Vox Populi
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Elsa Gidlow: Chance
Strange that a single white iris
Given carelessly one slumbering spring midnight
Should be the first of love,
Yet life is written so.
If it had been a rose
I might have smiled and pinned it to my dress:
We should have said Good Night indifferently
And never met again.
But the white iris!
It looked so infinitely pure
In the thin green moonlight.
A thousand little purple things
That had trembled about me through
the young years
Floated into a shape I seem always to have known
That I suddenly called Love!
The faint touch of your long fingers on mine
wakened me.
I saw that your tumbled hair was bright
with flame,
That your eyes were sapphire souls with
hungry stars in them,
And your lips were too near not to be kissed.
Life crouches at the knees of Chance
And takes what falls to her.
--
Public Domain. From On a Grey Thread (Will Ransom, 1923) by Elsa
Gidlow.
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Such gentleness. So well written.
“A thousand little purple things
That had trembled about me through
the young years
Floated into a shape I seem always to have known
That I suddenly called Love!”
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I agree, Rose Mary. A lovely lyric. Thank you.
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That poem is as tender and beautiful as a wild, white iris!
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Thanks, Laure-Anne. I think that Gidlow deserves more attention than she’s received. Her poems are beautiful lyrics, and she deserves credit for being open about being a lesbian in a time when it was illegal.
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Isn’t that just about a superb poem?!
Life crouches at the knees of Chance
And takes what falls to her
Engrave it on every heart!
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Thanks, Sean. I really appreciate the enthusiastic praise you give to our authors. Elsa Gidlow is a very important poet who has been ignored too long.
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