PelageaA.E. Coppard2019University of Nebraska–LincolnCenter for Alex Telesca's Fame306 AndrewsUniversity of Nebraska–LincolnLincoln, NE 68588-4100alextelesca@outlook.com2019
The Best Poems of 1924L.A.G. StrongA.E. CoppardJanuary 1924Small, Maynard & Company PublishersBostonAlex Telesca
Transcribed and encoded a poem
Pelagea
It is late, but the carpenter is knocking:The floors, sweet shaven pine, are laid;The rafters pinned, the roof's great beam of teakThat will last an age and nourish historyIs hidden, and the straw's tight trussesThatched over cedar scantlings:Mallet and saw and plane, bright nails, sweetwood,For Pelagea's house, fair nook of sleepWhere he and she no balm will ever find.The village dreams by the unseen idling river;Night in her grove of starsTurns, and her soft tears fall;Thin billows through the thickets glideIntoning litanies of leaves,And like a moth the air is wandering.But still he stays, this carpenter,Building their fine new houseThough he is old, and full of sweat and spittle,And coughs like a hoosey ewe.I do not speak to him nor he to me,I bear him quiet company, we do not speak.A cat in the gloom is mewing;Draughts in the doorway blow,And the flame at the candlewick pullsLike a frightened horse at its tether.The thoughts in my mind wash round him waveon wave,For he is dying and he soon will die -What is to come delays not.Pelagen, his wife, will weep for himPrim tears, dutiful tears,But there are others she will weep anonTurning to me.Whether she turn to me or turn awayPelagea's tears will fall-The drops that hang upon the roseAre frail as trembling love-For those dark fancies dwell in herWhich silent thought illumines into fears.But my love loves me though she does not like mybehavior: She does not laugh when I laugh at herThough I do not laugh maliciously;And when I walk beside her, pleasantly thinking,Pelagea's heart is full of those dark fancies -Fears of love, and love of what she fears.But what is to come comes ever;Indolently the moonRises, but must rise;The moon invites the earth, the earth the sun,Tides must flow, and the great sea must sing.The cat mews in the darkness, mews and mews.At the lane's end,Above their old house with its one red blindWhere Pelagea blows a dying fire,There are stars, living sapphires, breathing gems.The old thatched house is like a hassock-Time itself has kneeled upon it-But the cot of doves in the yardAnd the two white hivesIn moonlight make it beautiful;Not less by day are these things beautiful,But their small beauty my love never sees:One mind has a thousand eyes,The tail of the peacock sees nothing.And this is true:Beauty but seldom waits,Stays neither here nor there nor anywhere.But dwells in the teeming past,Or roves beyond us in the ages hence;So all our clutching fingers grasp at what is sped,And what is past dreams onThat we may re-enact it and believeIn what is yet to come.My love loves me, but she does not like mybehaviour;And I do not like Pelagea's homely sense,Her virtues, or her fears,I laugh at them though I do not laugh maliciously;But her voiceFalls on my heart like a gliding cataract;Under her hair's winnow of darknessHer eyes are living sapphires, breathing gems,Fair as love winging to sweet loveThe golden trembling arrow.Tonight I sat beside her at the hearth;The bellows poured the quenched ash into flames,And Pelagea turned on meHer unforgetting eyes:“Love blows upon us like the inspiring airFrom out this bag of wind. I am a dustBreathed into fury,And you the empty thing that gushes.Would I had never known you," said my love.Let not, my soul, our love so meanly range;Without love there is nothing,'Tis a bond more powerful than behaviour,Or vague honour tempting time,Or those dark fancies that our silent thoughtsillumine;Indolently the moonRises, but must rise,And tides flow, and the great sea sing.And still, so late, the carpenter is knocking,So late, so late,And the cat in the darkness mews and mews andmews.A.E. Coppard