Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON THE THRESHOLD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: No more of love, lad! We are wedded folk
Last Line: That you and I must travel, side by side.


Persons:

PHILIP RIDLEY, a young shepherd.
ALICE RIDLEY, his bride.
ELLEN HALL, an elderly woman.

Scene: Cragshields, a cottage on the fells. Through a
little window to one side of the hearth a far-off
lough is seen, glittering in the April sunshine. Now
and again, the call of the curlew is heard. PHILIP
RIDLEY and his wife are seated at breakfast near the open door.

ALICE. No more of love, lad! We are wedded folk
With work to do, and little time enough
To earn our bread in; and must put away
Such lovers' folly.
PHILIP. Can you say so, lass,
Hearing the curlew pipe down every slack!
Their mating-call runs rippling through my blood.
Hark, do you hear how shrill and sweet it is!
Does it stir naught in you? You have no heart
If that can leave you cold which thrills me through
Till every vein's a-tingle.
ALICE. Shut the door,
And sup your porridge ere it cools. You know
Even the curlew cannot live on love.
He's a wise bird, and soon will sober down.
He courts but in due season, and his voice
Keeps not the wooing note the whole year long.
So must we settle down, lad. Do you think
Old William Hall and his goodwife who dwelt,
For sixty years, together in this house,
Before our coming, as the neighbours tell,
Lived like young lovers through so many years?
PHILIP. But we've not mated, lass, as curlew mate;
Our love shall know no season. I have heard
That William and his wife were hard and cold,
And seldom spoke save with a bitter tongue.
ALICE. And yet, they dwelt beneath this very roof
Together sixty years -- as we may dwell!
They must have wed as young as we, and come
Home to this hearth as full of foolish hope.
I shudder when I think of those long years.
PHILIP. Don't think of them, for they are naught to you.
ALICE. Had they no children, then?
PHILIP. But one, a lass;
And she was led astray. They cast her out,
And barred the door upon her one wild night;
And what became of her none ever knew.
The neighbours ne'er heard tell of her again.
ALICE. I wonder if she lives, poor soul! And yet,
I'd bar the door on any child of mine....
PHILIP. You wouldn't, Alice. You don't know your heart.
We'll speak no more of them. The past is past,
And throws no shadow on our lives; no ghost
Of old unhappiness shall haunt our home.
The years hold no such bitterness for us;
And naught shall come between us and our love.
ALICE. Now you are at your foolish talk! It's time
That you were with the sheep. If you have naught
To turn your hand to, I have more to do
Than may be done ere bedtime. Shift your seat
Till I have cleared the table, lad.
PHILIP. No, lass,
I must away; but, ere I go, one kiss
To keep my heart up through the morning!
ALICE. Go,
You foolish lad! You're still a boy.
PHILIP. Time mends
The folly that is youth -- if it be folly
To live and love in happiness and hope;
For we are young but once; and, as you say,
We have full sixty years in which to grow
Wise, cold and crabbed, if we should live as long
As William and his wife.
[To his collie.] Down, Nelly, down!
I will be back ere noonday.

[Goes out, closing the door behind him.]

ALICE. Sixty years!
It's a long while to dwell in bitterness.
I wonder if they ever loved as we
When they were young. Maybe they did, until
Their daughter's trouble soured their hearts -- and yet,
Surely, if they had loved! ... Ah, well, the years
Must bring what they will bring, and we abide
The winter, though it freeze the springs of love.

[She turns to her work of scrubbing and sweeping.
After a while, the door opens noiselessly; and ELLEN
HALL stands on the threshold, unseen of ALICE, who is
bending over the hearth.]

ELLEN [gazing about her absently]. The dresser stood
against the other wall.

[Seeing ALICE, who looks up suddenly in amazement.]

Forgive me that I did not knock. So long
I raised this latch a dozen times a day,
Undreaming that the hour would ever come
When I should need to knock, that, when, once more,
I stood upon the threshold, I forgot
The years that stood between me and my home,
And that I came a stranger to this house.
Forgive me....
ALICE. Nay, come in, and take a seat.
We are newcomers to these parts....
ELLEN. Had you
Been born and bred within a mile or so,
You would not know me, lass; for you are young;
And it is forty years since I left home.
But you shall know me ere I take a seat
Beneath your roof. If you will ask me then....
You start at that! I see that you have heard
My tale already. I am Ellen Hall,
The outcast whom the neighbours told you of.
But I must go. Forgive me that I brought
My shadow in your house. I meant no harm.
I only wished to see my home once more.
ALICE. Nay, nay, come in, and rest; for you are tired.
You must not go with neither bite nor sup.
I'll set the kettle on the bar....
ELLEN. Nay, lass,
I will not eat nor drink, but I would rest
A little while, for my old feet have found
The fell-road long and heavy, though my heart
Grew young again, breathing the upland air.
Let me not hinder you: just do your work
As though I were not here. I'll not bide long.

[After a pause.]
Lass, do you love your man?
ALICE. I wedded him.
ELLEN. Though your reproof be bitter, it is just;
But I have lived so long on bitter words
That I, long since, have lost the taste of them.
I did not speak the word in wantonness;
For as I look upon you where you stand
In your fresh bloom of youth, old memories stir
Within me; for your eyes are kind. My heart
That has not spoken out so many years
A moment longed to tell its tale to you,
The tale it never told to any heart;
But it shall keep its silence to the end,
For you are proud and happy in your youth,
As I was proud and happy once. Ay, lass,
Even I was young and comely in my time --
Though you may smile to hear it now, as then
I should have smiled.... Nay, lass, I do not blame you!
Forgive a lonely woman, frail and old,
Whom years and grief have brought to foolishness.
ALICE. Nay, nay, I didn't smile. I'd hear your tale
If you would tell it me. 'Twill ease your heart
To pour its sorrow in another's ear.
But if you would keep silence, breathe no word.
Yet, bide till you are rested.
ELLEN. Thank you, lass.
A silence that has lasted forty years
May not be broken in a breathing space.
It isn't easy, speaking; yet, I'll speak
Because your eyes are kind, and nevermore
Shall look upon me when the tale is told.
I haven't much to tell, for you have heard
The neighbours' talk; and yet, lass, none may know
The heart's true story save the heart itself;
And they who speak, not knowing the full truth,
May twist on idle tongues unwittingly
What little of the truth is theirs. You know
It was my sin, as folk account it sin,
To love beyond my station -- ay, to love
Unquestioning, undoubting, unafraid --
To love with the fierce faith and simple might
And courage of a young girl's innocence.
In sweet, blind trustfulness and happy pride,
As many a maid has loved, nor lived to rue.
Yet, I don't blame him: he was passion's fool --
Ay, one of those from whom hard fate withholds
The wonder and the tenderness of love --
Though I believed he loved me as I loved,
And as I love him yet -- ay, even yet!
Blindly I loved him -- blinded by the light
Of my own love, my love that still.... But you,
Unless you love, you will not understand;
For only love brings knowledge. You have heard
How, when he left me, I was turned from home.
Abandoned in my trouble, I was thrust
On the cold mercy of a winter night.
This very door was barred against my woe --
I still can hear that bolt shot after me --
Although I never turned. Nay, speak no word!
I crave no pity; for I loved, and love
Brooks no compassion from a happier heart.
And I remember little of that night;
It scarcely seemed to matter when so much
Was gone from me that all should go. To me
My parents had been ever shrewd and harsh
As to each other. They had never known
The tenderness of love; for they had wed
In wanton passion which had left them cold,
To live for sixty years on bitter words;
For they were over eighty when both died,
As though they had been lovers, on one day.
Spare all the fresh young pity of your heart
For those whom chance has tethered without love
To tread together the same path of life
Till death release them.
ALICE. Did you ne'er return?
ELLEN. Love's outcasts don't come back.
ALICE. Might not the years
Have softened their hard hearts? They would relent....
ELLEN. Time brings no understanding without love;
Love cannot spring from barrenness; the soil
That does not quicken to the breath of spring
Will bear no blade of green in winter days.
I pitied them; and, had my child but lived,
I had forgiven them with all my heart.
ALICE. Ah! they were cruel! but you, what could you do?
ELLEN. I lived -- but not as idle tongues have lied.
I loved him, lass; and if your heart is true
To love, 'twill know that I speak truly. Yet,
What can the happy know of love! O lass,
You are too fresh and fair to have known love!
ALICE. Yet, I love Philip.
ELLEN. Nay, you cannot love!
They don't know love who have not starved for love,
And worked their fingers to the bone for love,
And lived for love, without love's recompense,
Death holding within easy reach the while
The escape and solace of forgetfulness.
Still, you may love -- for, even unto me,
Love once was happiness. Forgive me, lass;
It is so long since I knew happiness.
You have not idle hands; but then you toil
For him you love and who loves you again,
While I have laboured only for my love
Of him who never loved me, and to whom
I was a broken trinket, cast aside,
Forgotten, for he wedded years ago.
Forgive me, if I weary you; so long
My heart has brooded in its solitude
On all these things, oft shaping them to words
For its own comfort -- for even words give ease
To aching and intolerable thought --
Although it could not utter them aloud,
That, now they find a vent, they teem, a spate
Enough to drown your patience.
ALICE. Nay, speak on.
ELLEN. I have dwelt long in grey and narrow streets,
A stranger among strangers, where men snatch
A starveling living from each other's clutch;
Ay, I have toiled in cities where men grind
Their brothers' bones for bread, where life is naught
But labour and starvation to the end.
Lass, may your kind eyes never need to grow,
As mine have grown, accustomed to the sight
Of the evil and the wretchedness and want
That huddle in dark alleys; yet even there
Love shines, though cooped in stifling misery,
A candle in a garret. To the poor,
Life is not easy underneath the sun,
But in the dark and reeking city ways
It's more relentless, grim and terrible --
The endless struggle. Lass, I never thought
To look upon the hills of home again,
Or tread the ling, or breathe the living air
That I had breathed, a heedless child; but when
By chance I heard my parents both were gone
To where the shadow of a daughter's shame
Might never vex their slumber, my heart yearned
To gaze once more o'er the familiar fells
Where I had first found love. So I set out,
Hoping to come and go ere the new herd
Should take possession. As I crossed the crags,
I saw the smoke curl o'er the chimney-stack,
And knew I came too late.
ALICE. Nay, not too late!
You have not come too late!
ELLEN. I nigh turned back.
I had not meant to cross the threshold-stone;
But as I climbed the brae-top, and looked forth
Over the sweep of bent and heath, and breathed
The morning air, and gazed upon the loughs
A-shimmer in the sun, and heard the call
Of curlew down the slacks, and felt the spring
Of heather under-foot, I -- who had thought
So little of these things when I had lived,
A careless lass, among them, but had come
To hanker after them in city streets --
Was filled with strange forgetfulness, and moved
As in a trance, scarce knowing what I did,
Till I had raised the latch, and saw your eyes
In wonder fixed on mine. But I must go
Before your man comes in.
ALICE. No, you must bide.
This is your home. You must not go again
Back to the city. You are old and weak;
And I and Philip are both young and strong
To work for you, if you will live with us.
ELLEN. With all my heart I thank you, lass, and yet,
I may not bide. Though I am old and weak,
I would tread out my pathway to the end.
It is too late, too late to turn aside;
Nor would I if I could, since I have fared
So far along the solitary way.
I could not rest at ease in idleness.
Yet, I shall go to take up work again
With kindlier memories of my home, and when
Once more the narrow alleys on me close,
I shall remember some one living here
Whom love has given understanding. Life
Be good to you -- yes, I can wish you this,
Though you have all that life withheld from me.
I don't know what the future holds, and yet,
Whatever may befall you, this is sure:
You shall not know the utmost bitterness;
Life cannot be all barren, having love.
From the full knowledge of my heart I speak
As one who through the perilous night has come
To you, upon the threshold of your day,
The dawnlight on your brow. Lass, fare you well!
ALICE. Farewell! and yet, I grieve that you should go
Back to the struggle who have brought to me
The secret you have wrung from life.
[Kissing her.] Farewell!
You have revealed to me my happiness.
ELLEN. Your kiss brings comfort, daughter. Fare you well!

[She goes out, and ALICE stands in the doorway, gazing
after her for a while. Presently a gate clashes hard
by, and PHILIP approaches.]

PHILIP. What do you look on, lass -- so rare a light
Burns in your deep, brown eyes! What do you see?
Have you been listening to the curlew's call?
ALICE. No: I have heard a voice from out the past;
And my eyes look down all the happy years
That you and I must travel, side by side.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net