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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408672" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Lily</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I scorn the man—a fool at most,<br>And ignorant and blind—<br>Who loves to go about and boast<br>“He understands mankind.”<br>I thought I had that knowledge too,<br>And boasted it with pride—<br>But since, I’ve learned that human hearts<br>Cannot be classified.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In days when I was young and wild<br>I had no vanity—<br>I always thought when women smiled<br>That they were fooling me.<br>I was content to let them fool,<br>And let them deem I cared;<br>For, tutored in a narrow school,<br>I held myself prepared.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But Lily had a pretty face,<br>And great blue Irish eyes—<br>And she was fair as any race<br>Beneath the Northern skies—<br>The sweetest voice I ever heard,<br>Although it was unschooled.<br>So for a season I preferred<br>By Lily to be fooled.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A friend embittered all my life<br>With careless words of his;<br>He said I’d “never win a wife<br>With such an ugly phiz.”<br>I laughed the loudest at the wit.<br>Though loud the laughter rung—<br>So be it to his credit writ—<br>He never knew it stung.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As far as human nature goes,<br>The cynic I would teach<br>That fruit’s not always sour to those<br>For whom none hangs in reach.<br>I only gazed as captives might<br>Gaze through their prison bars—<br>Fair women seemed to me as bright<br>Though far away, as stars.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Lily was to me a star<br>As fair as those above,<br>As beautiful but just as far<br>From my revengeful love.<br>The love I bore was not exempt<br>From hate, if this might be;<br>I hated her for that contempt<br>I thought she had for me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The “sour grapes” are often sweet<br>To lips that cannot touch,<br>And it is soothing to repeat:<br>“It does not matter much.”<br>But O to think that fruit so dear<br>To me in manhood’s prime,<br>Though seeming far, was clustered near<br>And red-ripe all the time.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My fault, perhaps, in Heav’n above<br>May not be deemed a sin.<br>I never thought that she would love<br>Or I’d the power to win.<br>And even now it puzzles me—<br>The butt of station chaff,<br>For I was plain as man could be<br>And awkward as a calf.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I would have liked to break the bow<br>That Lily never bent—<br>I thought she’d only laugh to know<br>How well her shafts were sent.<br>If my contempt had power to gall<br>Or careless sneers to touch<br>The heart that loved me after all,<br>She must have suffered much.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! I was blind, and could not see<br>The plain things in my way.<br>When Lily’s mistress twitted me<br>About the “wedding day”,<br>I answered with a careless word<br>And half-unconscious sneer—<br>I never thought that Lily heard,<br>Nor dreamed that she was near.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We talked of other things and joked,<br>Till tongues began to tire—<br>Then I and Lily’s master smoked<br>Our pipes beside the fire.<br>The day wore on, and then she brought<br>The kettle to the hob,<br>And as she turned to go I thought<br>I heard a stifled sob.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I spoke; she never answered me.<br>I sneered, “I’ll not forget;<br>Above all things I hate to see<br>A woman in a pet!”—<br>Those cruel words, that were the last<br>That Lily ever heard—<br>I’ve heard them shrieking in the blast<br>And twittered by the bird.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Deep in the creek that wandered near<br>There lay a grassy pool,<br>’Neath oaks that sighed through all the year<br>And kept the water cool.<br>The stars that pierced the reedy bower<br>Made water lilies bright,<br>And underneath her sister flower<br>Our Lily slept that night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She’d brought a pole the pool to sound<br>(It must have tried her strength).<br>We found it lying on the ground<br>And wet for half its length.<br>We found it there upon the grass,<br>But ah! it was not all!<br>An open prayer book lay, alas!<br>Beside poor Lily’s shawl.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We drew her out and laid her down<br>Upon a granite ledge—<br>The water from her dripping gown<br>Went trickling o’er the edge.<br>Like drops into a pool of fears<br>I saw the crystals dart,<br>Or one by one like scalding tears<br>That plash upon the heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The circles died upon the shore,<br>The frogs began to croak.<br>The wind that passed to list once more<br>Went sighing through the oak—<br>The oak that seemed to say to me<br>(I think I hear it yet),<br>“Above all things I hate to see<br>A woman in a pet!”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The blackest thoughts are swift to fill<br>The evil minds of men—<br>I knew the meaning of the looks<br>They bent upon me then;<br>And then I did as cowards do:<br>I vanished like a cur;<br>For many years I never knew<br>Where they had buried her.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, drawn by that same power that brings<br>The slayer to the slain,<br>Or driven like the bird that wings<br>Against the storm in vain,<br>I journeyed from another shore<br>Across the weary wave<br>And wandered by the creek once more,<br>And sought for Lily’s grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I rode across the ridges brown<br>And through a rocky pass,<br>And took the track that led me down<br>To great white flats of grass.<br>I passed the homestead’s skeleton<br>That rotted in the sun,<br>And by the broken stockyards on<br>The long-deserted run.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Whole beds of reeds were covered o’er<br>With coats of yellow mud,<br>And all along the creek I saw<br>The traces of a flood.<br>I reached the place where Lily died.<br>The banks were washed away;<br>Before me on the other side<br>There rose a wall of clay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I saw a thing that seemed a weed<br>Outgrowing from the “face”;<br>I stood and marvelled that a seed<br>Had grown in such a place.<br>I climbed the bank, and with a rod<br>I pushed the weed about—<br>And from the dry and crumbling sod<br>I saw a skull roll out!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I started back from where I stood,<br>For she was buried there!<br>I’d seen the coffin’s rotting wood.<br>The weed was Lily’s hair!<br>They’d laid her in the rushes dank<br>Upon a sandy bend;<br>The floods had washed away the bank<br>And reached the coffin’s end.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, coward heart and conscience, too!<br>Did I reclaim the dead?<br>Ah, no, I did as cowards do—<br>A second time I fled!<br>And still I see the flying form,<br>I see myself again—<br>A madman riding through the storm<br>With terror in his brain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That night the rain in torrents dashed,<br>The sky seemed flushed with blood,<br>And here and there the she-oaks crashed<br>Beneath the yellow flood.<br>And still I see the murderous sky<br>That never seems to change,<br>And hear the flood go growling by<br>That thundered from the range.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My inner sight as years went o’er<br>Grew sharp instead of dull,<br>And nearly every night I saw<br>The coffin and the skull.<br>Three ghastly things, unaltered still,<br>I knew would haunt my night—<br>I knew would fill my dreams until<br>I buried them from sight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I journeyed to the creek once more<br>When five long years had flown,<br>And buried in the sand I saw<br>A piece of fashioned stone:<br>And bit by bit and bone by bone<br>In those long years of rain,<br>The cruel creek had claimed its own<br>And buried it again!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I clambered down the bank and knelt<br>And scraped away the sand,<br>And graven on the stone, I felt<br>Her name beneath my hand;<br>And in the she-oak over me<br>The wind was sneering yet:<br>“Above all things I hate to see<br>A woman in a pet.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408672" data-title="Lily de Henry Lawson" data-description="I scorn the man—a fool at most,
And ignorant and blind—
Who loves to go about and boast
“He understands mankind.”
I thought I had that knowledge too,
And boasted it with pride—
But since, I’ve learned that human hearts
Cannot be classi..."></div>
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