Teresa Hooley

To-night out in the darkness
The wind is loud and high-
I saw a star go falling
Along the wintry sky.
...

Gleam on gleam in the veilèd dawn
The feet of the Gods are but half withdrawn;
The Colour fringes their garments' hem,
And the stones of the desert remember them.
...

We woke and watched the stars all jewel-bright.
Sudden I heard, as I lay lover-warm
In the encircling hollow of your arm,
The old sad wind of Egypt in the night-
...

Bareheaded to winds of summer,
Through the sun-flecked wood you ran,
And sudden a veil was lifted-
I saw you other than man,
...

To-day I saw a butterfly,
The first-born of the Spring,
Sunning itself upon a bank-
A lovely, tawny thing.
...

I have known moors and mountains,
And many a wind-swept height,
But the little hills of Charnwood
Are precious in my sight.
...

Airily poised in the garden bed,
Delicate saffron, white and rose,
With gossamer petals lightly spread
The columbines flutter upon their toes.
...

All day long blew the daffodils,
Oh, what a sight to see,
A myriad gold-gowned daffodils,
Moved to a rhythmic glee.
...

They came with gushing platitudes
To 'study Nature' in my woods,
That they might, to their greater glory,
Mouth her in sonnet and in story.
...

Men cut down the trees here,
Years ago.
Now it is all Beauty:
Brambles blow,
...

The shadow of a flying bird
Dark on a dew-white lawn,
And all the heart of me is stirred
By beauty old as dawn.
...

'Oh, who is this that seeks at night
The ways of green Gethsemane?
Oh, who is this that prays at night,
Face to the ground, in agony?-
...

I love the nurseries,
Where, all arow,
The trees stand up and grow-
The little trees:
...

Softly through the little wood
Came the Queen of Heaven;
Paused, and stood.
Bluebells deep as mists of even,
...

Mary Mother leaned from heaven,
Gazed upon my little wood,
Where the trees stood up to praise her
In the winter solitude.
...

Down blossoming ways, upon the happy star
Where all young things of all Creation are-
Small winds and rainbows and the thoughts of flowers,
The unborn children laughed away the hours.
...

In that fair land where dead and unborn meet,
Beyond the shadowy bars of time and space,
With asphodel and poppies at his feet
Pan lay asleep in a forgotten place.
...

The mist lay on the river as I roamed the water's edge,
And a little wind of twilight murmured ghostly in the sedge-
A wayward wind of evening shook the reeds to melody,
And a voice came echoing softly down the long dead years to me.
...

'Fierce fighting in a wood'- so read
The city placards. Suddenly,
From out dim æons of the dead
There flashed a memory.
...

It rains to-day.
You always loved the rain-
Glitter of dripping hedge-twigs in the lane,
Wet scents, and skies all grey.
...