Many Voices: Poems

E. Nesbit

Edith Nesbit was born in Kennington, Surrey in 1858. Her family moved around constantly during her youth, living variously in Brighton, Buckinghamshire, France, Spain and Germany, before settling for three years in Halstead in north-west Kent, a location which later inspired her well-known novel, The Railway Children. In 1880, Nesbit married Hubert Bland, and her writing talents – which had been in evidence during her teens – were quickly needed to bring in extra money.

Over the course of her life, Nesbit would go on to publish approximately 40 books for children, including novels, collections of stories and picture books. Among her best-known works are The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1898), The Wouldbegoods (1899) and The Railway Children (1906). Nesbit is regarded by many critics as the first truly 'modern' children's writer, in that she replaced the fantastical worlds utilised by authors such as Lewis Carroll with real-life settings marked by the occasional intrusion of magic. In this, Nesbit is seen as a precursor to writers such as J. K. Rowling and C. S. Lewis. Nesbit was also a lifelong socialist; in 1884 she was among the founding members of the influential Fabian Society. For much of her adult life she was an active lecturer and prolific writer on socialism.

Having suffered from lung cancer for some years, Nesbit died in 1924 at New Romney, Kent, aged 65.

THE RETURN

The grass was gray with the moonlit dew,

The stones were white as I came through;

I came down the path by the thirteen yews,

Through the blocks of shade that the moonlight hews.

And when I came to the high lych-gate

I waited awhile where the corpses wait;

Then I came down the road where the moonlight lay

Like the fallen ghost of the light of day.

The bats shrieked high in their zigzag flight,

The owls’ spread wings were quiet and white,

The wind and the poplar gave sigh for sigh,

And all about were the rustling shy

Little live creatures that love the night—

Little wild creatures timid and free.

I passed, and they were not afraid of me.

It was over the meadow and down the lane

The way to come to my house again:

Through the wood where the lovers talk,

And the ghosts, they say, get leave to walk.

I wore the clothes that we all must wear,

And no one saw me walking there,

No one saw my pale feet pass

By my garden path to my garden grass.

My garden was hung with the veil of spring—

Plum-tree and pear-tree blossoming;

It lay in the moon’s cold sheet of light

In garlands and silence, wondrous and white

As a dead bride decked for her burying.

Then I saw the face of my house

Held close in the arms of the blossomed boughs:

I leaned my face to the window bright

To feel if the heart of my house beat right.

The firelight hung it with fitful gold;

It was warm as the house of the dead is cold.

I saw the settles, the candles tall,

The black-faced presses against the wall,

Polished beechwood and shining brass,

The gleam of china, the glitter of glass,

All the little things that were home to me—

Everything as it used to be.

Then I said, "The fire of life still burns,

And I have returned whence none returns:

I will warm my hands where the fire is lit,

I will warm my heart in the heart of it!"

So I called aloud to the one within:

"Open, open, and let me in!

Let me in to the fire and the light—

It is very