four Ruth Pitter poems

 I mentioned to Gretchen, in a comment, that I was reading a little book of Ruth Pitter's poetry. And that I couldn't really find one I actively like.

This book was published in 1953, so I guess it's safe to put a few here. 

                 The Ermine

I know this Ermine. He is small,
Keen-biting, very quick withal.

He dies of soil. He is the snow.
I marvel anyone can know

This Ermine: he is delicate.
Yes, maculate immaculate,

He is well seen and known by me,

Rough-handed homespun though I be.

I muse on him. His little eye
Reflects no beam I do not spy.

I through his snowy silence hear

Beyond the labyrinthine ear.

Royal he is. What makes him so?

Why, that too is a thing I know:

It is his blame, his black, his blot;

The badge of kings, the sable spot.

O subtle, royal Ermine, tell

Me how to wear my black as well.

Okay - now, I have no problem with this poem; I don't think it's gloomy. What is it about? If a real ermine, why is the word capitalized? Does it matter why? Is it really about something else?  I have no problem with this poem. But I move along through the book.

The Great Winter, 1946-1947

The leaves die, fall and go.
They lie all under the snow.

In the great snow the grass dies;

Still the deep clouds fill the skies.

Summer wept, and now the east

Roaring falls on man and beast.

And man and beast die, fall and go;

Under the sky's pall, rain or snow;

Neither hut nor palace stays

The sure ending of their days;

Age and sickness and the wars

Stretch them stiff beneath the stars.

And the stars die, fall and go.

Eye by eye, they cease to glow;

Orb by orb, the storm of suns

To its end in glory runs;

The great wheels, the galaxies,

Shall turn no more about the skies.

Since all must die, fall and go,

Why do we mourn that it is so?

All mourn, lament and weep

That creation falls asleep?

This was given us to make

Our spirits homeless for His sake.

Okay, this poem is sound theology - she's a believer.  Next:

The Other

Like a bird in the rainy cover
When song is fallen still,

It dwells apart, and over

Blue hill upon blue hill.

As a bird in the green places

When summer days are long,

Falls weary, and embraces

Silence instead of song,

Far and apart it muses

In the obscure and dim,

Forgetting the sweet uses

Of voice and feather and limb.

Small, small and slender,

Crowned with its faint gold crown,

It dwells where the light is tender,

Like fair hair falling down.

Swiftness and song were moulded

Into that wing, that breast;

But now the wing is folded,

The throbbing throat at rest.

When from that bosom narrow

The fiery singing flew,

Like a sharp secret arrow

It pierced my armour through.

But its great silence haunts me

In the solemn summer gloom;

The voiceless thing enchants me

As with a sense of doom.

A monument, a token

Of all we have betrayed,

Of all that we have broken -

It makes my soul afraid.

Far from the tumult fleeing,

The shrines that we destroy,

Is it my own grieved being

Mourning its unborn joy,

Or some indignant spirit

Whose power can afford

To give us what we merit -

A silence like a sword? 

All right. Now we are getting to what I complaining of to Gretchen: these poems seem kind of gloomy. Well, this one does. To continue:

The Neophyte

Something I see and feel,

But I must not speak.

It lives, O it is real,

But cold and weak

As a far light in a cave,

As the faint glow

That the green glow-worms have,

As stars of snow;

As tenuous jellies small,

Knotted, turned in,

That you may see on a wall

Where the tide has been;

Whence the great swinging deep,

With its bell-mouthed roar,

Has gone, and left them asleep,

Flowers no more;

Has gone, falling away

Far to the main:

But with the day, with the new day,

Shall come again.

Alright, I think they are not really gloomy, but they seem to be. She has faith in God, in the next life, and her poems all seem to be about that. I think it's just her way of saying it. I have no problem with her ability! I cannot write poetry! I told Gretchen that I missed Christina Rossetti in comparison. But, Christina wrote a lot about love: lost love, unrequited love, hopeless love, etc.. So that's where she was coming from and that's what she had to write about. And this woman can only tell things in her own way, too. It's just that she is saying true things, but there seems a heavy-air hanging about them. (in my opinion)

I can't say I dislike these poems; they are well-crafted. Maybe I'm just nit-picking.