THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 GREEN DAYS 
 AND BLUE DAYS 
 
 ^. Q.
 
 " Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.'' 
 
 R. L. STEVENSON.
 
 GREEN DAYS 
 
 AND BLUE DAYS 
 
 PATRICK R. CHALMERS 
 
 THE NORMAN, REMINGTON CO. 
 
 BALTIMORE 
 
 1914
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE. Printers to His Majesty
 
 boo? 
 
 To 
 E. M. C. 
 
 620021 
 
 LffiRAKY
 
 The following verses have, with one exception, 
 appeared in PUNCH or the WESTMINSTER 
 GAZETTE. To the Proprietors of the one and 
 the Editor of the other I beg to express my thanks 
 for their kind permission to reproduce them in book 
 form. 
 
 P. R. C.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 TIMES AND SEASONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PAN PIPES I 
 
 APRIL IN "THE STREET" 4 
 
 THE VAGABOND 6 
 
 BOND STREET 8 
 
 HUSTON I O 
 
 LAVENDER'S FOR LADIES 13 
 
 POMONA 1 5 
 
 ROUNDABOUTS AND SWINGS 1 8 
 
 THE MUTINY YEAR 21 
 
 SWEEP 24 
 
 PATSY 26 
 
 SOLOMON AND THE MONKEYS 28 
 
 TO A BISON 3O 
 
 TO A BANK OF ENGLAND PIGEON 33 
 
 DAPHNE 35 
 
 PROMETHEA 4<D 
 
 vii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 A CLASSICAL CONTRAST 
 
 A SONG OF SYRINX 
 
 AN URBAN ECLOGUE 
 
 THE SCARAB 
 
 AWA* FRAE GOWRIB 
 
 A JEWELLED SELL 
 
 BLUE ROSES 
 
 THE ROAD 
 
 THE ARTISTS 
 
 GOLD ! 
 
 TO AN AZTEC IDOL 
 
 RICHMOND PARK 
 
 AS IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 MULL 
 
 THE LITTLE GHOST 
 
 COTTAGE GARDEN PRAYER 
 
 BALLADE OF AUGUST 
 
 BALLADE OF THE FOREST IN SUMMER 
 
 BALLADE OF FANCY FAIR 
 
 THE EVENING RISE 
 
 TO A MACAW 
 
 viii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 TO A TERRIER 88 
 
 TO A DEBUTANTE 8 
 
 HORNS OF ELFLAND 
 
 A DREAM 93 
 
 GHOSTS OF PAPER 95 
 
 TO A CHALK-BLUE 98 
 
 PUK-WUDJIES 1 00 
 
 THE DISAPPOINTED DEMON IO2 
 
 "TREASURE ISLAND" 104 
 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE IO6 
 
 IF I HAD A BROOMSTICK 108 
 
 WHEN MARY GOES WALKING 109 
 
 THE GARDENER'S CAT no 
 
 "HOLD" 112 
 
 IN AN OLD NURSERY 115 
 
 THE CUSTOM HOUSE 117 
 
 A BLACK-LETTER STORY-BOOK 119 
 
 A STORY OF A, B, C 121 
 
 MOON-FLOWERS 123 
 
 TWILIGHT'S IN THE CORNERS 126 
 
 PETER PAN 128 
 ix
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ODD MOMENTS 
 
 THE FIRST FISHERMAN 133 
 
 A MARCH BROWN 135 
 
 SPRING SALMON 138 
 
 TO A MAYFLY I4O 
 
 THE UNATTAINABLE 143 
 
 TO AN OLD FRIEND 145 
 
 TO A KINGFISHER 147 
 
 THE MYTH 149 
 
 ANCESTORS I $2 
 
 MY WOODCOCK I 54 
 
 WILD GEESE 156 
 
 DIRGE TO A DEAD OWL 158 
 
 TO A DECEMBER GROUSE l6o 
 
 THE PERENNIAL RABBIT I 62 
 
 AN EMPTY SADDLE 164 
 
 KINGS AND CUBBING 165 
 
 TO A FOX-CUB 167 
 
 "THE LITTLE FOXES" 169 
 
 JANE A TERRIER 172
 
 TIMES AND SEASONS
 
 PAN-PIPES 
 
 PAN did you say he was dead, that he'd gone, 
 
 and for good 
 Gone with the Dryads and all of the shy forest 
 
 faces ? 
 Who was it then plucked your sleeve as you 
 
 came through the wood, 
 
 What of the whisper that waits in the oddest of 
 places ? 
 
 Pan of the garden, the fold, 
 Pan of the bird and the beast, 
 
 Kindly, he lives as of old, 
 He isn't dead in the least ! 
 
 I B
 
 PAN-PIPES 
 
 Yes, you may find him to-day (how the reeds 
 
 twitter on, 
 Tuneful, as once when he followed young 
 
 Bacchus's leopards) ; 
 Stiffer he may be, perhaps, since our moonlight 
 
 has shone 
 Centuries long on his goat-horns old Pan of 
 
 the shepherds ! 
 
 Brown are his tatters, his tan 
 
 Roughened from tillage and toil, 
 
 Pagan and homely, but Pan 
 Pan of the sap and the soil ! 
 
 Find him, in fact, in the Park when the first 
 
 crocus cowers ; 
 Cockney is he when it suits him, I know that 
 
 he knocks his 
 Crook at my window at times o'er sixpenn'orth 
 
 of flowers, 
 Gives me his blessing anew with my fresh 
 
 window-boxes ! 
 
 2
 
 PAN-PIPES 
 
 Piping the leaf on the larch, 
 
 Piping the nymphs (in the Row), 
 
 Piping a magic of March, 
 Just as he did long ago !
 
 APRIL IN "THE STREET 
 
 APRIL of the shining tresses, 
 
 Tearful mouth, and laughing eyes ! 
 Where the budding wildernesses 
 Wait the swallow's glad surprise, 
 
 Where the slender 
 
 Larch's tender 
 Green is new and neat, 
 
 Most folk set you ; 
 
 Yet I've met you 
 In Throgmorton Street ! 
 
 When the City pigeon's cooing 
 
 Takes a soft domestic note, 
 When the daffodil is doing 
 Duty in the broker's coat, 
 
 When through highway, 
 
 Court and byway, 
 Gusts and sunshine range, 
 
 And the racing 
 
 Clouds are chasing 
 Over the Exchange ;
 
 APRIL IN "THE STREET" 
 
 What if rates be flat or firmer, 
 
 What if prices fill or back, 
 If I hear your sunny murmur 
 Of a four days' Easter slack, 
 Of absconding, 
 Vagabonding 
 
 From the Street's grim aisle, 
 While its chill stones, 
 Mammon's millstones, 
 Cease to grind awhile 1
 
 THE VAGABOND 
 
 THE wind is in the wood, 
 
 The sap hath stirred 
 Blue flowers in multitude, 
 
 And song of bird ; 
 And, though her day hath been, 
 
 Last summer's fern 
 Is red among the green, 
 
 For to discern I 
 
 What scribe am I, I say, 
 
 To mope within, 
 Whenas the common's gay 
 
 With yellow whin, 
 When sun and shower and sod 
 
 In ancient plan 
 Do praise the horned god 
 
 Arcadian ? 
 
 For I must be astir 
 With scrip and staff, 
 6
 
 THE VAGABOND 
 
 To hear the woodpecker 
 
 In April laugh, 
 Or go with jest and rhyme 
 
 A-journeying 
 By Tamis' flood from Prime 
 
 Till Nones doth ring ! 
 
 Where lusty poplars bend 
 
 The path is free ; 
 I'll tread it with a friend 
 
 For company, 
 Then rest and drink a glass 
 
 If they should brew 
 Ale at the " Dragon " as 
 
 They used to do !
 
 BOND STREET 
 
 LAVENDER fresh are your looks 
 
 Bond Street, in May-time ; 
 London that's laid down her books, 
 
 London in playtime ; 
 Sunlit eleven o'clock, 
 
 Jack, ay, and Jill, 
 Furbelow, feather and frock, 
 
 Fashion and frill ! 
 
 Lilac'd and lawned go your girls, 
 
 So many Graces, 
 Soft as the dawn, or the pearls 
 
 Caught in their laces ; 
 Lo, it was Celia laughed 
 
 Silver afar ; 
 Here breathed a violet waft, 
 
 There a cigar ! 
 
 Men who are fSted and fed, 
 Folk who've come croppers, 
 8
 
 BOND STREET 
 
 Men who fill lions with lead, 
 
 Surbiton shoppers ; 
 Thus does the whirligig go 
 
 Blithe as a bell ; 
 Soothly it seems that your show 
 
 Runs rather well. 
 
 Yet on this Monday you've more- 
 How shall I term it ? 
 
 Eclat than ever before, 
 Yes, I affirm it ; 
 
 Why so, I hardly can say, 
 Saving 'tis that 
 
 Dolly is up for the day, 
 Getting a hat I
 
 EUSTON 
 
 Now, when the sportsman is flitting from mar- 
 ket and Mammon, 
 
 Now, when the courts, swept and garnished, 
 stand silent and lone, 
 
 Now, with her challenging grouse, and her sea- 
 silver salmon, 
 
 August, of mountains and memories, comes to 
 her own ; 
 
 Would you gaze into the crystal, and see the 
 long valleys, 
 
 Braes of the North, and the rivers that wander 
 between, 
 
 Crags with whose coating the tint of the 
 ptarmigan tallies ? 
 
 Come up to Euston to-night about 7.15. 
 
 There, if you've got to make shift with a fort- 
 night at Margate, 
 
 Humbly content with the codling you catch from 
 the pier, 
 
 10
 
 EUSTON 
 
 Making the booth's mere mechanical rabbit your 
 
 target, 
 There, if your "heart's in the highlands a- 
 
 chasing the deer " 
 Shall you slip past, all unchallenged, the magical 
 
 wicket, 
 Portal that opens at will on to heather and 
 
 streams ; 
 No need to bother for berth or for booking of 
 
 ticket, 
 When you would sojourn a space in the Kingdom 
 
 of Dreams. 
 
 Come, then, and stand on the platform, and see 
 through the arches, 
 
 Full of the evening that flushes the chimneys 
 with light, 
 
 Gold-burnished rails that run out to the pines 
 and the larches, 
 
 See the long corridor carriages busking for flight; 
 
 Board them in fancy, and then, when the twi- 
 light grows deeper, 
 
 Speed through the moon-mantled Midlands 
 by fell and by firth, 
 II
 
 EUSTON 
 
 Wake with your tea, in the smooth-swinging 
 
 rush of the sleeper, 
 When the white glamour of morning is pale 
 
 over Perth. 
 
 So, spite of luggage and crowds and of engines 
 
 that whistle, 
 Over the riggings in spirit once more you'll 
 
 descry, 
 On to the perilous butts, where the batteries 
 
 bristle, 
 Blotting the heather, the well-driven coveys 
 
 come by ; 
 Bracken and blaeberry, murderous midges that 
 
 bite you, 
 Summits that stand to the sunset, tremendous 
 
 and stark, 
 Come up to Euston, for lo, it has dreams to 
 
 requite you, 
 Till the last tail-light has twinkled, and gone in 
 
 the dark ! 
 
 12
 
 LAVENDER'S FOR LADIES 
 
 LAVENDER'S for ladies, an* they grows it in the 
 
 garden ; 
 Lavender's for ladies, and its sweet an* dry an' 
 
 blue j 
 But the swallows leave the steeple an' the skies 
 
 begin to harden, 
 For now's the time o' lavender, an' now's the 
 
 time o' rue ! 
 
 " Lavender, lavender, buy my sweet lavender," 
 All down the street an old woman will cry ; 
 But when she trundles 
 The sweet-smellin' bundles, 
 When she calls lavender swallows must fly ! 
 
 Lavender 's for ladies (Heaven love their pretty 
 
 faces) ; 
 Lavender's for ladies, they can sniff it at their 
 
 ease, 
 
 13
 
 LAVENDER'S FOR LADIES 
 
 An* they puts it on their counterpins an' on their 
 
 pillow-cases, 
 An' dreams about their true-loves an' o' ships 
 
 that cross the seas ! 
 
 " Lavender, Lavender, buy my sweet lavender," 
 Thus the old woman will quaver an' call 
 
 All through the city 
 
 It's blue an' it's pretty, 
 But brown's on the beech-tree an' mist over all ! 
 
 Lavender's for ladies, so they puts it in their 
 
 presses ; 
 Lavender's for ladies, Joan an' Mary, Jill an' 
 
 Jane ; 
 So they lays it in their muslins an' their lawny 
 
 Sunday dresses, 
 An* keeps 'em fresh as April till their loves 
 
 come 'ome again ! 
 
 " Lavender, lavender, buy my sweet lavender," 
 Still the old woman will wheeze and will cry. 
 Give 'er a copper 
 An' p'raps it will stop 'er, 
 For when she calls lavender summer must die !
 
 POMONA 
 
 THE hive's full of honey, the steading of stacks, 
 The stubbles are bare to the sunshine again, 
 There's a wind in the branches that eddies and 
 
 backs 
 
 That whispers of Autumn, that whispers of rain. 
 The orchards are mellow with red globes and 
 
 yellow, 
 
 The matronly months of fulfilment are now, 
 So now must we turn to their goddess, and 
 
 yearn to 
 Pomona, beloved of the fruit-burdened bough ! 
 
 The swallows have gone from the eaves and 
 
 the spire, 
 From the garden has faded the pomp of high 
 
 June, 
 
 But crimson's the maple, the woods are a-fire, 
 And filling with woodcock beneath the new 
 
 moon ; 
 
 15
 
 POMONA 
 
 Folk say that she lingers with berry-stained 
 
 fingers 
 On field-paths that clamber by cottage and 
 
 croft, 
 Pomona, dear maiden, whose brown arms are 
 
 laden 
 With fruit and with fullness for cellar and loft ! 
 
 Oh, some may build altars for Dian, and some 
 For Cyprian Venus who rose from the sea, 
 And some for the Muses the learned and glum, 
 But no such fine ladies for mortals like me. 
 No doubt they are charming ; I'd find them 
 
 alarming ; 
 And when did they offer to quench a man's 
 
 thirst ? 
 
 Pomona, provider of tanged autumn cider, 
 Our lady of apples, she's easily first ! 
 
 
 
 Since you'd offer libation, this method is mine 
 Go up by the footpath (the high roads I shun), 
 And ten miles of walking will show you her 
 
 shrine, 
 An inn with a settle that faces the sun ; 
 
 16
 
 POMONA 
 
 And absent if She be, an apple-cheeked Hebe 
 Shall pour you her nectar that winks and that 
 
 swirls ; 
 She's brown and she's smiling, she's plump, she's 
 
 beguiling, 
 Perhaps not the goddess, but one of her girls !
 
 ROUNDABOUTS AND SWINGS 
 
 IT was early last September nigh to Framlin'am- 
 
 on-Sea 
 An* 'twas Fair-day come to-morrow, an* the 
 
 time was after tea, 
 
 An' I met a painted caravan adown a dusty lane, 
 A Pharaoh with his waggons comin' jolt an' 
 
 creak an' strain ; 
 A cheery cove an* sunburnt, bold o' eye and 
 
 wrinkled up, 
 An' beside him on the splashboard sat a brindled 
 
 tarrier pup, 
 
 An' a lurcher wise as Solomon an' lean as fiddle- 
 strings 
 Was joggin' in the dust along 'is roundabouts 
 
 and swings. 
 
 "Goo'-day," said 'e ; Goo'-day," said I ; "an' 
 
 'ow d'you find things go, 
 An' what's the chance o' millions when you runs 
 
 a travellin' show ? " 
 18
 
 ROUNDABOUTS AND SWINGS 
 
 "I find," said 'e, "things very much as 'ow I've 
 
 always found, 
 For mostly they goes up and down or else goes 
 
 round and round." 
 Said 'e, "The job's the very spit o' what it 
 
 always were, 
 It's bread and bacon mostly when the dog don't 
 
 catch a 'are ; 
 But lookin' at it broad, an* while it ain't no 
 
 merchant king's, 
 What's lost upon the roundabouts we pulls up 
 
 on the swings ! 
 
 "Goo' luck," said'e; "Goo' luck," said I; 
 " you've put it past a doubt ; 
 
 An' keep that lurcher on the road, the game- 
 keepers is out ; " 
 
 'E thumped upon the footboard an' 'e lumbered 
 on again 
 
 To meet a gold-dust sunset down the owl-light 
 in the lane ; 
 
 An' the moon she climbed the 'azels, while a 
 nightjar seemed to spin 
 
 That Pharaoh's wisdom o'er again, 'is sooth of 
 lose-and-win ; 
 
 19
 
 For " up an' down an' round," said 'e, " goes all 
 
 appointed things, 
 An' losses on the roundabouts means profits on 
 
 the swings ! " 
 
 2O
 
 THE MUTINY YEAR 
 
 IN the lumber-room I rummaged for some papers 
 
 out of place, 
 When I came among the cobwebs on a small 
 
 morocco case, 
 
 Raised the lid and saw a medal, on its upturned 
 
 side a date, 
 " 1857 " graven on the tarnished laurelled plate. 
 
 'Twas enough, and ere I turned it in its faded 
 
 velvet bed 
 Quite a host of recollections ran in riot through 
 
 my head ; 
 
 And from out the musty boxes, loved of spider 
 
 and of mouse, 
 Came a half-forgotten story of an owner of the 
 
 house. 
 
 Thus : A dusty roadway rises, and an Indian 
 
 sun beats down 
 Where an English scouting party gallop in from 
 
 Delhi Town. 
 
 21
 
 THE MUTINY YEAR 
 
 On their flank the rebel rifles rattle out in sudden 
 storms, 
 
 One full mile in front is shelter, where a sweat- 
 ing battery forms. 
 
 On they come in open order, through the danger 
 
 zone they sweep, 
 Save the last, whose wounded Waler pecks, 
 
 and pitches in a heap, 
 
 Struggles, shivers and lies quiet, while the 
 
 trooper makes a run, 
 Tries to join his comrades halting under cover 
 
 of the gun, 
 
 Where they breathe their sobbing horses, and the 
 
 boy who's in command 
 Knocks the dust from off his tunic, numbers off 
 
 his tattered band, 
 
 Throws a glance along the roadway where the 
 
 bullets flick and bound, 
 Sees the distant, limping figure, swings his 
 
 reeking Arab round, 
 22
 
 THE MUTINY YEAR 
 
 Swears, and, sitting down to gallop, sends him 
 
 racing back again, 
 Gets the trooper up in safety, spite the raking 
 
 leaden rain, 
 
 And again defies the gauntlet of the glaring shot- 
 swept road, 
 
 Till the Arab rocks and staggers into cover with 
 his load ! 
 
 This the story I remembered of those days by 
 
 Delhi's gate, 
 As I read the magic figures of the medal's 
 
 famous date. 
 
 Then it seemed to my romantic and unmilitary 
 
 mind, 
 That some record of his riding might be found 
 
 engraved behind. 
 
 So I turned it, and discovered that, some fifty 
 
 years ago, 
 His Aunt Jane had scored with butter at the 
 
 local county show. 
 23
 
 SWEEP 
 
 AULD Sweep, your muzzle's grey 
 As the rime at skreigh o' day, 
 Ye're no fit to tak the brae, 
 
 Neeps, nor ploo 
 You that wis sae gleg an' bauld, 
 I' the het an' i' the cauld, 
 Ay, ye're wearin' gey an' auld, 
 
 Sweep, the noo ! 
 
 Ye'd come, I ken it fine, 
 Limpin' far ahint the line, 
 Sittin' doon at dykes, to whine 
 
 Sair perplexed ; 
 Hirplin' on aye, stiff an' lame, 
 Till the Laird wad pit ye hame, 
 Wi' the cairt that taks the game, 
 
 Maybe vexed ! 
 
 Ye're deef an' slaw an' blin', 
 An' ye're by wi' muir and whin, 
 -24
 
 SWEEP 
 
 Pickin' up or drivin' in, 
 
 Braw an' douce ; 
 An' ye're a' rheumatic pains, 
 Gin the wet gets to your banes, 
 Sae ye'll need to bide your lanes 
 
 Ben the hoose ! 
 
 The young dog's fleet an' spang, 
 An' he'll rin the hale day lang, 
 Yet it's sweir am I to gang 
 
 Wantin' you, 
 For traivel East or West, 
 Aye the auldest freends is best, 
 An' ye're aulder than the rest, 
 
 Sweep, the noo 1
 
 PATSY 
 
 PUPPY dog, rough as a bramble, 
 
 Eyed like a saint, 
 Beggar to slobber and gambol, 
 
 Corky and quaint, 
 
 Chasing your tail like a fubsy turbillion, 
 Plaguing a playmate with fuss of a million 
 
 Gnats, 
 But keen as a kestrel 
 
 And fierce as a stoat is, 
 A-thrill to ancestral 
 Furies at notice 
 
 Of rats, 
 Rats, little hound of Beelzebub, rats I 
 
 And as you sleep off a surfeit, 
 
 Mischief and tea, 
 Prone on the summer-warm turf, it 
 
 Surely must be 
 
 (Rapturous whimper and tremulant twitching), 
 Somewhere or other there's hunting bewitching ; 
 26
 
 PATSY 
 
 That's 
 More blessed than biscuit ; 
 
 I'll lay, through your slumbers, 
 They squeak and they frisk it 
 In shadowy numbers, 
 
 R-r-rats, 
 Rats, little hound of Beelzebub, rats !
 
 SOLOMON AND THE 
 MONKEYS 
 
 APES and peacocks and almug and ivory 
 
 Solomon sent for over seas, 
 And, if you ask me the reason why for he 
 
 Sent his shipping for such as these 
 Peacocks flaunt like an opal necklace, 
 Figurey almug's fair and fleckless, 
 Ivory's smooth and white and speckless 
 
 (Tusks on a plinth of gold) ; 
 And the little grey monkeys, so wrinkled wise, 
 Little grey apes with the twinkling eyes, 
 
 Puckered, brown and cold, 
 'Spite of their lightsome ways and reckless, 
 Know the wisdom of gods of old ! 
 
 Solomon sat by his garden palaces 
 
 Seeking wisdom of earth and air ; 
 Little grey apes, full of mocks and malices, 
 
 Chipped and chattered around his chair ; 
 Chipped and chattered and made grimaces, 
 28
 
 SOLOMON AND THE MONKEYS 
 
 Rubbed their backs and their wrinkled faces, 
 Swung themselves with a score of graces 
 
 Through the cedar trees : 
 But never their knowledge could Solomon 
 
 catch, 
 For, if he asked them, they'd only scratch, 
 
 Stop and scratch for fleas ; 
 Then they'd rocket away in races, 
 Ruffling, scuffling, in twos and threes ! 
 
 So Solomon sent for Hiram, King o' Tyre 
 
 Hiram strode 'neath the budding leaf, 
 Purple vesture and golden ring, attire 
 
 Fit indeed for a merchant chief 
 He bade him watch the monkeys slipping 
 Through the pomegranate branches dipping 
 Over the fountains ferned and dripping, 
 
 Green and clear and cold ; 
 And " 'Tis excellent knowledge," King Hiram 
 
 said, 
 " That keeps its learning inside its head ; 
 
 That's your monkey's gold 
 That's the reason that sets them skipping 
 That's their wisdom of gods of old !
 
 TO A BISON 
 
 [After reading a recent Article on his preservation.'] 
 
 CREATURE, regards ! What though river and 
 prairie 
 
 Know not to-day the stampede of your horde, 
 See not the maelstrom of heads huge and hairy, 
 
 Hear not the thunder of hoof upon sward ? 
 What though the plough breaks the trails where 
 your following 
 
 Millions once surged like the flow of the tide, 
 And o'er your picturesque places of wallowing 
 
 Golden as sunrise the wheat stretches wide ? 
 
 For there's romance in your veriest mention ; 
 
 Camp-fires at nightfall and mountings at morn, 
 Wigwam and war-path again claim attention, 
 
 Hair-breadth escapes from your perilous horn ! 
 Yes, when we read of you, boyhood comes back 
 
 again, 
 
 (Shade of Mayne Reid and of Ballantyne too !) 
 30
 
 TO A BISON 
 
 And we're repelling a Red-skin attack again, 
 Strewing the lawn with belligerent Sioux ! 
 
 Or, on our mustangs (the fire-breathing devils) 
 
 Madly we gallop with never a pull, 
 Close with your mob on the alkali levels 
 
 (Sometimes the garden), and drop the big bull ! 
 Back to the waggons (the tool-shed or rockery), 
 
 Loose in the saddle to breakfast we ride, 
 Naught of contemptible cruet and crockery 
 
 Needs the proved plainsman when pemmican's 
 fried 1 
 
 Will you once more at Saskatchewan's regions 
 
 Thrive, as we hope, just as hardy and tough 
 As when the red man of old saw your legions 
 
 Blacken the plains from some prominent bluff? 
 Will the bronzed cow-puncher hear, when the 
 twittering 
 
 Quail greet the morning, your truculent moo 
 Boom down the canon where snow-peaks are 
 glittering, 
 
 Soaring aloft to the fathomless blue ?
 
 TO A BISON 
 
 Only your Totem can tell ; so at present 
 
 Just let us wish you the peace of the hills, 
 Salt-lick and wallow, and pasturage pleasant, 
 
 Safe from the bullets of " Buffalo Bills"; 
 Few, half domestic the blood's not degene- 
 rate 
 
 Long may you rule your park-ranges at ease, 
 And here's regards to you, creature, at any 
 
 rate, 
 
 Since your mere mention brings dreams such 
 as these 1
 
 TO A BANK OF ENGLAND 
 PIGEON 
 
 DESCENDANT of the doves of Aphrodite 
 Who fluttered in that type of beauty's train 
 And followed her affairs the grave, the flighty, 
 Cooing in just your calm, uncaring strain, 
 Whether she thought to rid her of a rival, 
 Or bring some laggard lover to her knees ; 
 I see you, Sir, the latter-day survival 
 Of such fair plume'd satellites as these ! 
 
 " Bred in the bone," perchance you know the 
 
 motto ! 
 
 And so you doubtless dream of tides that lace 
 O'er snow-white sand by some blue Paphian 
 
 grotto, 
 Or of your sires' dark, murmurous, woodland 
 
 Thrace ; 
 
 A penny whistle shrilling 'mid the traffic 
 May seem the goat-foot god's own oaten trill, 
 
 33
 
 TO A BANK OF ENGLAND PIGEON 
 
 Till you shall think to hear the Maenads maffic 
 In the upborne commotion of Cornhill ! 
 
 And from your perch where sooty winds are 
 
 striving, 
 
 O Bank stock-dove, as o'er Hymettian bloom 
 You yet may watch the busy bees a-hiving 
 The sweet and subtle fragrance of the Boom, 
 And see, as once before the Cyprian matron, 
 The crowds that wait, obsequious and discreet, 
 On her, your passionless and newer patron, 
 The stern Old Lady of Threadneedle Street ! 
 
 34
 
 DAPHNE 
 
 HERE'S a tale from times called olden, further 
 
 qualified as golden, 
 When the gods on high Olympus smacked of 
 
 earth and sunburnt tan, 
 With their far from formal Dryads, and their 
 
 Oreads and Naiads, 
 And the questionable doings of the forest Courts 
 
 of Pan. 
 
 At the era that I write on, in the whole of 
 
 Greece no chiton 
 Hid a contour more alluring or revealed so fair 
 
 a cheek 
 As the one which draped the figure, in its folded 
 
 classic rigour, 
 Of a charming girl called Daphne, of a type 
 
 divinely Greek. 
 
 I perhaps may also mention that her eyes were 
 
 bluest gentian, 
 While her hair was like the sunshine on the 
 
 rippling waves of wheat, 
 35
 
 DAPHNE 
 
 And her face supplied a thesis for the shepherds' 
 
 pastoral pieces, 
 And they laid their choicest garlands at her little 
 
 sandalled feet. 
 
 But, in spite of rustic sheep's eyes and bucolic 
 
 winks and deep sighs, 
 Daphne shunned alike the pastorals and posies 
 
 of the herds 
 For the lonely woodland places or for high and 
 
 windy spaces, 
 For the music of the mountains or the singing of 
 
 the birds. 
 
 And if Bacchus and his leopards roused the 
 
 neighbouring nymphs and shepherds, 
 When the Bassarid and Maenad made the Vale 
 
 of Tempe ring 
 With their light and larky revels on the misty 
 
 moonlit levels, 
 Well, I rather fancy Daphne would avoid that 
 
 kind of thing. 
 
 36
 
 DAPHNE 
 
 So the empty weeks that passed her left her cold 
 
 as alabaster, 
 Till one dark day by Peneus where the laurel 
 
 thickets are, 
 With a certain shy ignition, Daphne met a tall 
 
 musician 
 Who in fact was young Apollo who had loved 
 
 her from afar. 
 
 Now, although his reputation gave some cause 
 
 for conversation, 
 Still I think that had she waited he'd have won 
 
 her at his ease, 
 But, when he declared his title, in alarm at his 
 
 recital 
 She forsook his further wooing for the butterflies 
 
 and bees. 
 
 Like the summer wind that passes, Daphne fled 
 
 o'er flowers and grasses, 
 For she heard the rushing footsteps race across 
 
 the scented thyme, 
 37
 
 DAPHNE 
 
 And in sudden panic ardour, she implored the 
 
 gods to guard her 
 From the words she vowed were nonsense and 
 
 the kiss she called a crime ! 
 
 And at once her lithe form faltered and grew 
 rigid, and she altered 
 
 To a bush of gleaming laurel in its dark peren- 
 nial green ; 
 
 And she grows beside the river where the rushes 
 thrill and shiver 
 
 With an everlasting murmur of the things which 
 might have been ! 
 
 And when autumn days are dying and the wood 
 
 is full of sighing, 
 When there's sobbing in the pine tops and a 
 
 murmur in the firs, 
 
 Do we tax imagination if we say its lamentation 
 Is our little Daphne crying for the love that was 
 
 not hers ? 
 
 
 
 Should we want to pin a moral to this legend of 
 
 the laurel 
 For the use of any debutante on reaching seventeen, 
 
 38
 
 DAPHNE 
 
 It is : Don't he too unbending, or you'll run 
 
 the risk of ending 
 Not a laurel, but a wall-flower which is not an 
 
 evergreen 1
 
 PROMETHEA 
 
 BEFORE the February day 
 
 Yellows the window-pane once more, 
 I hear her on her slipshod way 
 
 Clatter outside my bedroom door, 
 Unshrined and all unknown to fame 
 To me a goddess just the same ! 
 
 Hers was no columned Grecian grove, 
 Hers no be-ferned Sicilian fount ; 
 
 No shepherd of the white-fleeced drove 
 Adjudged her fair on Ida's mount, 
 
 Nor did she in the dark unbar 
 
 The dawn gate for the sun-god's car ! 
 
 Yet, ere the laggard milkman cries, 
 Ill-nurtured nymph of household care 
 
 She comes, poor child, with heavy eyes 
 Adown the creaky lodging stair, 
 
 To struggle with the Stygian gloom 
 
 Of fog that fills the dining-room ! 
 4.0
 
 PROMETHEA 
 
 Coarse-fingered, grimy as to face 
 From scuttle, pan, or window-sill ; 
 
 Well, was the very rosiest Grace 
 So fit to merit man's good-will 
 
 As she, who comes in low estate, 
 
 Poor little drudge, to lay the grate ? 
 
 And when the glow of kindly flame 
 
 Leaps 'neath her touch to warm and cheer 
 
 The cockles of the human frame, 
 Its little handmaid doth appear, 
 
 For sheer humanitarian worth, 
 
 His equal, who brought Fire to Earth !
 
 A CLASSICAL CONTRAST 
 
 I HAVE (in bronze) a tiny 
 
 Adventuress of Greece, 
 A little laughing Phryne, 
 
 Upon my mantelpiece, 
 And when I see her smiling 
 
 Imagination strays 
 Once more in brave, beguiling, 
 
 Divine Athenian days ! 
 
 Cool marble courts are ringing 
 
 As merry voices call, 
 Where girls are garland-stringing 
 
 For Springtime's festival ; 
 In lanes of linked lightness 
 
 The roses rope, and flow 
 Blood-red upon the whiteness 
 
 Of chiselled Parian snow ! 
 
 I have a pot of pewter, 
 
 And when the firelight gleams 
 42
 
 A CLASSICAL CONTRAST 
 
 It too will turn transmuter 
 Of commonplace to dreams. 
 
 Then, though the year's at ember 
 Once more high June doth reign 
 
 And I in dreams remember, 
 And win the thing again ! 
 
 On turf of headland thymy, 
 
 Where brine-washed breezes strive, 
 I lay the subtle stymie, 
 
 I drive the spanking drive ; 
 I see the grey tides sleeping, 
 
 I watch the grey gulls wheel, 
 Till through the dusk come creeping 
 
 The lights of distant Deal ! 
 
 pewter and O Phryne, 
 Since both of you may bring 
 
 Your visions blue and briny 
 Or garlanded of Spring : 
 
 1 welcome you together 
 
 Upon my mantelpiece, 
 And love both magics, whether 
 Of England or of Greece 1 
 
 43
 
 A SONG OF SYRINX 
 
 LITTLE lady, whom 'tis said 
 Pan tried very hard to please, 
 
 I expect before you fled 
 
 'Neath the wondering willow-trees, 
 
 Ran away from his caress 
 
 In the Doric wilderness, 
 
 That you'd led him on a lot, 
 
 Said you would, and then would not : 
 
 No way that to treat a man, 
 
 Little lady loved of Pan ! 
 
 I expect you'd dropped your eyes 
 
 (Eyes that held your stream's own hue, 
 
 Kingfishers and dragon-flies 
 Sparkling in their ripple blue), 
 
 And you'd tossed your tresses up, 
 
 Yellow as the cool king-cup, 
 
 And you'd dimpled at his vows 
 
 Underneath the willow boughs, 
 
 Ere you mocked him, ere you ran, 
 
 Little lady loved of Pan ! 
 44
 
 A SONG OF SYRINX 
 
 So they've turned you to a reed, 
 As the great Olympians could, 
 
 You've to bow, so they've decreed, 
 
 When old Pan comes through the wood, 
 
 You've to curtsey and to gleam 
 
 In the wind and in the stream 
 
 (Which are forms, I've heard folks say, 
 
 That the god adopts to-day), 
 
 And we watch you bear your ban, 
 
 Little lady loved of Pan ! 
 
 For in pleasant spots you lie 
 
 Where the lazy river is, 
 Where the chasing whispers fly 
 
 Through the beds of bulrushes, 
 Where the big chub, golden dun, 
 Turns his sides to catch the sun, 
 Where one listens for the queer 
 Voices in the splashing weir, 
 Where I know that still you can 
 Weave a spell to charm a man, 
 Little lady loved of Pan ! 
 
 45
 
 AN URBAN ECLOGUE 
 
 (Coronation Year) 
 
 STREPHON : 
 
 How favoured are we, Phyllis, 
 
 That ours is not the age 
 When rustic Amaryllis 
 
 Enjoyed a rustic rage ; 
 Her freckles and her frolics, 
 
 Her stupid swains we know 
 I've read their old bucolics 
 
 (I had to years ago !). 
 
 PHYLLIS : 
 
 / haven't (thanks to heaven, 
 
 And Fraillein's easy yoke) ; 
 But still I fancy, Strephon, 
 
 I know your tiresome folk : 
 Their compliments becowslipped, 
 
 Their idylls of the sheep, 
 Their wreaths that o'er the brows slipped 
 
 In unbecoming sleep ! 
 46
 
 AN URBAN ECLOGUE 
 
 STREPHON : 
 
 I picture you reclining 
 
 With cricked and aching spine, 
 To catch the pan-pipes whining 
 
 Beneath some draughty pine ; 
 You, Phyllis, with your brooches 
 
 And Paris frocks to-day 
 Supreme among the coaches, 
 
 Resplendent at the play ! 
 
 PHYLLIS : 
 
 I simply can't imagine 
 
 You on the classic lawns, 
 With no Enclosure badge on, 
 
 Amid the festive fauns : 
 Or lounging, say, astride of 
 
 A log on summer nights, 
 You, Strephon, you the pride of 
 
 The window-seat at White's ! 
 
 STREPHON : 
 
 They knew not bands and cities, 
 Nor streets in bunting bound ; 
 47
 
 AN URBAN ECLOGUE 
 
 Their bunting chirped his ditties 
 When Pan came barging round ; 
 
 For in their futile, far land, 
 The only crownings were 
 
 When someone dumped a garland 
 On someone else's hair ! 
 
 PHYLLIS : 
 
 Yet sometimes, when the dawning 
 
 Comes o'er the chimneys tall, 
 I find I'm almost yawning 
 
 Half through some ripping ball ; 
 It's odd, but all one knows is 
 
 Just then that such things please 
 As hedges and wild-roses 
 
 And buttercups and bees ! 
 
 STREPHON : 
 
 Why not then ? /'// have fancies ; 
 
 I, too, would botanize 
 And pick I think they're pansies 
 
 The blue things like your eyes : 
 48
 
 AN URBAN ECLOGUE 
 
 Or down the Henley reaches 
 The crank canoe impel, 
 
 To lunch 'neath Shiplake beeches- 
 If you were there as well ! 
 
 PHYLLIS : 
 
 This much then for conclusion, 
 
 I'd say small difference is 
 'Twixt tommy-rot effusion 
 
 And old absurdities 
 The sort your shepherd-sillies 
 
 Fired off in fatuous flow 
 For rustic Amaryllis, 
 
 A million years ago ! 
 
 49
 
 THE SCARAB 
 
 SPOIL of the tomb of kings, 
 
 Snatched from the shadows solemn, 
 Where the wide falcon-wings 
 
 Brood o'er the pylon's column, 
 Scarab (oh, blue of the artist Egyptian), 
 How goes your curious carven inscription ? 
 
 Emblem of Life and Sun, 
 
 How do its letters run ? 
 Spells it of magic and censers a-swing 
 Ere you were vowed to my Lilian's ring ? 
 
 Tells it of girlish throng, 
 
 Homage and graceful pose, if 
 Pharaoh should chance along, 
 
 Pharaoh who knew not Joseph ? 
 Down the dim coolness of corridors going, 
 Out to the noon on his rose gardens glowing ; 
 
 Where by the fish-pond's brink 
 
 Ibises coral-pink 
 
 Stood in a sacred and somnolent row, 
 Ages and ages and ages ago ? 
 50
 
 THE SCARAB 
 
 Spoil of the pyramid 
 
 Where the old shadows linger, 
 Now as a mascot slid 
 
 On to a dainty finger ; 
 If I might fathom the secret you fetter, 
 Hazard each cryptical, long-ago letter, 
 
 Emblem of Life that's gone, 
 
 I would say, " Love lives on '* : 
 Surely a proper and plausible thing, 
 Since you are vowed to my Lilian's ring !
 
 AWA' FRAE COWRIE 
 
 (Lowland Love-Song) 
 
 SHE wis never that young, she wis never just 
 
 that bonny, 
 An' it's nae the bawbees, for she's no had onjr 
 
 This seventeen year, 
 
 Yet it's oh but I 'm sweir 
 Tae pairt frae ma jo Annie Powrie ; 
 
 She's fair past wurk, though she's but 
 fufty-three, 
 
 An' they've taen her till the infirmarie, 
 
 An' wha's tae rax me ma dish o' tea, 
 When she's awa' frae Gowrie ? 
 
 I've pawned her puckle gear, an' I've drinkt 
 
 her bit beddin', 
 An' the auld black goun that she wore tae wir 
 
 weddin', 
 
 An' her stuffit chair, 
 Still it's eh but I'm sair 
 Tae twine frae ma jo Annie Powrie ; 
 52
 
 AW A' FRAE COWRIE 
 
 The doctor says that she's gey far through, 
 But wha's tae dig the croft i' the noo, 
 An' wha's tae bed me the nichts I'm fou, 
 When she's awa' frae Gowrie ? 
 
 She was wattit tae the bane at the tattie-sawin' 
 
 I' the spring o' the year when the win* wis 
 
 blawin' 
 
 O* a cauld-rife airt, 
 An' it's wae is ma hairt 
 
 Tae twine frae ma jo Annie Powrie ; 
 
 They're tellin' aye that she's like tae dee, 
 Nae an unco' thing as ye'll agree, 
 But wha's tae fend for the pig an' me, 
 
 Gin she's awa' frae Gowrie ? 
 
 53
 
 A JEWELLED SELL 
 
 PALE pearls 
 Are best for girls, 
 And queenly diamond stones 
 Their charming chaperons 
 
 Do most befit ; 
 But this fierce ruby, heart's blood of the East, 
 
 What does it want, I ask you, west of Suez ? 
 Down the dim centuries of fight and feast 
 It's blazed (no doubt) on many a Rajah-rou6's 
 
 Kingly and costly kit ; 
 Balefully still it blinks of hate and harm, 
 An asp upon my Amy's rose-white arm ! 
 
 What tales 
 Of long jezails, 
 And grim zenana-bars, 
 And cruel scimitars 
 Could it portray ! 
 
 Torture, intrigue it knows, and cut-and-thrust 
 Of companies, bow-string and poisoned potion, 
 54
 
 A JEWELLED SELL 
 
 And elephants soft-padding through the dust, 
 And years and years of killing and commotion. 
 
 What, Amy, did you say ? 
 "Talk about something that I understand"? 
 
 Why, quite. 
 A Capetown garnet, is it ? Oh, all right ! 
 
 5.5
 
 BLUE ROSES 
 
 SHEPHERD in delicate Dresden china, 
 Loitering ever the while you twine a 
 
 Garland of oddly azure roses, 
 All for a shepherdess passing fair ; 
 Poor little shepherdess waiting there 
 
 All the time for your china posies, 
 Posies pale for her jet-black hair ! 
 
 Doesn't she wait (oh, the anxious glances !) 
 Flowers for one of your stately dances, 
 
 A crown to finish a dainty toilette, 
 (Haven't the harps just now begun, 
 Minuets 'neath a china sun ?) 
 
 Doesn't she dread that the dust may soil it, 
 When, oh, when will the boy be done ? 
 
 Summer and winter and still you linger, 
 Laggard lover with lazy finger, 
 
 Never your little maid's wreath completing, 
 56
 
 BLUE ROSES 
 
 Still half-strung are its petalled showers 
 Must she wait all her dancing hours, 
 
 Wait in spite of her shy entreating, 
 Wait for ever her azure flowers ? 
 
 57
 
 THE ROAD 
 
 " Now where are ye goin'," ses I, " wid the 
 
 shawl 
 
 An' cotton umbrella an' basket an' all ? 
 Would ye not wait for McMullen's machine, 
 Wid that iligant instep befittin' a queen ? 
 
 Oh, you wid the wind-soft grey eye wid 
 
 a wile in it, 
 You wid the lip wid the troublesome smile 
 
 in it, 
 Sure, the road's wet, ivery rain-muddied 
 
 mile in it " 
 
 " Ah, the Saints'lt be kapir? me petticoats dean /" 
 
 " But," ses I, " would ye like it to meet Clancy's 
 
 bull, 
 Or the tinks poachin' rabbits above Slieve-na- 
 
 coul ? 
 
 An' the ford at Kilmaddy is big wid the snows, 
 An' the whisht Little People that wear the 
 
 green close, 
 
 58
 
 THE ROAD 
 
 They'd run from the bog to be makin 1 a 
 
 catch o' ye, 
 The king o' them's wishful o' weddin' the 
 
 match o' ye, 
 'T would be long, if they did, ere ye lifted 
 
 the latch o' ye " 
 
 " What fairy's to touch her that sings as she goes!" 
 
 " Ah, where are ye goin'," ses I, " wid the 
 
 shawl, 
 
 An' the grey eyes a-dreamin' beneath it an' all ? 
 
 The road by the mountain's a long one, depend 
 
 Ye'll be done for, alannah, ere reachin' the end ; 
 
 Ye'Il be bate wid the wind on each' back- 
 
 breakin' bit on it, 
 Wet wid the puddles and lamed wid the 
 
 grit on it, 
 Since lonesome ye're layin' yer delicut fit 
 
 on it " 
 
 " Sure whin's a road lonesome that's stepped wid a 
 friend"? 
 
 That's stepped wid a friend ? 
 Who did Bridgy intend ? 
 
 Still 'twas me that went wid her right on to the 
 end! 
 
 59
 
 THE ARTISTS 
 
 BLUE as a mile of pansies are the seas that circle 
 
 the shores, 
 Circle the shores of Fairyland and the high, 
 
 enchanted ways 
 Where the great grim sea-green dragons guard 
 
 the jade and the amber doors, 
 And the Queen of the Fairies' peacocks walk 
 under the crimson mays ; 
 Oh, what, I wonder, 
 
 Could look more gay 
 Than a peacock under 
 A crimson may ? 
 
 For that is the home of colour and many a 
 
 wizard hue, 
 'Tis there they deck the rainbow ere he's pinned 
 
 against the rain, 
 And squeeze the tubes for the pictures of 
 
 " things too good to be true," 
 And make the gilt for the turrets of castles we 
 
 build in Spain ; 
 
 60
 
 THE ARTISTS 
 
 And what's more gilded, 
 This world amid, 
 
 Than castles builded 
 Near old Madrid ? 
 
 For we, we're all ot us artists with plans and 
 
 canvases 
 Of excellent Spanish castles with turrets all 
 
 about, 
 With angels in the corners, romaunts, and 
 
 symphonies 
 
 Of things as we would have them did every 
 dream work out ; 
 
 And such were duller, 
 
 You'll understand, 
 If robbed of colour 
 From Fairyland ! 
 
 So we must stroke the dragons and tickle their 
 
 shiny scales, 
 And they shall grin politely and we shall pass 
 
 along, 
 
 61
 
 THE ARTISTS 
 
 Where under the crimson may-trees the pea- 
 cocks spread their tails, 
 
 To dip our brushes in magic and echoes of fairy 
 song; 
 
 And find us Fancy 
 
 Our daubs to deck, 
 With tints of pansy 
 And peacock's neck 1
 
 GOLD ! 
 
 [" It is announced from Vancouver that the rumours of a 
 big strike of gold at Bitter Creek have been confirmed." 
 Daily Paper.] 
 
 GOLD ! 'mid the North's magnetic hush, 
 
 They've struck it in the good old manner, 
 Not the beringed promoter's gush, 
 
 No swank of your prospectus-planner, 
 But the true kind that played its part 
 
 With bowies, " guns," and forty-niners, 
 When (by the magic of Bret Harte) 
 
 You found no life excelled the miner's I 
 
 How often have you, beat but game, 
 
 Your old red shirt without a collar, 
 Toiled at the stiff, abandoned claim 
 
 You'd purchased with your last half dollar ; 
 Sure-armed, you swung your pick aloft 
 
 Through days of doubt and hours of danger, 
 Then, lo ! the vein dull, yellowy, soft, 
 
 And " Sort o' think you'd struck it, 
 Stranger!" 
 
 63
 
 GOLD ! 
 
 And up the pass, through pine and snow, 
 
 You've heard the river in the canon 
 Shouting a thousand foot below, 
 
 The timber-wolf your sole companion ; 
 With aching back you've faced the hill, 
 
 You've searched each likely ledge and dug it, 
 And whooped the eagle from his kill 
 
 When you acclaimed a ten-ounce nugget ! 
 
 You've swaggered into camp at night, 
 
 Bronzed, bold, a devil of a fellow ; 
 You've seen the windy dark alight, 
 
 Stern faces round the fire grown mellow j 
 And, where the fanged Sierras rise 
 
 Up to the moon's cold flooding crystal, 
 You've lain and watched the opal skies, 
 
 Your head upon a loaded pistol ! 
 
 Tap of the pick ! it's waked, in sooth, 
 The kindly, half-forgotten fairies, 
 
 Friends of the camping fires of youth 
 
 That shone on Indians, trails, and prairies ; 
 64
 
 GOLD! 
 
 Whose sparks still through the darkness fall 
 In flashing showers of gold unstinted, 
 
 The purest metal of them all, 
 
 A finer ore than e'er was minted !
 
 TO AN AZTEC IDOL 
 
 LITTLE idol of gold 
 
 With your legs interlaced, 
 And your fingers a-fold 
 
 On your horrible waist, 
 
 Say, of what do you dream as you sit there and 
 Brood with a simper unchaste ? 
 
 You're some six inches high, 
 
 Yet the devils that lurk 
 In the slant of your sly 
 
 And malevolent smirk, 
 Seem to hint at the evil of ages, left latent, 
 
 But ready to work ! 
 
 Do the days of your state 
 
 Come again as you drowse ? 
 Do the crowds at your gate 
 Offer incense and vows ? 
 
 Are your hand-maidens slim young Princesses, 
 with 
 
 Emeralds bound on their brows ? 
 66
 
 TO AN AZTEC IDOL 
 
 Does the trend of your dream 
 
 To old rituals yearn ? 
 Does the victim's wild scream 
 
 And the sunshine return, 
 With the Priests, and the blood-dabbled altars, the 
 
 Uplifted casket and urn ? 
 
 Do you see in your sleep 
 
 Proud hidalgos of Spain, 
 And the galleons that leap 
 
 From the blue of the Main, 
 The sack of the temple, the treasure, 
 
 The plumes and the rapiers again ? 
 
 
 Dead, dead are the days 
 
 When you pranked it, and preened, 
 And from altar-fire blaze 
 
 To my chimney demeaned 
 You sit there a-simper o'er long ago 
 
 Lusts, little god, little fiend !
 
 RICHMOND PARK 
 
 OH, have you been to Richmond of a windy 
 
 April morning, 
 When the loose white clouds are flying and the 
 
 blue is washed and clean, 
 When the beeches on the hill-top don a diffident 
 
 adorning 
 And the river twines its silver through the 
 
 shimmer of the green, 
 
 When the cuckoo flings his notes 
 And the thrushes crack their throats 
 And the boatmen at the eyot start a-varnishing 
 
 their boats ? 
 
 Have you seen its gallant vistas in the splendour 
 
 of a June day, 
 Oh, the rhododendron thickets and the water 
 
 and the wood ! 
 When the stags are still in velvet and across the 
 
 hush of noon-day 
 Comes the throbbing of the motors past the Gate 
 
 of Robin Hood, 
 
 68
 
 RICHMOND PARK 
 
 When the bracken by the ponds 
 First unfolds its crinkled fronds 
 And the dragon-flies are dancing round the 
 slender willow wands ? 
 
 Have you been to royal Richmond when the 
 year is growing mellow, 
 
 And October, mild and fruitful, on its woodland 
 sets her mark, 
 
 When the footpath of her bounty has a carpet 
 red and yellow, 
 
 And the great harts roar a challenge as the twi- 
 light meets the dark, 
 
 And at half-past five or so 
 
 There are lights that flash and glow, 
 
 Thrilling upward in the quiet out of Kingston 
 down below ? 
 
 Oh, have you been to Richmond when the days 
 
 are short and chilly, 
 When a red December sunset has been swallowed 
 
 in the fog, 
 
 69
 
 RICHMOND PARK 
 
 When the wanderer, belated in the frosty air and 
 
 stilly, 
 
 Sees the tree-trunks full of goblins, and he whistles 
 up his dog, 
 
 And turns to look again 
 At the firelight on the pane, 
 In the keeper's cottage window, going home by 
 Clarence Lane ? 
 
 If you've not, then, and would know it, with its 
 
 pools and forest spaces, 
 Take this gratis introduction, very willingly 
 
 bestowed, 
 And a trifling thing in train-fares will acquaint 
 
 you with its graces, 
 Or you'll hear its Pan-pipe music by a 'bus from 
 
 Brompton Road. 
 
 If a Dryad you should see 
 And you care to mention me, 
 I shouldn't be astonished if she asked you in to 
 
 tea! 
 
 70
 
 AS IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 IN the very far beginning, when our fathers 
 lived in caves, 
 
 And the glacier rolled and shuddered where to- 
 day you roll the lawn, 
 
 Then the forests and the rivers, and the 
 mountains and the waves 
 
 Were the haunts of troll and kelpie, gnome, 
 pishogue and leprechaun ; 
 
 Long ago oh, long ago, 
 Little feet went to and fro 
 
 In the hushed and solemn moonrise, or the 
 silence of the dawn : 
 
 Weren't they just the prowling otter or the fox- 
 cub or the fawn ? 
 
 If the panting hunters plodded on the hairy 
 
 mammoth's trail, 
 Till the flint-tipped lances laid him in the 
 
 twilight stiff and stark, 
 
 71
 
 AS IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 If the yelling tribesmen lingered at the stranding 
 of the whale 
 
 Till the sledges were benighted in the demon- 
 haunted dark, 
 
 Each untutored scalp would rise 
 At mysterious woodland cries, 
 
 And they'd glance across their shoulders with a 
 shudder and a Hark !" 
 
 Though 'twas probably the screech owl or some 
 startled roebuck's bark ! 
 
 If the neolithic lover in a neolithic June 
 
 Met at nightfall, 'neath the hawthorn bough, a 
 
 neolithic maid, 
 Then, despite the ministrations of a full and 
 
 friendly moon, 
 
 As it caught the clumps of blossom in a net of 
 light and shade, 
 
 They would hear with knocking knees, 
 Come a kind of grunting wheeze, 
 For they'd think some spook had spied them, 
 
 and their cheeks would match their jade ; 
 But they never saw the badger rooting truffles 
 in the glade ! 
 
 72
 
 AS IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 Go you out along the chalk downs, and you'll see 
 
 our fathers yet 
 (Cairn upon the thymy hill-top, tumulus of tribal 
 
 kings !) 
 Yes, and in the sun- warmed quarry find perhaps 
 
 an amulet, 
 Such as kept them from the kobold, or the beat 
 
 of goblin wings ; 
 
 Then your sympathy shall stray 
 To our sires of feebler clay, 
 With their little local godlings and their foolish 
 
 fairy rings, 
 Though you know for Science says so that 
 
 there never were such things ! 
 
 For yourself you've sometimes hurried when 
 
 the mayfly cease to rise, 
 With your rod inside its cover and your cast 
 
 around your hat, 
 When the beetles boom like bullets, and the 
 
 bats are hawking flies, 
 And the night is in the meadows, and the mists 
 
 are on the flat, 
 
 n
 
 AS IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 Past some darkling belt of pine, 
 While you've felt all up your spine 
 Run a sort of icy shiver, and your heart's gone 
 
 pit-a-pat 
 
 Yet 'twas only just the night-jar, just the plopping 
 water-rat I 
 
 74
 
 MULL 
 
 TELL me not of Grecian isles 
 And a charm that's olden, 
 Brooding on the turquoise blue 
 That the Argo's oar-banks knew, 
 Where a sun-steeped ease beguiles, 
 Far away, and golden ! 
 
 There's a Western isle I know, 
 Where the last land merges 
 In the grey and outer seas, 
 Southward from the Hebrides, 
 And through old sea-caverns go 
 Old Atlantic dirges ! 
 
 Grey it is, and very still 
 In the August weather ; 
 
 Grey the basking seals that flock 
 
 On their jaggdd lift of rock ; 
 
 Starkly heaves a waste of hill 
 Grey, untouched of heather ! 
 75
 
 MULL 
 
 Grey streams show, by cliff and hag, 
 
 Pools, and runs that riot, 
 There the great grey sea-trout rise 
 Splashing silver at your flies, 
 There the grey crow from the crag 
 Croaks across the quiet ! 
 
 That's the place where I would be, 
 Where the winds blow purely ; 
 For I hear, by Fancy blest, 
 All the Fairies of the West 
 Sound their silver pipes for me 
 Horns of Elfland surely 1 
 
 7 6
 
 THE LITTLE GHOST 
 
 BROAD, high yew hedges flank the flowers, and 
 
 border 
 An old, smooth lawn where, fashioned grimly 
 
 stiff, 
 Two knights in close-clipped box keep 
 
 ancient order, 
 O'er shaven dragon, hound and hippogriff j 
 
 And there, 
 
 When the June air 
 
 At dusk is cool and fair, 
 
 And the great roses strengthen on their stalks, 
 Down the long path, beset 
 With heaven-scented, haunting mignonette, 
 
 The gardeners say, 
 
 A little grey 
 
 Ghost-lady walks ! 
 
 I haven't seen her, haven't heard her legend, 
 Pale little shade, only the rumour tells 
 
 77
 
 THE LITTLE GHOST 
 
 That 'tis her wont to wander to the hedge-end, 
 And vanish near the Canterbury Bells ; 
 
 And so 
 
 I do not know 
 
 What sends her to and fro 
 Murder, may be, or broken heart, or gold. 
 I like to fancy most 
 That she is just some little lady's ghost 
 
 Who loved her flowers 
 
 And quiet hours 
 
 In Junes of old !
 
 COTTAGE GARDEN PRAYER 
 
 LITTLE garden gods, 
 
 You of good bestowing, 
 
 You of kindly showing 
 Mid the pottings and the pods, 
 Watchers of geranium beds, 
 
 Pinks and stocks and suchlike orders, 
 Rose, and sleepy poppy-heads 
 
 Bless us in our borders, 
 Little garden gods ! 
 
 Little garden gods, 
 
 Bless the time of sowing, 
 
 Watering and growing ; 
 Lastly, when our sunflower nods, 
 And our rambler's red array 
 
 Waits the honey-bee her labours, 
 Bless our garden that it may 
 
 Beat our next-door neighbour's, 
 Little garden gods ! 
 
 79
 
 BALLADE OF AUGUST 
 
 Now, when the street-pent airs blow stale 
 
 A longing stirs us as of yore 
 To take the old Odyssian trail, 
 
 To bend upon the trireme's oar 
 
 For isld stream and hill-bound shore ; 
 To lay aside the dirty pen 
 
 For summer's blue and golden store 
 'Neath other skies, 'mid stranger men ! 
 
 Then let the rover's call prevail 
 
 That opes for us the enchanted door, 
 
 That bids us spread the silken sail 
 
 For bays o'er which the seabirds soar, 
 And foam-flecked rollers pitch and roar, 
 
 Where nymph maybe, and mermaiden, 
 Come beachward in the moon-rise hoar, 
 
 'Neath other skies, 'mid stranger men ! 
 
 Blue-eyed Calypsos, Circes pale 
 
 (The sage who shuns them I abhor), 
 80
 
 BALLADE OF AUGUST 
 
 These for a fortnight shall not fail 
 To thrill the heart's susceptive core, 
 To bind us with their ancient lore, 
 
 Who rather like to listen when 
 
 Sweet-lipped the sirens voice their score, 
 
 'Neath other skies, 'mid stranger men ! 
 
 ENVOY 
 
 Masters, who seek the minted ore, 
 It's only August now and then, 
 
 Ah, take the Wanderer's way once more, 
 'Neath other skies, 'mid stranger men !
 
 BALLADE OF THE FOREST 
 IN SUMMER 
 
 FRA Cruachan tae Aberdeen 
 
 The hinds'll move their calfies soon 
 Up frae the bracken's bonnie green 
 
 To yon blue heights that float aboon ; 
 Nae snaws the tops an' corries croon ; 
 
 Crags whaur the eagle lifts his kills 
 Blink i' the gowden efternoon ; 
 
 It's summer noo in a* the hills ! 
 
 The heather sleeps frae morn till e'en 
 
 Braw in her reed-an'-purple goon ; 
 Sax weeks it wants or stags be clean 
 
 An' gang wi thickenin' manes an' broun 
 Waitin' the cauld October moon 
 
 When a' the roarin' brae-face fills 
 Ye've heard yon wild, wanchancy tune ? 
 
 It's summer noo in a' the hills ! 
 
 Yet blaws a soupin' breeze an' keen ; 
 We're wearit for it whiles in toun, 
 82
 
 BALLADE OF FOREST IN SUMMER 
 
 An' I wad be whaur I hae been 
 In Autumn's blast or heats o' June 
 
 Up on the quiet forest groun', 
 
 Friens wi' the sun, or shoor that chills, 
 
 Watchin' the beasts gang up an' doon ; 
 It's summer noo in a' the hills ! 
 
 ENVOY 
 
 Mountains o' deer, ye ca' a loon 
 Fra streets an' sic-like stoury ills 
 
 Wi' thankfu' heart an' easy shoon ; 
 It's summer noo in a* the hills !
 
 BALLADE OF FANCY FAIR 
 
 IN April hours 
 
 Its booths we knew 
 Uplift 'mid flowers 
 
 Untouched of rue. 
 'Twas then we drew 
 
 The magic ware 
 From tents of blue 
 
 At Fancy Fair ! 
 
 Its kindly bowers 
 
 For lovers due, 
 From chilly showers 
 
 They kept us two ; 
 Lest wetted through, 
 
 We'd ceased to care 
 For Cupid's brew 
 
 And Fancy Fair ! 
 
 Still hath it dower 
 When life's askew, 
 84
 
 BALLADE OF FANCY FAIR 
 
 A gentle power, 
 
 A kind ado, 
 For me and you 
 
 Who still may share 
 The rainbow view 
 
 Of Fancy Fair ! 
 
 ENVOY 
 
 Princess, anew 
 
 We'll wander there, 
 
 For dreams are true 
 In Fancy Fair !
 
 THE EVENING RISE 
 
 LITTEN with lots and lots of little moons, 
 Broods o'er the bosky bank the guelder-rose ; 
 She watches by the river as it goes, 
 Knowing its whispered secrets and its runes, 
 And that it's useless in these afternoons 
 Of midsummer ; I hardly do suppose 
 A trout had stirred just then for all our throws 
 And feathered lures begirt of silk cocoons. 
 
 But now hath come the coolth and kindliness 
 Of eve, and we may get to work again ; 
 See, there's a bulge, and there a fish came up, 
 And we anon shall levy toll and cess 
 A brace mayhap ; and still before the train 
 Have time for supper and a cider-cup ! 
 
 86
 
 TO A MACAW 
 
 FOWL of the nightmare visage, baldly white, 
 Your evil orb fulfilled of all the sly 
 Inherent devilries of days gone by, 
 Ere from the main upswept the Spaniards' might, 
 When your familiar sires would shriek delight, 
 Perched where some cruel temple rose on high 
 I will not scratch that heathen head, not I, 
 Moreover, I am certain that you bite ! 
 
 I wonder haply, long, long years ago 
 
 If once you lived, a painted Aztec priest, 
 
 Ill-famed for many a fierce and hurtful deed, 
 
 Who in your guise must watch the seasons flow, 
 
 A captive, far from sacrificial feast, 
 
 Cloyed with the unconvincing nut and seed !
 
 TO A TERRIER 
 
 (November, 1910) 
 
 CRIB, on your grave beneath the chestnut 
 
 boughs 
 
 To-day no fragrance falls nor summer air, 
 Only a master's love who laid you there 
 Perchance may warm the earth 'neath which 
 
 you drowse 
 In dreams from which no dinner gong may 
 
 rouse, 
 
 Unwakeable, though close the rat may dare, 
 Deaf, though the rabbit thump in playful scare, 
 Silent, though twenty tabbies pay their vows. 
 
 And yet, mayhap, some night when shadows 
 
 pass, 
 
 And from the fir the brown owl hoots on high, 
 That should one whistle 'neath a favouring star 
 Your small white shade shall patter o'er the 
 
 grass, 
 
 Questing for him you loved o' days gone by, 
 Ere Death the Dog-Thief carried you afar ! 
 88
 
 TO A DEBUTANTE 
 
 You trip, O Youth incarnate, down the stairs, 
 Dear Miss Nineteen, whose dance-fresh grace 
 
 defies 
 
 Blossom of orchards, April's very skies ; 
 So might a nymph have slid to shepherd airs 
 In groves of cypress where the ringdove pairs, 
 Lightfoot, elusive, panting, woodland-wise, 
 With just a half-shy challenge in the eyes, 
 To fan pursuit or wake the love that dares. 
 
 Still I, your mid-aged friend, do most acclaim 
 Not the curved lip, the sun-steeped eyes of you, 
 Nor two slim feet, the bard-sung " little mice," 
 But that dear gift, the clean, untarnished flame 
 That sends you, 'twixt the midnight chimes and 
 
 two, 
 With cheery gusto into supper thrice 1
 
 HORNS OF ELFLAND
 
 A DREAM 
 
 AND at night we'd find a town, 
 
 Flat-roofed, by a star-strewn sea, 
 Where the pirate crew came down 
 
 To a long-forgotten quay, 
 And we'd meet them in the gloaming, 
 
 Tarry pigtails, back from roaming, 
 With a pot of pirate ginger for the likes of hel 
 and me ! 
 
 She was small and rather pale, 
 
 Grey-eyed, grey as smoke that weaves, 
 And we'd watch them stowing sail, 
 
 Forty most attractive thieves ; 
 Propped against the porphyry column, 
 
 She was seven, sweet and solemn, 
 And she'd hair blue-black as swallows when 
 they flit beneath the eaves. 
 
 On the moonlit sands and bare, 
 Clamorous, jewelled in the dusk, 
 93
 
 A DREAM 
 
 There would be an Eastern Fair, 
 
 We could smell the mules and musk, 
 We could see the cressets flaring, 
 And we'd run to buy a fairing 
 Where a black man blew a fanfare on a carven 
 ivory tusk. 
 
 And we'd stop before the stall 
 
 Of a grave green-turbaned khan, 
 Gem or flower he kept them all 
 
 Persian cat or yataghan ; 
 And I'd pay a golden guinea 
 
 And she'd fill her holland pinny 
 With white kittens and red roses and blue stones 
 from Turkestan ! 
 
 London streets have flowers anew, 
 
 London shops with gems are set ; 
 When you've none to give them to, 
 
 What is pearl or violet ? 
 Vain things both and emptinesses, 
 So they wait a dream-Princess's 
 Coming, if she's sweet and solemn with grey 
 eyes and hair of jet ! 
 94
 
 GHOSTS OF PAPER 
 
 SHOULD you go down Ludgate Hill, 
 As I'm sure you sometimes will, 
 When the dark comes soft and new, 
 Smudged and smooth and powder-blue, 
 And the lights on either hand, 
 Run away to reach the Strand ; 
 And the winter rains that stream 
 Make the pavements glance and gleam ; 
 There you'll see the wet roofs rise 
 Packed against the lamp-lit skies, 
 And at once you shall look down 
 Into an enchanted town. 
 Jewelled Fleet Street, golden gay, 
 Sloughs the drab of work-a-day, 
 Conjuring before you then 
 All her ghosts of ink and pen, 
 Striking from her magic mint 
 Places you have loved in print, 
 From the fairy towns and streets 
 Raised by Djinn and fierce Afreets, 
 95
 
 GHOSTS OF PAPER 
 
 To the columned brass that shone 
 On the gates of Babylon. 
 You shall wander, mazed, amid 
 Pylon, palm, and pyramid ; 
 You shall see, where taxis throng, 
 River lamps of old Hong Kong ; 
 See the ramparts standing tall 
 Of the wondrous Tartar Wall ; 
 See, despite of rain and wind, 
 Marble towns of rosy Ind, 
 And the domes and palaces 
 Crowning Tripoli and Fez. 
 While, where buses churn and splash, 
 There's the ripple of a sash, 
 Silken maid and paper fan 
 And the peach-bloom of Japan. 
 But, the finest thing of all, 
 You shall ride a charger tall 
 Into huddled towns that haunt 
 Picture-books of old romaunt, 
 Where go squire and knight and saint, 
 Heavy limned in golden paint ; 
 You shall ride above the crowd 
 On a courser pacing proud, 
 In fit panoply and meet 
 96
 
 GHOSTS OF PAPER 
 
 Through be-cobbled square and street, 
 Where with bays and gestures bland 
 Little brown-faced angels stand ! 
 
 * 
 
 These are some of things you'll view 
 When the night is blurred and blue, 
 If you look down Ludgate Hill, 
 As I'm sure you often will ! 
 
 07
 
 TO A CHALK-BLUE 
 
 BUTTERFLIES, Butterflies, delicate downy ones, 
 Golden, and purple, and yellowy browny ones, 
 Whites, reds, and tortoiseshells, what's in a 
 
 hue? 
 You're worth the whole lot of them, little 
 
 Chalk-Blue ! 
 
 Fabled Apollos, of bug-hunter's hollow tales, 
 Camberwell Beauties, Large Coppers, and 
 
 Swallow-tails, 
 They've fled from high farming, they've gone 
 
 down the breeze, 
 To Elfland perhaps, or wherever you please ! 
 
 You, Master Blue, hold by man and his handi- 
 works, 
 
 Chalk-pits and cuttings, and engineer's sandy 
 works, 
 
 Sway on his wheat stalks, most buoyant and 
 bold, 
 
 A turquoise a-droop on a chain of light gold ! 
 98
 
 TO A CHALK-BLUE 
 
 Here was your home, ere the Legion's lean 
 
 warriors 
 
 Laughed at the slings of Druidical quarriers, 
 Or ever the Eagles came swooping ashore, 
 You flew your blue ensign from Lizard to Nore ! 
 
 Long may you linger and flourish exceedingly, 
 Dancing the sun round all summer unheedingly, 
 Sprite of his splendour, small priest of high 
 
 noon, 
 Oh, bold little, old little, blue bit of June ! 
 
 99
 
 PUK-WUDJIES 
 
 ("" The Puk-Wudjies ... the little People." Longftlhw.] 
 
 THEY live 'neath the curtain 
 Of fir woods and heather, 
 And never take hurt in 
 
 The wildest of weather, 
 But best they love Autumn she's brown as 
 
 themselves 
 And they are the brownest of all the brown 
 
 elves ; 
 
 When loud sings the West Wind, 
 The bravest and best wind, 
 And puddles are shining in all the cart ruts, 
 They turn up the dead leaves, 
 The russet and red leaves, 
 
 Where squirrels have taught them to look out 
 for nuts ! 
 
 The hedge-cutters hear them 
 
 Where berries are glowing, 
 The scythe circles near them 
 
 At time of the mowing, 
 100
 
 PUK-WUDJIES 
 
 But most they love woodlands when Autumn's 
 
 winds pipe, 
 And all through the cover the beechnuts are ripe, 
 
 And great spikey chestnuts, 
 
 The biggest and best nuts, 
 
 Blown down in the ditches, fair windfalls lie 
 cast, 
 
 And no tree begrudges 
 
 The little Puk-Wudjies 
 A pocket of acorns, a handful of mast ! 
 
 So should you be roaming 
 
 Where branches are sighing, 
 When up in the gloaming 
 
 The moon-wrack is flying, 
 
 And hear through the darkness, again and again, 
 What's neither the wind nor the spatter of 
 
 rain 
 
 A flutter, a flurry, 
 A scuffle, a scurry, 
 
 A bump like the rabbits' that bump on the ground, 
 A patter, a bustle 
 Of small things that rustle, 
 You'll know the Puk-Wudjies are somewhere 
 around ! 
 
 101
 
 THE DISAPPOINTED DEMON 
 
 A JAPANESE artist of old took a chisel, 
 And a chunk of smooth ivory, soft as is such, 
 And, wrinkle by wrinkle and bristle by bristle, 
 A little old demon had life at his touch, 
 A squat little figure 
 All sword-belts and vigour, 
 With claws that could clasp with a terrible 
 clutch ! 
 
 A tea-house acquired him, he sat in its porches 
 For years of red lacquer and joss-stick and fan, 
 The sun on the fir-trees at noon, and the torches 
 Of gay paper lanterns at nightfall, he'd scan, 
 
 Blind to both for a geisha, 
 
 The brightest in Asia, 
 Whom he loved, as a demon in ivory can ! 
 
 She was small and delightful, her silk robes 
 
 would rustle 
 When she slid o'er the matting with tea-tray 
 
 and pot, 
 
 I O2
 
 THE DISAPPOINTED DEMON 
 
 She'd a flower in her hair and a sash like a bustle, 
 And she loved her old demon, he fancied, a lot; 
 For she laughed at him often, 
 He'd thrill then and soften ; 
 She was called something San, though I never 
 learnt what. 
 
 But alas for his fancies, he'd misunderstood her ; 
 One day, when the peach-bloom was pink on 
 
 the trees, 
 There came a Mikado's Court Captain who 
 
 wooed her 
 
 And wed her and carried her off at his ease, 
 And a P. & O. seaman 
 He looted the demon, 
 And brought him to London across the high seas ! 
 
 Now he sits on my chimney in all his regalia, 
 As bored as a Buddha. He dreams of Japan, 
 Of hill-sides of cherry and banks of azalea 
 And pines that would whisper to maiden and man, 
 
 But mostly of laughter 
 
 That rang to the rafter, 
 
 The laughter of blossom-cheeked somebody San ! 
 103
 
 "TREASURE ISLAND" 
 
 A LOVER breeze to the roses pleaded, 
 
 Failed and faltered, took heart and advanced ; 
 
 Up over the peaches, unimpeded, 
 
 A great Red Admiral ducked and danced ; 
 
 But the boy with the book saw not, nor heeded, 
 Reading entranced entranced ! 
 
 He read, nor knew that the fat bees bumbled ; 
 
 He woke no whit to the tea-bell's touch, 
 The browny pigeons that wheeled and tumbled, 
 
 (For how should a pirate reck of such ?). 
 He read, and the flaming flower-beds crumbled, 
 
 At tap of the sea-cook's crutch ! 
 
 And lo, there leapt for him dolphins running 
 The peacock seas of the buccaneer, 
 
 Long, savage reefs where the seals lay sunning, 
 The curve of canvas, the creak of gear ; 
 
 For ever the Master's wondrous cunning 
 Lent him of wizard lear ! 
 
 104
 
 "TREASURE ISLAND" 
 
 But lost are the garden days of leisure, 
 Lost with their wide-eyed ten-year-old, 
 
 Yet if you'd move to a bygone measure, 
 Or shape your heart to an ancient mould, 
 
 Maroons and schooners and buried treasure 
 Wrought on a page of gold 
 
 Then take the book in the dingy binding 
 Still the shadows come, bearded, great, 
 
 And swaggering files of sea-thieves winding 
 Back, with their ruffling cut-throat gait, 
 
 Reclaim an hour when we first went finding 
 Pieces of Eight of Eight. 
 
 105
 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 
 WE saw the arc of the rainbow stand up o'er 
 
 the garden wall, 
 We scaled that perilous rampart to spy where 
 
 its foot might be, 
 We saw its trailing triumph, we marked its 
 
 flashing fall, 
 Over the hay-field, down by the river, under 
 
 the pollard-tree ; 
 We saw the fall of the rainbow, 
 
 We guessed where the gold would be, 
 Under the pollard, pollard, pollard, 
 
 Under the pollard-tree ! 
 
 We slipped through the garden wicket, we 
 
 sped through the hay-cocks proud, 
 Where, gemmed in the slanting sunset, each 
 
 winking raindrop shone, 
 But we saw ere we gained the river, afloat on a 
 
 purple cloud, 
 The magical arch of fairy glory over the valley 
 
 gone ! 
 
 1 06
 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 
 We saw the arc of the rainbow 
 
 As the slant of the sunset shone, 
 
 Over the valley, valley, valley, 
 Over the valley gone ! 
 
 Then up and spake our captain, " A fig for such 
 fairy gold, 
 
 Come follow me back, my hearties, to the things 
 of every day ; 
 
 For, touch but a magic treasure, 'twill crumble 
 to ashes cold, 
 
 So follow me back through the darkling hay- 
 cocks, back to the things that pay ! " 
 
 We turned from the truant rainbow, 
 And went in the fading day, 
 
 Back through the hay-cocks, hay-cocks, hay- 
 cocks, 
 Back to the things that pay ! 
 
 107
 
 IF I HAD A BROOMSTICK 
 
 IF I had a broomstick, and knew how to ride it, 
 I'd fly through the windows when Jane goes to 
 
 tea, 
 
 And over the tops of the chimneys I'd guide it, 
 To lands where no children are cripples like 
 
 me ; 
 
 I'd run on the rocks with the crabs and the sea, 
 Where soft red anemones close when you touch ; 
 If I had a broomstick, and knew how to ride it, 
 If I had a broomstick instead of a crutch ! 
 
 1 08
 
 WHEN MARY GOES 
 WALKING 
 
 WHEN Mary goes walking 
 
 The Autumn winds blow, 
 The poplars they curtsey, 
 
 The larches bend low, 
 The oaks and the beeches 
 
 Their gold they fling down, 
 To make her a carpet, 
 
 To make her a crown ! 
 
 109
 
 THE GARDENER'S CAT 
 
 THE gardener's cat's called Mignonette, 
 She hates the cold, she hates the wet, 
 She sits among the hothouse flowers 
 And sleeps for hours and hours and hours. 
 
 She dreams she is a tiger fierce 
 With great majestic claws that pierce, 
 She sits by the hot-water pipes 
 And dreams about a coat of stripes ; 
 
 And in her slumbers she will go 
 And stalk the sullen buffalo, 
 And when he roars across the brake 
 She does not wink, she does not wake. 
 
 It must be perfectly immense 
 To dream with such magnificence, 
 And pass the most inclement day 
 In this indeed stupendous way. 
 HO
 
 THE GARDENER'S CAT 
 
 She dreams of India's sunny clime, 
 And only wakes at dinner-time, 
 And even then she does not stir 
 But waits till milk is brought to her. 
 
 How nice to be the gardener's cat, 
 She troubles not for mouse or rat, 
 But, when it's coming down in streams, 
 She sits among the flowers and dreams. 
 
 The gardener's cat would be the thing, 
 Her dreams are so encouraging ; 
 She dreams that she's a tiger, yet 
 She's just a cat called Mignonette ! 
 
 The moral's this, my little man 
 Sleep 'neath life's hailstones when you can, 
 And if you're humble in estate, 
 Dream splendidly, at any rate I 
 
 III
 
 "HOLD" 
 
 I KNOW where Hampshire fronts the Wight, 
 
 A little church, where " after strife " 
 Reposes Guy de Blanquely, Knight, 
 
 By Alison his wife : 
 I know their features' graven lines 
 
 In time-stained marble monotone, 
 While crouched before their feet reclines 
 
 Their little dog of stone ! 
 
 I look where Blanquely Castle still 
 
 Frowns o'er the oak wood's summer state, 
 (The maker of a patent pill 
 
 Has purchased it of late), 
 And then through Fancy's open door 
 
 I backward turn to days of old, 
 And see Sir Guy a bachelor 
 
 Who owns a dog called " Hold " ! 
 
 I see him take the tourney's chance, 
 And urge his coal-black charger on 
 112
 
 "HOLD" 
 
 To an arbitrament by lance 
 
 For lovely Alison ; 
 I mark the onset, see him hurl 
 
 From broidered saddle to the dirt 
 His rival, that ignoble Earl 
 
 Black-hearted Massingbert ! 
 
 Then Alison, with down-dropped eyes, 
 
 Where happy tears bedim the blue, 
 Bestows a valuable prize 
 
 And adds her hand thereto ; 
 My lord, his surcoat streaked with sand, 
 
 Remounts, low muttering curses hot, 
 And with a base-born, hireling band 
 
 He plans a dastard plot ! 
 
 
 
 'Tis night Sir Guy has sunk to sleep, 
 
 The castle keep is hushed and still 
 See, up the spiral stairway creep, 
 
 To work his wicked will, 
 Lord Massingbert of odious fame, 
 
 Soft followed by his cut-throat staff; 
 Ah, " Hold " has justified his name 
 
 And pinned his lordship's calf ! 
 
 113 I
 
 "HOLD" 
 
 A growl, an oath, then torches flare ; 
 
 Out rings a sentry's startled shout ; 
 The guard are racing for the stair, 
 
 Half-dressed, Sir Guy runs out ; 
 On high his glittering blade he waves, 
 
 He gives foul Massingbert the point, 
 He carves the hired assassin knaves 
 
 Joint from plebeian joint ! 
 
 The Knight is dead his sword is rust, 
 
 But in his day I'm certain " Hold " 
 Wore, as his master's badge of trust, 
 
 A collarette of gold : 
 And still I like to fancy that, 
 
 Somewhere beyond the Styx's bound, 
 Sir Guy's tall phantom stoops to pat 
 
 His little phantom hound 1 
 
 114
 
 IN AN OLD NURSERY 
 
 A PRIM old room where memories stir 
 Through faded chintz and wall-paper, 
 Like bees along the lavender 
 
 Of some dim border ; 
 Bay-windowed, whence at close of day 
 You see the roosty starlings sway 
 High on the elm-tree's topmost spray 
 
 In gossip order. 
 
 In its quaint realm how soon one slips 
 Back to the age of treasure-ships, 
 The atmosphere of cowboy-trips 
 
 And boundless prairies ; 
 And when the red logs fret and fume 
 (They're lit to-night to air the room) 
 Here come a tip-toe in the gloom 
 
 Old nursery fairies. 
 
 Here come dear ghosts to him who sees- 
 Fat ghosts of long digested teas, 
 Thin little ghosts of " saying please," 
 Big ghosts of birthdays, 
 US
 
 IN AN OLD NURSERY 
 
 And sundry honourable sprites 
 To whisper those foredone delights 
 Of hallowe'ens and stocking-nights 
 And other mirth-days. 
 
 Its walls are full of musics drawn 
 From twitterings in the eaves at dawn, 
 From swish of scythe on summer lawn, 
 
 From Shetlands pawing 
 The gravel by the front-door yew, 
 And, wind-tossed from the avenue, 
 Fugues of first February blue 
 
 And rooks a-cawing. 
 
 Old room, the years have galloped on, 
 The days that danced, the hours that shone 
 Have turned their backs on you and gone 
 
 By ways that harden ; 
 But you in you their gold and myrrh 
 And frankincense of dreams still stir 
 Like bees that haunt the lavender 
 
 Of some walled garden ! 
 
 116
 
 THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 THE Custom House in Billingsgate 
 Is very large and very great, 
 All summer its electrics swish 
 To dissipate the smell of fish. 
 
 Outside the streets are glaring, grim, 
 Inside it's cool and wide and dim, 
 And all its rooms have swinging doors, 
 And disinfectants on the floors. 
 
 From its front windows one may see 
 The Thames as muddy as can be ; 
 Its clerks are very cross and sour, 
 And keep you waiting half-an-hour. 
 
 But you may watch the tramps go by 
 For Christiansund or Uruguay, 
 Or read, what most my fancy stirs, 
 The " Notices to Mariners." 
 117
 
 THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 These tell of buoys and lights and quays, 
 For those in " peril of the seas," 
 They caution captains, and convict 
 The sunken shoal or derelict. 
 
 And as you read them you may reach 
 A Greenland floe, a coral beach, 
 The breeze that stirs the tamarinds, 
 Or rushing, grey Atlantic winds. 
 
 And so the Custom House, you see, 
 Seems quite a pleasant place to me ; 
 I won't mind waiting no, not I, 
 For half-an-hour of hot July. 
 
 118
 
 A BLACK-LETTER STORY- 
 BOOK 
 
 IN dingy binding dark with time 
 And stately centuries of grime, 
 An offspring of that early prime 
 
 When first Ambition 
 Set up, of minstrel's tale and rhyme, 
 
 A print edition 
 
 This, the old volume that you'll find 
 Dozing on upper shelves, resigned 
 To modern manners, and the mind 
 
 That seldom heeds it 
 (Save as a marketable find) 
 
 And never reads it. 
 
 So dull it looks by tales to-day, 
 For here no artist's paints portray 
 In elfin fancy, gnome or fay, 
 
 Nor pencil stages 
 His light conceptions of the way 
 
 Across its pages. 
 119
 
 A BLACK-LETTER STORY-BOOK 
 
 Its day was earlier far, you see, 
 Than these proved comrades though 
 
 they be 
 Who fill a fire-lit " after tea " 
 
 From well-loved chalice, 
 With fairy, giant, and jinnee, 
 
 With Rip and Alice. 
 
 Yet if you plod and persevere 
 Along its leaded lines austere, 
 As an adventurer in drear, 
 
 Dark wildernesses, 
 You'll learn to love the spelling queer, 
 
 The antic esses. 
 
 And find therein a promised land, 
 Where friends of a robuster brand, 
 Monks, archers, and a jolly band 
 
 Of knights and dragons, 
 Will toast your advent to their strand 
 
 In brimming flagons ! 
 
 I2O
 
 A STORY OF A, B, C 
 
 WHEN I'm going to town of a morning, 
 
 Every day I meet 
 
 Three little girls with grace adorning 
 The long, grey aisle of a London street 
 (The Saints be kind to their class-ward feet), 
 And I don't know what their names may be, 
 Never a one of all the three, 
 So we'll call them A and B and C. 
 And A's as slim as a willow, 
 And B's as nice as a bun, 
 And C's as pretty as sixpence, 
 And how shall the story run ? 
 
 They go in orchard, apple-green dresses 
 
 (Best of Pomona's hues), 
 
 They wear the sun in their pig-tailed tresses, 
 They wear the wind in their walking shoes ; 
 You wouldn't know which of the three to 
 choose. 
 
 121
 
 A STORY OF A, B, C 
 
 Each of them fresh as an April day, 
 Each of them bright as a roundelay, 
 Each of them, C and B and A. 
 
 And A's the grace of a princess, 
 
 And B's as sweet as a rose, 
 And C, she's pretty as sixpence, 
 And that's how the story goes ! 
 
 Now that's as far as my knowledge reaches, 
 
 Fancy finds the end, 
 " Sugar and spice " for all and each is 
 
 Always there when it's " Let's pretend"; 
 So 'tis settled that Fate's to send 
 Sugar and spice to all the three 
 (Letting them know it comes from me), 
 Each of them, A and B and C. 
 
 And A shall marry a marquis, 
 And B shall marry a squire, 
 And C (who's pretty as sixpence) 
 Whomever her dreams desire ! 
 
 77?
 
 MOON-FLOWERS 
 
 THE moon-flowers, the moon-flowers, to sleepy 
 splash of fountains 
 
 They open grey and silver when the stars 
 come overhead, 
 
 And if you'd go to Fairyland and find the Pea- 
 cock Mountains 
 
 You've got to pick the moon-flowers before you 
 go to bed. 
 
 Oh, would you go to Nineveh of ancient pomps 
 
 and palaces, 
 Or see the towers of Ascalon lift spire on aching 
 
 spire, 
 Or sup with Montezumas golden plate and 
 
 jewelled chalices 
 
 Or dip your pocket-handkerchief in purple vats 
 of Tyre ? 
 
 Would you sail, a swart Phoenician, 
 On a buccaneering mission 
 123
 
 MOON-FLOWERS 
 
 (Dig and drive and swing of oar-blades as the 
 plunging triremes go ! ) 
 
 Till the sea-rim gives the highlands 
 Of the fern-fringed Happy Islands ? 
 
 Ah, you've first to see the moon-flowers blow ! 
 
 You've missed the Peacock Mountains through 
 
 the pearl-pink sea-fog shimmering, 
 The turkis-blue and opal that they bind about 
 
 their brows ; 
 You've missed the magic moorings where the 
 
 flying fish go glimmering 
 
 And painted dolphins leaping in the tide-rip 
 round the bows ; 
 
 For the bit of wedding-cake, you 
 Said was certain sure to take you, 
 Never got you any further on the road that you 
 should go 
 
 To the sapphire peaks and gorges 
 Than St. Peter's or St. George's, 
 And you'd never heard of moon-flowers No ! 
 
 The moon-flowers, the moon-flowers, when first 
 the twilight changes, 
 124
 
 MOON-FLOWERS 
 
 They open grey and silver as the stars come 
 
 out a-row, 
 So if you'd go to Fairyland and see the Peacock 
 
 ranges, 
 You've first to face the twilight and watch the 
 
 moon -flowers blow ! 
 
 T25
 
 TWILIGHT'S IN THE 
 CORNERS 
 
 TWILIGHT'S in the corners, the twilight and the 
 fire, 
 
 All its jolly marchers, 
 Men-at-arms and archers, 
 
 Clank across the carpet in most wonderful attire 
 Cloak and jewelled dagger, 
 Plumes that sway and swagger, 
 As the knights come riding, each attended by 
 
 his squire : 
 
 And you hear the flutter as the silken pennons flit, 
 Hear a trumpet fanfare, and you long to follow it, 
 Where brown-eyed princesses bend from high 
 
 embattled towers, 
 
 Where in wondrous gardens flame the wondrous 
 Wishing Flowers, 
 
 And where, with knightly grit, 
 You a splendid lance may split, 
 With a brother of the dreamland, ere the school- 
 room lamp is lit ! 
 
 126
 
 TWILIGHT'S IN THE CORNERS 
 
 Magic through the fireguard, oh, wide and wide 
 it flings, 
 
 Tales of jousts and journeys, 
 Tales of trysts and tourneys, 
 Tales of monks and minstrels, and of fairy given 
 rings, 
 
 Wizard ways and witches, 
 Caves and buried riches, 
 Listed camps, and companies, and comradeship 
 
 of kings ; 
 Yes, but when they're leading out your charger 
 
 from his stall, 
 
 White is he asistarlight, red-caparisoned and tall, 
 Just as you are mounting with a high and mighty 
 
 mien, 
 
 Lady Lucy's love gage o'er your helmet's 
 damascene, 
 
 With a crash the castles fall, 
 Jane has left the servants' hall, 
 And she's brought the schoolroom lamp in, and 
 the lamp has spoilt it all ! 
 
 127
 
 PETER PAN 
 
 AMONG the joys that winter brings, 
 Is going out and buying things. 
 When all the shops look warm and bright 
 With gas and with electric light, 
 Suggestive in their fine array 
 Of Santa Glaus and Christmas Day, 
 And all the windows seem to try 
 To make you go inside and buy. 
 And when you're going home to tea, 
 It's nice if you look up to see 
 The stars that twinkle row by row, 
 All lit by half-past four or so ; 
 The very same that seldom peep 
 In summer till you've gone to sleep ; 
 It's nice to see them now instead 
 Of after you have gone to bed. 
 I do not mean, of course, that when 
 There's rain and fog you'll see them then. 
 Then you will watch the buses slide 
 And spatter mud on every side ; 
 128
 
 PETER PAN 
 
 Perhaps you'll get some on your hair, 
 And if you do you will not care ; 
 And if it goes on nurse's dress, 
 You'll view the fact with cheerfulness ; 
 And if she gets it in her eye, 
 You'll simply thrill with ecstasy ; 
 And if it goes in yours, why then 
 She'll help to take it out again. 
 And when you take a cab or train, 
 From " Peter Pan," or Drury Lane 
 When heads are full of fairy caves, 
 Of pirates and of Indian braves 
 You'll see the lamps on every hand 
 Go swinging up and down the Strand, 
 And know that London town o* nights, 
 Is just as full of rich delights, 
 Of magic and of mystery, 
 As ever fairy cave could be : 
 Perhaps you'll find in after years 
 That London Town has toil and tears, 
 Well, if you do, the wisest plan 
 Is just to visit " Peter Pan " ! 
 But best of winter joys you'll find, 
 Is when they've drawn the nursery blind- 
 To think before you go to bed, 
 
 129 &
 
 PETER PAN 
 
 (When through the bars the fire grows red, 
 And dances on the painted shelves, 
 Until the very toys themselves 
 Seem quite alive, and dancing too), 
 About the lovely things you'll do, 
 When Spring puts on a wondrous dress 
 Of little yellow crocuses, 
 And whispers at the window-sills 
 Of hyacinths and daffodils 1 
 
 130
 
 ODD MOMENTS
 
 THE FIRST FISHERMAN 
 
 BESIDE a vast and primal sea 
 A solitary savage he, 
 
 Who gathered for his tribe's rude need 
 The daily dole of raw sea-weed. 
 
 He watched the great tides rise and fall, 
 And spoke the truth or not at all ! 
 
 Along the awful shore he ran 
 A simple pre-Pelasgian ; 
 
 A thing primeval, undefiled, 
 Straightforward as a little child, 
 
 Until one morn he made a grab 
 And caught a mesozoic crab !
 
 THE FIRST FISHERMAN 
 
 Then told the tribe at close of day 
 A bigger one had got away ! 
 
 From him have sprung (I own a bias 
 To ways the cult of rod and fly has) 
 All fishermen and Ananias ! 
 
 '34
 
 A MARCH BROWN 
 
 ONCE more come clarion and blue-hearted dawns, 
 And Springtide plays her yearly hocus-pocus, 
 Her magic of high March that decks the lawns 
 With those her floral fays and leprechauns, 
 The yellow daffand the green sheathed crocus 
 When through the city softer winds envoke us 
 To where the streams run down, 
 And the stark fells above the birch-woods frown, 
 And you first move upon the waters, Mr. Brown ! 
 
 A coy bacillus, fair ephemerid, 
 
 For some weeks past I've felt you in my being, 
 
 Till lately I have come on you amid 
 
 My daily toil, and softly you have slid 
 
 Across the half-writ page, till to my seeing 
 
 Have come green fields, and bosomed clouds 
 
 a-fleeing, 
 
 And mill-stream's foam-flecked fuss, 
 And banks of primrose, rathe, auriferous ; 
 "And thus," I've said, "I'd cast your counterfeit, 
 
 and thus " ; 
 
 '35
 
 A MARCH BROWN 
 
 And rising, I have taken to me rods 
 From the retreat where they have been reclining 
 (Waiting your whisper, best of naiant gods), 
 And idly I've withdrawn the brass-bound wads, 
 And built them up, the supple and the shining, 
 As men build hopes, and felt my fingers twining 
 In that whole-hearted squeeze, 
 Kept for tried friends and mates of ancient ease, 
 Round handles ardent from the southern cork- 
 wood trees ! 
 
 Thus then I yield me to your influence, 
 Shy flutt'erer of the hill-stream and the river, 
 Thus does your primal message thrill each sense, 
 Your wings susurrant seem to call me hence 
 To grey keen waters where the catkins quiver, 
 And I, responsive, do acclaim you giver 
 Of these right god-sent spells 
 Of dancing streams and far-off waiting fells, 
 And stop to look up trains and write about 
 hotels. 
 
 When other men shall have the mind to praise 
 June's jovial bug of carnival and riot, 
 136
 
 A MARCH BROWN 
 
 That blossoms with wild roses and red mays, 
 He the green-drake, who sets whole streams 
 
 ablaze 
 
 With mottled monsters taking change of diet, 
 By pool and shallow, osier-bed or eyot, 
 I'll swear by Mr. Brown 
 Who, in his chill wan water's sober gown, 
 Is yearly first to bid me forth again from Town ! 
 
 137
 
 SPRING SALMON 
 
 IT'S oh, but I'm dreaming 
 Of grey water streaming, 
 Great rivers that go gleaming 
 
 Where brown the heather blows, 
 Ere May's southern graces 
 Rub out the last white traces 
 From high and mountain places 
 
 Of stubborn, storm-packed snows ! 
 
 The chill wind that searches 
 
 The low-lying birches, 
 
 The old red grouse that perches 
 
 And swaggers in the sun ; 
 I'm fain for its blowing, 
 I'm restless for his crowing, 
 And it's I that would be going 
 
 Where the spring salmon run ! 
 
 And oh, were they bulking 
 Bright silver, or sulking 
 In the snow-broth a-skulking, 
 I would care not at all, 
 138
 
 SPRING SALMON 
 
 I'd hear the falls ringing, 
 I'd see the pine-tops swinging 
 In a wind that's filled with singing 
 When the green plover call ! 
 
 '39
 
 TO A MAYFLY 
 
 (Ephemera vulgaris) 
 
 [" Golf occasionally has a very weakening effect on fly- 
 fishers, and is a thing to be fought against." Daily Paper.'] 
 
 HAMPSHIRE woods are in summer's keeping, 
 Sunshine's sleeping 
 
 On banks of may, 
 Spring has taken her smiles and weeping 
 
 Over the hills and far away ! 
 
 Now, Ephemera, now you gladden 
 Streams, and madden 
 
 The morning rise ; 
 Craftiest monsters now are had on 
 
 By the veriest tyro's flies ! 
 
 Now from memory's mist and vapours 
 Gut that tapers, 
 
 By Fancy thrown, 
 Drops you here on my books and papers 
 
 Gossamer wraith so lightly blown ! 
 140
 
 TO A MAYFLY 
 
 Till I see in your green-coat flicker 
 Brooks that bicker 
 
 And streams that swell ; 
 And an elderly pulse goes quicker 
 
 Under your old-time magic spell ! 
 
 Far too long on the links I've striven, 
 Tee'd and driven, 
 
 (And cursed mishap !) 
 Far too long has my time been given 
 
 To the cult of my handicap ! 
 
 Has my wrist for your gentler science 
 Still compliance 
 
 To work my will ? 
 Can I look for the old reliance 
 
 In its flexible easy skill ? 
 
 Or has Philistine usage rusted 
 Tendons trusted 
 
 Of old to ply, 
 When your delicate legions dusted 
 
 Pool and shallow the green-drake fly ? 
 141
 
 TO A MAYFLY 
 
 Ha ! the ruler I deftly dandle 
 Claims of Vandal 
 
 Amusements flee, 
 As it turns to a split-cane handle 
 
 Wait till Saturday, then you'll see 
 
 142
 
 THE UNATTAINABLE 
 
 I KNOW a pool where the river, 
 
 Sunlit and still, 
 Slips by a bank of wild roses 
 
 Down from the mill ; 
 There do I linger when summer makes glorious 
 
 Valley and hill. 
 
 Somewhere the song of a skylark 
 
 Melts into air, 
 Butterflies float through the sunshine, 
 
 June's everywhere ; 
 Nature in fact, shows an amiable jollity 
 
 I do not share. 
 
 For in the shade of the alders, 
 
 Scornful of flies, 
 There is a trout that no cunning 
 
 Coaxes to rise, 
 Sly as Ulysses, and doubtful as Didymus, 
 
 Mammoth in size. 
 
 And when the Mayfly battalions 
 Flutter and skim,
 
 THE UNATTAINABLE 
 
 When all the others are filling 
 
 Baskets abrim, 
 I spend the cream of a fisherman's carnival 
 
 Casting at him ; 
 
 Seeing in fancy my hackle 
 
 Seized with a flounce, 
 
 Hearing the reel racing madly 
 Under his pounce, 
 
 Knowing at last all the pounds of his magnitude- 
 (Eight of an ounce ! ) 
 
 But of my drakes and my sedges 
 
 None make the kill, 
 None tempt him up from his fastness 
 
 Under the mill, 
 And, for I saw him as lately as Saturday, 
 
 There he is still. 
 
 Thus do Life's triumphs elude us, 
 Yet it may be 
 
 Some afternoon, when the keeper 
 Goes to his tea, 
 
 That, if a lob-worm were dropped unofficially- 
 Well, we shall see. 
 
 144
 
 TO AN OLD FRIEND 
 
 THE end draws near again, and very near, 
 The first few fluttered beech leaves fall and 
 
 gleam 
 
 Light skirmishers that dog the dying year 
 But still I see you down below the weir, 
 A shadow in the stream ! 
 
 Here have you lurked since spring, in sportive 
 
 guise, 
 
 Rallied the meadows to young April's rout, 
 Here first I marked the marvel of your size, 
 Here wooed you with each fleeting season's 
 
 flies 
 
 O alderman of trout ! 
 
 Here, when the madcap cuckoo made his mock, 
 And the rathe wild-rose blushed in earliest June, 
 The day the mayfly hatched above the lock 
 You nearly had it, didn't you, old cock, 
 
 Save that you stopped too soon ? 
 145 L
 
 TO AN OLD FRIEND 
 
 Here have I waited as the dawn spread high, 
 Hoping in vain the prejudice or pique 
 That makes you obviously reject a fly 
 Would send you hurtling through the startled 
 fry 
 
 To grab a proffered bleak ! 
 
 Here likewise have my steps at eve been drawn, 
 And, as the moon made way behind the wood 
 (The same old moon that watched the hunting 
 
 faun), 
 
 I've found the lob-worm garnered from the lawn 
 Did just as little good ! 
 
 And now the end is near ; we part a space, 
 You to your mud and I to mine in town ; 
 May Easter find us at the trysting-place, 
 There where the dancing bubbles spin and race, 
 To meet the first March Brown ! 
 
 146
 
 TO A KINGFISHER 
 
 ST. PETER was a fisherman, a fisherman was he, 
 He killed his fish right handsomely in gentle 
 
 Galilee, 
 As you and I would do, my friend, from Severn 
 
 unto Dee ! 
 
 He always acted sportsmanlike though Luck she 
 
 scowled or laughed, 
 He'd throw into a ten-knot breeze as though it 
 
 blew abaft, 
 And you and I are proud to be of that his 
 
 ancient craft 1 
 
 It's not in any book I've read but still it may 
 
 have been 
 That you have perched beside his lines, so 
 
 shiny-eyed and keen, 
 A little apt disciple in a coat of blue and 
 
 green ! 
 
 '47
 
 TO A KINGFISHER 
 
 And since he was a fisherman, the brightest 
 
 bird that flies 
 He vowed to other fishermen who cast 'neath 
 
 colder skies, 
 To light their river-banks, that they his name 
 
 might recognize ! 
 
 Oh, I was up last Saturday by Thames's amber 
 
 brown, 
 While yet the oak and elm they wore the night's 
 
 grave misty gown, 
 And saw you like an emerald go flashing up and 
 
 down ! 
 
 And as it seemed for fishermen that life was 
 
 passing good, 
 
 I lit a little candle at St. Peter's-in-the-Wood, 
 Or if I didn't actually, I think he understood ! 
 
 148
 
 THE MYTH 
 
 (A Thames Trout) 
 
 WHERE the bulrushes grow ranker 
 
 (Oh, the long green spears a-gleam ! ) 
 
 There the punt shall rock at anchor 
 In the stream ; 
 
 By the weir's cool curve of thunder, 
 
 By the stones where wagtails plunder 
 Foolish daddy-long-leg flies, 
 
 And the strings of rainbow bubbles in a rhapsody 
 arise ! 
 
 Hours may pass and hours go fleeting, 
 
 You shall heed them not, but stay 
 
 Lost to them, and all the sweeting 
 Of the may ; 
 
 For beneath the swelling current 
 
 Where the midge-cloud hangs susurrant, 
 And the sweeping swallows go, 
 
 Lives a most prodigious monster, lurking learnedly 
 and low ! 
 
 149
 
 THE MYTH 
 
 No ! I've never really seen him, 
 
 But the boatman tells a tale 
 Of a something (" must 'a' been 'im ") 
 
 Like a whale, 
 
 On the shelving shallow showing 
 " Where them kingcups is a-growing," 
 
 Only just the other night, 
 
 And the frightened fry went leaping from the 
 Presence left and right ! 
 
 But a crafty old curmudgeon 
 
 He must be, for ne'er a fin 
 Does he move for any gudgeon 
 
 That you spin ; 
 
 With a wink he maybe watches 
 'Neath the willow-root's dark notches 
 
 As you toil with aching wrist, 
 But the landing-net's no nearer, nor the deft 
 taxidermist ! 
 
 But the skies are smiling bluely, 
 
 There is shade along the shore, 
 
 And the chestnut's litten newly 
 Lamps a score ; 
 
 150
 
 THE MYTH 
 
 Drop the rod then and be thankful 
 For the sights that fill the bank full 
 
 Verdant meads and ancient stems 
 And the broad paternal bigness and the peace 
 
 of Father Thames 1
 
 ANCESTORS 
 
 " SEPTEMBER ! Come out, 'tis September, 
 The moon of the hunter is young," 
 
 This style, as perhaps you remember, 
 
 Stamped songs that our grandpapas sung : 
 
 I can see the old boys, in their day-time's 
 
 December, 
 But ruddy as pippins and mighty of lung ! 
 
 I can see the green coats and white beavers, 
 The guns (the old flint-lock affair), 
 
 The cockers they used as retrievers 
 To pick up their partridge or hare ; 
 
 No beaters to bungle, no bag-making fevers 
 Destroy the old-fashioned repose of their air ! 
 
 I see them come down by the spinney, 
 They measure and ram in their lead, 
 
 Then start through the turnips, with " Prinny " 
 And " Dash " working gaily ahead ; 
 152
 
 ANCESTORS 
 
 If a covey is flushed I would wager a guinea 
 They'll aim for a minute but kill their birds 
 dead! 
 
 They go with their old-world precision, 
 Their quaintness of garb and of gun, 
 
 Till out of my day-dreaming vision 
 They fade in the slant of the sun ; 
 
 Let's hope they are tramping o'er manors Elysian, 
 With asphodel-cover to give 'em good fun ! 
 
 153
 
 MY WOODCOCK 
 
 I STOOD in the ride, and the glamour 
 Of autumn was gold on the trees, 
 
 While the far-away beaters' faint clamour 
 Was borne on the whispering breeze, 
 
 When the voices that came through the cover 
 With the tapping of stick upon stock, 
 
 Rang out with a roar " Woodcock over ! 
 Cock forward ! Mark cock ! " 
 
 Like a leaf of last year that is lifted 
 When March is in maddest of moods, 
 
 Through the tops of the beeches he drifted, 
 A little brown ghost of the woods : 
 
 Bombarded with passionate vigour, 
 He lazily dodged down the line, 
 
 And I knew, as I pressed on the trigger, 
 I knew he was mine ! 
 
 My pulses may fade and grow duller, 
 My eyesight may weaken, but still 
 154
 
 MY WOODCOCK 
 
 I shall see the soft pinion's warm colour, 
 The length of that insolent bill ; 
 
 And, till age leaves me withered and one-eyed 
 At the ultimate end of my road, 
 
 I shall hear the click-click of the gun I'd 
 Omitted to load ! 
 
 155
 
 WILD GEESE 
 
 THEY'RE shy as the otter, they're sly as the fox, 
 They're worse to approach than the craftiest 
 
 hind, 
 You may freeze on the fore-shore or crouch on 
 
 the rocks, 
 You may soak in the sea- fog or wait in the 
 
 wind, 
 Though their magical music will give you no 
 
 peace, 
 Yet your bag shall go empty, for aren't they 
 
 wild geese ? 
 
 Honk-honk, honk-honk, the distant voices clank it ; 
 The wet retriever trembles at your knee ; 
 For he hears the lone notes falling, 
 Where the long grey tides are crawling, 
 Through the shouting west wind's buffets or the 
 
 dripping fog's chill blanket, 
 As the wild geese come shoreward from the 
 sea ! 
 
 156
 
 WILD-GEESE 
 
 You may stalk them at sundown, at dawning's 
 
 first flame, 
 
 They've ears for the wariest, softest of treads, 
 And, stook-time or snow-time, the end is the 
 
 same 
 
 A picket gives warning and up go their heads : 
 Yes, your boots (wet as sponges in spite of their 
 
 grease) 
 You may wear to brown paper in chasing wild 
 
 geese ! 
 
 Yet still, honk-honk, a northern charm shall fold 
 
 you, 
 
 Though Shot shall shake the raindrops from his 
 sides, 
 
 Though you catch the drifting clamour 
 Through the sleet squall's sting and 
 
 hammer, 
 Still the flight shall work its magic and the 
 
 breathless stalk shall hold you, 
 When the grey geese come calling off the tides ! 
 
 157
 
 [" Most proprietors nowadays strictly preserve these beautiful 
 and useful birds." Natural History.] 
 
 SILENT, mysterious, on wings of down, 
 A swift, deceptive presence in the cover, 
 Vaguely irresolute, soft-breasted, brown, 
 Bird of Minerva, tawny-eyed moon-lover, 
 You faced the sunshine mid the fir-trees gaunt, 
 Roused by the beaters' distant sticks a-tapping, 
 From some sequestered, hidden, noontide haunt, 
 Where doubtless you'd been napping. 
 
 Now all that's mortal of you, limp and dead, 
 Lies where a few pale, floating plumes still fly 
 
 light ; 
 
 Your little ghost, I like to think, has sped 
 To the dim nether world of endless twilight, 
 (Fit paradise for one who loved full well 
 The empty dark, those shores forlorn, abhorrent,) 
 To sail for ever o'er the asphodel, 
 By Styx's gloomy torrent ! 
 158
 
 DIRGE TO A DEAD OWL 
 
 Meanwhile with hasty hands the mould I'll 
 
 heap 
 
 Over your warm, uncaring, earthly habit, 
 Over the pinions that no more may sweep 
 Upon the unsophisticated rabbit ; 
 Lost to the daylight (which you couldn't brook, 
 You loathed that sunrise bore, the dull but good 
 
 cock), 
 
 None of the guns shall guess that I mistook 
 You for the sweepstakes woodcock. 
 
 159
 
 TO A DECEMBER GROUSE 
 
 (Heard from the smoking-room) 
 
 NAY, is it now you'd have me take the hill, 
 Voice from the snow line, far away and mocking ? 
 In August, well, you might have roused a thrill, 
 But now, when sleet showers drive and pines 
 are rocking 
 
 In the keen north-east wind, 
 
 I find 
 The cheery hearth and a dry boot and stocking 
 
 More to my mind 
 
 Than the wet mountain and your wild cok- 
 coking ! 
 
 In August, yes, 'twas doubtless vastly well, 
 When butterflies and bees and guns together 
 Made holiday in dingle and in dell, 
 To seek you 'mid a charm of sky and weather, 
 With a fair interlude 
 For food, 
 1 60
 
 TO A DECEMBER GROUSE 
 
 In sunshine that could tan one's cheeks to 
 leather, 
 
 Before I strewed 
 Again your youthful kind upon the heather ! 
 
 I know the game to-day the snow, the blast 
 Down which the swinging packs will whirr and 
 
 whizz hard, 
 
 I'd hear your ramping pinions whistle past, 
 And I should miss you, nipped of nose and 
 gizzard, 
 
 And drain the futile dram, 
 
 And damn 
 The braes, the bleakness, and the brutal blizzard, 
 
 For oh, I am 
 A chilly thing and " meagre as a lizard "! 
 
 I come not at your challenge, haughty bird ! 
 Let the more earnest and the harder bitten, 
 If they should choose to make themselves absurd, 
 Compass your end in mackintosh and mitten ; 
 I find my sole desire 
 
 The fire, 
 And this great padded chair which now I sit on, 
 
 Nor shall I tire 
 
 Of pipes and papers and the Persian kitten ! 
 161 M
 
 THE PERENNIAL RABBIT 
 
 THE savage by primeval Thames, 
 
 Lurking, the mammoth to waylay, 
 Amid the awful forest stems, 
 
 On some far, dim, forgotten day, 
 As that vast bulk of brawn and beef 
 
 Squelched off unscathed through lone morasses, 
 Would turn, I doubt not, with relief 
 
 To where you scuttled in the grasses ! 
 
 Perhaps my cave-man blood's to blame, 
 
 For atavistic taint I too 
 Have dropped a more exacting game, 
 
 Bunny, to have a bang at you ; 
 The driven partridge missed in front, 
 
 And eke behind, lacks serious merit 
 Beside a sunny hedgerow hunt, 
 
 A terrier and an active ferret ! 
 
 Give me a summer afternoon, 
 
 An air-gun and the drone of bees, 
 162
 
 THE PERENNIAL RABBIT 
 
 The water-meadows lush with June, 
 A stalk among the Alderneys ; 
 
 Then, hit or miss, I care no-ways, 
 In such surroundings I consider 
 
 You're worth a hundred storm-swept braes 
 And all the royals in Balquidder ! 
 
 Indeed, wherever I may go, 
 
 Through summer woods, by wintry fell, 
 I've found you, in the sun or snow, 
 
 A friendly little Ishmael ; 
 Along the southern trout-stream banks, 
 
 Or with the ptarmigan consorting, 
 You've always earned my grateful thanks, 
 
 And in all seasons acted sporting ! 
 
 Hushed is the hairy mammoths' roar 
 
 And gone the mastodon uncouth 
 Down to decay with dinosaur, 
 
 Aurochs, and fearsome sabre-tooth ; 
 But you, small beast in hodden-gray, 
 
 Survive, and will, I take for granted, 
 Be here when I am dust, to play 
 
 In moonlit covers still unplanted ! 
 
 163
 
 AN EMPTY SADDLE 
 
 DOWN the hill path echo the hoof-beats hollow, 
 
 The empty saddle sways ; 
 Sadly the road that weary feet must follow 
 
 Winds through the darkling braes. 
 
 Soft fall the clansman voices, hushed, complete in 
 
 A pathos worse than woe ; 
 Meet tongue indeed to murmur of defeat in 
 
 The Gaelic, gentle, low ! 
 
 Up in the cliffs the raven cries for slaughter, 
 
 The caustic croaking mocks 
 A beaten man whose heart is in the water 
 
 That squelches in his socks. 
 
 Bird of ill omen, sombre and accurst one, 
 
 Be still upon your crag, 
 You surely don't suppose that I'm the first one 
 
 Who missed a rotten stag ? 
 
 164
 
 KINGS AND CUBBING 
 
 THEY built rosy castles, 
 
 And big, winged bulls, 
 And red-robed wizards 
 
 Worked miracles, 
 When the kings rode hunting 
 
 With javelin and bow 
 Down the road to Nineveh 
 
 A long time ago ! 
 
 They sat on their saddles 
 
 As good men sit, 
 Long in the stirrup, 
 
 Light on the bit, 
 Their proud lips a-curling, 
 
 Their crimped beards just so. 
 Down the road to Nineveh 
 
 A long time ago ! 
 
 And what did they ride for ? 
 Great beasts of stress 
 165
 
 KINGS AND CUBBING 
 
 Lithe and tremendous 
 
 Lions ! no less ! 
 The big black-maned beauties 
 
 That prowled to and fro 
 Down the road to Nineveh 
 
 A long time ago ! 
 
 For why should we doubt it ? 
 
 Still does each chief 
 Fill them with arrows 
 
 In bas-relief, 
 And fine rough-and-tumbles 
 
 The grim carvings show 
 Down the road to Nineveh 
 
 A long time ago ! 
 
 Then hear us, O Nimrod, 
 
 That we may find 
 Heart such as theirs was 
 
 (Jumps still are blind) ; 
 Send cubs stout as lions, 
 
 The sort they laid low 
 Down the road to Nineveh 
 
 A long time ago ! 
 
 1 66
 
 TO A FOX-CUB 
 
 You slipped through the hedgerow's high tangle 
 
 of bramble, 
 
 You knew of the gap by the hazel-tree's trunk, 
 As sharp as a needle, as red as a Campbell, 
 Surprised, very likely, but not in a funk ; 
 Demure as a kitten, yet wise and hard-bitten, 
 You pricked a keen ear to the crash in the scrub, 
 Where Grateful and Glitter had stirred up the 
 
 litter, 
 O bandit beginner O cool little cub ! 
 
 You went like a dream, yet an eye of cold 
 
 yellow 
 
 You cocked in a crafty but confident glance, 
 As much as to tell me, " Now, be a good fellow, 
 Say nothing about it and give us a chance ; 
 Those lashing white ladies can gallop like Hades, 
 They'd slate me at present in less than a 
 
 mile ; 
 
 I'm small, I'm a baby, sit quiet, and maybe 
 I'll live to reward you with something worth 
 
 while !" 
 
 167
 
 TO A FOX-CUB 
 
 Discreetly I watched you dive under the double; 
 I moved not an eyelid, I give you my word ; 
 If out of the belt by the ten-acre stubble 
 A jay screamed a menace, well, nobody heard ; 
 For far in the whinny, green depths of the 
 
 spinney 
 
 A brother, ill-fated, was biting the mud, 
 Borne down in a flurry of furies that worry 
 And bristle and clamour for blood, and for blood ! 
 
 And so it's a bargain, my boy, you'll remember ; 
 Some day we shall ask you to settle the bill, 
 Some soft, misty day in a distant December, 
 When you, a great dog-fox, glide out down the 
 
 hill: 
 They'll find you by noonlight, and run you till 
 
 moonlight, 
 And I would be with them the whole of the 
 
 day, 
 
 By brook and by village, by grass-land and tillage, 
 To lose you, or eat you, a county away ! 
 
 168
 
 THIS was a wisdom that Solomon said 
 In a garden of citron and roses red, 
 A word he wove, where his grey apes played, 
 In the rhyme he strung for love of a maid ; 
 Thus went his learning, most discerning, 
 
 Thus he sang of his old designs, 
 " Take us the foxes little foxes, 
 
 Little dog-foxes that spoil the vines ! " 
 
 (Though Solomon never since he was born 
 Had heard the twang of a huntsman's horn, 
 Killing his foxes, so I'll be bound, 
 Without the help of a horse or hound, 
 Still down the ages, this his sage's 
 
 Word with gallanter meaning shines, 
 When we take foxes, little foxes, 
 
 Little dog-foxes that spoil the vines !) 
 
 So when the morn hangs misty now 
 Where the grass shows never a patch of plough, 
 169
 
 "THE LITTLE FOXES" 
 
 Hark to the cry on the spruce-crowned hill, 
 For Solomon's wisdom is working still ; 
 Hark to the singing voices flinging, 
 
 White sterns waving among the pines, 
 All for the foxes little foxes, 
 
 Little dog-foxes that spoil the vines. 
 
 The lift of a cap at the cover side, 
 A thud of hoofs in a squelchy ride, 
 And the pack is racing a breast-high scent 
 Like a shadow cloud o'er a windy bent ! 
 Customer cunning full of running, 
 
 Never a moment the game declines ; 
 Thus are the foxes little foxes, 
 
 Little dog-foxes that spoil the vines. 
 
 So it's afternoon, and eight miles away 
 That beat, dead-weary and stiff with clay 
 A tired mask, set for a distant whin, 
 Is wheeled on Death with a brigand grin ! 
 There by the paling, wet brush trailing, 
 Still he bares them his lips' long lines ; 
 So die the foxes little foxes, 
 
 Little dog-foxes that spoil the vines. 
 170
 
 "THE LITTLE FOXES" 
 
 This was the wisdom that Solomon made 
 In a garden of citron and almug shade, 
 That a man and a horse might find them fun 
 Wherever the little dog-foxes run, 
 
 Since of his meaning we've been gleaning, 
 
 Since we've altered his old designs, 
 All about foxes little foxes, 
 
 Little dog-foxes that spoil the vines ! 
 
 171
 
 JANE A TERRIER 
 
 SHE'S short in the leg and she's long in the jaw, 
 And the roof of her mouth is as black as your 
 
 hat, 
 With her rough little coat and her round little 
 
 paw, 
 She's a rum 'un, is Jane, at fox, otter, or rat ; 
 
 She's the hardest from Bedale to Bicester, 
 In holt or in earth or in drain, 
 And she sticks just as close as a blister, 
 Does good little sister Jane. 
 
 She never was willing to learn as a pup 
 
 To " die for her country " or carry your stick, 
 
 And she always sat down when you bade her 
 
 "sit up," 
 But she's clever as sin, and she's thunder-bolt 
 
 quick, 
 
 And the heaviest badger'll shirk her, 
 The biggest dog-fox bolt amain ; 
 172
 
 JANE A TERRIER 
 
 She's a wasp for her weight, she's a 
 
 worker, 
 Is good little sister Jane ! 
 
 At night, when she's curled in her place by the 
 
 fire, 
 
 She cocks you a wicked and earth-reddened eye, 
 To say that her badger " sat up " by desire, 
 That a hoary buck-rat in the hedge did the 
 
 die," 
 
 And she twitches and whines and 
 
 remembers, 
 
 And tackles 'em over again, 
 Rolled up end to end by the embers, 
 Does good little sister Jane !
 
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