#Charlotte Mew

[mournfulroses]

Charlotte Mew, from The Selected Poems of Charlotte Mew; "The Changeling,"

[apoemaday]

I So Liked Spring

by Charlotte Mew

I so liked spring last year Because you were here;– The thrushes, too– Because it was these you so liked to hear– I so liked you.

This year’s a different thing,– I’ll not think of you. But I’ll like spring because it is simply spring As the thrushes do.

[starrynightsxo]

okay but HOW was Holly Black able to make a poem from Charlotte Mew, a poet from the 19th and 20th Century, work SO INCREDIBLY well in a story of faerie fiction???

[sorry-im-such-a-bad-person]

Rooms, Charlotte Mew // Believers Never Die, Fall Out Boy // No Children, The Mountain Goats // Numb, Moral Orel 3x02 // Twin Skeletons (Hotel In NYC), Fall Out Boy // That's Too Much, Man!, BoJack Horseman 3x11

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"I so liked Spring last year / Because you were here; —"

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

[cobwebs-in-sues-closet]

the pebbles pushing in the silver streams,/the rushes talking in their dreams,

[poemoftheday]

Poem of the Day 12 May 2024

The Farmer’s Bride

BY CHARLOTTE MEW

     Three summers since I chose a maid,

     Too young maybe—but more’s to do

     At harvest-time than bide and woo.

              When us was wed she turned afraid

     Of love and me and all things human;

     Like the shut of a winter’s day

     Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman—

            More like a little frightened fay.

                    One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

     “Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said,

     ’Should properly have been abed;

     But sure enough she wadn’t there

     Lying awake with her wide brown stare.

So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down

     We chased her, flying like a hare

     Before our lanterns. To Church-Town

              All in a shiver and a scare

     We caught her, fetched her home at last

              And turned the key upon her, fast.

     She does the work about the house

     As well as most, but like a mouse:

              Happy enough to chat and play

              With birds and rabbits and such as they,

              So long as men-folk keep away.

     “Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech

     When one of us comes within reach.

              The women say that beasts in stall

              Look round like children at her call.

              I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.

     Shy as a leveret, swift as he,

     Straight and slight as a young larch tree,

     Sweet as the first wild violets, she,

     To her wild self. But what to me?

     The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,

              The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,

     One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,

              A magpie’s spotted feathers lie

     On the black earth spread white with rime,

     The berries redden up to Christmas-time.

              What’s Christmas-time without there be

              Some other in the house than we!

              She sleeps up in the attic there

              Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair

     Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,

     The soft young down of her, the brown,

The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!

[oflights]

Not for That City

Not for that city of the level sun, Its golden streets and glittering gates ablaze— The shadeless, sleepless city of white days, White nights, or nights and days that are as one— We weary, when all is said , all thought, all done. We strain our eyes beyond this dusk to see What, from the threshold of eternity We shall step into. No, I think we shun The splendour of that everlasting glare, The clamour of that never-ending song. And if for anything we greatly long, It is for some remote and quiet stair Which winds to silence and a space for sleep Too sound for waking and for dreams too deep.

Charlotte Mew

[tail-feathers]

The Poetry of Charlotte Mew

"Born into a family racked by childhood death, insolvency and mental illness, she compensated for the instability by sticking, metrically, to a measured poetic tranquillity that some today might call severe." --Clive James

"Charlotte Mew should be much better known than she is. She had some significant literary champions in her own time, but financial and family troubles continued to dog her, and she was eventually committed to an institution, where she killed herself." - Clive James

[mournfulroses]

Charlotte Mew, from The Selected Poems of Charlotte Mew; "On The Road to the Sea,"

[ardent-reflections]

She had come to be a thing of spirit only, she wasn't altogether real, she didn't altogether live, she was committed to the darkness, she was already in the world of shades,

Charlotte Mew

[wellconstructedsentences]

One evening, too, by the nursery fire,

We snuggled close and sat round so still,

When suddenly as the wind blew higher,

Something scratched on the window-sill.

A pinched brown face peered in--I shivered;

No one listened or seemed to see;

The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered

Whoo--I knew it had come for me!

Some are as bad as bad can be!

All night long they danced in the rain,

Round and round in a dripping chain,

Threw their caps at the window-pane,

Tried to make me scream and shout

And fling the bedclothes all about:

I meant to stay in bed that night,

And if only you had left a light

They would never have got me out!

The Changeling by Charlotte Mew

[spudcity]

Fin de Fête

Sweetheart, for such a day

     One mustn’t grudge the score;

Here, then, it’s all to pay,

     It’s Good-night at the door.

Good-night and good dreams to you,—

     Do you remember the picture-book thieves

Who left two children sleeping in a wood the long night through,

     And how the birds came down and covered them with leaves?

So you and I should have slept,—But now,

     Oh, what a lonely head!

With just the shadow of a waving bough

     In the moonlight over your bed.

–Charlotte Mew

[caedmonofwhitby]

Arracombe Wood by Charlotte Mew

English poet, b 15th November 1869 in Bloomsbury, London

“…All that she wrote had its quality of depth and stillness. No English poet had less pretensions, and few as genuine a claim to be in touch with the source of poetry."

- Humbert Wolfe

Photo: The Poetry Foundation

[cobwebs-in-sues-closet]

a day of reading and writing about charlotte mew’s poetry and fairies is always a good day <3

[violettesiren]

Seventeen years ago you said Something that sounded like Good-bye; And everybody thinks that you are dead, But I.

So I, as I grow stiff and cold To this and that say Good-bye too; And everybody sees that I am old But you.

And one fine morning in a sunny lane Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear That nobody can love their way again While over there You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair.

A Quoi Bon Dire by Charlotte Mew