29 JUNE 1934, Page 13

A Woman Knitting

A THOUSAND years the flesh of the wool growing between my fingers, cast on or cast off by shifting needles, by the unfertile bone, the sturdily-flowing

wool was, for a thousand years, the tough smooth strand of life, and I, the woman vigilant, wore my heavy crown.

The future between finger and thumb, informed, fulfilled, made ponderable by the weight of longing, how must I wear it, now my vision mended is strictly wound into a ball of pain ?

Whence came the wild-bee stitches warmly thronging, as though midsummer's murmuring thoughts had swarmed?

Ah bloom of flesh ! A thousand years are ended, - and I, the spirit, the vagrant, am uncrowned again.

LILIAN BOWES Lvo:sr.