Lettice by Michael Field. Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. 1895. A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Lettice

Michael Field


LITTLE Lettice is dead, they say,
The brown, sweet child who rolled in the hay;
Ah, where shall we find her?
For the neighbors pass
To the pretty lass,	5
In a linen cere-cloth to wind her.

If her sister were set to search
The nettle-green nook beside the church,
And the way were shown her
Through the coffin-gate	10
To her dead playmate,
She would fly too frightened to own her.

Should she come at a noonday call,
Ah, stealthy, stealthy, with no footfall,
And no laughing chatter,	15
To her mother ’t were worse
Than a barren curse
That her own little wench should pat her.

Little Lettice is dead and gone!
The stream by her garden wanders on	20
Through the rushes wider;
She fretted to know
How its bright drops grow
On the hills, but no hand would guide her.

Little Lettice is dead and lost!	25
Her willow-tree boughs by storm are tost—
Oh, the swimming sallows!—
Where she crouched to find
The nest of the wind
Like a water-fowl’s in the shallows.	30

Little Lettice is out of sight!
The river-bed and the breeze are bright:
Ay me, were it sinning
To dream that she knows
Where the soft wind rose	35
That her willow-branches is thinning?

Little Lettice has lost her name,
Slipt away from our praise and our blame;
Let not love pursue her,
But conceive her free	40
Where the bright drops be
On the hills, and no longer rue her!