Rooms

By Charlotte Mew 1869–1928 Charlotte Mew

I remember rooms that have had their part

In the steady slowing down of the heart.

The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,

The little damp room with the seaweed smell,

And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide—

Rooms where for good or for ill—things died.

But there is the room where we (two) lie dead,

Though every morning we seem to wake and might just as well seem to sleep again

As we shall somewhere in the other quieter, dustier bed

Out there in the sun—in the rain.

Biography

The life of turn-of-the-twentieth-century British writer Charlotte Mew was full of tragedy from beginning to end. Mew was born in London in 1869 into a family of seven children; she was the eldest daughter. While she was still a child, three of her brothers died. Later, another brother and then a sister were committed to mental hospitals in their twenties where they would spend the rest of their lives. That left only Charlotte . . .

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