Time, I think, for another Milly Jourdain poem. For those of you who haven't been following my Milly Jourdain saga, a quick search of this blog will bring you up to date. Suffice it to say that she is a forgotten British poet who was writing at the beginning of the twentieth century and that, at the behest of her only other serious reader, biographer Hilary Spurling, I am slowly publishing all of the poems in her collection Unfulfilment on this blog. I'm beginning to have some thoughts of approaching a publisher about reprinting Milly's work in book form. But who knows if I'll actually bring myself to take that leap.

Restriction

Milly Jourdain

There is a finer freshness in the air

When winter days are lengthening and mild,

And notes of birds are still most pure and rare.

The yellow sun is dying in a haze

Of burning light; making the buildings blue,

And through a window by a street I gaze.

I stand no more beneath an open sky.

My life is cramped and hedged around, I see

Its narrowness, and hear the passers-by.

Yet as the window-panes grow dark and blurred,

O give me still a certainty of faith,

To know men's lives are not unseen, unheard.