Friday 16 March 2018

Black Magic and White by Mrs Godfrey Blount

This poem printed in The Vineyard, April 1913 reminds me of Ethel (Mrs Godfrey Blount) & Maude's presentation to the General Meeting of the the Peasant Arts Fellowship in 1912 (Caxton Hall, 28th February), which is recorded in their Peasant Arts Guild Paper “To give a little girl the use of her hands is to bring a disinherited princess back into her kingdom” (‘Our experience of the Influence of Handicraft upon the Workers’, Peasant Arts Guild Paper, No. 10 , Ethel Blount and Maude E. King).  


from Blount, Ethel, The Story of the Homespun Web


When time was young a princess fell
     (A heart most rare,
     A soul most fair!)
Beneath a fiendish wizard's spell.

His Hell-broth won, the poison wrought;
     Afar from man
     The princess ran
De-humanised, a thing distraught.

From out the kindly human ranks
    She ran, accurst,   
    For blood a-thirst,
With tawny stripes upon her flanks,

Then came at night in dreadful quest
   To roam and roam
   Around her home
Where once with Love she took her rest.

She saw her husband's spear and dart;
   The eyes of ire
   Glared forth the fire
That fed upon the tiger-heart!

She saw her children's dolls and ships;
   Without a sound
   She snuffed around
And licked those dreadful, dreadful lips;

Then saw her pretty weaving gear
   Of flax and loom;
   In puzzled gloom
The tiger-heart began to fear

from Blount, Ethel, The Story of the Homespun Web


There lay her little spinning-wheel,
   The band unbound,
   The reel unwound;
The tiger-heart began to feel.

There lay her dainty little pirn,
   The thread undone,
   The wool unspun;
The woman-heart began to burn;

The cruel heart, the eyes of steel
   Began to yearn,
   Began to turn
At sight of flax and fleece and wheel.

The yellow stripes and eyes of gloom
   Began to fade,
   Passed into shade;
The princess stood beside her loom.

The loom and spindle, flax and fleece,
   The living art,
   Called back her heart
And filled her soul with vital peace.




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