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Before the dawn wind swept the troubled sky
And stirred the stricken trenches far and wide,
I saw the Lord of Holiness pass by,
With Mary at His side.

With Mary Michael passed, for I could hear

His clashing arms, and see his spangled sword.
Loudly I cried out, “Mother!” then in fear,
“O Mother of our Lord.”

For in her eyes all human sorrow burned,

All tenderness lay naked when she smiled;
And once she stooped to kiss, and once she turned
And shuddered like a child.

He moved through all the surge and clash of war,

The King of Kings since Brotherhood began;
But in His still and shadowed face I saw
The agony of Man.

And as I gazed, the ruined fields of France

Loomed to the dawn in shades of shifting grey;
Dumbly I stood to arms, as in a trance
I watched the climbing day.

Was this a dream? Yet Mary saw the sky,

Lit by a vision from the darkness hurled;
A little dream which made a baby cry—
A dream which saved the world.

REVELATION
Can death give you such dignity, and pride
So beautiful it puts our grief to shame?
For now we stumble as we speak your name,
Yet you were just a boy before you died.
We question blankly, pondering heavy-eyed,
Can this be he we used to praise or blame
In careless moments, ere the trial came
When all the bravest hearts in anguish cried?
Then, humbled, we beheld our poor disguise,
False moods and manners clothed in empty speech
Which drowned the silence—till there came a day
That smote our vision to awakened eyes:
For God bent down to bring you to our reach,
But ere we touched you, you had gone away.

TELL ME, STRANGER

Tell me, Stranger, is it true
There is magic happening,
Are all the dappled fields of Kew
Bowing to their Lord the Spring?

Are the bluebells chaste and mute

Dancing in each dale and hollow
Dew-sprinkled, with a glad salute
To omnipotent Apollo?

Tell me, do the feathered creatures

Flutter as in days of yore,
What are the “distinctive features”
Of the Swallow’s Flying Corps?

Here there is no magic, Stranger.

Save within our merry souls—
For some wanton god in anger
Punches earth with gaping holes.

Yet the stifled land is showing

Here and there a touch of grace,
And the marshalled clouds are blowing
Through the aerodromes of space.

Hate is strong, but Love is stronger,

And the world shall wake to birth
When the touch of man no longer
Stays the touch of God from Earth.

Tell me, Stranger, is it true

There is magic happening,
Are all the dappled fields of Kew
Bowing to their Lord the Spring?

B. E. F., April, 1917.

 SPRING IN THE TRENCHES

The racing clouds have borne her message down

And blown a thrilling rumour, from the far
Heart-centres of each crowded port and town,
And up the flowing arteries of War.
Life, life, green tales of corn in sprouting blades,
Of swallows crowding with sea-sprinkled wings
And ash-buds amber-gummed round close-furled green.
High blossom mantling murmurous orchard glades
In air a-tingle April-sweet and keen—
Ah, we have heard of wondrous happenings.

For now the magic carnivals begin

The lilac broods in honeyed secrecy,
And dappled lawns are changed: a Harlequin
Has brushed the tangled carpet silently.
We know how white narcissus fills the lake
With dancing shadows; how in open blue
A chestnut builds her clustered pyramids,
And down below anemones awake;
Long-hushed the violets open wide their lids
And all the dreamed-of fantasy comes true.

Glad tidings thrill the re-awakened earth

By daffodils and blue-bells heralded;
Spring with her van imperial comes forth
To herald Summer proudly canopied
Beneath the bowing leaves. Persistent Spring
Bestirs the seed enshrined in Winter’s store;
And even round the parapet a breath
Of far-flung prophecy is clamouring:
“Behold new life within the tomb of death
“Importunate and vivid as before.”
ON THE ROAD
We halted, with the urgent Spring behind
Our straining teams, where all the land was black,
And huddled woods lay beaten, starkly blind:
Their mangled branches loomed athwart the track
Grotesque and terrible. Yet near the way,
A river, scatheless as the open sea,
Flowed like a breathing hope that cannot die
In desolation. Now, at setting day,
Moored water lilies, pale as argent sky,
Cling to the twilight fading silently.

Such is the tale of memory, ere night

Had deepened, and our weary convoy slept
Beside the way. Slow-rising points of light
Twinkled amid the spangled netting swept
Across the ebon desert; and a gleam
Pierced the cloud-woven pillows of the moon.
Now slumber freed me from the iron cage
That bound the snarling war; and, in a dream,
The panorama of a dawning age
Unrolled, a world slow-waking from a swoon.

Before my gaze a teeming city loomed

Gay with the bustling clamour of the street—
The very town an easy word had doomed
And cast in ashes at the trampling feet
Of mortal gods. Street, corner, square and place,
Seemed woken from a long and squalid trance—
I saw a nation growing like a flower;
A nation true and loyal to a race
That forged an army of clean-soldiered power
Wrought by the common chivalry of France.

Here was no arrogance of martial pride,

The fireside boast that sows the fatal seed,
For happiness had come from those who died
For happiness had come from those who died
Stark of delusion and the deadly creed
Of false romance. I saw a world reborn—
The very battlefield was robed again
In lines of chequered land, and bordered round
With stretching roads and rills. The poppied corn
Held rubies set in gold, and far beyond
Lay a surf-ravelled sea and swarded plain.

I marvelled, till oblivion shadowed all,

Blurred in the dawning light of every day.
It was so true, I scarcely heard the call
To feed and water and to move away.
We stretched our limbs, and packed each heavy load;
Moved on, and left the weary night behind,
Through torn and withered trees that stared aghast;
Yet, through the veil that shrouded all the road
I saw new radiance in the land we passed,
And heard a sudden murmur in the wind.

B. E. F., 1917.

KEATS, BEFORE ACTION

A little moment more—O, let me hear
(The thunder rolls above, and star-shells fall)
Those melodies unheard re-echo clear
Before the shuddering moment closes all.
They come—they come—they answer to my call,
That Grecian throng of graven ecstasies,
Hyperion aglow in blazing skies,
And Cortez with the wonder in his eyes.
In battle-wreaths of smoke they rise, and fall
Beyond—beyond recall.

Now all is silent, still, and magic-keen

(Yet thunder rolls above and star-shells fall)
And slowly pacing, rides a faery queen
Wild eyed and singing to a knight in thrall.
Enough—enough—let lightning whip me bare
And leave me naked in the howling air
My body broken here, and here, and here.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all,
The very all in all.

THE SOMME
 From Amiens to Abbeville
My swollen waters race,
And silver-veined by many a rill
Green hamlets thrive apace.
From Amiens to Abbeville
I labour at the listless mill,
And tempt the nodding daffodil
To blur my open face.
But south of Amiens I flow
Past dumb Peronne and Brie,
The peopled land I used to know
Now all belongs to me.
Yet phantom armies come and go,
And shadows hurry to and fro;
Again my seething battles grow
In murdered Picardy.

Behold the mother of a soil forlorn;

I suckled towns, and fed the forest land,
Behold my shattered villages and mourn
How should I understand?

Why are those huts o’erpatched like dappled kine,

What are those weary men in blue and brown,
And humming craft that search my sinuous line;
Why should my name re-echo with renown
Past every phantom town?
But still my lily-breasted waters shine,
And still I chant my shadowy ripples down.

From peace through war my waters flow,

To peace again at sea,
The peopled land I used to know
Now all belongs to me.
Though battling armies come and go,
I toil and spin I reap and sow
 I toil and spin, I reap and sow,
And poppy-mantled meadows blow
In murdered Picardy.

My eddies bear the clinging scent of lime

To sweeten clouds of plume-tossed meadowsweet;
My meadow grasses nestle with the thyme
And flowering rushes tower in the heat.
Low-brushing swifts and swallows splashed with white
O’er flash my laden mirrors slow and deep
That bear swift-merging canopies of sleep.
Until the growing light
Has chased marauding owls, and butterflies,
Born of blue-woven skies,
Flutter away like hare-bells spurred to flight.
But who are these? The powdered butterfly
Outshines that air leviathan that swings
In rigid curves adown the barren sky,
With cloudy satellites about her wings.
And I have seen
Dark horsemen ride with spears of tapered steel;
And bellowing guns beneath the far balloons.
And once a ponderous slug bedecked in green
Crept, in the waning moon’s
Still-darkening gloom, and at her giant heel
White-gleaming, ran a train of hooded cars....

I triumph, triumph, search my sinuous line

Amid the snarling impotence of wars.
Turn where you will. Look, there a signboard shows
The lair of guns; already round the sign
White trumpeting convolvuli entwine
Their clinging arms, across the placard blows
A quiet-breathing rose.
And still my lily-breasted waters shine
And loud my chanting grows:
From peace through war my waters flow
To peace again at sea,
The peopled land I used to know
Now all belongs to me.
Though battling armies come and go
I toil and spin, I reap and sow,
And poppy-mantled meadows blow
In murdered Picardy.

SOMME FLOWER TALK

 Said the Cornflower to the Pimpernel,
“O sudden scarlet eyes,
You never bloomed till ploughing shell
Laid bare earth’s sanctities!”

Then upward cried the Pimpernel:

“Blue head in deeper blue,
’Tis strange this former waste of Hell
Is Paradise anew.

“But who is Lord of Paradise

And Commandant; and who
Commands sky-faring butterflies
All camouflaged in blue?

“Are dandelion parachutes

His messages, and do
Those armoured beetles clamber roots
With news from Army Q?

“Above each water-lily ship

The feathered red caps pipe.
Because the pear has earned a pip,
The tiger-moth a stripe.

“The gorse artillery has eyes

We never knew before.
And lady bees can organise
The Honey Service Corps.

“Field-marshals rule the war behind

The guns, but Summer shields
Here in the clash of human kind
Her marshal of the fields.”
TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING.
“He too! He too!” The veteran paused, the sound
Of a light paper fluttering to the ground
Rustled the twilight peace. “He—too—is—dead—”
His wife, scarce faltering from the words she read,
Stared at the glowing sun, the while her eyes
Shone mistily in nameless agonies.
Five sons, and four were dead!
The clock ticked desolation to their ears
And silence gripped the moments as they passed
Too terrible, too passionless for tears.
At last,
Stronger than he, she curbed herself and smiled
And held him weeping like a weary child
Before the first immensity of pain.
Yet once again
She conjured scenes beyond the darkened cloud
That blurred the soul’s horizon, as aloud
She spoke his name, and whispered little things
More pregnant than the utterance of kings.

That night she moved,

Spurred by devotion for the man she loved,
Without a pause for sorrow, or a breath
To murmur at the closing walls of death;
Love-steeled and queenly every step she trod;
She climbed unfaltering, serenely browed,
Until she touched the very feet of God
Undaunted and unbowed.
And there in mystic awe
Slow-turning wheels of evolution spun
The poised and pulsing universe. She saw
All life and death synonymous, and birth
The dawn of human wonderment begun
(Birth of all birth) in other realms afar.
Below, ice pivoted revolved the earth,
At ll ’ j it d il t t
 A traveller’s joy it seemed, a mile-stone star,
Half-glowing, bathed in sun....

At dawn they met and found each other’s eyes,

Asked the same questions, sought the same replies:
Their last and youngest fought where harsh commands
Still goaded forward lashed and driven bands,
Where Vaux and Thiaumont twin sentinels
Loomed stalwartly. And still a howl of shells
Shattered the Verdun battlements in vain;
Still domineered that keen death-tutored brain
Behind an army deaf to angry scorn,
The boast forgotten and the mask outworn.
At length she spoke: “Go quickly now,” she said,
“Quick, the next hurrying hour may see him dead.
Find the Great Overlord and tell him all
Quick, for our boy may pass beyond recall
Meanwhile. He shall know happiness to come,
He, the last scion of our stricken home,
Shall blossom like a flower in early Spring
I say it, I who bore him. Time shall bring
The old primeval happiness to birth
If there be any justice upon earth.”
She ceased; it seemed her voice re-echoed still
As strung with hope he hurried on until
He reached the palace and besought for grace
To see his royal master face to face.

That night in sudden joy he urged away

Across Lorraine, for in his wallet lay
An order blazoned with the royal seals.
Hour after hour the car’s revolving wheels
Rushed dizzily towards the high command
That held his son in fee. Around, the land
Awoke in changeless Spring. Four steady hours
They travelled, till the bloom of passing flowers
Brought tidings of the dawn Then to his ears
Brought tidings of the dawn. Then to his ears
Rumbled a distant thunder, sudden fears
Urged onward faster. Now the country showed
First signs of war-flung tentacles, the road
Lay pitted here and there, a wounded tree
No longer framed its lordly symmetry.
And soon the land whereon all life was stilled
Became as Man had willed.
At last his journey ended. Long delayed
He sought his goal, now pressing on, now stayed,
Until outside the place of high command
The royal warrant burning in his hand
He knocked—was bidden enter—tense and mute
He faced the marshal with a grave salute
And showed the royal word.
The crowded room was silent, no man stirred—
A pause as long as death, then, dragged and slow,
A voice—“Your son was killed an hour ago.”
A clock importunately unconcerned
Repeated tick—tick—tick. His eyes discerned
A pen vague-sprawling, madly spiderwise.
Not a man glanced—Yet all the room had eyes:
Not a man spoke—Yet clamorous voices cried:
Stumbling, he walked outside.

IN THE MESS
I sat alone although the mess
Was full, when—quick as tears
A song of naked happiness
Came singing in my ears.

I summoned strength to kill a cry

And mad desire to weep;
Then, glancing round me guiltily,
Found everyone asleep!

A TRENCH INCIDENT
We waited, as the thundering curtain swept
Our sector, and torn shards of iron fell;
Dust from the parapet in showers leapt
Swirled up by bursting shell.

We waited, like a storm-bespattered ship

That flutters sail to free her grounded keel;
The tingling moments tightened every grip
On rifles lanced with steel.

We knew the man who led us. All could hear

His ringing voice re-echo loud and strong,
Born of that higher bravery when fear.
Is battled into song.

Then sudden fury lulled and far behind

Like angered beasts our batteries replied—
And suddenly he stumbled, dazed and blind.
He lay, but ere he died

He struggled for a while, then dimly smiled,

Wrapped in the comradeship of happy things,
Before he entered like a wondering child
The heritage of kings.

REALITY
 Below my room the noise and measured beat
Of marching men re-echoed loud and clear;
Now bobbing cavalry swung down the street;
Now mules and rumbling batteries drew near.
But all is dim—The rolling wagon-stream
To Amiens between the aspen trees,
The stables, billets, men and horses, seem
Dead mummers of forgotten fantasies.

Only my dreams are still aglow, a throng

Of scenes that crowded through a waiting mind
A myriad scenes: For I have swept along
To foam ashriek with gulls, and rowed behind
Brown oarsmen swinging to an ocean song
Where stately galleons bowed before the wind.

“WE POETS OF THE PROUD OLD LINEAGE”

Apart we labour, and alone we climb

The barren heights; for we the singing throng
Whose lives were hallowed by impassioned song
Must die or prove unworthy of our rhyme.
Man after man—we know the price of wars
Who watched the mask of Night whilst others slept,
And spread our laughter far and wide, but kept
Our tears and terror privy to the stars.

0 magic gift omnipotent, to sing

And conjure Heaven from surrounding Hell.
Our lips and eyes are touched (for we have seen
Celestial weavers at the loom of Spring).
But O the iron bitterness and keen
Of voices ever clamouring farewell!
 III

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

SONG

Would I could commandeer the bees

To hum you droning symphonies.
I love the climbing thoughts that rise
To the sheer heaven of your eyes,
Wide laughter-dromes of wondering blue,
Yes, yes, I do!

But when I sing of bubbling seas,

The zephyr-clapping hands of trees
Applauding in tumultuous skies,
Or window-winged dragonflies,
Or anything that’s good and true
I sing of you—
Yes, yes, I do!

THE SHADOW
I stood one night where rivers pause to meet
And mingle in the traffic-rumbling sea:
The surge and clamour of a London street,
In tides alternate, rolled, impassively.
Before my feet
Ran shouting boys, and through the pallid glare
Loomed gaunt leviathans that swayed and roared
Past glittering shops, and stations which outpoured
Load after weary load; and everywhere
Strange sounds, a snatch of laughter, shout or word,
Sleek-coated motor-cars that softly purred
Round corners sounding with the rustling beat
Of hurried swarms of feet.
And yet I seemed alone, and dumb-amazed
Before a towering building, wherein blazed
One staring patch of light, one amber square
That shone enshrouded by the dome of night
High in the naked air. And still I gazed
Until a shadow passed across the blind:
A shadow-woman pacing time away
Beside a bed, wherein a poet lay
Dying, dying. One whose mind
(A womb of beauty whereof love was lord)
Had fashioned symphonies of thought and word
Impassionately sweet. And suddenly
She paused—I saw the shadow of her hand
Stretch out and shudder back. I saw her stand
All sorrow-bound in graven dignity.
She bowed her head, her shoulders taut with pain,
Her figure burdened with the weight of tears.
Then all grew dark. And in my waking ears
The traffic surged again.

EVERYCHILD
We take you through Pacific seas
To islands strange and new,
Where howling monkeys scale the trees
Alive with humming-birds and bees,
Where shiny seals and porpoises
Snort in the rolling blue.

Then quicker than a shaft of light

We shear the arctic foam,
And lounging bears of polar white
Roar loudly through the dancing night,
And drive the killer-whales to flight—
Upon the floor at home.

O hear the chant of Eastern song

Beneath Arabian stars,
Where camels slowly stalk along
And gleaming Arabs, tall and strong,
Buy gold and merchandise among
The riot of bazaars!

The glow-worms crawl excitedly

And trim their lamps o’ night;
For often, ere the moon is high,
Bat-harnessed walnut-shells flit by
To bear them to the waiting sky
And set the stars alight.

The nodding poplars understand

And birds and beasts and flowers:
And we shall wander hand in hand
With better things than Peter Panned—
O what is footlight fairyland
Beside this world of ours?

What matter if the clouds are grey

 Or winter-keen and wild,
When you and I have found a way
To turn November into May;
For Everyjoy is Everyday
And Everyman a child.

CHILD OF THE FLOWING TIDE

Away to the call of the racing sea—

(Child of the flowing tide)
A hundred chargers of ivory,
And two of them saddled for you and for me,
Are pawing and stamping the surf to be free
Where the wild sea-horses ride.
The deep water shall roar as we race from the shore
On the back of the flowing tide.

O hurry, the moon is away in the sky

(Child of the flowing tide)
With your heels well down, and your heart set high
You’re saddled and bridled, and so am I;
So gather your reins, for the foam will fly
Where the wild sea-horses ride.
Grip tight with your knees as you gallop the seas
On the back of the flowing tide.

On the wide lagoon I’ll meet you to-night

(Child of the flowing tide)
When the moon swings high and the stars are alight
And the roaring sea-chargers are ready to fight:
Their manes are all foam and their coats are all white
Where the wild sea-horses ride.
The deep waters shall roar as we race from the shore
On the back of the flowing tide.
 EIGHT SONNETS
I

I Tremble at the outset, for I know

How rhythm halts and rhyme rings falsely true.
Yet courage, your disciple, bids me show
That speech may offer sacrifice to you.
Vain boast! For if success in splendour came
Poised faultlessly in lines of perfect stress,
I must fall short of it in very shame
Unworthy of my sonnet’s worthiness.

But should I fail, and feel the words I sought

Elusive, or bedecked with frail disguise
Of tattered sentiment, that risk I dare
Not hazard in the winding maze of thought,
Lest I should stir the wonder in your eyes
Or wind a little tangle in your hair.

II
So let me fail: what matter if the wise
And worldly whisper, who so poor as they?
For everywhere alike the common way
Has now become an earthly paradise.
And where you walk the very pavement cries
Of blue-bells, April-chimed, and fawns at play;
And London seems a sylvan holiday
Of flower-hunting bees and butterflies.

So let me fail, for where I could succeed

How mean the quest, a climber gazing down
From the low vantage of some petty hill.
But chance success would be the gambler’s thrill
Who plays with God for worlds, and wins indeed
The whole of Paradise for half-a-crown!

III

I Have no room for jealous gods, and find

No ring of joy or laughter in the Creed,
Nor shall my great possession be resigned
In fear or favour of my spirit’s need.
For joy is mine, and mine the teeming years
Unfettered in a world impassionate;
Not mine a sorrowed Calvary of tears
Where love was vassal to the lords of hate.

Let others bow before a God unknown

Enshrined in words they dimly understand.
Let every man make Paradise his own—
My Goddess breathes and leads me by the hand
O hush! I dare not speak of it alone,
’Tis all too wonderful and strangely planned!
 IV

Day after day my growing pinions beat

Impatiently. Yet, in a place unclean
I sought the dwarfed, the petty and obscene,
And aped the clownish mummers of the street;
Till suddenly the world grew strangely sweet,
All eager at a touch, and thrilling-keen;
With half-forgotten hands I strove unseen
To mould a little planet at your feet.

You spoke and there was light, and slowly grew

My teeming world of verse, a brotherhood
Of music, thought, and wonder, born anew,
Alive, aglow, in every varied mood.
And when the waking truth is bursting through
I feel you bend to see that all is good.

V
 If I had seen what hourly happiness
In this my world your being could ordain,
How then should I have trysted with distress
And misery the cringing friend of pain?
If I had seen beyond the looming years
Your shadow, grief had haunted me in vain,
For what are cataracts of human tears
Beside the boundless laughter of the main?

O barren days bygone! Now every field

Wakes clamorous with dawning life conceived,
So has the magic universe revealed
Whole happiness to one who half believed—
Whole happiness, and in my heart concealed
Wide wonder at the sacrament received.

VI

“Great men and happy years,” you say from these

Your knowledge came, and your diviner powers
More thrilling than the honey-womb of flowers
Or the bright star-foam of the Pleiades.
So, did you learn the droning lore of bees
From some be-medalled soldier? Did you meet
Madonna-hearted statesmen in the street,
Or bishops, babbling of the opal seas?

O poor deceiver, conscript joys belong

To you as homage. For the happy years
Bear fruit to-day, and blossom like the flowers
That breathe of summertime in after hours.
For you were loyal to a creed of Song
Nor ever stooped to misery and tears.
 VII

Would I could throw my stuttering self away

And shrine the soul wherein all wonders beat,
Would I were you, for one brief holiday
The whole shy universe before my feet.
O happiness, to know joy’s secret mine,
To hold adoring ministers in fee,
Narcissus-like to bless the Serpentine
And with the stars outdance Terpsichore.

For once a poet sang of happiness,

But now, like running flame, glad voices say—
“Joy is the sheer antithesis of wrong.”
Enough,—and I, no longer comradeless,
Behold exultant on the world’s highway
Your being, and the proof of Pippa’s song.

VIII
When you are old and dancing shadows play
Around the sky-blown laughter in your eyes
Shall I, unworthy of your new disguise,
Forget the sacrament and go away?
Shall I adore, like sorrowed men to-day,
The child who gurgled in first ecstasies
At oxen (Mary said) that mooed surprise
And snuffed with wondering muzzles in the hay?

O leave the past—the living world is mine

Warm, passionate, and breathing. Even so
Shall Life in after years make Earth divine
And fire shall burn as long as embers glow.
But he who babbled to the wondering kine
Is dead, long dead, two thousand years ago.

KEATS

Touch me, O Lord, and let my sonnet ring

With echoes. Now his words of crowned belief
In raging hours of pain and suffering
Too high for praise, too terrible for grief,
Ring loud and clear. Last night his chariot rolled
And I beheld him urge amid the stars
Cloud-fashioned steeds of snow moon-aureoled,
Himself a charioteer equipped for wars.

Faster and faster—men of Blood and Pain

Opposed in vast battalions, but he
Rolled back their army to the dark again
And triumphed while he sang exultingly
As now he sings. Boy of the glowing brain,
Dear Keats your name is Paradise to me!
MEETING HER IN THE STREET

She’s coming down the road! You know

Those laughter-woken eyes?
I beckon at the stars—But O
If she should recognise:

Nearer and nearer yet she trod

Till (mad blood-dancing joy)
Down from the planet-fields of God
She nodded, “Hullo, Boy.”

HER HOMAGE

Silence outlives the argument of kings

And best is dumb applause. Behold, she moves:
No soft-winged owlets blink, no cricket sings,
Before she greets the murmuring world she loves.
Now twirling parachutes of sycamore
Hang waiting, and the rippled trout-rings die,
The murmur round a jasmine honey store
Is still—a linnet falters suddenly.

From out the reeds an awe-struck otter peers

As eerie quiet speeds from bush to bush:
High Summer stands on tip-toe as She nears
The woods, and magic numbs the missel-thrush:
Above still grasses prick the listening ears
Of rabbits, and a squirrel whispers “Hush!”

REACTION
Afraid, afraid, I sought the kindly night
In fear that mocking fools should scrutinise
The beauty I discovered in men’s eyes,
And mock me as a dreaming anchorite.
For long in fear I sinned against the light
And shrouded Poetry with vain disguise;
Before I sang, unconscious as the skies,
Self-chanting songs to me supreme delight.

But now, O littlest of all little minds,

High-browed, alone, aloof, you little know
How like you are to Brown, who lifts the blinds
Of his suburban villa, just to show
That he alone is up, but always finds
The neighbourhood awoke an hour ago!

APRIL
How much are you achieving
O April day,
By orchard looms a-weaving
All apple-gay?
Tie on your cherry blossom, clothe your squills
Madonna-blue, and give your daffodils
Their collars of pale straw, and come away,
Your rain-awoken hills
Shall welcome May.

What is behind your weeping

O April tears?
Your lilac plumes are sweeping,
Your silken spears
Of chestnut bristle in the changing sky
Whilst herded clouds foregather, ’neath the high
Storm-loud arena’s thundering charioteers:
And beckoned silently
The swallow nears.

MAY-JUNE
Now is the swaddling husk of Winter shed,
And waking Summer, robed in windy showers,
Is heralded from silvered aspen towers
And orchards in high blossom garlanded.
Now sunlight, in the plumed laburnum flowers
And purple lilac, trembles overhead;
And bees a-drone in field and flower bed
Make clamorous the trade of teeming hours.

Now the sweet-pea, all honey-laden, shows

Full-swollen sails, her mooring ropes of green
Encircle twigs. And soon the primrose queen
Lights her pale lamps of Evening ’mid the glows
Of brazen flower-suns, that burn between
The yawning honeysuckle and the rose.

THE STROLLING SINGER

Sun-bathed in Summer peace the village lay
That afternoon. Along the happy street
Milk-fragrant kine, and wagons high with hay
Came lumbering. The fields were loud with bees
And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet.
From bowing trees
Fell chatter, and above the garden wall
Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks
That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks,
And bore their laddered blooms high over all.

Here amid Summer murmur and delight

The strolling singer came. The people heard
Stray snatches of a song—a laugh—a word,
And gossiping in groups of two or three
Stood all amazed. For no one came in sight,
Only the wind was laden drowsily
With mellow sounds that slowly growing strong
At last became a song:—

“Bend down, the marsh and meadow holds

Pale yellow pimpernels,
And sun-begotten marigolds,
Thyme, orchis, asphodels,
And borage born of ocean blue,
Plumed armoured thistles, fever-few,
Sea-campion globed, and clinging dew
In giant flower-bells.

“Bend down—an ebon beetle prowls,

And there a swinging bee
Drinks honey from the laden cowls
That clothe the foxglove tree.
And giant peacock butterflies
Light meadowsweet with sudden eyes,
And through the tangled grasses rise
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