Exit (Easily to the Old....) by Wilson MacDonald (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

It is probable that you have never seen this poem before. I have never seen it anthologised, probably because it is so macabre. I have known it by heart since I was a teenager, and it made a great impression on me then. Wilson MacDonald was once the most famous Canadian poet. Now he is not so well known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_MacDonald The paintings are "Malvine Dying In The Arms Of Fingal" and "Atala au Tombeau" and "Psyche Asleep" by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson Easily to the old Opens the hard ground: But when youth grows cold, And red lips have no sound, Bitterly does the earth Open to receive And bitterly do the grasses In the churchyard grieve. Cold clay knows how to hold An agèd hand; But how to comfort youth It does not understand. Even the gravel rasps In a dumb way When youth comes homing Before its day. Elizabeth's hair was made To warm a man's breast, Her lips called like roses To be caressed; But grim the Jester Who gave her hair to lie On the coldest lover Under the cold sky. But Elizabeth never knew, Nor will learn now, How the long wrinkle comes On the white brow; Nor will she ever know, In her robes of gloom, How chill is a dead child From a warm womb. O clay, so tender When a flower is born! Press gently as she dreams In her bed forlorn. They who come early Must weary of their rest-- Lie softly, then, as light On her dear breast. Unflowered is her floor, Her roof is unstarred. Is this then the ending-- Here, shuttered and barred? Nay, not the ending; She will awake Or the heart of the earth That enfolds her will break. Easily to the old Opens the hard ground: But when youth grows cold, And red lips have no sound, Bitterly does the earth Open to receive And bitterly do the grasses In the churchyard grieve.