My heart is like a hollow bowl
Emptied of joy and pain.
The desert airs have taken toll,
The parching droughts remain --
No stored-up vintage of the soul
Comes brimming back again.
My heart is like a hidden shrine
The worshippers forgot;
Long spilt the sacramental wine,
The withered garlands rot --
No slender, starry candles shine
Where sanctity is not.
My heart is like a shuttered door,
A little empty room;
No chink of sunlight on the floor,
No footstep in the gloom,
No voices breaking any more
The silence of the tomb.
I think that it is better so.
What use in bringing back
A lovely, tender thing to know
The torture and the rack? --
The smallness you can not forgo,
The greatness that I lack.
First published in The Australian Woman's Mirror, 29 November 1927
