The doves that coo in Colomen
Are never heard by mortal men,
But when a human creature passes
Underneath the churchyard grasses,
In deep voices, velvet-warm,
They tell of ancient perils, storm
Long hushed, and hopes withered and dead,
And joys a long while harvested.
There was a lady small and thin
(Oh, grave! Why did you let her in?)
Her voice was sad as a dove’s, her feet
Went softly through the yellow wheat,
Like stars that haunt the evening west.
Hers was the tall, round, sunny cote
Whence, as she called, her doves would float
Softly, on arm and shoulder rest,
Until the lady, leaning so,
Under the feathers of rose and snow,
Wing of azure and purple plume,
Was like a slim tree bent with bloom.
And still, at Colomen, they say,
When midsummer has stolen away
The last arch primrose, and swiftly fall
Hawthorn petals, wan as a pall,
And the grave blackbirds, that of late
Shouted the sun up, meditate,
You hear about the ruined cote
A mighty, muted sound of wings,
And faint, ghostly flutterings.
Then, if your death is near, you see
A lady standing like a tree
Bent down with blossom. Long ago
Her little joy, her long woe!
In an April dawn of rose and flame
A poor, travelling painter came
Through tasselled woods, and in the tower
Beheld the lady, like a flower–
A pale flower beneath the hill,
Trembling when the air is still,
Broken when the storms are wild,
The lady looked on him, and smiled.
Woe, woe to Colomen,
Where never lovers come again,
Laughing in the morning air!
Dew decked the lady’s hair
Because the lilac, purple and tall,
Saw her beauty and let fall
All her silver, all her sweet.
In dove-grey dawns their lips
In the room beneath the tower
Where the drowsy sunlight smote
Seldom, and the air would creep
Stealthily and half asleep,
While stillness held the dancing mote,
And croonings fell from the ivied cote
With a musical, low roar,
Like summer seas on a fairy shore.
The boding wind had moaned of loss;
The boding shadow laid a cross
From the barred window to their feet;
The doves made a heart-broken, sweet
Clamour of some eerie thing.
They did not hear nor understand
How soon love is withered away
Like a flower on a frosty day!
Early in a summer dawn
When the shadows of the doves were drawn
Down the roof and from the clover
The bees’ low roar came up, her lover
Finished her portrait, thin and small
And pale, with an ethereal
Sweet air, because he had seen her soul
Come to the threshold when she stole
To meet him. There for ever she stood
Like a silver fairy in a wood
Or a may-tree in the moonlight.
He told her of his dream’s delight,
How they would dwell alone, aloof,
With doves crooning on the roof.
He had painted through a sapphire June
Into a thunderous dark July.
Alas! How fleet is spring! How soon
From all their little windows fly
The doves of joy! In an evil hour
Her sister saw him leave the tower.
For all her simple country grace,
Hers was a haughty, lordly race.
When night was thick and black above,
They sent the press-gang for her love.
All day, beside the memoried cote
She lay so still they thought her dead,
Her doves, that wheeled above her head.
But in her eyes a wild, remote,
Inhuman sorrow slumbered.
When next the clover called the bee,
Where was she? Ah, where was she?
She dragged her leaden limbs across
The grey lawns, to hear the sound
That turned a sword within her wound
And made her agony of loss
So keen that if she held her breath
She almost heard the feet of death.
When all her thronging pigeons cooed
Around, with outspread arms she stood.
She seemed a pale and slender tree,
But with snow and not with bloom–
Bent lower towards the tomb.
She would be free of the distress
That men call joy, the littleness
That men call life–as birds are free.
So in the dewy morning hour
She hanged herself within the tower,
Beside her portrait, spirit-fair,
With these words written: ‘We come again,
And ours the house of Colomen.’
Her cousins came and found her there,
While high against the painted dawn
Her pigeons–rosy, white and fawn,
Coal-black and mottled–wheeled in the air.
But while they gazed, weeping aloud,
Around the tower a silence fell.
The doves wheeled high: they could not tell
Which were birds and which was cloud.
A haunted silence held the tower,
Wherein the portrait’s living eyes
Watched the dead lady with surprise,
Like a flower that gazes on a flower.
No doves returned there evermore.
The spiders wove about the door
Intricate tapestries of time,
That held the dew and held the rime.
And from the house of Colomen,
Like water from a frozen strand,
Failed the voices of maids and men,
Shrivelled the heart, shrivelled the hand,
Till there within the arching wood
No face was left but the painted face,
No sound was left of the human race,
But only the sound of doves that cooed
Sadly, intermittently–
Wheeling doves that none can see
But dying men who wander here
And see a picture, glassy-clear,
Where the milky hawthorn-blossom falls
And from the elm a blackbird calls:
Then softly from the ruined cote
A pigeon coos–and faint, remote,
A hundred pigeons answer low,
Voicing the lady’s ancient woe;
And then they see her, very fair
And fragile in the scented air;
On arms and shoulders doves alight,
Multiple-tinted, like a bright
Tapestry that time has faded.
Softly purple, lilac-shaded,
The lady standeth, like a tree
Bent down with blossom….
(Mary Webb)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Man Poems, Night Poems, Sadness Poems, Time Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Nature Poems, Faces Poems, Joy & Excitement Poems, Fairness Poems, Flowers PoemsBased on Keywords: memoried, press-gang, dove-grey, may-tree, glassy-clear, life-as, croonings, intermittently