Death
It is with gentleness Death’s fingers close
The wrinkled eyelids of the old, and veil
Their eyes grown dim and weary.
‘Tis with stealth
She steals upon a child, tearing him from
His mother’s heart, and leaving it to bleed.
To Age and Infancy Death is not cruel
But Youth she tortures – Youth whose heart yet bounds
With hope and courage. There is no sadder sight
Than Youth with Death’s reflection in his eyes.
Margaret Taylor
Without Words
Between close friends I’ve seen the quick sly glance
of understanding pass. I’ve seen eyes dewed
with suffering unconcern when at a dance
A young girl stands alone: proud maiden wooed
With eyes that spoke more clearly than lips dared.
The passive, wandering glance of invalids
And wide unblinking stare of a child scared
By tales of ogres that the mother reads.
All these I’ve seen, but all forget when you,
You tiny scrap of life, whose warm caress
Brings joy upwelling, tears upwelling too,
Look up with love and faith undoubting – Oh!
Would that I knew you ever would look so.
These I have seen. But I recall how you
Looked at me when we kissed or the first time,
Exultant, gaily, lovingly it’s true,
But with a lordly look your eyes met mine,
As if you owned me – metamorphosis
From supplicant to tyrant with a kiss!
Margaret Taylor
Animals
Sometimes it seems that animals
By instinct taught to live and die
And even dumb, insensate things
Like trees are happier than I.
Time does not tyrannise them; space
Confines them not. They do not dread
The future nor regret the past;
No mourners leave, when they are dead.
But Nature compensation gives
However blessed may be their lot
Yet my small joys enjoyment bring
(Whereas) their pleasures please them not.
Meg Rugg-Easey
Cows
Sometimes I’m envious of cows
In sunlit grassy worlds at ease,
With peace to ruminate or stare
For endless hours at hills and trees.
I’m sometimes jealous of the birds
Freed from earth’s gravity. To be
A lizard lazing in the sun
Seems oft the happiest life to me.
At other times I’m more content
With weals and woes of human lot.
What joys are mine enjoy’ed are.
Their pleasures please them not.
Margaret Taylor
Almond Blossom
Three Almond trees have blossomed in the square
And all this week their palely-tinted flowers
Have hung in wondrous clusters, gently swaying
With every little breeze, and dropping showers
Of tiny snow-flake petals to obscure
The dusty pavement stones. And I have passed
And as I passed looked up to wonder at
The glory of these clusters ‘gainst the sky.
There have been many others this week who
Have raised their eyes to see the laden boughs
But more have passed, with down-bent heads and missed
The joy of seeing Nature’s freshness triumph
Over the dingy, time-worn city street.
And as I watched them from my window here
Hurrying past, unconscious of the joy
They might have had by merely looking up
I wondered if those people spent their lives
Missing the beauty that is freely shown
To those whose eyes are looking out to see,
Whose minds are not too stagnant to receive
Fresh thoughts, new wonders, great discoveries.
And yet, I reasoned, if they miss the joys
Yet there are many sorrows they miss too,
For to be blind to Beauty when she beckons
Is to be deaf to Sorrow till she weeps.
Thus we must choose to joy or sorrow keenly
Or lose them both in dull indifference.
Margaret Taylor
Reflections (1938)
‘Tis women’s way –
Or so they say –
To beautify or rectify
Their varied physiognomy
Regardless of economy.
It may be so,
But this I know,
At Telegraph and Times they laugh
Neglected quite they let them lie
And daily to the Mirror fly
Margaret Taylor 1938 (Age 24)
Anatomy (1935)
I’ve donned my erstwhile snow-white coat, my gloves,
I’ve bagged a stool, and joined the other seven,
And now we’re sitting round a thing that once
Was all a self-respecting corpse could wish.
But what’s the good of stuffing my poor head
With facts and figures, measurements and names
Deep-delving oft in many-pag’ed tomes
Searching the mysteries of anatomy
When at the moment when I need them most
They all take wing and fly away, or start
To twist and twirl, to writhe and wriggle so
A tangled mass of most untruthful facts
Remain where ordered knowledge once held sway.
For half an hour – a very long half hour –
The constant stream of questions has gone forth
And answers, not so flowing, been returned:
Answers that made their authors blush in shame,
Or glow with humble pride. O would that I
Might get the question that my neighbours have.
But they can always answer and I get
Instead a most unfair conundrum,
And after meditating on it well
I give up and earn another frown,
And all the facts give yet another squirm
And settle down more jumbled than before.
But slowly, slowly that large minute-hand
Climbs upward jerk by jerk until at last
It is eleven, and we rise, released
And tally ho! for biscuits, coffee, peace.
Meg Rugg-Easey 1935 (Age 21)
The Thyrotoxic Lady (1943)
The lady sitting over there
(with proptosed and unwinking stare)
Is thyrotoxic. It’s not hot
But note that she perspires a lot;
And if you chanced upon the sly
To knock her knee as you went by
(I recommend you take the risk)
You’ld find her knee-jerks rather brisk.
If you sat next to her, and dared
To take her hand you’ld think her scared
For ‘twould be trembling; her pulse rate
Might rise to dizzy heights; a state
Of palpitations in the chest
Would come upon her if you pressed
Her fingers – be not over-bold
Her feelings cannot be controlled.
In fact it is because her nerves
Are so on edge that all the curves
Of female form have worn away
And left her thin and far from gay.
Though she (it cannot be denied)
Eats like a horse, something inside
Must take all value from her food,
It never does her any good.
(Only her neck’s circumference
Enlarges fast at her expense).
All told, the thyrotoxic state
Is one, I fancy, she must hate.
Published in “The Lancet” 1943 (received £5 !)
For Mr Joll
Five thousand incisions of necklace type
Five thousand glands exposed
Five thousand, or more, bits of thyroid removed
And five thousand necks reclosed.
Just think of the innumerable Spencer Wells
Just think of the swabs without end
Just imagine the rows of Michel clips
And the five thousand patients to tend.
May the goitrous patients long flock to A.2.
May their thyroids fall fast in the bowl.
May the thousands increase, Mr Joll, may you reach
(spite of students) the ten thousand goal.
Meg Rugg-Easey 1936
(Mentioned in Meg’s 1937 diary)
Jane
Jane always was a timid girl, a rather shy and timid girl,
And when she went to college she was terrified to death.
She tiptoed up the front steps, the dreadful public front steps,
Then pressed against the wall inside, and almost held her breath.
But somebody soon saw her there, standing lost and silent there
And showed her to the cloakroom where she took off coat and hat,
And after taking ages – yes, she made it take her ages –
She returned to the Common Room – she knew her way to that.
And sitting in a corner, a nice convenient corner,
She watched the others dash about and laugh and joke and yell,
And during all that first week it seems she sat in corners
And why she didn’t die there is more than she can tell.
But now she’s been at college for ages, simply ages,
And you can see her dash about and laugh and yell and joke,
And when she sees the “freshers” sitting frightened in their corners
She can never understand it,
No she cannot understand it
For she says we’re all such kindly, harmless, friendly sort of folk.
Margaret Lilian Taylor 1936