Star over Bethlehem (16 page)

My fair love,

My false love,

My fair false love …

And no one knows to look at me

That all the time I only see

Two long white hands and drowning hair

And oh! a face so wild and strange and fair …

 

C
OME
down to me, Jenny, come down from the hill,

Come down to me here where I wait,

Come down to my arms, to my lips, my desire,

Come down all my hunger to sate.

But Jenny walks lonely, her head in the air,

She walks on the hilltop, the wind in her hair,

She will not come down to me, loud though I cry,

She walks with the wind, upturned face to the sky …

In the cool of the evening I walked in the glade,

And there I met God … and I was not afraid.

Together we walked in the depths of the wood

And together we looked at the things we had made,

Together we looked—and we saw they were good …

God made the World and the stars set on high,

The Galaxies rushing, none knows where or why.

God fashioned the Cosmos, the Universe wide,

And the hills and the valleys, the birds in the wood,

God made them and loved them, and saw they were good …

And I—have made Jenny! To walk on the hill.

She will not come down to me loud though I cry;

She walks there for ever, her face to the sky,

She will not come down though I call her,

She will not come down to my greed,

She is as I dreamed her … and made her

Of my loving and longing and need …

With my mind and my heart I made Jenny,

I made her of love and desire,

I made her to walk on the hilltop

In loneliness, beauty and fire …

In the cool of the evening I walked in the wood

And God walked beside me …

We both understood.

 

T
HE
fairies talk to little girls,

They push aside their golden curls

And whisper in a shell-pink ear—

But what they say
we
cannot hear.

We grown-ups are so tall and proud

And fairies
hate
to shout aloud.

The fairies run along the ground

And baby girls can hear the sound,

They double up, and crow and kick

And beg their mothers to look quick.

But when we look, they've always past,

The little fairies run so fast.

The fairies stay awake all night

So little girls need take no fright,

For if the night light
does
go out

They know the fairies are about,

And they can hear their silky wings—

They
are
so kind, these darling things!

 

I
WORE
my new canary suit

To go and meet my love,

We talked and talked of everything

In earth and heaven above.

I went again to meet my love,

The years had flitted by,

I wore my old canary suit

To bid my love goodbye.

I took it to a jumble sale

But brought it back once more

And hung it on an inner peg

Within my cupboard door.

I shall not meet my love again

For he is in his grave.

So—I've an old moth-eaten suit

And he is young and brave …

 

P
RESUMPTIVE
is Man to claim the right

To arbitrate between God's creatures so

And place a gulf between the Black and White

Deeper than sea or ocean waters flow.

So strange it seems, this unpigmented pride,

The paleness of a skin that knows not sun …

Men all are built of bone;

How hard then to decide

If they are Apes or Men

When life is done!

Some think, and more than one,

That coffee-coloured children meet the case,

It is our duty so to take one's fun

That the resulting mixture has a face

That nicely illustrates Mendelian lore.

Oh, coffee-coloured world,

You'll be a
BORE.

Satiety but no variety.

A
BORE.
A
BORE.
A
BORE.

 

A
FTERNOON
Tea by the side of the road

That is the meal that I love,

Hundreds of cars rushing past all the time,

Sunshine and clouds up above!

Get out the chairs and set up the tea,

Serviettes, too, are a must.

Never a moment that's quiet or dull,

Sausage rolls flavoured with dust!

Time to go home? Strew the orange peel round,

Leave paper and portions of pie,

Pack up the crocks and get into the queue,

Perfect picnic place, love, and goodbye …

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.

She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
. With
The Murder in the Vicarage
, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.

Many of Christie's novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series.
The Mousetrap
, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are
Murder on the Orient Express
(1974) and
Death on the Nile
(1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.

Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain's highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.

www.AgathaChristie.com

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

“Agatha Christie has provided entertainment, suspense, and temporary relief from the anxieties and traumas of life both in peace and war for millions through the world.”—P.D. James,
New York Times
bestselling author

The Man in the Brown Suit

The Secret of Chimneys

The Seven Dials Mystery

The Mysterious Mr. Quin

The Sittaford Mystery

Parker Pyne Investigates

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Murder Is Easy

The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

And Then There Were None

Towards Zero

Death Comes as the End

Sparkling Cyanide

The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

Crooked House

Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

They Came to Baghdad

Destination Unknown

Ordeal by Innocence

Double Sin and Other Stories

The Pale Horse

Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories

Endless Night

Passenger to Frankfurt

The Golden Ball and Other Stories

The Mousetrap and Other Plays

The Harlequin Tea Set

The Hercule Poirot Mysteries

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Murder on the Links

Poirot Investigates

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Big Four

The Mystery of the Blue Train

Peril at End House

Lord Edgware Dies

Murder on the Orient Express

Three Act Tragedy

Death in the Clouds

The A.B.C. Murders

Murder in Mesopotamia

Cards on the Table

Murder in the Mews

Dumb Witness

Death on the Nile

Appointment with Death

Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Sad Cypress

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Evil Under the Sun

Five Little Pigs

The Hollow

The Labors of Hercules

Taken at the Flood

The Under Dog and Other Stories

Mrs. McGinty's Dead

After the Funeral

Hickory Dickory Dock

Dead Man's Folly

Cat Among the Pigeons

The Clocks

Third Girl

Hallowe'en Party

Elephants Can Remember

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case

The Miss Marple Mysteries

The Murder at the Vicarage

The Body in the Library

The Moving Finger

A Murder Is Announced

They Do It with Mirrors

A Pocket Full of Rye

4:50 from Paddington

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

A Caribbean Mystery

At Bertram's Hotel

Nemesis

Sleeping Murder

Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories

The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries

The Secret Adversary

Partners in Crime

N or M?

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Postern of Fate

Memoirs

An Autobiography

Come, Tell Me How You Live