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BREAD AND CIRCUSES

by

HELEN PARRY EDEN






London: John Lane, The Bodley Head
New York: John Lane Company
Toronto: Bell & Cockburn MCMXIV

William Brendon and Son, Ltd., Printers, Plymouth




                                 ERRATA
            Page  4, line 11, _for_ “about” _read_ “above.”
              ”  15,   ”   5, _for_ “who”   _read_ “Who.”
              ”  55,   ”  11, _for_ “saw I” _read_ “saw that I.”
              ”  87,   ”  15, _for_ “Close” _read_ “close.”


                                   TO
                        THE MEMORY OF MY SISTER
                           JOAN ABBOTT PARRY

                          THESE, AND MUCH MORE




NOTE


Of the verses contained in this book, the greater part have already
appeared, notably in the _Westminster Gazette_, _The Englishwoman_,
_The Daily Chronicle_, _The Catholic Messenger_, _The Pall Mall
Magazine_, _T.P.’s Magazine_, and _Punch_. To the proprietors of
_Punch_ I am especially indebted for leave to reprint thirteen numbers
of which they own the copyright.

                                                             H. P. E.




CONTENTS


                                                          PAGE
        THE BROOK ALONG THE ROMSEY ROAD                     3
        THE POET AND THE WOOD-LOUSE                         5
        “JAM HIEMS TRANSIIT”                                7
        “VOX CLAMANTIS”                                     8
        SORROW                                              9
        THE MULBERRY                                       10
        THE WINDOW-SILL                                    11
        THE ANGELUS-BELL                                   12
        THE APPLE-MAN FROM AWBRIDGE                        13
        OF DULCIBEL                                        15
        THE LADY PHEASANT                                  16
        TIME’S TYRANNESS                                   17
        THE GINGER CAT                                     19
        Μονοχρόνος Ἡδόνη                                   21
        A SONG IN A LANE                                   22
        CRIES OF LONDON                                    23
        THE THIRD BIRTHDAY                                 25
        ONE-EYED JOCKO                                     26
        A SUBURBAN NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT                   27
        “A PURPOSE OF AMENDMENT”                           30
        HELENA TO HERMIA                                   31
        “EFFANY”                                           32
        THE ARK                                            34
        AN UPLAND STATION                                  36
        THE WORSHIPPERS                                    38
        LINES TO A JOURNALIST, ON HIS PRAISING A
                 NOBLE LORD RECENTLY CREATED               39
        THE BELGIAN PINAFORE                               41
        THE WIND                                           43
        TO BETSEY-JANE, ON HER DESIRING TO GO
                 INCONTINENTLY TO HEAVEN                   45
        IN BETHLEHEM TOWN                                  46
        THE MOON                                           48
        A LADY OF FASHION ON THE DEATH OF HER DOG          49
        TO A LITTLE GIRL                                   51
        LINES WRITTEN FOR D. E. IN A COPY OF “THE CHILD’S
                 GARDEN OF VERSES”                         52
        EPISTLE TO THOMAS BLACK, CAT TO THE SOANE MUSEUM   53
        FOR MY MOTHER, WITH A NEW BUTTON-BOX               56
        A CHILD BEFORE THE CRIB                            57
        TO MASS AT DAWN                                    59
        THE NUNS’ CHAPEL                                   60
        THE SNARE                                          61
        A HOUSE IN A WOOD                                  63
        THE CONFESSIONAL                                   65
        EPITAPH ON A CHILD, RUN OVER AND KILLED BY A
                 MOTOR-CAR IN THE STREET                   67
        THE WATER-MEADS OF MOTTISFONT                      70
        THE SENIOR MISTRESS OF BLYTH                       72
        THE FIRST PARTY                                    75
        SOUVENIR OF MICHAEL DRAYTON                        77
        “FOUR-PAWS”                                        79
        “FOUR-PAWS” IN LONDON                              81
        TO MY SISTER DOROTHY, WITH A PASTE BROOCH          83
        SESTINA, TO D. E.                                  84
        LULLABY FOR A LITTLE GIRL                          86
        RONDEAU OF SARUM CLOSE                             87
        THE KNOBBY-GREEN                                   88
        THE CARCANET                                       89
        TO A TOWN CRIER                                    90
        THE TALE OF JOCKO, A STORY FOR A CHILD             91
        THE WAG-TAIL                                       98
        HIGH TIDE AT BATTERSEA                            100
        TO MY DAUGHTER, WHO TELLS ME SHE CAN
                 DRESS HERSELF                            101
        THE BABY GOAT                                     103
        BOURNEMOUTH TO POOLE:
            (1) BOURNEMOUTH                               105
            (2) POOLE HARBOUR                             105
        THE JAPANESE DUCKLING                             107
        THE PRIVET HEDGE                                  108
        THE VEGETARIAN’S DAUGHTER                         109
        HONEY MEADOW                                      110
        AN ELEGY, FOR FATHER ANSELM, OF THE ORDER OF
                 REFORMED CISTERCIANS, GUEST-MASTER
                 AND PARISH PRIEST                        112
        THE REGRET                                        117
        FIRST SNOW                                        118
        TO A CHILD RETURNING HOME UPON A WINDY DAY        119
        THE DEATH OF SIR MATHO                            120
        THE PETALS                                        124
        POST-COMMUNION                                    126
        INDEX TO FIRST LINES                              127

[Illustration: BREAD & CIRCUSES]


THE BROOK ALONG THE ROMSEY ROAD

      The brook along the Romsey road
      With cresses fringed about,
      Holds waving fins and streaming weeds
      And bubbles bright as crystal beads
      And root-bound reaches whither speeds
      Startled the shadowy trout.

      As southward runs the Romsey road
      The sunny wind blows harsh
      With yellow shale and whirling sands
      That sting the faces and the hands
      Of us who leave the wooded lands
      Of pleasant Michelmarsh.

      Where southward runs the Romsey road
      Southward lagged Betsey-Jane
      Clutching my hand, and still the grit
      Lay rough between our fingers, it
      Smarted on Betsey’s face and knit
      Her little brows with pain.

      A bend was in the Romsey road,
      Shut off by elms the wind
      Was stilled, below a bridge the brook
      Came dimpling forth, and Betsey shook
      Her fingers free and ran to look,—
      I held her frock behind.

      On the far shore a wag-tail dipped
      His beak,—we gazed below,
      And Betsey was content to stand
      And see the trout and hold my hand,
      And watch them wave above the sand
      Until we turned to go.

      The brook along the Romsey road
      With cresses fringed about
      Ran all day long in Betsey’s head,
      She played at wag-tails while she fed,
      And even as she went to bed
      She babbled of the trout.


THE POET AND THE WOOD-LOUSE

      A portly Wood-louse, full of cares,
      Transacted eminent affairs
      Along a parapet where pears
      Unripened fell
      And vines embellished the sweet airs
      With muscatel.

      Day after day beheld him run
      His scales a-twinkle in the sun
      About his business never done;
      Night’s slender span he
      Spent in the home his wealth had won—
      A red-brick cranny.

      Thus, as his Sense of Right directed,
      He lived both honoured and respected,
      Cherished his children and protected
      His duteous wife,
      And nought of diffidence deflected
      His useful life.

      One mid-day, hastening to his Club,
      He spied beside a water-tub
      The owner of each plant and shrub
      A humble Bard
      Who turned upon the conscious grub
      A mild regard.

      “Eh?” quoth the Wood-louse, “Can it be
      A Higher Power looks down to see
      My praiseworthy activity
      And notes me plying
      My Daily Task?—Not strange, dear me,
      But gratifying!”

      To whom the Bard: “I still divest
      My orchard of the Insect Pest,
      That you are such is manifest,
      Prepare to die.—
      And yet, how sweetly does your crest
      Reflect the sky!

      “Go then forgiven, (for what ails
      Your naughty life this fact avails
      To pardon) mirror in your scales
      Celestial blue,
      Till the sun sets and the light fails
      The skies and you.”

       *       *       *       *       *

      May all we proud and bustling parties
      Whose lot in forum, street and mart is
      Stand in conspectu Deitatis
      And save our face,
      Reflecting where our scaly heart is
      Some skyey grace.


“JAM HIEMS TRANSIIT”

      When the wind blows without the garden walls
      Where from high vantage of the budding boughs
      The wanton starling claps his wing and brawls
      And finches to their half-erected house
      Trail silver straws; when on the sand-pit verges
      The young lambs leap, when clouds on sunny tiles
      Pass and re-pass, then the young Spring emerges
      From Winter’s fingers panoplied with smiles.
      So some bright demoiselle but late returning
      To her old home with new-acquirèd graces
      Learnt in some strait academy and burning
      To kindle wonderment in homely faces
      Smileth, while she who taught her all her arts,
      The dark duenna, with a sigh departs.


“VOX CLAMANTIS”

      How late in the wet twilight doth that bird
      Prolong his ditty; from what darkling thorn,
      Dim elder wand or blackest box unstirred
      By drip of rain, is the dear descant borne?
      So late it is, two seeming candles shine
      Athwart blue panes in the extremest hedge,
      Ev’n the child’s bunch of daisies close their eyne
      In their horn goblet on the window ledge.
      Sad is the night, doth it so smell of spring
      And wake such ardours in thy pelted breast?
      Aye, thou wert ever one to stay and sing
      Of surgent East to the declining West:—
      And now thou’rt gone, the last of a bright breed,
      Draw-to the curtains, it is night indeed.


SORROW

      Of Sorrow, ’tis as Saints have said—
      That his ill-savoured lamp shall shed
      A light to Heaven, when, blown about
      By the world’s vain and windy rout,
      The candles of delight burn out.

      Then usher Sorrow to thy board,
      Give him such fare as may afford
      Thy single habitation—best
      To meet him half-way in his quest,
      The importunate and sad-eyed guest.

      Yet somewhat should he give who took
      Thy hospitality, for look,
      His is no random vagrancy,
      Beneath his rags what hints there be
      Of a celestial livery.

      Sweet Sorrow, play a grateful part,
      Break me the marble of my heart
      And of its fragments pave a street
      Where, to my bliss, myself may meet
      One hastening with piercèd feet.


THE MULBERRY

      Within our garden walls you see
      A huge old-fashioned mulberry
      Whose purple fruit in summer falls
      Into the shade below the walls.

      Its blackened trunk grows grim and hard
      From the harsh gravel of the yard,
      Its crest beholds the winds go by
      And scans the milky evening sky.

      And like this tree my soul makes mirth,
      (Though rooted deep in blackened earth)
      For it shall grow till it hath sight
      (The walls o’er-topped) of endless light.


THE WINDOW-SILL

      The fuchsias dangle on their stem,
      The baby girl looks up at them,
      The light comes through the muslin frill
      Upon the painted window-sill.

      She cannot see the world outside
      Where men in snorting motors ride,
      Each speeding from his far abode
      To town, along the Fulham Road.


THE ANGELUS-BELL

      My night-dress hangs on fire-guard rail
      And my cup of milk on the table stands,
      The day goes down like a distant sail
      And leaves me undressed in my Mother’s hands.

      She has washed me clean of the long day’s grime
      And the pillow is cool for my sleepy head,
      For the Angelus-bell with its three-fold chime
      Has tolled the sun and myself to bed.


THE APPLE-MAN FROM AWBRIDGE

    While I stand upon the pavement and I dress the dusty stall,
    Where they sell the travelled apples, I bethink me most of all
    How the Quarentines are ripening in Michelmarsh again
    And the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-clinking up the lane.

    Sweet and slim the Ladies’ Fingers fall around you as you
          pass,
    And the Hollycores are mellow by the pig-hole in the grass,
    ’Tis but green they look, you pluck them, and you list the ratt’ling
          core—
    And the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-chaffering at the door.

    Then the first baked batch of Profits, ’twas a treat my mother
          planned,
    Drew them foaming from the oven with the dishcloth round her hand,
    She who poured the amber cider to the pewter’s polished brink
    And the Apple-man from Awbridge wet the bargain with a drink.

    For he buys them by the bushel and he buys them on the trees
    And he sends them from the orchard plot to places such as these;
    And there’s money in your pocket and a hollow at your heart
    When the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-loading of his cart.

    And maybe the nameless apples on the stall in Fulham Road
    Once were piled behind his pony in that fresh and fragrant load
    And maybe it was my mother pulled the Ladies’ Fingers down;
    And the Apple-man from Awbridge turned them over to the town.


OF DULCIBEL

      When by the fire-light Dulcibel
      Stirs the red ash with lively grace,
      Is it the glow of Heaven or Hell
      That mantles in her rosy face?

      They know, Who for despair and joy
      All fateful loveliness have blent,
      Who do both comfort and destroy
      With the indifferent element.


THE LADY PHEASANT

      Whom meet we, Betsey, in the wood?
      The Lady Pheasant and her Brood;
      So stand we still, to let them pass
      On oak-leaves through the tasselled grass.

      Down dappled aisles of hazel shade
      They disappear along the glade,
      My Lady in her rusty gown,
      Ten children clad in useful brown.

      But one fledged laggard stops to eat
      The plantain seeds at Betsey’s feet,
      Who plucks my fingers: “Mother, come
      We’ll pick him up and take him home!”

      The nestling joins the hidden nine
      Deep in the copse; and I lift mine
      And bear her home along the lane,—
      “I want him!” still pouts Betsey-Jane.


TIME’S TYRANNESS

      How few alack,
      There be along the track
      Of life which hear not at their back

      (Though small birds sing
      And blessèd belfries ring)
      The creaking of Time’s iron wing;

      And, in mad flight
      From an untempted might,
      Trample the lovely fields of light,

      Nor for a space
      Pause in their fearful race
      To look their tyrant in the face.—

      In you alone,
      Dear child, there ever shone
      Divine deliberation.

      And now in weed
      And grass you bid Time speed
      Away in dandelion seed,

      Till your bright hair,
      For the down mingled there,
      His very greyness looks to wear.

      Ah happy she
      Whose gentle hours be
      Told by such kind chronometry!

      For now Time saith,
      Who smiling listeneth,
      “Lo, a child flouts me with a breath!”

      And so, to assuage
      Sweetly a feignèd rage,
      He dims your hair with mimic age.


THE GINGER CAT

     ’Tis the old wife at Rickling, she
      Has lost her ginger cat, ’twas he
      Who used to share the Master’s tea
      Beside the settle,
      Or on his corduroy-clad knee
      Out-purr the kettle;

      Who followed when she pinned a-row
      Her flapping gowns of indigo
      And watched the apple-petals blow,
      With stealthy rapture
      Rehearsing in a mimic show
      Some mouse’s capture.

      At dew-fall, with uncovered head,
      What tidings have the old wife led
      Hither where oak and hazel shed
      Their shadow deeper?
      —They say the ginger cat is dead,
      Shot by the Keeper.

      Through coverts dim her searches lie
      (Howe’er so hardly sorrows try
      The burden of uncertainty
      To bear were harder)
      To where things dangle when they die—
      The Keeper’s larder.

      A bough the larder hangs upon—
      Rats, and decaying hedge-hogs grown
      Shapeless, and owls their features gone,—
      A grisly freight,
      And many a weasel skeleton
      With hairless pate,

      And trophy of cats’ tails arrayed,
      Tabby and white and black displayed,
      The adornment of the still green glade—
      More gay for that
      Of him who in the morning strayed,
      The ginger cat.

      She knows it, and she cuts it down;
      Then warm beneath her folded gown
      Bestows the severed brush’s brown
      And orange bands—
      So soft of fur, the tears fall down
      Upon her hands.

      The copse-wood parts, ’tis she who goes,
      Whom shades obscure and star-light shows,
      Treading between the hazel rows
      The fallen sticks,
      Home, where the careless fire-light glows
      Along the bricks.


Μονοχρόνος Ἡδόνη.

      Pull out my couch across the fire,
      Let the flames warm me through,
      Though the pain gnaw my back away
      There shall be pleasure too!

      Search out the desolate garden walks—
      What though the year be spent—
      There shall be marigolds enough
      For the bowl we bought in Ghent:

      Fire shall bring out their acrid scents
      For a walled garden’s sweets,
      With the melody of Flemish bells
      And the angles of Flemish streets.

      Fire and blossom and dreamful shapes
      And I, while the long pain stays,
      Ward off the shot of the savage hours
      On my rampart of yesterdays.


A SONG IN A LANE

      When the Wind comes up the lane
      And you go down—
      The elms their spacious branches swing,
      The hidden hedgelings sing and sing,
      The nettle draws aside his sting
      And kindly weeds their shadows fling
      Across your sunny gown;—
      When the Wind comes up the lane
      And you go down.

      When the Wind comes up the lane
      And you go down—
      Your tresses, for a gusty space,
      Discover all your merry face
      And the Wind drops with pinioned grace
      To kiss the small white forehead place
      Above your summer brown;—
      When the Wind comes up the lane
      And you go down.


CRIES OF LONDON

      What dusky branches fret the yellow sky,
      Betsey, beyond our urban balcony
      How darkly looms the street;
      And from below how many a note assails
      Your unaccustomed ears where London wails
      About your little feet.

      Here, princess of a sombre citadel,
      You stand, the muffin-man with twilight bell
      Preludes your early tea
      And where the milk-man on melodious ways
      Slowly meanders, you incline to praise
      His clear delivery;

      How pitiful you scan the vagabond
      Who cries his ferns as though each arid frond
      Sprang from his arid heart,
      And list the lamentable sweep complain
      Urging in wrath against the slanting rain
      The sable of his cart.

      These for your little ears, so lately blest
      With cluck of painted poultry on the nest
      And rooks’ loquacious flight,
      Who, when the pear-blossom was hardly blown,
      Answered the cuckoo’s folly with your own
      And chid the owls at night.

      Dear, I could thank you for your brave content—
      But, ah, beware, when spring is gone and spent,
      Lest summer’s dusty stir
      Lead gypsies Londonwards from scented loam
      Of Mitcham and the furrows nearer home
      With song of “Lavender!”

      Then close your casement, shun the outer air,
      Let no sublime virago mount the stair
      And bring the rustic South,
      Lest some quick memory of all before
      And the great silver bush beside the door,
      Deject your happy mouth.


THE THIRD BIRTHDAY

      Three candles had her cake,
      Which now are burnt away;
      We wreathed it for her sake
      With currant-leaves and bay
      And the last graces
      Of Michaelmas Daisies
      Pluckt on a misty day.

      Curled (as she cut her cake)
      In mine her fingers lay;
      Purple the petals brake,
      Bruised was the scented bay;
      Like a yellow moth
      On the white white cloth
      One currant-leaf flew away.

      Three candles lit her state;
      Dimmed is their golden reign—
      Leaves on an empty plate,
      Petals and tallow-stain;
      Nor will she
      Nor the candles three
      Ever be three again.


ONE-EYED JOCKO

      The Baby slumbers through the night
      With One-eyed Jocko close to her,
      She clasps his fluffy limbs so tight
      Beside her cheek, her breathings stir
      His agèd fur.

      When Mother, with the shaded light
      Held from the sleepy pillow, stays
      To smooth the counterpane, this sight
      Of Friendship’s sweet nocturnal ways
      Arrests her gaze.

      Yet in the nursery by day
      Jocko doth all neglected lie
      Prone on the hearth-rug, while away
      The Baby stalks, unheeded by
      His vacant eye.


A SUBURBAN NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT

      With a full house of other folks
      I pass the night at Sevenoaks;
      And, for the air is still outside,
      Push the new-painted lattice wide
      Where night’s blue decent quilt is drawn
      Over the shrubs and tennis-lawn
      Up to the very star-lit face
      Of the dim unacquainted place.
        A yellow street-lamp, hid to me,
      Haloes a dusky-headed tree,
      And, by a hedge-row screened from sight,
      Paves the still road with tranquil light,
      Save where the path gold-parapetted
      Lies by a shade of leaves o’erfretted;
      Leaves dangle dark above the fence,
      Their shadowy forms sole evidence
      Of their sweet-breath’d nocturnal sleeping
      And leaves out-face the light which leaping
      A war with monstrous gloom to wage
      Spangles a den of foliage.
        A second lamp that burns in sight
      Fronts shops fast closèd for the night
      Whose white façades are all as mild
      As eye-lids of a sleeping child
      Which in their mute mendacity
      The bustle of the day belie.
        Among the darkling trees set back,
      With many a swarthy chimney-stack,
      The great, rich houses of the place
      Lie all unlit, while the slow pace
      Of night goes on and still lets be
      Their dark inert felicity.
      Here is all still, save when again
      The shuddering cries of the hid train,
      Deep in the cutting no one sees,
      Muffled below the heavy trees,
      Waken the sleeping shrubberies;
      And, with red speed and scudding spark,
      Disperse the arboreal-scented dark.
        Were’t not for these, there is no doubt
      But some fair daemon long cast out
      (The authentic goddess of the place
      Who far too long hath screened her face
      And beauty in some beechen bole
      Gigantic in the woods of Knole)
      Would choose this night for her returning,
      The lawns with silent footfall spurning;
      And such mis-shapen woodland gods
      As work-men with their laden hods
      Scattered, when Progress came with Pride
      And bound in brick the country-side
      And Sevenoaks was edified.
        To-night the wan demesne out-spread
      By star-light waits her wonted tread;—
      Fair! (for the dripping herb is so
      Fragrant and dark) forget to know
      That the dim grass, your sweet resort,
      Is branded for a tennis-court,
      Where silent conies scrambled through
      The grey-clumped fox-gloves drenched with dew
      In the old days so dear to you.
        O pardon and forget it all,
      The long insulting interval,
      Know all a dream, believe them gone,
      The urban race, nor having done
      Hurt to your oaks nor stained your streams;
      So stay, until the windy gleams
      Of dawn the occult sweet minstrels wake.
      Then through the gloaming by-ways take
      Your way bent-headed whence you stole
      Last night, the covert ferns of Knole,
      Ere the first yawning maid unbars
      The door and drives away the stars;
      Lest haply from the northern sky
      Smite on your ear the long-drawn sigh
      (There where the silence was most deep)
      Of London turning in her sleep.


“A PURPOSE OF AMENDMENT”

      He who a mangold-patch doth hoe,
      Sweating beneath a sturdy sun,
      Clearing each weed-disguisèd row
      Till day-light and the task be done,

      Standeth to view his labour’s scene—
      Where now, within the hedge-row’s girth,
      The little plants untrammelled green
      Stripes the brown fabric of the earth.

      So when the absolution’s said
      Behind the grille, and I may go,
      And all the flowers of sin are dead,
      And all the stems of sin laid low,

      And I am come to Mary’s shrine
      To lay my hopes within her hand—
      Ah, in how fair and green a line
      The seedling resolutions stand.


HELENA TO HERMIA (FOR WINIFRED MORGAN-BROWN)

      Throw up the cinders, let the night wear through
      And all the dear accustomed things be said
      Ere up the sleepy stair-case I and you
      Take our warm ways to bed.
      Then let us loose our hands’ reluctant hold
      Lest the uneasy dawn behind dim groves
      Stir the still leaves and any hint of cold
      Blow on our loves.


“EFFANY”

      When elm-buds turn from red to green
      And growing lambs more staidly graze
      And brighter nettle-tops are seen
      Along the hedge-rows’ rambling ways;
      When leaves unclose where late the hail
      Rustled in naked hawthorn twig,
      April comes laughing up the vale
      And Effany comes round to dig.

      Aloof among her nursery toys
      From her high casement Betsey sees
      His vellum-coloured corduroys
      Stirring behind the apple-trees,
      Clutching her trowel she descends,
      With unimagined projects big,
      For Effany and she are friends,
      And she helps Effany to dig.

      Deep in the flowering currant-rows
      The robin twitters gentle mirth
      Where Effany with Betsey goes
      Triumphant o’er the new-turned earth;
      And the wind wanders out and in
      As doubting which it loves the best—
      The grizzly stubble round his chin,
      Or her be-ruffled golden crest.

      His coat, lined with carnation red,
      Hangs in the plum-tree’s forkèd boughs,
      Till sun is low and the day sped
      And Betsey called into the house—
      He scrapes his spade, her trowel she,
      She looks and lingers loath to start
      With little earth-bound feet to tea,
      He takes his coat down to depart.

      Half musing on the little maid
      He trudges towards the coming night,
      Stooping beneath his shouldered spade,
      To where across the curtained light
      With leaves upon its fiery fold
      His wife’s thin shadow falls alone—
      For she and Effany are old
      And all their little ones are gone.


THE ARK

      Vainly, my Betsey, to the weeping day
      You sing the rhyme that drives the rain away;
      And from your window mourn the patient trees
      Buffeted by the peevish Hyades.
      Come, let us shut the lattice, do you slide
      From your old Ark the gaudy-painted side
      And let the enlargèd captives walk about;
      For though a deluge be at work without,
      Secure within we’ve no concern for that,
      And all the nursery is Ararat.
      Not on the rug,—a space of oaken boards
      A firmer footing for the crew affords:
      Softly, my Betsey, lest your fervour harm
      The extreme frailness of a leg or arm—
      Poor limbs, so often and so rudely tossed
      And rattled down, no wonder some be lost
      Beyond the aid of glue! What skill did cram
      Into the hold vermilion-hatted Ham
      And Shem with the green top-knot and the slim
      Contours of Japheth, Noah (somewhat grim
      With buttons) and his consort after him!
      The wives are at the bottom, dear, but now
      Come the black pig and terra-cotta cow,
      Three foxes, this a purple collar round
      His rigid neck proclaims the faithful hound;
      The birds are not so nice, tradition fails
      To account for such a quantity of quails,
      But the old weary crow that flew and flew
      Away from Noah has come back for you.
      Where is the dove? For if my memory speak
      The truth there _was_ a dove and in his beak
      The olive leaves he plucked upon the day
      When, as you know, the waters ebbed away;
      Who perched on Noah’s window with pink feet,
      And without whom no Ark is thought complete.
      Where is the missing dove? For now I see,
      Standing or prone the whole menagerie,
      And the rain’s stopped without and all above
      Beams the benignant sky; and still no dove,
      Of the same beautiful fact the feathered proof!
      Why here—upon the ripples of the roof—
      Here is your truant painted, to abide
      When Shem and Ham are scattered far and wide,
      And all the beasts are broke, to brood with furled
      Pacific wings over the new-washed world.


AN UPLAND STATION

   O the trucks that leave Southampton bring a smell of twine and tar,
   And fishy like the asphalt ways that front the glittering bar,
   And they steam into the station where the laurel bushes are;

   And the trucks be wet and slippery as sea-weed on the rocks
   With their cumbrous coils of cordage from the ships beside the docks,
   And they creak along the platform like the clank of ogres’ locks.

   What send we to Southampton for our upland valley’s freight?
   Comes a band of armoured milk-cans through the level-crossing’s gate
   And cabbages with leaves a-curl and sprouting through the crate.

   And ducklings in a wicker coop and gilly-flowers to fall,
   Dusty-petalled in a bucket under some Southampton stall,
   And sons who sail for ’Meriky and bid good-bye to all.

   Then it’s “Forward for Southampton!” They are gone and we turn back,
   Past the river and the orchard and the warm dishevelled stack,
   And again the silent barriers are swung across the track;

   Again the platform is at peace, the idle metals shine,
   And the tendrils are untroubled on the station-master’s vine,
   And the sun is on the laurels and the sparrows on the line.


THE WORSHIPPERS

      When the young Spring in Betsey’s fingers sets
      The first white violets,
      And she hath reared them in her soft brown fist,
      Ev’n to my stooping mouth till they be kist:—
      Shall I allow my kiss more fainly lingers
      Among her baby fingers,
      Where (for all pride of perfume that they shed),
      The very violets be out-violetted?

      Great is her portion whose auriferous mines
      Yield new-coin’d celandines,
      Her dowry hoarded in the hedge-row’s heart
      Till the March wind hath blown the buds apart;
      For her delight these gay-wrought tassels be
      By name Dog’s Mercury,
      For her delight I scour from wood to wood,
      Lured by one lode-star with her Babyhood.

      Dare I avow then, Betsey, that your grove
      Hath not mine only love?
      Have we not quit a brave and bustling world
      For catkins and the cuckoo-pint uncurl’d?
      So, while your wind-blown cheek to mine you press,
      I know you’ll never guess
      Whereto my woodland incense I prefer—
      And that I worship you, dear worshipper.


LINES TO A JOURNALIST, ON HIS PRAISING A NOBLE LORD RECENTLY CREATED

        [“Finally it is proof of his faith in his race and
      his country that he owns twenty thousand acres in
      England and fifteen thousand in Scotland; and he has
      no terrors even of Mr. Lloyd George’s budgets.”]

      Permit, Dear Sir, that the judicious grieve
      Hearing you thus old Mammon’s faith profess
      And the career of commerce interweave
      With terms of more than standard unctuousness;

      For (you yourself have said it) what reward
      Hope you enrolled among the sworn defenders
      Of one who, while you tender your regard,
      Remains impassive and regards his tenders?

      True he has great possessions, well they might
      Stagger your brain and sway your understanding,
      His English leagues—while English paupers fight
      To hang their washing on a London landing;

      Also (’tis as you say) while they the facts
      Deplore of governmental tolls, his rest
      Is still secure, nor any Georgian Acts
      Rouse panic terror in that sturdy breast.

      And yet, and yet, Dear Sir, it would not do
      For all of us to kiss the feet that Fate
      Has set upon our necks although (with you)
      We own they are superlatively great;—

      Here is a rule to save the like mistakes
      And sift the patriots from the money-makers,
      These take an interest in their country’s aches,
      And those an interest on their country’s acres.


THE BELGIAN PINAFORE

     ’Twas bought in Bruges, the shop was poor,
      One read “Au Bébé” flourished o’er
      The ancient lintel; to that door
      No English guinea
      Had ever come nor travelled gold
      Gladdened her gaze, that woman old,
      Who tottered from the gloom and sold
      The Belgian “pinny.”

      I mind me choosing in the place
      A cap with frills of little lace;
      “That too,” I said, “shall come to grace
      My Small and Sweet.”
      Prim in her pinafore arrayed
      I pictured Betsey while I strayed
      Where, all the time, the proud bells played
      Above the street.

      Now, Betsey, on the roguish back
      That stalks around the sunny stack
      The turkey’s truculence or the track
      Of stable cats
      The Belgian “pinny” flaunts its hue,
      Still the same stripe of white and blue
      As when ’twas dyed, no doubt for you,
      In Flemish vats.

      Still of its old lost life it tells
      And alien provenance, there are spells
      And glamour of the Town of Bells
      About it shed;
      And when my Belgian Betsey climbs
      My knee I’ve heard a hundred times
      The clash and ripple of the chimes
      Around her head.

      As though the child herself did play
      Without some white estaminet
      Shuttered and silent where, all day
      In sun and shower,
      Two little lions with stone grins
      Hold ’scutcheons under paws and chins
      And their divine appellant dins
      The honoured hour.


THE WIND

      The sun sank, and the wind uprist whose note
      Piped on amid the stubble melodies
      Of such appeal as ’scape the limber throat
      Of robin singing under saffron skies;—
      Then did he breathe like winding of a horn,
      Whereat some sable flock of clouds affrighted
      Huddled across their rosy pasturage
      Behind the troubled leaves,—
      Larger he loomed, a traveller benighted,
      Hinting of menace and insurgent rage
      Around the placid twilight of our eaves.

      The sun was gone; beneath the steady stars
      That watched the spectral anticks of the oak
      The plumèd elm-tops met in savage wars,
      The smitten pools in argent splinters broke;
      While, as a labourer among the boughs
      Cudgels a harvest from the branches crooked,
      Within the orchard fence one plied a flail
      That woke the sleeping house,
      Till from the shivered lattice faces looked
      Whitely, because the apples fell like hail.

      The sun uprose, serenely gold and fair,
      And Morning in a little ruffled pond
      Scanned her sweet face and prinkt her yellow hair.
      Around her mirror lapped the leaves, beyond
      Jetsam of mast and acorn hid the strand,
      Thick in the orchard was the wreckage piled
      Of twig and fruit, the pitifullest noise
      Of sobbing filled the land:—
      The wind was sleeping sadly as a child
      Littered about by all its broken toys.


TO BETSEY-JANE, ON HER DESIRING TO GO INCONTINENTLY TO HEAVEN

      My Betsey-Jane it would not do,
      For what would Heaven make of you,
      A little honey-loving bear,
      Among the Blessèd Babies there?

      Nor do you dwell with us in vain
      Who tumble and get up again
      And try, with bruisèd knees, to smile—
      Sweet, you are blessèd all the while

      And we in you: so wait, they’ll come
      To take your hand and fetch you home,
      In Heavenly leaves to play at tents
      With all the Holy Innocents.


IN BETHLEHEM TOWN

      In Bethlehem Town by lantern light
      Installèd is our King to-night
      Who for us men shall come to weep
      Our sins alone while very deep
      In shade of leaves His comrades sleep.
      To-night we rise with Thee to pray,
      O parve Jesu Domine.

      In Bethlehem Town the shepherds spread
      Their fairest fleeces for Thy head
      Which for us men with buffets broke
      Shall stain the mockery of Thy cloak
      For the rude scorn of sinful folk.
      No scorn know we who sing and say,
      O parve Jesu Domine.

      In Bethlehem Town soft linens wrap
      Thy limbs upon Thy Mother’s lap
      Which for us men shall soon be bound
      Fast to the pillar whilst around
      The plying scourges fall and wound.
      Alas, our sins be sharp as they,
      O parve Jesu Domine.

      In Bethlehem Town Thou scarce couldst hold
      The three Kings’ gift of myrrh and gold
      Who for us men shall come to groan
      Beneath a guerdon not Thine own,
      Thy most dispiteous cross, alone.
      Now Simon’s part be ours to play,
      O parve Jesu Domine.

      In Bethlehem Town Thy Mother’s knee
      Bore Bliss Itself in bearing Thee
      Who for us men with arms outspanned
      The Cross shall bear while she doth stand
      With pardon at Thy piercèd hand.
      So may we stand with her alway,
      O parve Jesu Domine.


THE MOON

      Playthings my Betsey hath, the snail’s cast shell,
      Pebbles and small unripened pears, she dotes
      On gentle things with furred or feathered coats,
      A bunch of keys, a little brazen bell;
      But none of these enticements please so well,
      Nor pouring tea nor sailing paper boats,
      As the rare moon that of an evening floats
      In anchorages inaccessible.
      On frost-bound nights a portly yellow moon
      She kissed her hand to him before she slept,
      The slim white stripling of an afternoon
      In summer, still she longed for him and wept
      Seeking to coax him down an elder wand,
      For once, that she might hold him in her hand.


A LADY OF FASHION ON THE DEATH OF HER DOG

        “Amongst the many others that were present that
      Cup Day were ... Mr. and Mrs. W.—— L.—— (the
      latter by the way has just lost a dear dog in
      London).”—_The Lady._

      I am not lightly moved, my grief was dumb
      At Great-Aunt Cohen’s death, nor did I whine
      When Uncle Monty did at last succumb,
      Aged close on sixty-nine.

      Dear are my friends, and yet my heart still light is,
      Undimmed the eyes that see our set depart,
      Snatched from the Season by appendicitis
      Or something quite as smart.

      But when my Chin-Chin drew his latest breath
      On Marie’s out-spread apron, slow and wheezily,
      I simply sniffed, I could not take _his_ death
      So Pekineasily.

      All day at Goodwood, where I planned to go,
      Superb in pink and Coronation-blue,
      I mourned, until my husband sought to know
      What good would mourning do?

      “Fool,” I replied, “grief courts these sad ovations,
      And many press my sable-suèded hand,
      Noting the blackest of Lucile’s creations,
      Inquire, and understand:

      And he who lies among the plane-trees shady,
      May rest in peace below the fallen leaf,
      For one, the Correspondent of ‘The Lady,’
      Shares and respects my grief.”


TO A LITTLE GIRL

      You taught me ways of gracefulness and fashions of address,
      The mode of plucking pansies and the art of sowing cress,
      And how to handle puppies, with propitiatory pats
      For mother dogs, and little acts of courtesy to cats.

      O connoisseur of pebbles, coloured leaves and trickling rills,
      Whom seasons fit as do the sheaths that wrap the daffodils,
      Whose eyes’ divine expectancy foretells some starry goal,
      You taught me here docility—and how to save my soul.


LINES WRITTEN FOR D. E.

IN A COPY OF “THE CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES”

      You that have fenced about my storm-swept ways
      With a green hedge-row of your hard-won bays
      And set the flints with flowers such as start
      Deep in the dear Child’s Garden of your heart—
      Take this small gift from her to whom ’tis life
      To be your Dearest Debtor and your Wife.


EPISTLE TO THOMAS BLACK, CAT TO THE SOANE MUSEUM

      Pardon, Dear Sir, if with intrusive pen
      I would remind you that we met last week;
      Not that you showed me any favour then
      Nor that I have forgot the infernal cheek
      You tendered to your fellow-citizen,
      Veiling your yellow eyes, where black and sleek
      You graced the hearth-rug in the glittering gloom
      Of Sir John Soane’s be-mirrored breakfast-room.

      Which snub to soften, an official leant
      Hinting, behind his tactful fingers, that
      It was but seldom that you _quite_ unbent
      Being almost a Statutory cat;
      If not retained by Act of Parliament
      (As is your noble shrine) at least you sat,
      Kept up by twenty shillings and tradition,
      As part and parcel of the exhibition.

      For when (he added in an undertone)
      Each Reynolds, Fuseli, and Bartolozzi,
      Hogarth and Lawrence were bequeathed by Soane
      With Roman marbles and Athenian pots, he
      Begrudged to leave them lifeless and alone,
      So, having ranged them in appropriate spots, he
      Said—“There shall be a Cat,” and, in effect, you’re
      His last word in Domestic Architecture.

      Thus far Authority. Now, might I ask it,—
      How came you, Thomas, by this lofty station
      From kitten-hood and the maternal basket?
      Was there, perchance, some stiff examination
      Such as tests candidates whose pleasant task it
      Is to advance the cause of education,
      In places advertised, you often see ’em,
      On outside pages of the _Athenæum_?

      Or how were you appointed? Was it Fate or
      The cat before, some mid-Victorian mouser,
      Left you the seat Death bade him abdicate or
      Did hirelings kidnap you like Kaspar Hauser?
      Did rich relations canvass the Curator
      And the Trustees on your behalf? Allow, Sir,
      Some little light to play upon the mystery
      Of Thomas Black his entrance into History.

      O happy he for whom does not exist
      Our later London—that superb disaster,
      Who in his Georgian hermitage has missed
      Our schemes of girders overlaid with plaster,
      Who has not met a Post-Impressionist
      Nor heard a maniac acclaimed a master,
      But sits with those who draw their weekly salary
      Soothed by dim models of the Dulwich Gallery.

      For, be their outlook dull, at least ’tis clean.
      Not so the cat’s whose whole existence spent is
      In some half-lighted haunt of the obscene—
      The studio of that modern idle ’prentice
      Who thinks he has the trick of Hogarth’s spleen
      (Of course he’s twice the draughtsman) if his bent is
      To paint that vice with intimate elation
      Which Hogarth limned, apart, with detestation.

      All this you’re spared; and so you might have paid
      Some courtesy to those, a very few,
      Who come withdrawn from that exterior shade
      To spend an hour with sanity and you,—
      And, when you saw that I had gladly stayed,
      Not closed your eye-lids and our interview
      But told me what the contents of each case meant
      And let me come with you to see the basement.

      Yet, after all, you know your part, doze on;
      You are no common cat, you rather seem,
      If not the incarnation of Sir John,
      To be at least the creature of his dream;
      Visitors enter, sign their names, are gone—
      You stay, the centre of his classic scheme.
      Blink not an ear for me—t’were not expedient—
      But let me rest, Dear Sir, your most obedient.


FOR MY MOTHER, WITH A NEW BUTTON-BOX

      When I was small, great joy it was to see
      Your button-box: the deathless comedy
      Of blowing on the lid enacted, wide
      It flew, I scanned the treasure-trove tongue-tied,
      Cassim in caves of Haberdashery!
      The small pearl “glove” evoked essential glee,
      The large white linen was an ecstasy
      And each gilt hook was covetously eyed
      When I was small.
      Lost are the clothes whereon those buttons be—
      But not the love that planned the stitchery,
      The button-baby is herself a bride—
      But sends you this with love, and writes inside
      “You are far dearer than you were to me
      When I was small.”


A CHILD BEFORE THE CRIB

      We came on Christmas Day
      Within the church to pray
      And lit by candle-ray
      I Mary saw
      And Joseph and the mild
      Ox and that little Child
      With open arms who smiled
      Amid the straw.

      Behind a press of folk
      We knelt and no one spoke,
      Our Lady in her cloak
      Made not less noise,
      With folded fingers, than
      Each silent kneeling man,
      And sweet small girls who can
      Be still, and boys.

      But for that Babe divine,
      His cot compared to mine,
      There in the candle-shine
      Was poor and hard.
      Yet did He never cry,
      Laid on such stems of rye
      As we see blowing by
      The stable yard.

      And I who lie and wail,
      Pent by the polished rail
      Of my white cot while pale
      The night-light gleams,
      Who spurn my sheets and stain
      The patchwork counterpane
      With tears, then sink again
      Into my dreams,

      Must mind me of His lot
      Whose mother poor had got
      No whitely pillowed cot
      To ease His head,
      But was at pains to shake
      The straws up for His sake
      And did a manger make
      Into His bed.

      Sweet Jesus let me wear
      My swaddling-bands of care
      Smiling, and still forbear
      To be so nice;
      That thus I may behold
      Thy True Face, being old,
      Where straws are turned to gold
      In Paradise.


TO MASS AT DAWN

“EX UMBRIS ET IMAGINIBUS IN VERITATEM”

      On the high frosty fields afoot at dawn
      I start:—with rarest mist the vale below
      Brims like a milky cup, the elm-tops show
      As floating islets, not a sound is borne
      Up from the river, shadowy on the lawn
      Two monstrous pheasants fight and strangely low
      The white sun peers between a spectral row
      Of quicksets spanned by spider-webs untorn.
      And the return:—the high sun over-head,
      The fair sleek fallows spread before my sight,
      The garrulous clear waters in their bed
      Of greenest sedge, the multitudinous flight
      Of little wings—O miracle of light—
      The self-same track, with all the shadows fled.


THE NUNS’ CHAPEL

      Now night hath fallen on the little town,
      Lights glimmer from each ancient window-pane,
      On darkling chimney-cowl and weather-vane
      The buoyant moon looks equitably down;
      The portico’s be-shadowed columns frown
      At the market’s verge, and the long lights again
      Stream from the inn,—I to the convent lane
      Pass betwixt looming walls and ilex brown.
      The little door’s ajar, the moon in the porch
      Gleams on the water-stoup, “In Nomine
      Patris et Filii....” God’s rosy light
      Plays on its swinging chain, the auguster torch
      Of prayer hath burnt to fragrance here all day
      Whose ashes lie about His feet to-night.


THE SNARE

      Dear, the delightful world I see
      Holdeth its attributes for thee,
      Nor on my heart doth earth intrude
      Save to thy grace it hath some rude
      Inadequate similitude.

      So lilac leaves the showers bespatter,
      The dropping acorns’ elfin patter—
      These are but echoes of thy feet,
      Naked or shod, how fair and fleet
      On oaken board or paven street.

      The burnish of thy hair is far
      Dearer to me than sunsets are—
      When, from sheer Compton looking west,
      Such gilded after-glows invest
      The twilight on the Vale of Test.

      Grey mirrors to the blue of the skies
      Are the fringed candours of your eyes—
      So hoof-prints in the grassy lane,
      Goblets full-brimmed of Heaven, contain
      Celestial leavings of the rain.

      But vain the wordy nets I make
      To trap the look of thee and take
      Thy graces by the wings which be
      So sturdy as to flutter free

      Yet shall the broke words cast away
      Serve for thy monument which say—
      “Behold us, all too weak a gin
      Too slack a toil to fetter in
      The shadows on her childish chin.”


A HOUSE IN A WOOD

      So ’tis your will to have a cell,
      My Betsey, of your own and dwell
      Here where the sun for ever shines
      That glances off the holly spines—
      A clearing where the trunks are few
      Here shall be built a house for you,
      The little walls of beechen stakes,
      Wattled with twigs from hazel brakes,
      Tiled with white oak-chips that lie round
      The fallen giants on the ground;
      Under your little feet shall be
      A ground-work of wild strawberry
      With gadding stem, a pleasant wort
      Alike for carpet and dessert.
      Here Betsey, in the lucid shade,
      Come, let us twine a green stockade,
      With slender saplings all about,
      And a small window to look out,
      So that you may be “Not at Home”
      If any mortal callers come.
      Then shall arrive to make you mirth
      The four wise peoples of the earth:
      The thrifty ants who run around
      To fill their store-rooms underground,
      The rabbit-folk, a feeble race,
      From out their rocky sleeping place,
      The grasshoppers who have no king
      Yet come in companies to sing,
      The lizard slim who shyly stands
      Swaying upon his slender hands—
      I’ll give them all your new address.
      For me, my little anchoress,
      I’ll never stir the bracken by
      Your house; the brown wood butterfly,
      Passing you like the sunshine’s fleck
      That gilds the nape of your warm neck,
      Shall still report me how you do
      And bring me all the news of you,
      And tell me (where I sit alone)
      How gay you are and how you’re grown
      A fox-glove’s span in the soft weather.

       *       *       *       *       *

      No? Then we’ll wander home together.


THE CONFESSIONAL

      My Sorrow diligent would sweep
      That dingy room infest
      With dust (thereby I mean my soul)
      Because she hath a Guest
      Who doth require that self-same room
      Be garnished for His rest.

      And Sorrow (who had washed His feet
      Where He before had been)
      Took the long broom of Memory
      And swept the corners clean,
      Till in the midst of the fair floor
      The sum of dust was seen.

      It lay there, settled by her tears,
      That fell the while she swept—
      Light fluffs of grey and earthy dregs;
      And over these she wept,
      For all were come since last her Guest
      Within the room had slept.

      And, for nor broom nor tears had power
      To lift the clods of ill,
      She called one servant of her Guest
      Who came with right good will,
      For, by his sweet Lord’s bidding, he
      Waiteth on Sorrow still;

      Who, seeing she had done her part
      As far as in her lay
      And had intent to keep the place
      More cleanly from that day,
      Did with his Master’s dust-pan come
      And take the dust away.

      She thankèd him, and Him who sent
      Such succour, and she spread
      Fair sheets of Thankfulness and Love
      Upon her Master’s bed,
      Then on the new-scoured threshold stood
      And listened for His tread.


EPITAPH ON A CHILD

RUN OVER AND KILLED BY A MOTOR-CAR IN THE STREET

      Here lies A. B. who, four years from her birth,
      Found there was nowhere left to play on earth.
      Strange, for her mother’s child had ever grown
      In the quaint precincts of a country town,
      Yet was she one whose small predestined feet
      Learnt nor forgot to walk upon the street.
      She might not ramble where the farmer spanned
      With consecrated quickset all his land
      To fill her pinafore when mushrooms swell;
      Nor dare she scale the lovely citadel
      Of brambles in the lane, for their sweet prize
      Was spoilt with dust that dimmed the children’s eyes
      When local gods dispersed the timid crowd
      And went before in pillars of grey cloud.
      Nor might a bigger child frequent the edge
      Of the pebbled stream to plait the flowering sedge,
      For aught of native life was kept without
      The chosen haunt of Dives and his trout;
      His pheasants held the coppice and its nuts,
      Where bearded men played peep behind their butts
      And wolvish keepers prowling through the woods
      Had a short way with all Red Riding Hoods.
      No blade of wholesome grass shot through the hard
      And greasy flagstones of the narrow yard
      At home, nor might the children ever play
      Through the allotments where, a mile away,
      The civic cabbages congested stood,
      Reluctant tenants of a stony rood.
      One playground, one alone, for such as she,
      Had planned a grave adult humanity,
      There where grey asphalt hid the ruder ground
      And serried spikes begirt the place around;
      At the one end, of yellow brick and slate,
      Was reared a sort of female Traitors’ Gate,
      At t’other end the piety of a nation
      Had raised a shrine of tin to sanitation.
      This, thanks to man, was all the children’s share
      And Nature was allowed to tender air.
      Hence did it chance (as now and then it may)
      The Powers that Be decreed a holiday.
      And reckless childhood, whom it ever galls
      To sit within the compass of four walls,
      Loosed from its wonted pen conspired to run
      At random through the town beneath the sun,
      Rashly disporting in the common street
      Its rude hands and unnecessary feet.
      That day, so many a hooting corner crost,
      The marvel is that one alone was lost,
      She to whom poverty no tomb assigns
      But a low mound and these unworthy lines.—
      Mourn not at all that Her whose burnished wing
      Flies on the blissful errands of her King,
      Whom (by a heavenly law too young to err,
      Accounted on the earth a Trespasser)
      He hath resumèd and her footfall white
      Enfranchised of the liberties of light:
      But for all those who play the part of Fate
      To engineer this poor and mirthless state
      Weep,—and for all who loved that childish hair
      And saw it stained with Tragedy—one prayer.


THE WATER-MEADS OF MOTTISFONT

    On the painted bridge at Mottisfont above the Test I’ve stood
    Where the dab-chick from a rushy raft directs her little brood,
    Where fringed with sedge and willow-weed the waters spread about
    And linger in pellucid glooms the sleepy spotted trout.

    I’ve seen the tawny tumult of the headlong Highland spate,
    And the ebb round Hair-brush Island (which the map calls
          Chiswick Ait)
    Where the withy bristles shimmer and the purple mud-banks gleam
    And the lights come out by Thornycroft’s and glisten in the stream.

    ’Twere good to be at Abergeirch: the little brook again
    Greets the brine among the shingle on the beetling coast of Lleyn,—
    O the shallows on the sand-banks where the dozing flat-fish lie
    And the heather surging inland till it breaks against the sky!

    But the chalky scaurs of Compton hold the shadows; and between
    Lie the water-meads of Mottisfont enamelled with such green
    As discolours all I’ve looked upon in valleys far apart—
    For the water-meads of Mottisfont lie nearest to my heart.


THE SENIOR MISTRESS OF BLYTH

        [“BLYTH SECONDARY SCHOOL.—The Governors
      of the above School invite applications for the
      post of Senior Mistress. Candidates must be
      Graduates in Honours of a British University and
      must be well qualified in Mathematics, Latin,
      and English. Ability to teach Art will be a
      recommendation.”—Advertisement in _The Spectator_.]

      It is told of the painter Da Vinci,
      Being once unemployed for a span,
      At the menace of poverty’s pinch he
      Sought work at the Court of Milan.
      Having shown himself willing and able
      To perform on the curious lyre,
      He presented the Duke with a table
      Of the talents he proffered for hire.

     “I can raze you a fortress,” it ran on,
     “Quell castles, drain ditches and moats,
      Make shapely and competent cannon,
      Build aqueducts, bridges and boats;
      In peace I can mould for your Courts a
      Few models in marble or clay
      And paint the illustrious Sforza
      With anyone living to-day.”

      Leonardo is dead, they asseverate,
      He has left no successor behind,
      For the days of the specialist never rate
      At its value the versatile mind.
      Is Lord Brougham, then, our latest example?
      No, Time, the old churl with his scythe,
      Shall spare us a notable sample
      In the Senior Mistress of Blyth.

      She shall guide Standard Three through Progressions,
      Study Statics and Surds with the Fourth,
      She shall dwell on De Quincey’s Confessions,
      Donne, Caedmon and Christopher North;
      And no class-room shall boast of a quicker row
      When her classical pupils rehearse
      Their prose, which is modelled on Cicero,
      And their more than Horatian verse.

      She shall lead them to love Cimabue,
      To distinguish with scholarship ripe
      ’Twixt the texture of Clausen and Clouet,
      And the values of Collier and Cuyp.
      Nay, all Blyth shall reflect her ability
      As its brushes acquire by her aid
      Or South Kensington’s pretty facility
      Or the terrible strength of the Slade.

      Yes, her duties are diverse, and this’ll
      Suggest to each candidate why
      They should read Leonardo’s epistle
      Before they sit down to apply;
      For his style is itself a credential
      Though truly he has not a tithe
      Of the qualifications essential
      To the Senior Mistress of Blyth.


THE FIRST PARTY

      Follow, my Betsey-Jane, as best you can,
      Clutching your Mother’s fingers in firm hold,
      The sable progress of the serving-man,
      Nor stumble on your shawl’s imperial fold;
      Whose ceremonious pin of jade and gold
      Bringeth such rosy awe into your face
      As the white frock, the stockings silken-soled
      And the white shoes (with pompons) which will grace
      The lightness of your feet in this illumined place.

      Shawls being shed, descend the ample stair
      And greet our Hostess. Now you’re set to see
      The Conjurer, nor think to leave your chair
      For safer eyrie of your Mother’s knee;—
      Still, as his tricks are tedious to Three
      And strange the flounce-clad children in their tiers,
      Turn your shy back on wiles and wizardry
      To hug, for comfort’s sake, two homely bears
      And a prepost’rous poodle, white with knitted ears.

      For tea, gramercie to a thoughtful choice
      And nice derangement of the chairs, your seat
      Faces a fair acquaintance known as Joyce;—
      What glances under glossy tresses greet
      The fellow-connoisseur of cake and sweet
      Till the last cracker’s pulled on the last plate.
      Now sidle through the dancers’ tortuous feet
      And come at last, for the time waxes late,
      Where in their cloudy breath the shadowy horses wait.

      Glow the two tawny lanterns on the hedge,
      Gleam the ungainly boughs the window blurs,
      And Betsey nodding on the seat’s soft edge
      Holds to her heart those pompon’d shoes of hers;
      Till in my arms, most spent of revellers,
      I lift her slumb’ring whom nor lifting grieves
      Nor sudden stay nor the cold night wind stirs,
      Borne up the path through fragrance of box-leaves,
      Up to her drowsy cot under dependent eaves.


SOUVENIR OF MICHAEL DRAYTON

I

      Scarce hath the crookèd scythe
      Duly been whetted
      When all the mowers blithe
      (By the storm letted,
      Crouching the shed beneath
      At the field’s margent)
      See the first fallen swathe
      Pelted with argent.
      White mist the valley blurs,
      White the horizon,
      Since the cloud skirmishers
      Sent their first spies on.
      Haste away,
      Waters grey,
      Spare of your shedding,
      Till we bestow our hay
      Safe in the steading.

II

      Gild, sun, the pendent leaves
      Silverly dripping,
      Call the swifts from the eaves
      Screaming and dipping,
      Raise the green docks that be
      To the ground beaten,
      All the washed earth we see
      Comfort and sweeten;
      Till at soft interval
      On the small flowers,
      Drops from the thatch-ends fall—
      Spent are the showers.
      Haste away,
      Waters grey,
      Spare of your shedding,
      Till we bestow our hay
      Safe in the steading.

III

      Soon may the whisp’ring blade
      Bow the grey grasses,
      Lo, the lush edge unfrayed
      Where the scythe passes!
      All with a stately speed
      Shorn and soft whistle
      Muted on nought of weed,
      Burdock nor thistle.—
      Grace hath possessed the sky,
      Hope hath o’er-spanned it,
      Parteth he hurriedly,
      Storm, the black bandit.
      Haste away,
      Waters grey,
      Spare of your shedding,
      Till we bestow our hay
      Safe in the steading.


“FOUR-PAWS”

      Four-paws, the kitten from the farm,
      Is come to live with Betsey-Jane,
      Leaving the stack-yard for the warm
      Flower-compassed cottage in the lane,
      To wash his idle face and play
      Among chintz cushions all the day.

      Under the shadow of her hair
      He lies, who loves him nor desists
      To praise his whiskers and compare
      The tabby bracelets on his wrists,—
      Omelet at lunch and milk at tea
      Suit Betsey-Jane and so fares he.

      Happy beneath her golden hand
      He purrs contentedly nor hears
      His Mother mourning through the land,
      The old grey cat with tattered ears
      And humble tail and heavy paw
      Who brought him up among the straw.

      Never by day she ventures nigh,
      But when the dusk grows dim and deep
      And moths flit out of the strange sky
      And Betsey has been long asleep—
      Out of the dark she comes and brings
      Her dark maternal offerings;—

      Some field-mouse or a throstle caught
      Near netted fruit or in the corn,
      Or rat, for this her darling sought
      In the old barn where he was born;
      And all lest on his dainty bed
      Four-paws were faint or under-fed.

      Only between the twilight hours
      Under the window-panes she walks
      Shrewdly among the scented flowers
      Nor snaps the soft nasturtium stalks,
      Uttering still her plaintive cries
      And Four-paws, from the house, replies,

      Leaps from his cushion to the floor,
      Down the brick passage scantly lit,
      Waits wailing at the outer door
      Till one arise and open it—
      Then from the swinging lantern’s light
      Runs to his Mother in the night.


“FOUR-PAWS” IN LONDON

      Four-paws, we know the sun is white
      At dawn in Hampshire when the night
      Deserts those frozen miles,
      When robin creaks from wintry bush
      And early milk-boy’s breeches brush
      The hoar-frost from the stiles;

      Yet shall you never hear him more
      Insistent at our cottage door
      Nor of his spoils partake,
      Alas, poor puss who stir and yawn
      Uneasy in the London dawn
      And, in a flat, awake.

      Four-paws, forgive us! When apprised
      Of our departure you devised,
      No doubt, some darling plan
      Of exodus that should surpass
      His who removed last Michaelmas—
      Your friend the dairy-man:—

      A mightier waggon on the road
      You pictured and so vast a load
      That all should turn and look,—
      Betsey precarious on the shaft,
      Master and Mistress fore and aft,
      The carter and the cook,

      Nurse, with her knitting, in mid-air,
      Carpets in bales, your favourite chair
      And (the progressive path
      With added glory to invest)
      Our Four-paws couchant on the crest
      Of an inverted bath.

      Alas, what difference disgraced
      Our flight! An obscure van replaced
      The customary wain;
      And you, with many a mournful cry,
      Fettered by Betsey in the fly
      And hampered in the train.

      And now you’re here. Well, it may be
      The sun _does_ rise in Battersea
      Although to-day be dark,
      Life is not shorn of loves and hates
      While there are sparrows on the slates
      And keepers in the Park:

      And you yourself will come to learn
      The ways of London and in turn
      Assume your cockney cares,
      Like other folk who live in flats,
      Chasing your purely abstract rats
      Upon the concrete stairs.


TO MY SISTER DOROTHY, WITH A PASTE BROOCH

      Time, cunning smith, hath set you in my heart
      Like stones in silver none may wrest apart;
      Not counterfeit as these our loves shall stay
      When sullen-footed Time hath paced away.


SESTINA

TO D. E.

      I saw myself encircled in the grey
      Of your grey eyes, Dear Love, as in a glass;
      In place of lurking glooms I come their way
      As idle ghosts through magic mirrors pass
      Or shifty clouds bewilder a spring day
      Or windy shadows dusk the summer grass.

      And as swift sickles lop the hedge-row grass,
      As ghosts scent out the dawn with faces grey
      And flee before the stirring feet of day,
      As magic shivers in a splintered glass,
      So all the shaken pictures of me pass
      Even with the moving of your head away.

      Yet would your head be ever turned my way,
      Only our peace is fugitive as grass:—
      Beyond the clapping lintels footsteps pass,
      Shake the snared joy from quiet’s cobweb grey—
      O who drinks silence from a jolted glass,
      Who deals in stillness on a market-day?

      Our joys go begging for a gentle day,
      They are swayed as weed-stems in a water-way,
      Hurt as blind lips that drain a broken glass,
      Blown down by breath as petals flung on grass,
      Thinned as gold hair dull sorrow braids with grey,
      Lopped short as willow-tufts where cattle pass.

      This noisy horde of minutes never pass,
      This patchwork crew;—they throng us day by day,
      Hint of silk linings to their cloaks of grey,
      Cleave out strong-elbowed their ungentle way,
      Bruise the poor joy as legions tread the grass,
      Or as wet fingers rub a moaning glass.

      There is no day ringed round with seas of glass,
      No island day, where like-faced minutes pass
      Fingered on gathered mouth through breathless grass
      With close-girt garment lest the bloom of day
      Be brushed or pollen spilt along their way,—
      Or lest my face be shook from your eyes’ grey.

      O dear grey eyes, though ruder minutes pass
      And dusk the glass, your heart is turned my way
      Wherein all day my face springs up like grass.


LULLABY FOR A LITTLE GIRL

      Now candle-flames disperse the rout
      Of shadows and their giant wars;
      And though the roof of night without
      Be spanned with dusk and set with stars,
      ’Tis lullaby,
      The elm-tops cry,
      And lullaby, the leaves that pass
      In stealth across the window-glass.

      The comb shall sleek your drooping head
      And through the darling tangles go
      And all your night attire is spread
      Before the fire to face the glow,
      And lullaby,
      The cinders sigh,
      For ev’ry rosy palace gone,
      Fall’n in their dwarfish Ilion.

      Now rest, your prayers said aright
      And timely supped your milky bowl,
      Your little body all as white
      And sweet as your unsoilèd soul;
      And lullaby,
      Her melody,
      Who from the quilted bedside goes,
      A-tiptoe, when your eye-lids close.


RONDEAU OF SARUM CLOSE

      In Sarum Close, when she had said her say,
      He stood bare-headed where dim vapours lay
      Heavy on vacant lawn, athwart the stone
      Of that great pile that stands unsought, alone,—
      Himself as still and derelict as they.
      Here, when morn’s gleaming hand had rolled away
      From the green plot of this their week-old play
      Her misty curtain, each to each was shown,
      In Sarum Close.

      Void the discoloured fane before him lay,
      Void the dark-sodded precincts,—far away
      One closed a window, night’s appeal had grown
      Perchance too urgent, even as his own
      Had seemed to her whose friendship did with day
      In Sarum close.


THE KNOBBY-GREEN

      O thou who ’neath the umbrageous trees
      That line the Avenue Louise
      Did’st spread in Belgian sun and breeze
      Thy buds about,
      I come to weep thy destinies
      My Brussels Sprout:

      Who, on this drear December day,
      Rearest above mine Essex clay
      Thy wand of buds as green as they
      Who spend their Yule
      Hearing remoter church-bells play
      In St. Gudule.

      Hail, noble alien, I see
      Thou bear’st in exile and for me
      A neat-curl’d row of progeny,
      (Not all unlike
      Some purse-proud donor’s family,
      By John van Eyck)

      For me unmindful of thy place
      (Comrade of carpets and of lace)
      Who class thee with the vulgar race
      Of Beet and Bean,
      And call thee—to thy very face—
      The Knobby-green.


THE CARCANET

      The world’s a quarry for whose spoils
      Love, the untiring miner, toils
      Early and late, such stones to get
      As may be cut devised and set
      Into his mistress’ carcanet.

      Alack that love can never choose
      But bring thee pebbles of no use:—
      Glance at the gift and thou shalt see
      Each facet in his treasury
      Of stones doth but diminish thee.


TO A TOWN CRIER

“Whiffin, proclaim silence!”—_Pickwick_

      Whiffin, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
      Thee and thine ancient office and the sweet
      Metallic peal that quelled the popular heat
      When party strife ran high in Eatanswill;
      Who now with quavering eloquence would’st fill,
      And tidings of a pilfered purse, the street
      Maddened with motors and the armoured fleet
      Of base mechanical engines out to kill.
      Go, thou sole arbiter of Buff and Blue,
      Time hath prevailed against thee, yield the floor,
      Toll, on bare sufferance, from door to door,
      The hooters hold the highway;—as for you,
      You voice the missing ha’pence of the poor,
      And they the incomes of the well-to-do.


THE TALE OF JOCKO

A STORY FOR A CHILD

I

      An old white Jocko, kindly and urbane,
      Lived with a little girl called Betsey-Jane,
      He was her oldest friend, thin was his hair,
      One arm he lacked, but Jocko did not care,
      No more did Betsey-Jane;—his eyes were gone,
      His figure flat, but all his teeth were on,
      Stitched to his mouth, a row of beady pearls
      More white than those of many little girls.
      All day to please he did his docile best
      And only squeaked when Betsey punched his chest;
      When bed-time came and Nurse tucked Betsey in,
      Warm in her cot he slept beneath her chin.

II

      Now Betsey-Jane was rather more than two
      And just about as good as I and you;—
      She’d learnt to talk, but not learnt when to stop,
      Her yellow hair swung round her in a mop,
      Round was her face, her eyes were opened wide
      And only blinked in sleep or when she cried;
      White frocks she had and blue her pinafore
      With scarlet stitching at the neck, and more
      Delights she had than many girls and boys,—
      Father and Mother, Nurse and many toys
      To comfort her, but, more than all the rest,
      There is no doubt she loved her Jocko best.

III

      Yet Jocko’s life was not a life of ease,—
      We think to do entirely as we please,
      Age teaches otherwise. One evil day
      A cat approached the cushion where he lay
      And tore away his inoffensive hair
      And left him with his leathern skin laid bare,
      Silent upon the rug. His Betsey-Jane
      Found him with tears and kissed him well again;
      But she herself, forgetful of her grief,
      Laughed when they dressed him in a handkerchief
      Just like a doll, but Jocko did not mind,
      He still forgave her for his heart was kind.

IV

      Thus did our Jocko play, for Betsey’s sake,
      The Grand Domestic Game of Give and Take,
      Until her rudeness to her friend was such
      As makes men say “This is a straw too much.”
      One day he sat, as docile as a lamb,
      By Betsey-Jane who, upright in her pram,
      Refused to sleep and went from bad to worse,
      Kicked off her rug and disobeyed her nurse;
      And though her Jocko did not speak his mind
      And only stared to see her so unkind,
      In Endless Street, some yards from their abode,
      She picked him up and flung him in the road.

V

      On sped the pram nor did the nurse’s pace
      Leave time to miss our hero from his place.
      Flat by the curb lay Jocko, still and pale,
      Till a rude sparrow plucked him by the tail
      And up he sat;—the sparrow hopped around
      And eyed him seated sadly on the ground,
      Propped up against the parapet and grey
      With grime and dust that in the gutter lay.
      Then Jocko spoke, he smoothed his sullied fur
      With one long trembling paw, and thought of her
      And said, all torn betwixt his love and pain,—
      “I will go back no more to Betsey-Jane.”

VI

      “I will arise and go beyond the din
      Of towns to where the endless woods begin,
      There among tangled oaks and lowly ways
      Of undergrowth to end my dreary days;
      I will seek acorns, beech-nuts, hips and haws
      And pluck them down with my prehensile paws;
      While the grey rabbits, never shy with me,
      From holes around my sandy-rooted tree
      Come out to nibble in the gentle rain,—
      A calmer life than that with Betsey-Jane.
      Long is the way, but I will make a start,
      A carrier shall take me in his cart.”

VII

      This said, he rose, and sought with feeble pace,
      For he was stiff and sore, the Market Place;
      Where, without horses and their shafts turned down,
      Are ranged the carts that come into the town;
      Until at dusk, all loaded up, they’re gone.
      He found the cart that went to Clarendon.
      Beneath it lay a yellow dog who shook
      His brazen collar, but his churlish look
      Passed off when Jocko hailed the man inside
      Who, loading parcels and not looking, cried,—
      “We start in Butcher Row, sir, from the Bear.
      At four o’clock.” Said Jocko “I’ll be there.”

VIII

      All was arranged, and he could do no more
      But pass the time until the clock struck four.
      He wandered up the Market; far and wide
      The burly drovers elbowed him aside,
      The sheep regarded him with mild surprise
      Behind their hurdles, and the hairy eyes
      Of families of little porkers stared
      And cart-horses with braided tresses glared
      And stamped upon the cobbles. From their shed
      The calves looked bluntly round and many a head
      Of penned-up fowls peered through a wiry door,—
      “Jocko!” they cackled, “we will meet once more!”

IX

      Out of the Market Place an alley led
      To Poultry Cross and old white Jocko sped
      Beneath its shelter and surveyed the stalls
      Which here sell hobby horse, tops and balls,
      And tins for little cakes. One stall was full
      Of button-cards and reels and hanks of wool,
      Another sold you sage and pansy roots,
      And this, red carpet-slippers, hob-nailed boots
      And clogs, and hanging on a string by twos
      A row of little russet leather shoes;
      Tears filled his eyes, he turned to look again,—
      “Those shoes,” said he, “are just like Betsey-Jane.”

X

      While thus he spake two farmers sauntered past
      And turned to stare at Jocko, said the last,—
      “I saw that monkey next a Spanish hen,
      The little beast has wandered from his pen!”
      Jocko is captured by the portly pair,
      They lead him, passive, to the Market Square;
      Once more the hens their throats exultant crane,—
      “Jocko!” they cackle; “Here he is again!”
      The farmers stuff our hero, sad and sore,
      Into a vacant pen and slam the door:—
      Through the grim wires the searching breezes moan
      And Jocko sits there shivering alone.

XI

      The time lagged on; some children through his door
      Prodded his fur with sticks, the clock struck four.
      Now is the time, but Jocko does not care,
      When carriers are starting from the Bear;
      Fast in his pen, and all his anger gone,
      No longer would he live at Clarendon.
      Home was his one desire. “At six,” he said,
      “My Betsey-Jane is kissed, and goes to bed,
      Her bath-tub by the nursery fire will be,
      She will come in and look around for me
      And sob all night beneath her counterpane
      For her lost Jocko—little Betsey-Jane!”

XII

      While Jocko thus lamented, through the crowd
      There came a little girl who sobbed aloud
      And clutched her Mother’s hand; ’twas Betsey-Jane,
      Who all the afternoon had sought in vain
      Her Jocko cast away in Endless Street;
      Tired are her little gaitered legs, her feet
      So weary, each new thought of Jocko brings
      New tears to wet her woollen bonnet strings
      And drip from each blue tassel to the ground.
      She would not look on all the beasts around,
      But Jocko saw her coat, and “Betsey-Jane,”
      He cried, “Do come and take me home again!”

XIII

      Alas, they did not hear, his voice was low,
      With chill and hunger, Mother turned to go;
      But Betsey-Jane looked sadly back and then
      Beheld him upright in his distant pen.
      She dropped her Mother’s hand and with a shout
      Of “Jocko, Jocko!” ran to get him out;—
      Two shame-faced men undid at her commands
      His cage and Mother put him in her hands,
      She clasped him closely, not a word was said,
      And laid her tearful cheek against his head.

XIV

      So back to Endless Street and once again
      Our Jocko slumbers close to Betsey-Jane,
      Clutched in her little fingers’ rosy snare,
      Among the sleepy tangles of her hair,
      Seen dimly through her cot’s surrounding rail.
      And here are morals tied to Jocko’s Tale:—
      “Though hurt your feelings never try to roam
      For there are many places worse than home.”
      And yet another,—“Never slight or spurn
      A good old friend, they say a worm will turn;
      And such-like stories end in deeper pain
      Than that of Jocko and his Betsey-Jane.”


THE WAG-TAIL

      By brook and bent,
      Alert and diligent,
      All day my merry wag-tail went,

      Soberly clad
      She seemed, in feathers sad
      Which yet a fair white braiding had;

      Nor did she fail
      With jerking beak and tail
      Quite to dislodge th’ incurious snail,

      And thence away
      To the pollard where all day
      Her brown big-footed babies lay.

      —I do desire
      No better, nor look higher,
      Pied wag-tail, than thy plain attire;

      Nor would I roam
      Afar, but kindly come
      Back to th’ acclaiming mouths at home.

      Like thee to run
      About my works begun
      And pluck delights from ev’ry one.

      Where (might I do’t)
      Living, my only suit,
      And dead, my dearest attribute.


HIGH TIDE AT BATTERSEA

      So now my Thames is fairly on the turn
      And plain it is the sum of water seeks
      That ocean which the flood so late did spurn
      With long reluctance in the little creeks;
      Now the great barges tethered to their buoys
      (Their gulls still seated in deliberate loads)
      Swing round majestical and, with no noise,
      Face the hid sea beyond these sullen roads.
      Even so my soul which did so long abide
      With thoughts so fledged and meditative freighted
      Hath veered about and answered to the tide,
      Glad, and her faithless station abdicated;—
      Lord, ere this lovely ebb shall set for me,
      Slip thou my chain and lure me out to sea.


TO MY DAUGHTER

WHO TELLS ME SHE CAN DRESS HERSELF

      So, dear, have you and Nurse conspired
      In secret, and all eyes evaded,
      Till you can boast yourself attired
      Unwatched, uncounselled and unaided?

      Perfect in button, tape and hook,
      You’ve learned the knack, you come to tell us,
      And while you turn that we may look
      I own I am a little jealous

      That she has taught you with success
      How to assume your frock and shed it,
      That you have learnt the art to dress
      And Abigail’s is all the credit.

      Yet my devotion has its will,
      Nor can I lightly yield to Nurse all
      The praise, for I have prompted still
      A spiritual dress rehearsal;

      On your soft hair a helmet placed,
      Fastened your breastplate like a bib on,
      And tied the Truth about your waist
      Where she is proud to tie your ribbon.

      Each has her task, decorous, sweet,
      Fair, to surpass your friends, she made you,
      While for your hidden foes’ defeat
      I in your Pauline arms arrayed you.

      For, though you tire of sash and gown
      And fold them up for good, there’s no day
      When these, that I have made your own,
      Shall be a burden or démodés.

      Yet, though the clasps endure, I know
      I’ll wish our handiwork were neater
      When at celestial gates you show
      The well-worn harness to St. Peter.


THE BABY GOAT

      Four alders guard a bridge of planks
      And waveless waters filmed with brown,
      A rugged lawn’s uneven banks
      Slope gently down,
      And there, still chafing at the chain
      That girds his slim pathetic throat,
      They’ve picketed our friend again—
      The Baby Goat.

      Treading alone the watered vale,
      Betsey and I, beside the marsh
      Often we linger to bewail
      His durance harsh;
      What plaints allure my baby’s feet,
      What tethered struggles claim her sighs,
      What shrill protestant whinnies greet
      Her long good-byes.

      Once we repassed the lonely ground
      Below the alders where he feeds
      And spied his stunted horns girt round
      With flow’ring weeds,
      Two merry wenches and a child
      Caressed his grey ill-fitting coat
      And, lolling in the sedge, beguiled
      The Baby Goat.

      Now, for long days companionless,
      His soft blunt nose, his agate eyes,
      His raised remonstrant brows express
      The sad surprise
      Wherewith the desolate green waste
      O’erloads his heart who at the edge
      Of stagnant waters kneels to taste
      The thankless sedge.

      His Mother is his chiefest lack
      Who in some heathy upland place
      Tidied his sturdy socks of black
      And licked his face;
      He turns to see us saunter by
      The level highway hand-in-hand—
      I think the Baby Goat knows why
      We understand.


BOURNEMOUTH TO POOLE

I BOURNEMOUTH

      Quite given o’er to shameful destinies
      Yet may I muse what graces once were thine
      Whose little brooks descend the tawny chine
      So silver-silent on their gold degrees;
      Whose smiles, like hers of Cyprus, from the seas
      Have drawn the tremulous mirth wherewith they shine
      Under the coif of heaven that doth confine
      Thy tender headlands and their tress of trees.
      Poor beauty, with thy dowry of bright sand,
      Poured out in softness, to chance comers shown,
      So fallen;—doth it much import what hand
      Cast the rude lot that shred thy purple gown,
      Or, on this lovely and reluctant land,
      Who stamped this monstrous image of a town?

II POOLE HARBOUR

      O valiant reach of land that doth include
      The striving sea in such a large embrace!
      O valiant homes that overlook the face
      Of water by a hundred keels subdued!
      Poole, thou art map of thine own fortitude,
      And, in thy building, eloquent of a race
      That singed the beard of Spain and for a lace
      Fought on this quay the Georgian excise-brood.
      Old, and thy harbour skies more scantly sparred,
      Thy constant stones survey the fickle flow
      Of Tide and Time; and on thy casements barred
      Burns Memory like a crimson afterglow,
      Bright as the blood-red hollyhocks that blow
      Through the grey timber in this silent yard.


THE JAPANESE DUCKLING

      The shop-girl in my fingers laid
      The Yellow Duckling, Mother paid
      A silver coin to set him free
      And so he came to live with me.

      I kissed his baby feathers sweet,
      His callow bill and parchment feet;
      And so his love for me began—
      My Yellow Duckling from Japan.

      And he forgot his native nest,
      Forgot the way his plumy breast
      Parted the waters as they ran
      Amid strange weeds in far Japan.

      And he forgot the yellow child
      Whose narrow eye-lids on him smiled:—
      I kissed him, and he settled down
      To live with me in London town.


THE PRIVET HEDGE

      The common pavement dull and grey
      Is strewn with leafy wands to-day,
      And sceptres green to the curb’s edge—
      For they have cut the privet hedge.

      My Baby gathers, bending down,
      The branches swept by Mother’s gown
      And carries home into the house
      Those magical and royal boughs.

      But O the milky blossoms sweet
      That scented all the sunny street—
      Crushed by the Baby’s sandalled tread
      They lie behind her, brown and dead.


THE VEGETARIAN’S DAUGHTER

      She ate her oat-cake by the fire,
      Her bath was done and dried her hair,
      Her nightgown was her sole attire,
      Her towel steamed across a chair.

      And as the oat-cake contour grew
      Eroded as a tide-worn cape,
      She named the jagged residue
      After the beast most like its shape.

      “This is a pig, a growly bear,
      A baa-sheep” (and she bit him)—thus
      Her speech flowed on, to my despair
      Incredibly carnivorous.

      At last, all wreathed in drowsy smiles,
      She munched the final gee-gee’s head—
      “Ah, Betsey, what would Eustace Miles,
      And what would Bernard Shaw have said?”


HONEY MEADOW

      Here, Betsey, where the sainfoin blows,
      Pink and the grass more thickly grows,
      Where small brown bees are winging
      To clamber up the stooping flowers,
      We’ll share the sweet and sunny hours
      Made murmurous with their singing.

      Dear, it requires no small address
      In such a billowy floweriness
      For you, so young, to sally:
      Yet would you still out-stay the sun
      And linger when his light was done
      Along the haunted valley.

      O small brown fingers, clutched to seize
      The biggest blooms, don’t spill the bees;
      Imagine what contempt he
      Would meet who ventured to arrive
      Home, of an evening, at the hive,
      With both his pockets empty!

      Moreover, if you steal their share,
      The bees become too poor to spare
      Their sweets nor part with any
      Honey at tea-time; so for you
      What were for them a cell too few
      Would be a sell too many!

      Or, what were worse for you and me,
      They might admire the industry
      So thoughtlessly paraded,
      And, tired of their brown queen, maintain
      That no one needed Betsey-Jane
      As urgently as they did.

      So should you taste in some far clime
      The plunder of eternal thyme
      And you would quite forget us,
      Our cottage and these English trees,
      When you were Queen of Honey Bees
      At Hybla or Hymettus.


AN ELEGY, FOR FATHER ANSELM, OF THE ORDER OF REFORMED CISTERCIANS,
GUEST-MASTER AND PARISH PRIEST

“Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes”

      You to whose soul a death propitious brings
      Its Heaven, who attain a windless bourne
      Of sanctity beyond all sufferings,
      It is not ours to mourn;

      For you, to whom the earth could nothing give,
      Who knew no hint of our inspirèd pride,
      You could not very well be said to live
      Until the day you died.

      ’Tis upon us—father and kindly friend,
      Holy and cheerful host—the unbidden guests
      You welcomed and the souls you would amend,
      The weight of sorrow rests.

      From Sarum in the mesh of her five streams,
      Her idle belfries and her glittering vanes,
      We are clomb to where the cloud-race dusks and gleams
      On turf of upland plains.

      Southward the road through juniper and briar
      Clambers the down, untrodden and unworn
      Save where some flock pitted the chalky mire
      With little feet at dawn.

      Twice in a week the hooded carrier’s lamp,
      Flashing on wayside flints and grasses, spills
      Its misty radiance where the dews lie damp
      Among the untended hills;

      Here lies the hamlet ringed with grassy mound
      And brambled barrow where, superbly dead,
      The dust of pagans turned to holy ground
      Beneath your humble tread.

      Here we descend at drooping dusk the side
      Of the stony down beneath the planted ring
      Of beeches where you showed with pastoral pride
      The folded lambs in spring;

      Here pull at eve the self-same bell that hastened
      Your rough-shod feet behind the hollow door—
      Yet never see you stand, the chain unfastened,
      Your lantern on the floor.

      Others will spread the board now you are gone
      Here where you smiled and gave your guests to eat,
      Learning your menial kingliness from One
      Who washed His servants’ feet;

      Along the slumbering corridor betimes
      Others will knock and other footsteps pass
      Down the wet lane e’er the thin shivering chimes
      Toll for the early mass.

      Yet in the chapel’s self no sorrows sing
      In the strange priest’s voice, nor any dolour grips
      The heart because it is not you who bring
      Your Master to its lips.

      Here let us leave the things you would not have—
      Vain grief and sorrow useless to be shown—
      “God’s gift and the Community’s I gave
      And nothing of my own,”

      You would have said, self-deemed of no more worth
      Than the green hands that guard a poppy’s grace,—
      Blows the eternal flower and back to earth
      Tumbles the withered case.

      Nay, but Our Lord hath made renouncement vain,
      Himself into those humble hands let fall,
      Guerdon of willing poverty and pain,
      The greatest gift of all;

      To you and all who in that life austere
      Mid fields remote your harsher labours ply
      Singing His praise, girt round from year to year
      With sheep-bells and the sky—

      This, that to you is larger audience given
      Where prayer and praise with sighing pinions shod
      Piercing the starry ante-rooms of Heaven
      Sway the designs of God:

      And now yourself, standing where late hath stood
      The echo of your voice, are prayer and praise—
      O sweet reward and unsurpassing good
      For that small gift of days.

      Yourself, who now have heard such summoning
      And seen such burning clarities alight
      As broke the vigilant shepherds’ drowsy ring
      On the predestined night,

      Who made such haste as theirs who rose and trod
      To Bethlehem the dew-encumbered grass,
      Trustful to see the showing forth of God
      And the Word come to pass;

      With how much more than home-spun Israelites’
      Poor hungry glimpse of Godhead are you blest
      Whom Mary shows for more than mortal nights
      The Jewel on her breast.

      Yet, as one kneeling churl might chance to think
      Of the wan herd behind their wattled bars,
      Moving unshepherded with bells that clink
      And stir beneath the stars,

      And, for the thought’s space wishing he were back,
      Pray to that Sum of Sweetness for his sheep—
      “Take them, O Thou that dost supply our lack,
      Into Thy hands to keep,”

      So you who in His presence move and live
      Recall amid your glad celestial cares
      Your chosen office, to your children give
      The charity of prayers.


THE REGRET

      The mallow blooms in late July
      Along the dusty track
      To Romsey where the waters run
      And Norman stones confront the sun—
      Ah, Dear, that all our work were done
      And we were getting back!

      The whinchat in the willow runs
      From silver stair to stair,
      Cocks his white eyebrow, tunes his throat
      And plans his little creaking note
      To please the leaves that past him float—
      Ah, Dear, that we were there!

      Now all the world is carrying hay
      And all the world is wise,
      And O to trudge it once again
      There in the wake of a green wain
      That over-tops the rustling lane
      Beneath familiar skies!


FIRST SNOW

      Now Hertha hath, without a doubt,
      Got all her winter peltry out;
      And, for the weeds dispersèd show
      Dark through that field of fallen snow,
      We may felicitate in her
      The happy choice of minever.

      The well beside the rusty shed
      Hath screened his pent-house lapt in lead
      In candour of Carthusian cowl,
      (Soft as the plumage of white owl),
      Whose pail, for all the long night’s drouth,
      Hath foam about his sable mouth.

      How dark my cottage window eyes
      Her wonted landscape’s white disguise—
      Ho, Sulky-face, thine own brick ledge
      Beareth such burden as the hedge,
      And thatch, for all the warmth within,
      Is bearded like a Capuchin!


TO A CHILD RETURNING HOME UPON A WINDY DAY

      Prythee what mad contentments canst thou find,
      Rosy-cheeked Betsey, in this blust’rous wind
      Loved of thy Babyhood? Without the door
      His leaves as running footmen go before
      Thy lagging feet who with compliant grace
      Smilest, his kisses mantling on thy face.

      Go back and bid him use while yet he may
      His favour brief and pre-determined day;
      Bear with his wooing, nor forbid him now
      Lift the light hair from thine untroubled brow,
      Whom thou shalt dub a churl, when thou art grown
      A woman, but for ruffling of thy gown.


THE DEATH OF SIR MATHO

                           [“Nam quis iniquæ
      Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se
      Causidici nova cum veniat lectica Mathonis
      Plena ipso.”—_Juvenal_, I. 30.]

      When Sir Matho lay a-dying and his feet were growing cold,
      For the fire was out and left the place in gloom,
      And he could not see the night-light on his cornices of gold
      And the nurses that were hired for him some grisly gossip told
      As they lingered in the little dressing-room,
      There was none to light him candles or to kneel by him and pray
      And the youth that fed the fire-dogs had packed up and gone away—
      For where’s the sense of waiting on a man whose days are done?
     _And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run._

      As Sir Matho lay a-shivering, for Death crept on apace,
      Came an agèd woman in the flickering light;
      Like the women of the village, but he didn’t know her face,
      For his 50-h.p. Panhard used to go at such a pace
      That he never knew his cottagers by sight.
      He saw her twist her apron in her ugly withered hands
      As the poor did who awaited, while he lived, his high commands
      And Sir Matho blinked upon her like an old dog in the sun.
     _And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run._

      Then Sir Matho saw she looked on him and waited his desire
      And he conjured the poor mis-shapen witch
      To bring some logs of cedar and of oak to light his fire,
      For he counted on the pity that is never had for hire
      And is all the poor possess to give the rich.
      But she wrung her hands and cried to him, “Ah, Sir, I’ve done
          the oil
      Wherewith upon a little stove my mess of greens I boil;
      And coal is dear, and very dear, and fuel have we none.”
     _And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run._

      She knelt her at his couch’s foot, he saw her sorrow rise,
      Her tears bestarred his fair embroidered sheet,
      She pierced his silken coverlid with pity of her eyes,
      Her tenderness descended, like the dews of Paradise
      Or grace of shining chrism, upon his feet—
      The feet that trod the russet woods and broke the bracken curls;
      And crushed the purple whinberries, that grow for little girls,
      When the silly foreign feathers fell a-screaming to his gun.
     _And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run._

      And her tears recalled Sir Matho to a Woman ’neath a Tree,
      ’Twas an old pietà in his hall below
     (Bought to pass the time at Christie’s for a song) wherein you see
      How a Mother holds the Body of her Son upon her knee,
      But her eyes are red for them that dealt the blow.
     “This woman has forgiven me, and You forgive,” he cried.
     “So He may still be merciful.” With that Sir Matho died.
      But Satan ceased to blow the fire that he had well begun.
     _And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run._


THE PETALS

      Yourself in bed
      (My lovely Drowsy-head)
      Your garments lie like petals shed

      Upon the floor
      Whose carpet is strewn o’er
      With little things that late you wore.

      For the morrow’s wear
      I fold them neat and fair
      And lay them on the nursery chair;

      And round them lie
      Airs of the hours that die
      With all their stored-up fragrancy.

      As a flower might
      Give out to the cool night
      The warmth it drank in day-long light

      So wool and lawn
      From your soft skin withdrawn
      (Whereon they were assumed at dawn)

      Breathe the spent mood,
      Lost act and attitude,
      Of the small sweetness they endued.

      Ere all turn cold
      No garment that I hold
      But shakes a vision from its fold

      Of little feet
      That vainly would be fleet,
      Tangled about with meadow-sweet,

      And of bent knees
      When Betsey kneeling sees,
      In the parched hedge-row, strawberries.

      Such things I see
      Folding your clothes, which be
      Weeds of the dead day’s comedy.

      The while I pray
      Your part may be alway
      So simple and so good to play,

      And do desire
      Your life may still respire
      Such sweetness as your cast attire.


POST-COMMUNION

      Lord, when to Thine embrace I run
      Gathered like waters to the Sun,
      Shape me to such celestial mirth
      As may go back and glad the earth.
      Let Thy rays compass me, and crowd
      Into the semblance of a cloud
      Mine idle and dispersèd powers;
      That I, the casket of Thy showers,
      May, for my closeness, coloured be
      (Howe’er so faintly) like to Thee,

      And when Thou loosest me to go
      Diffused into Thy world below,
      May I, till drip of words shall cease,
      Sing of Refreshment, Light and Peace;
      And, poured into the Time’s abyss,
      Revive one blossom for Thy bliss.




INDEX TO FIRST LINES


                                                          PAGE
      The brook along the Romsey road                        3
      A portly Wood-louse, full of cares                     5
      When the wind blows without the garden walls           7
      How late in the wet twilight doth that bird            8
      Of Sorrow, ’tis as Saints have said                    9
      Within our garden walls you see                       10
      The fuchsias dangle on their stem                     11
      My night-dress hangs on fire-guard rail               12
      While I stand upon the pavement and I dress the
          dusty stall                                       13
      When by the fire-light Dulcibel                       15
      Whom meet we, Betsey, in the wood?                    16
      How few alack                                         17
      ’Tis the old wife at Rickling, she                     19
      Pull out my couch across the fire                     21
      When the Wind comes up the lane                       22
      What dusky branches fret the yellow sky               23
      Three candles had her cake                            25
      The Baby slumbers through the night                   26
      With a full house of other folks                      27
      He who a mangold-patch doth hoe                       30
      Throw up the cinders, let the night wear through      31
      When elm-buds turn from red to green                  32
      Vainly, my Betsey, to the weeping day                 34
      O the trucks that leave Southampton bring a smell
          of twine and tar                                  36
      When the young Spring in Betsey’s fingers sets        38
      Permit, Dear Sir, that the judicious grieve           39
      ’Twas bought in Bruges, the shop was poor              41
      The sun sank, and the wind uprist whose note          43
      My Betsey-Jane it would not do                        45
      In Bethlehem Town by lantern light                    46
      Playthings my Betsey hath, the snail’s cast shell     48
      I am not lightly moved, my grief was dumb             49
      You taught me ways of gracefulness and fashions
          of address                                        51
      You that have fenced about my storm-swept ways        52
      Pardon, Dear Sir, if with intrusive pen               53
      When I was small, great joy it was to see             56
      We came on Christmas Day                              57
      On the high frosty fields afoot at dawn               59
      Now night hath fallen on the little town              60
      Dear, the delightful world I see                      61
      So ’tis your will to have a cell                      63
      My Sorrow diligent would sweep                        65
      Here lies A. B. who, four years from her birth        67
      On the painted bridge at Mottisfont above the Test
          I’ve stood                                        70
      It is told of the painter Da Vinci                    72
      Follow, my Betsey-Jane, as best you can               75
      Scarce hath the crookèd scythe                        77
      Four-paws, the kitten from the farm                   79
      Four-paws, we know the sun is white                   81
      Time, cunning smith, hath set you in my heart         83
      I saw myself encircled in the grey                    84
      Now candle-flames disperse the rout                   86
      In Sarum Close, when she had said her say             87
      O thou who ’neath the umbrageous trees                88
      The world’s a quarry for whose spoils                 89
      Whiffin, with all thy faults, I love thee still       90
      An old white Jocko, kindly and urbane                 91
      By brook and bent                                     98
      So now my Thames is fairly on the turn               100
      So, dear, have you and Nurse conspired               101
      Four alders guard a bridge of planks                 103
      Quite given o’er to shameful destinies               105
      O valiant reach of land that doth include            105
      The shop-girl in my fingers laid                     107
      The common pavement dull and grey                    108
      She ate her oat-cake by the fire                     109
      Here, Betsey, where the sainfoin blows               110
      You to whose soul a death propitious brings          112
      The mallow blooms in late July                       117
      Now Hertha hath, without a doubt                     118
      Prythee what mad contentments canst thou find        119
      When Sir Matho lay a-dying and his feet were
          growing cold                                     120
      Yourself in bed                                      124
      Lord, when to Thine embrace I run                    126




SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS


      “A poem by Mrs. Helen Parry Eden, ‘A Suburban Night’s
        Entertainment,’ is in itself good enough to sustain
        the Englishwoman’s reputation as a judge of verse.”

      “A delightful fable.”

      “The most sensational feature of this number.”
                            _The Westminster Gazette._

      “A very pretty and finished piece of descriptive
        verse.”                           _The Queen._

      “A little masterpiece.”
             “JACOB TONSON” in _The New Age_.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

  Typographical errors have been silently corrected.

  The corrections in the ERRATA have been applied to the text.

  The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed
  in the public domain.