Poem by Elinor Wylie

Village Mystery

The woman in the pointed hood 
And cloak blue-gray like a pigeon’s wing, 
Whose orchard climbs to the balsam-wood, 
Has done a cruel thing.

To her back door-step came a ghost, 
A girl who had been ten years dead, 
She stood by the granite hitching-post 
And begged for a piece of bread.

Now why should I, who walk alone, 
Who am ironical and proud, 
Turn, when a woman casts a stone 
At a beggar in a shroud?

I saw the dead girl cringe and whine, 
And cower in the weeping air-- 
But, oh, she was no kin of mine, 
And so I did not care!

1. Upon Your Heart, Which Is.the Heart of All
2. The Little Beauty That I Was Allowed
3. In Our Content, before the Autumn Came
4. What Other Name Had Half Expressed the Whole
5. Absent Thee from Felicity Awhile

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