Poetry Friday--"The Seed Shop"

In an old poetry anthology, An Inheritance of Poetry, collected and arranged by Gladys L. Adshead and Annis Duff (Houghton Mifflin, 1948), I came across this poem by Muriel Stuart:

The Seed Shop

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry--
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams;
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
That will drink deeply of a century's streams;
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap;
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

This is quite simple and lovely, don't you think? These lilies shall make summer on my dust is a line to die for!

Who was Muriel Stuart? Muriel Stuart was born in England in 1885 and died 82 years later. Her poetry was, according to a brief entry in Wikipedia, "particularly concerned with the topic of sexual politics." That bit intrigued me, so I went looking for "her most famous poem," "In the Orchard." If you want to read a poem that deals with matters that are still relevant today, take a look at "In the Orchard." The more things change, the more they stay the same--at least as far as young love is concerned.

Visit Kelly Polark for this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up.

--Diane

Photo by chicks57