[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923).]
Heard at Mulcahy’s.
Heard in the depth of the night
Out where the timid souls go;
Brief as the life of a spark,
A lover could whisper as low:
— A sob, or a sigh, or a word,
What was it, now, that you heard?
Heard at Mulcahy’s?
Was it a woman in pain?
Or a child at its crying new-born?
A groan? or the hiss of a curse?
Or the prayer of a lover forlorn?
What was it, now, that you heard?
What whisper, what horrible word,
Did you hear at Mulcahy’s?
She shuddered, and looked at the fire:
She shuddered, and looked to the door:
Her eyes, they were strange and ablaze
As I never had seen them before.
Though I whispered not one little word
She trembled, and surely she heard
What she heard at Mulcahy’s?
The wind was a creeping slow thing
And the little clock ticked all alone.
I heard: ’twas a hiss, or a curse,
And yet ’twas a sob and a groan.
And she: she was sleeping, nor stirred:
A low evil whisper I heard,
It was heard at Mulcahy’s.
Source:
John Shaw Neilson, Ballad and Lyrical Poems, Sydney: The Bookfellow in Australia, 1923, page 47
Editor’s notes:
’twas = (archaic) a contraction of “it was”
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