захисник

Now it is Loneliness who comes at night

Instead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed.

Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread,

I watch her softly blowing out the light.

Motionless sitting, neither left or right

She turns, and weary, weary droops her head.

She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight.

So, with the laurel she is garlanded.

Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tide

Breaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied.

A strange wind flows… then silence.  I am fain

To turn to Loneliness, to take her hand,

Cling to her, waiting, till the barren land

Fills with the dreadful monotone of rain

Loneliness (1910)

I wish I had not got a cold,

The wind is big and wild,

I wish that I was very old,

Not just a little child.

Somehow the day is very long

Just keeping here, alone;

I do not like the big wind's song,

He's growling for a bone

He's like an awful dog we had

Who used to creep around

And snatch at things—he was so bad,

With just that horrid sound.

I'm sitting up and nurse has made

Me wear a woolly shawl;

I wish I was not so afraid;

It's horrid to be small.

It really feels quite like a day

Since I have had my tea;

P'raps everybody's gone away

And just forgotten me.

And oh!  I cannot go to sleep

Although I am in bed.

The wind keeps going creepy-creep

And waiting to be fed.

A Day in Bed 

I will think no more of the sea!

Of the big green waves

And the hollowed shore,

Of the brown rock caves

No more, no more

Of the swell and the weed

And the bubbling foam.

Memory dwells in my far away home,

She has nothing to do with me.

She is old and bent

With a pack

On her back.

Her tears all spent,

Her voice, just a crack.

With an old thorn stick

She hobbles along,

And a crazy song

Now slow, now quick,

Wheeks in her throat.

And every day

While there's light on the shore

She searches for something;

Her withered claw

Tumbles the seaweed;

She pokes in each shell

Groping and mumbling

Until the night

Deepens and darkens,

And covers her quite,

And bids her be silent,

And bids her be still.

The ghostly feet

Of the whispery waves

Tiptoe beside her.

They follow, follow

To the rocky caves

In the white beach hollow . . .

She hugs her hands,

She sobs, she shrills,

And the echoes shriek

In the rocky hills.

She moans: "It is lost!

Let it be! Let it be!

I am old. I'm too cold.

I am frightened . . . the sea

Is too loud . . . it is lost,

It is gone . . . Memory

Wails in my far away home.

Sea Song 

Katherine Mansfield