TOO EARLY TO BED—A LAMENT

BY DOROTHY P. WARD

This hand-coloured illustrated poem is centered, occupying a full page. The title is hand-lettered in a cartouche at the top of the image: “Too Early to Bed—A Lament.” The title is followed by three red roses. Below the title, three-quarters of the page displays the central scene: a young girl sitting up in bed, with drowsy eyes. She is pale skinned with light brown hair and wears a white night dress. Behind her, four seraphim peer in through a circular window. The window looks out onto a starry blue evening sky; a cityscape is rendered in silhouette. The seraphim have green wings, golden haloes, and have the same skin and hair colour as the girl. The wallpaper covering the wall around the window is decorated with red flowers. Behind the girl, on the right side of the image, the top of a staircase is visible in the bright light of the room beyond. Two angels recline at the foot of the wood-framed bed, their hands clasped in prayer. Like the seraphim, they have green wings, golden haloes, and look similar to the girl. Below the angels is a cartouche containing the poem’s calligraphic text: “Outside of the casement wind voices are singing / There is dancing below I can hear their gay tread / Even the church bells are cheerily ringing / O why am I sent all too early to bed? / Star faces are shining aloft in the lightness / And out in the passage the lamplight I see / For everyone else there is music and brightness / But only the silence and darkness for me.” The artist’s monogram is visible at the bottom right of the bed.

MLA citation:

Ward, Dorothy. “Too Early to Bed: A Lament.” The Green Sheaf, No. 2, 1903, p. 14. Green Sheaf Digital Edition, edited by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Yellow Nineties 2.0, Toronto Metropolitan University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2022. https://1890s.ca/gsv2-ward-lament

magazine_images The Green Sheaf 2 Too Early to Bed—A Lament Dorothy P. Ward 1903 Hand-coloured image Full-page decorated poem Window, Bed, Roses, and Curtains Girl, Angel, Nightgown, and Seraphim Interior, Bedroom, and Wallpaper