SpokenVerse | Exit (Easily to the Old....) by Wilson MacDonald (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded February 2012 | Updated October 2024, 31 minutes ago.
It is probable that you have never seen this poem before. I have never seen it anthologised, probably because it is so macabre. I have known it by heart since I was a teenager, and it made a great impression on me then.
Wilson MacDonald was once the most famous Canadian poet. Now he is not so well known.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_MacDonald
The paintings are "Malvine Dying In The Arms Of Fingal" and "Atala au Tombeau" and "Psyche Asleep" by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson
Easily to the old
Opens the hard ground:
But when youth grows cold,
And red lips have no sound,
Bitterly does the earth
Open to receive
And bitterly do the grasses
In the churchyard grieve.
Cold clay knows how to hold
An agèd hand;
But how to comfort youth
It does not understand.
Even the gravel rasps
In a dumb way
When youth comes homing
Before its day.
Elizabeth's hair was made
To warm a man's breast,
Her lips called like roses
To be caressed;
But grim the Jester
Who gave her hair to lie
On the coldest lover
Under the cold sky.
But Elizabeth never knew,
Nor will learn now,
How the long wrinkle comes
On the white brow;
Nor will she ever know,
In her robes of gloom,
How chill is a dead child
From a warm womb.
O clay, so tender
When a flower is born!
Press gently as she dreams
In her bed forlorn.
They who come early
Must weary of their rest--
Lie softly, then, as light
On her dear breast.
Unflowered is her floor,
Her roof is unstarred.
Is this then the ending--
Here, shuttered and barred?
Nay, not the ending;
She will awake
Or the heart of the earth
That enfolds her will break.
Easily to the old
Opens the hard ground:
But when youth grows cold,
And red lips have no sound,
Bitterly does the earth
Open to receive
And bitterly do the grasses
In the churchyard grieve.
It is probable that you have never seen this poem before. I have never seen it anthologised, probably because it is so macabre. I have known it by heart since I was a teenager, and it made a great impression on me then.
Wilson MacDonald was once the most famous Canadian poet. Now he is not so well known.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_MacDonald
The paintings are "Malvine Dying In The Arms Of Fingal" and "Atala au Tombeau" and "Psyche Asleep" by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson
Easily to the old
Opens the hard ground:
But when youth grows cold,
And red lips have no sound,
Bitterly does the earth
Open to receive
And bitterly do the grasses
In the churchyard grieve.
Cold clay knows how to hold
An agèd hand;
But how to comfort youth
It does not understand.
Even the gravel rasps
In a dumb way
When youth comes homing
Before its day.
Elizabeth's hair was made
To warm a man's breast,
Her lips called like roses
To be caressed;
But grim the Jester
Who gave her hair to lie
On the coldest lover
Under the cold sky.
But Elizabeth never knew,
Nor will learn now,
How the long wrinkle comes
On the white brow;
Nor will she ever know,
In her robes of gloom,
How chill is a dead child
From a warm womb.
O clay, so tender
When a flower is born!
Press gently as she dreams
In her bed forlorn.
They who come early
Must weary of their rest--
Lie softly, then, as light
On her dear breast.
Unflowered is her floor,
Her roof is unstarred.
Is this then the ending--
Here, shuttered and barred?
Nay, not the ending;
She will awake
Or the heart of the earth
That enfolds her will break.
Easily to the old
Opens the hard ground:
But when youth grows cold,
And red lips have no sound,
Bitterly does the earth
Open to receive
And bitterly do the grasses
In the churchyard grieve.
