Alisonpoetry

 

She walked the grounds and paced the floors, A young lady whose mother came from faraway shores. Her husband was the Baron of Bosworth Hall, Sir Wolstan had anger issues, not the belle of the ball. Anna was very lonely and made friends With a paid member of staff. Anna’s father became very annoyed and showed his wrath. The gardener and Anna would sneak off to the woods, Their love was not to be, for he lacked the financial goods. Yes, Sir Wolstan stated that the gardener was far below Anna’s privileged degree, Definitely not of husband status—very sadly, not he. Anna’s mother died shortly after her birth, Back in those days, there was little medical worth. There is a myth that Sir Wolstan set a man trap In the grounds of the great big house. Soon she would be dead, never to have a spouse. The trap was meant for the paid member of staff, But it caught Anna on her way down the path. She began to bleed heavily and fell on the path, A victim, it seemed, of he...

  I built this house of stone and lime To stand against the tide of time, To keep the common world away From where my gentle daughter lay. I saw the way he looked at her— That digging boy, that common cur— And so I swore by oath and blood To crush their passion in the mud. I did not mean for her to stray Beyond the light of common day. I set the trap for coarser feet, Where garden paths and thickets meet. But God, the sound of metal bone! A sound that turned my heart to stone. I found her there, my only child, By my own cleverness defiled. The halls are silent, cold, and wide, With nowhere left for me to hide. For though I buried her with grace, I still see Anna's phantom face. She does not speak, she does not cry, She only watches as I die, A prisoner in the house I made, Haunted by the trap I laid.

  The Girl in the Garden A father’s pride, a father’s wall, Enclosed the grounds of Bosworth Hall. But love grew wild beyond the gate, Unaware of iron, unaware of hate. She stepped where shadows softly lie, Beneath a cold and Leicester sky. The steel was hidden, the trap was set, For a lover’s foot she had not met. The snap of jaws, the cry of pain, Her crimson blood like summer rain. The gardener’s son she sought to see, Now haunts the roots of the chestnut tree. The Grey Lady She is a song the Watersons sing, A ghostly breath, a winter thing. Nineteen years was all she stayed, Before the debt of blood was paid. She walks the halls in a dress of mist, With a heavy heart and a broken wrist. Through the library door and the moonlit stair, You’ll feel the chill of her golden hair. The 4th Baronet, in his robes of stone, Left his daughter to die alone. But though they buried her deep in the clay, Anna Dixie will never stay away.