This afternoon
Would be the time, before I sell my ring.

I must be dreaming through the days
And see the world with childish eyes
If I'd go singing all my life
And my songs be wise
And in the kitchen or the house
Must wonder at the sights I see.
And I must hear the throb and hum
That moves to song in factory.
So much in life remains unsung,
And so much more than love is sweet.
I'd like a song of kitchenmaids
With steady fingers and swift feet.
And I could sing about the rest
That breaks upon a woman's day
When dinner's over and she lies
Upon her bed to dream and pray
Until the children come from school
And all her evening work begins.
There's more in life than tragic love
And all the storied, splendid sins.

Each day I sit in an ill-lighted room
To teach a boy;
For one hour by the clock great words and dreams
Are our employ.
We read St Agnes' Eve and that more fair
Eve of St Mark
At a small table up against the wall
In the half-dark.
I tell him all the wise things I have read
Concerning Keats.
'His earlier work is overfull of sense
And sensual sweets.'
I tell him all that comes into my mind
From God-knows-where,
Remark, 'In English poets Bertha's type
Is jolly rare.
She's a real girl that strains her eyes to read
And cricks her neck.
Now Madeline could pray all night nor feel
Her body's check.
And Bertha reads, p'rhaps the first reading girl
In English rhyme.'
It's maddening work to say what Keats has said
A second time.
The boy sits sideways with averted head.
His brown cheek glows.
I like his black eyes and his sprawling limbs
And his short nose.
He, feeling, dreads the splendour of the verse,
But he must learn
To write about it neatly and to quote
These lines that burn.
He drapes his soul in my obscuring words,
Makes himself fit
To go into a sunny world and take
His part in it.
'Examiners' point of view, you know,' say I,
'Is commonsense.
You must sift poetry before you can
Sift Evidence.'

Standing on tiptoe, head back, eyes and arm
Upraised, Kate groped to reach the higher shelf.
Her sleeve slid up like darkness in alarm
At gleam of dawn. Impatient with herself
For lack of inches, careless of her charm,
She strained to grasp a volume; then she turned
Back to her chair, an unforgetful Eve
Still snatching at the fruit for which she yearned
In Eden. She read idly to relieve
The forehead where her daylong studies burned,
Tales of an uncrowned queen who fed her child
On poisons, till death lurked, in act to spring,
Between the girl's breasts; who with soft mouth smiled
With soft eyes tempted the usurping King
Then dealt him death in kisses. Kate had piled
Her books three deep before her and across
This barricade she watched an old man nod
Over a dirty paper, until loss
Of life seemed better than possession. Shod
With kisses death might skid like thistle floss
Down windy slides, might prove at heart as gay
As Cinderella in glass slippers.
Life goes awkwardly so sandalled. Had decay
Been the girl's gift in that Miltonic strife
She would have rivalled God, Kate thought. A ray
Of sunshine carrying gilded flecks of dust
And minutes bright with fancies, touched her hair
To powder it with gold and silver, just
As if being now admitted she should wear
The scholar's wig, colleague of those whose lust
For beauty hidden in an outworn tongue
Had made it possible for her to read
Tales that were fathered in Arabia, sung
By trouvères and forgotten with their creed
Of love and magic. Beams that strayed among
Kate's fingers lit a rosy lantern there
To glow in twilight. Suddenly afraid
She seemed to see her beauty in a flare
Of light from hell. A throng of devils swayed
Before her, devils that had learned to wear
The shape of scholar, poet, libertine.
They smiled, frowned, beckoned, swearing to estrange
Kate from reflection that her soul had been
Slain by her woman's body or would change
From contact with it to a thing unclean.
Woman was made to worship man, they preached,
Not God, to serve earth's purpose, not to roam
The heavens of thought . . . A factory whistle screeched,
Someone turned up the lights. On her way home
Kate wondered in what mode were angels breeched.