:^msBgia3s^^. •"TsagSS^as Bsaas&^amaaBBB THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES jj^^^ i^' THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE AND W. V. HER BOOK This book, for the publication of nvhich I am indebted to Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Company, contains "The Invisible Playmate^'' and "IV. V., Her Book,'''' re-vised, enlarged, and in the defini- ti-ve and only form in --ivhich I desire to offer it to the good ^will of the American people. WILLIAM CANTON. " Thank you, Mr. Oakman ' THE Invisible Playmate AND W. V. HER BOOK BY WILLIAM CANTON With T^wo Illustrations by C. E. Brock NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY M DCCC XCVIII Copyright^ i8qb, By Stone and Kimball. Copyright, i8g8, By Dodd, Mead and Company. HitibcrsttD Prrss:' John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. ^ 4415" TO THE MOTHER OF W. V. April 26, 1897 Contents The Invisible Playmate .... Rhymes about a Little Woman An Unknown Child-Poem At a Wayside Station . W. v., Her Birthday . Her Book The Inquisition The First Miracle By the Fireside. I. By the Fireside. II. The Raider Babsie-Bird The Orchard of Stars The Sweet Pea . Brook-side Logic . Bubble-Blowing New Version of an Old Game The Golden Swing-Boat . Another Newton's Apple vii PAGE 3 29 49 65 79 103 105 107 108 IC9 no 112 113 J14 115 117 118 119 Contents PAGE Naturula Naturans 120 Wings and Hands 121 Flowers Invisible 122 Making Pansies 123 Heart-ease 124 " Si j'avais un arpent ■" . . . . 125 Her Friend Littlejohn .... 129 Her Bed-time 149 Various Verses East of Eden 159 Goodwin Sands 168 Trafalgar 173 Vignettes The Wanderer. 1 179 The Wanderer. II 180 The Scarecrow 182 The Haunted Bridge 184 The Stone Age 186 Sea-Pictures. 1 188 Sea-Pictures. II 190 Moonlight 152 Green Pastures 194 The Little Dipper 196 In the Hills 197 Nature's Magic 198 April Voices 199 Green Sky 204 viii Contents Sub Umbra Crucis The Shepherd Beautiful The Moss A Carol When Snow Lies Deep " Trees of Righteousness " The Comrades . . . . " Crying, Abba, Father" . This Grace Vouchsafe . PAGE 207 ZI I 212 214 216 218 221 226 iX THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE The poor lost image bro7ight back plain as dreams. Browning No visual shade of some one lost. But he, the Spirit himself, may come When all the nerve of sense is niwib. Tennyson God, by God's ways occult, May — doth, I -will believe — bring back All wanderers to a single track. Browning Vous voyez sous mon rire mes larmes, VIeux arbres, n'est-ce pas ? et vous n'avez pas cru Que i'oublierai jamais le petit disparu. THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE THE following pages are taken from a series of letters which I received a year or two ago ; and since no one is now left to be affected by the publication of them it can be no abuse of the writer's confidence to employ them for the purpose I have in view. Only by such extracts can I convey any clear impression of the char- acter of the person most concerned. To many the chief interest in what follows will centre in the unconscious self-portraiture of the writer. Others may be most attracted by the frank and naive picture of child-life. And yet a third class of readers may decide that the one passage of any real value is that which describes the incident with which the record closes. On these matters, how- 3 The Invisible Playmate ever, any comment from me appears to be unnecessary. I need only add that the writer of the letters was twice married, and that just before the death of his first wife their only child, a girl, died at the age of six weeks. " I never could understand why men should be so insanely set on their first-born being a boy. This of ours, I am glad to say, is a girl. I should have been pleased either way, but as a matter of fact I wanted a girl. I don't know why, but somehow with a girl one feels that one has provided against the disillusionment, the discomfort, the homelessness of old age and of mental and physical decrepitude. "For one thing above all others I am grateful : that, so far as I can see, here- dity has played no horrible pranks upon us. The poor little mortal is wholesome and shapely from her downy little poll to her little pink toe-nails. She could not have been lovelier if Math had made her out of flowers (or was it Gwydion? You re- member the Mabinogion). And she grips 4 The Invisible Playmate hard enough already to remind one of her remote arboreal ancestors. One of God's own ape-lets in the Tree of Life ! " " Exultant ! No, dear C — , anything but that ! Glad as I am, I am morbidly appre- hensive and alert to a myriad possibilities of misery. I am all quick. I feel as though I had shed my epidermis, and had but ' true skin ' for every breath and touch of mis- chance to play upon. " / have been through it all before. I was exultant then. I rode a bay trotting-horse, and was proud of heart and wore gloves in my cap. I feel sick at heart when I think how I was wrapped up in that child ; how in my idolatry of her I clean forgot the savage irony of existence ; how, when I was most unsuspecting, most unprepared — unarmed, naked — I was — stabbed from behind ! " I know what you will say. I see the grave look on your face as you read this. Perhaps I ought not to write it. I have never said so much to any one before \ but that is what I felt — what I feel. 5 The Invisible Playmate " Do you think, if I can help it, I shall give any one a chance of surprising me so again? This poor little mite can bring my heart with a leap into my throat, or send it down shivering into my boots — that I can't help — but never so long as I live, and dote on her as I may, never shall I again be taken at unawares. I have petri- fied myself against disaster. Sometimes as I am returning home in the grey dawn, sometimes even when I am putting the latch-key into the lock, I stop and hear an inward voice whispering, * Baby is dead ' ; and I reply, ' Then she is dead.' The rest I suppress, ignore, refuse to feel or think. It is not pleasant schooling; but I think it is wise." To this I presume I must have replied with the usual obvious arguments, for he writes later : " No ; I dorCt think I lose more than I gain. Trust me, I take all I can get : only, I provide against reprisals. Yes ; unfortu- nately all this does sound like Caliban on 6 The Invisible Playmate Setebos. Is that Caliban's fault? Dear man, I know I shock you. I almost shock myself; but how can / trust ? Shall I bar- gain and say, ' You took the other : ensure me this one, and I will think You as good and wise and merciful — as a man ? ' And if I make no bargain, but simply profess belief that ' all was for the best,' will that destroy the memory of all that horror and anguish ? Job ! The author of ' Job ' knew more about astronomy than he knew about fatherhood. " The anguish and horror were perchance meant for my chastening ! Am I a man to be chastened in that way? Or will you say, perhaps but for these you would have been a lost soul by this? To such questionings there is no end. As to selfishness, I will suffer anything for her sake ; but how will she profit by my suffering for the loss of her?" After an interval he wrote : "You are very good to take so much interest in the Heiress of the Ages. We have experienced some of the ordinary 7 The Invisible Playmate troubles — and let me gravely assure you that this is the single point in which she does resemble other children — but she is well at present and growing visibly. The Norse god who heard the growing of the grass and of the wool on the sheep's back would have been stunned with the tinta- marre of her development. "Thereto she noticeth. So saith her mother; so averreth the nurse, an experi- enced and unimpeachable witness. Think of it, C ! As the human mind is the one reality amid phenomena, this young person is really establishing and giving permanence to certain bits of creation. To that ex- tent the universe is the more solid on her account. " Nor are her virtue and excellency con- fined to noticing ; she positively radiates. Where she is, that is the sunny side of the house. I am no longer surprised at the folk-belief about the passing of a maiden making the fields fertile. I observe that in the sheltered places where she is taken for an airing the temperature is the more genial, the trees are in greener leaf, and the 8 The Invisible Playmate red half of the apple is that nearest the road. . . . " Accept for future use this shrewd dis- covery from my experience. When a baby is restless and fretful, hold its hands ! That steadies it. It is not used to the speed at which the earth revolves and the solar system whirls towards the starry aspect of Hercules (half a milhon miles a day!). Or it may be that coming out of the vortex of atoms it is sub-conscious of some sense of faUing through the void. The gigantic paternal hands close round the warm, tiny, twitching fists, soft as grass and strong as the everlasting hills. " I wonder if those worthy old Accadians had any notion of this when they prayed, ' Hold Thou my hands.' " In several subsequent letters he refers to the growth and the charming ways of the "little quadruped," the " quadrunianous angel," the "bishop" (from an odd resem- blance in the pose of the head to the late Bishop of Manchester). One passage must be given : The Invisible Playmate " It is an ' animal most gracious and benig- nant,' as Francesca calls Dante. Propped up with cushions, she will sit for half an hour on the rug at my feet while I am writ- ing, content to have her fluffy head patted at the end of every second paragraph. ''This evening she and I had the study to ourselves. She on my knee, cosily snug- gling within my arm, with a tiny hand clasped about each thumb. We were sitting by the window, and the western sky was filled with a lovely green light, which died out very slowly. It was the strangest and dreamiest of afterglows. She was curiously quiet and contented. As she sat like that, my mind went back to that old life of mine, that past which seems so many centuries away; and I remembered how that poor little white creature of those unforgettable six weeks sat where she was now sitting — so unlike her, so white and frail and old-womanish, with her wasted arms crossed before her, and her thin, worn face fading, fading, fading away into the everlasting dark. Why does — how can things like these happen? " She would have been nine now if she lO The Invisible Playmate had lived. How she would have loved this tiny sister ! " " You will be amused, perhaps you will be amazed, at my foolishness. When the post- man hands you Rhyjnes about a Little Woman ^ you will understand what I mean. In trotting up and down with the Immortal in my arms, crooning her to sleep, these rhymes came. I did not make them ! And sing — don't read them. Seriously, the noticeable thing about them is their unlike- ness to fictitious child-poems. I did not print them on that account, of course. But to me it will always be a pleasant thing to see, when I am very, very old, that genuine bit of the past. And I like to fancy that some day she will read — with eyes not dry — these nonsense verses that her poor old father used to sing to her in ' The days before God shut the doorways of her head.' " "You remember what I said about the child's hands? When I went to bed very 1 See p. 27. II The Invisible Playmate late last night, the words, 'Hold Thou my hands/ kept floating about in my mind, and then there grew on me the most perplexing half- recollection of a lovely air. I could not remember it quite, but it simply haunted me. Then, somehow, these words seemed to grow into it and out of it : Hold Thou my hands ! In grief and joy, in hope and fear, Lord, let xnQ/eel that Thou art near, Hold Thou my hands 1 If e'er by doubts Of Thy good fatherhood depressed, I cannot find in Thee my rest. Hold Thou my hands 1 Hold Thou my hands, — These passionate hands too quick to smite, These hands so eager for delight, — Hold Thou my hands ! And when at length, With darkened eyes and fingers cold, I seek some last loved hand to hold, Hold Thou my hands ! " I could endure it no longer, so I woke N [his wife]. I was as gentle, gradual, con- siderate as possible ! — just as if she were 12 The Invisible Playmate waking naturally. And she re-mon-strat-ed ! * The idea of waking any one at three in the morning to bother about a tune ! ' Dear, dear ! " Well, it was from * The Yeoman of the Guard.' You will know where by the rhythm and refrain ! " As the months went by the " benign an- thropoid " developed into a " stodgy volatile elephant with a precarious faculty of speech," and her father affected to be engrossed in ethnological and linguistic studies based on observation of her experiments in life and language. I now extract without further interpolation, merely premising that frequent intervals elapsed between the writing of the various passages, and that they themselves are but a small selection from many similar : II' • The * golden ephelant ' is unquestion- ably of Early-English origin. Perpend : we in our degeneracy say ' milk ' ; she pre- serves the Anglo-Saxon * meolc' Hengist and Horsa would recognise her as a kins- woman. Through the long ages between 13 The Invisible Playmate them and her, the pleasant guttural pronun- ciation of the ancient pastures has been discarded by all but the traditional dairy- man, and even he has modified the o into u. Similarly a ' wheel ' is a ' hw^ol.' But, in- deed, she is more A-S than the Anglo- Saxons themselves. All her verbs end in * en,' even * I am-en.' " " It is singularly interesting to me to watch the way in which she adapts words to her purposes. As she sits so much on our knees, she uses * knee ' for ' to sit down.' To-day she made me * knee ' in the arm-chair beside her. 'Too big' expresses, comically enough sometimes, all kinds of impossibility. She asked me to play one of her favourite tunes. * Pappa cannot, dearie,' * Oh ! ' — with much surprise — ' Too big? ' " " Oh, man, man, what wonderful creatures these bairnies are ! Did it ever occur to you that they must be the majority of the human race? The men and women com- bined may be about as numerous, but they must far outnumber the men or the women 14 The Invisible Playmate taken separately, and as all the women and most of the men — bad as they are — side with them, what a political power they might be, if they had their rights ! I have been thinking of this swarming of the miniature people, all over the globe, during the last few days. Could one but make a poem of that! I tried — and failed. * Too big ! ' But I did the next best thing — conceived an Unknown German Child-poe^n, and — what think you ? — reviewed it.^ If after reading it, the 'Astrologer' [a hypercritical young friend] tells you it reminds him of Carlyle, just ask him whether he never, neverheavd of Richter." " She delights in music and drawing. It is curious how sharp she is to recognise things. She picked out a baby in a picture the other day, and discovered a robin among the flowers and leaves high up on a painted panel of the mirror. What a contrast to the grown men of half-savage tribes one reads of, who cannot distinguish a house from a tree in a drawing ! She has, too, quite an extraordinary ear for rhyme and rhythm. I 1 See p. 47- 15 The Invisible Playmate find, to my amazement, that she can fill in the rhymes of a nonsense poem of twenty lines — * What shall we do to be rid of care ? ' by the way ^ — and when she does not know the words of a verse, she times out the metre with the right number of blanks. " One is puzzled, all the while, to know how much she understands. In one of her rhymes she sings, 'Birds are singing in the bowers.' The other day as she was chant- ing it a dog went by ; ' That, bowers ! ' (bow-wows ! ) she cried suddenly, pointing to the dog." " To-day she was frightened for the first time. We heard her roaring, *No, no,' in great wrath in the garden. A sparrow had dropped on the grass somewhere near her, and she was stamping and waving her hands in a perfect panic. When she found it was not to be driven away, she came sweeping in like a little elephant, screaming for < mam- ma ' to take up arms against that audacious ' dicken.' It was really ludicrous to see her terrorised by that handful of feathers. J See p. 33. 16 The Invisible Playmate " Yet she is not a bit afraid of big things. The dog in the kennel barked the first time she went near him. ' Oh ! ' she exclaimed, with a little laugh of surprise, * coughing ! ' Now she says, ' He not bark ; only say good morning.' She must kiss the donkey's fore- head ; she invites the mother-hen to shake hands, and the other day she was indignant that I would not hold a locomotive till she ' t'oked it dear head.' She has a comfort- able notion that things in general were in- tended for her. If she wants a cow or a yoke of horses with the ploughman for a play- thing, it is but to * ask my pappa ' and have. The wind and the rain and the moon * walk- ing ' come out to see her, and the flowers *wake up' with the same laudable object." " Yes ; a child has a civilising effect. I feel that I am less of a bear than I was. It is with some men as it is with the black- thorn ; the little v^\\\\.q, flower comes out first, and then the whole gnarled faggot breaks into leafy " I came to-day across a beautiful little bit from the letters of Marcus Aurelius. 'On 2 17 The Invisible Playmate my return from Lorium I found my little lady — dojfinulam ineam — in a fever ; ' later : ' You will be glad to hear that our little one is better and running about the room.' The old Emperor was one of ourselves. Indeed, look at his face in those marble busts in the Museum ; he might have been a man of our own generation. It was he, I remember, who wrote, * One prays — How shall I not lose my little son ? Do thou pray thus — How shall I not be afraid to lose him ? ' Ah, how shall I not be afraid ! " " We have had our first walk in the dark — a dark crowded with stars. She had never seen it before. It perplexed her, I think, for she stood and looked and said nothing. But it did not frighten her in the least. " I want her to have some one marvellous thing impressed on her memory — some one ineffable recollection of childhood ; and it is to be the darkness associated with shining stars and a safe feeling that her father took her out into it. This is to last all through her life — till the ' great dark ' comes ; so The Invisible Playmate that when it does come, it shall be with an old familiar sense of fatherhood and starlight. " You will laugh at me — but oh, no ! you will not laugh — when I tell you what a horror haunts me lest I should die before her little brain has been stamped with a vivid memory of me — clear as life, never to be obliterated, never even to be blurred. Who was it named Augustine ' the son of the tears of St. Monica ' ? This child might well be called the daughter of my tears — yet they have not been bitter ones. *' When she did speak — fluently at last — it was to suppose that a good many pipes were being lit up in the celestial spaces ! This was both prosy and impossible, yet what could I say? Ah, well ! some day she shall learn that the stars are not vestas, and that the dark is only the planetary shadow of a great rock in a blue and weary land — though little cause have I now of all men to call it weary ! Has that notion of the shadow ever occurred to you? And do you ever think of night on one of the small planetoids, five miles in diameter? That were the 19 The Invisible Playmate shadow of a mere boulder ; and yet on that boulder, though there can be neither water nor air there, what if there were some un- known form of motherhood, of babyhood, curled up asleep in the darkness? " But to return to Pinaforifera. Thinking these stars but vestas for the lighting of pipes, what must she do but try to blow them out, as she blows out her ' dad's ' ! I checked that at once, for i' faith this young person's powers are too miraculous to allow of any trifling with the stellar systems." " I fear I must weary you with these ' trivial fond records.' Really she is very in- teresting. * Ever what you doing ? ' ' Upon my word ! ' ' Dear iccle c'eature ! ' * Poor my hands ! ' — just as people used to say, 'Good my lord!'" "What heartless little wretches they are after all ! Sometimes, when I ask her for a kiss, she puts her head aside and coolly replies, ' I don't want to ! ' What can you say to that? One must respect her individ- uality, though she is but a child. Now and 20 The Invisible Playmate again she has her tender moments : * I shut-a door and leave poor you ? * * Yes, you did, dear.' * I stay with you ! ' — which means inexpressible things. You should see the odd coaxing way in which she says, 'My father ! ' Then this to her doll : 'You cry? I kiss you. You not cry no more.' " " Upon my life I am growing imbecile under the influence of this Pinaforifera. I met a very old, wrinkled, wizened little woman to-day, and as I looked at her poor dim eyes and weathered face, it flashed upon me like an inspiration — ' And she, too, was once a rosy, merry little mortal who set some poor silly dad doting 1 ' Then at the station I came across what seemed to me quite an incident — but, there, I have been daft enough to write the matter out in full, and you can read it, if paternity and its muddle- headedness do not fill your soul with loathing." ^ " By the way, she has got a new play- thing. I do not know what suggested the idea ; I don't think it came from any of us. ^ See p. 63. 21 The Invisible Playmate Lately she has taken to nursing an invisible * iccle gaal ' (little girl) whom she wheels about in her toy perambulator, puts care- fully to bed, and generally makes much of. This is — 'Yourn iccle baby, pappa, old man 1 ' if you please. When I sit down, this accession to the family is manifest to her on my right knee ; and she sits on my left and calls it a ' nice lovely iccle thing.' When she goes to bed she takes Struw- welpeter, Sambo (a sweet being in black india-rubber), and, of all people, Mrs. Grundy; and when she has been tucked in she makes place for * yourn iccle baby,' which, of course, I have to give her with due care. It is very odd to see her put her hands together for it, palms upward, and to hear her assurance, ' I not let her fall, pappa.' " " What droll little brains children have ! In Struwwelpeter, as probably you are not aware, naughty Frederick hurts his leg, and has to be put to bed ; and ' The doctor came and shook his head, And gave him nasty physic too.' 22 The Invisible Playmate This evening, as baby was prancing about in her night-dress, her mother told her she would catch cold, and then she would be ill and would have to be put to bed. 'And will the doctor come and shook my head ? ' she asked eagerly. Of course we laughed outright ; but the young person was right for all that. If the doctor was to do any good, it could not conceivably be by shak- ing his own head ! " "I told you about her invisible play- mate. Both N [his wife] and I have been wondering whether the child is only what is called making-believe, or whether she really sees anything. I suppose you have read Galton's account of the power of ' visu- alising,' as he calls it; that is, of actually seeing outside of one the appearance of things that exist only in imagination. He says somewhere that this faculty is very strongly developed in some young children, who are beset for years with the difficulty of distinguishing between the objective and the subjective. It is hard to say how one should act in a case of this sort. To en- 23 The Invisible Playmate courage her in this amusement might lead to some morbid mental condition; to try to suppress it might be equally injurious, for this appears to be a natural faculty, not a disease. Let nature have her own way? " If I rest my foot on my right knee to unlace my boot, she pulls my foot away — * Pappa, you put youm foot on yourn iccle baby.' She won't sit on my right knee at all until I have pretended to transfer the playmate to the other. " This girl is going to be a novelist. We have got a rival to the great Mrs. Harris. She has invented Mrs. Briss. No one knows who Mrs. Briss is. Sometimes she seems to mean herself; at other times it is clearly an interesting and inscrutable third person." ''The poor wee ape is ill. The doctor doesn't seem to understand what is the matter with her. We must wait a day or two for some development." " How these ten days and nights have dragged past ! Do not ask me about her. I cannot write. I cannot think." 24 The Invisible Playmate " My poor darling is dead ! I hardly know whether I am myself alive. Half of my indivi- duality has left me. I do not know myself. "Can you behave this? /cannot; and yet I saw it. A little while before she died I heard her speaking in an almost inaudible whisper. I knelt down and leaned over her. She looked curiously at me and said faintly : * Pappa, I not let her fall.' ' Who, dearie ? ' ' Yourn iccle baby. I gotten her in here.' She moved her wasted little hand as if to lift a fold of the bed-clothes. I raised them gently for her, and she smiled like her old self. How can I tell the rest ? " Close beside her lay that other little one, with its white worn face and its poor arms crossed in that old-womanish fashion in front of her. Its large, suffering eyes looked for a moment into mine, and then my head seemed filled with mist and my ears buzzed. " / saw that. It was not hallucination. It was there. " Just think what it means, if that actually happened. Think what must have been go- ing on in the past, and I never knew. I re- member, now, she never called it ' mamma's 25 The Invisible Playmate baby ' ; it was always ' yourn.' Think of the future, now that they are both — what ? Gone? " If it actually happened ! I saw it. I am sane, strong, in sound health. I saw it — saw it — do you understand ? And yet how incredible it is ! " Some months passed before I heard again from my friend. In his subsequent letters, which grew rarer and briefer as time went on, he never again referred to his loss or to the incident which he had described. His silence was singular, for he was natu- rally very communicative. But what most surprised me was the absolute change of character that seemed to have been brought about in an instant — literally in the twink- ling of an eye. One glimpse of the Unseen (as he called it) and the embittered recollec- tions of bereavement, the resentment, the dis- trust, the spirit of revolt were all swept into oblivion. Even the new bereavement had no sting. There was no anguish; there were no words of desolation. The man simply stood at gaze, stunned with amazement. 26 RHYMES ABOUT A LITTLE WOMAN Seep. II. 27 She is my pride ; my plague : my rest ; my rack : my bliss ; my bane : She brings me sunshine of the heart : and soft'ning of the brain. 28 RHYMES ABOUT A LITTLE WOMAN SHE 's very, very beautiful ; but — alas ! — Is n't it a pity that her eyes are glass ? And her face is only wax, coloured up, you know; And her hair is just a fluff of very fine tow ! No ! — she 's not a doll. That will never do — Never, never, never, for it is not true ! Did they call you a doll? Did they say that to you ? Oh, your eyes are little heavens of an earth made new ; 29 The Invisible Playmate Your face, it is the blossom of mortal things ; Your hair might be the down from an angel's wings ! Oh, yes ; she 's beauti-beautiful ! What else could she be? God meant her for Himself first then gave her to me. 30 II SHE was a treasure ; she was a sweet ; She was the darling of the Army and the Fleet ! When — she — smiled The crews of the line-of-battle ships went wild ! When — she — cried — Whole regiments reversed their arms and sighed ! When she was sick, for her sake The Queen took off her crown and sobbed as if her heart would break. 31 Ill LOOK at her shoulders now they are bare; Are there any signs of feathers growing there ? No, not a trace ; she cannot fly away ; This wingless little angel has been sent to stay. 32 IV w HAT shall we do to be rid of care ? Pack up her best clothes and pay her fare ; Pay her fare and let her go By an early train to Jer-I-Cho. There in Judaea she will be Slumbering under a green palm-tree ; And the Arabs of the Desert will come round When they see her lying on the ground, And some will say " Did you ever see Such a remark-a-bil babee?" 3 33 The Invisible Playmate And others, in the language the Arabs use, " Nous n' avons jamais vu line telle papoose J " And she will grow and grow ; and then She will marry a chief of the Desert men ; And he will keep her from heat and cold. And deck her in silk and satin and gold — With bangles for her feet and jewels for her hair. And other articles that ladies wear ! So pack up her best clothes, and let her go By an early train to Jer-I-Cho ! Pack up her best clothes, and pay her fare ; So we shall be rid of trouble and care ! 34 TAKE the idol to her shrine ; In her cradle lay her ! Worship her — she is divine ; Offer up your prayer ! She will bless you, bed and board, If befittingly adored. 35 VI o N a summer morning, Babsie up a tree ; In came a Blackbird, sat on Babsie 's knee. Babsie to Blaclibird — " Blackbird, how you do?" Blackbird to Babsie — " Babsie, how was you? " How was you in this commodious tree — How was^ 4 ^ The Invisible Playmate cious providence has encompassed their lives ! When I had smiled in witless amusement I had not thought of all this; and even now it had not occurred to me that this could have been no rare and exceptional case — that there must be many such dar- lings in the world. That same evening, how- ever, as I glanced over the paper, I came across the following notice in the column of " Births, Deaths, and Marriages " : " In memoriam, Louisa S , who died suddenly on August 22, aged 40 ; my youngest, most beloved, and affectionate daughter." 74 W. V. HER BOOK 75 HER BIRTHDAY 77 HER BIRTHDAY WE are still on the rosy side of the apple ; but this is the last Saturday in September, and we cannot expect many more golden days between this and the cry of the cuckoo. But what a summer we have had, thanks to one of W. V.'s ingenious sug- gestions ! She came to us in April, when the world is still a trifle bare and the wind somewhat too bleak for any one to get com- fortably lost in the Forest or cast up on a coral reef; so we have made her birthday a movable feast, -and whenever a fine free Saturday comes round we devote it to thankfulness that she' has been born, and to the joy of our both be^ijig alive together. W. V. sleeps in an eastern room, and accordingly the sun rises on that side of the house. Under the eaves and just above her 79 W. V. window the martins have a nest plastered against the wall, and their chattering awakens her in the first freshness of the new morning. She watches the black shadows of the birds fluttering on the sunny blind, as, first one and then another, they race up to the nest, and vibrate in the air a moment before dart- ing into it. When her interest has begun to flag, she steals in to me in her nightdress, and tugs gently at my beard till I waken and sit up. Unhappily her mother wakens too. "What, more birthdays ! " she exclaims in a tone of stern disapproval ; whereat W. V. and I laugh, for evasion of domestic law is the sweet marjoram of our salad. But it t's possible to coax even a Draconian parent into assent, and oh ! Flower of the may, If mamsie will not say her nay, W. won't care what any one may say ! We first make a tour of the garden, and it is delightful to observe W. V. prying about with happy, eager eyes, to detect whether nature has been making any new thing during the dim, starry hours when people are too So Her Birthday sound asleep to notice; delightful to hear her little screams of ecstasy when she has discovered something she has not seen be- fore. It is singular how keenly she notes every fresh object, and in what quaint and pretty terms of phrase she expresses her glee and wonderment. " Oh, father, have n't the bushes got their hands quite full of flowers ? " " Are n't the buds the trees' little girls?" This morning the sun was blissfully warm, and the air seemed alive with the sparkle of the dew, which lay thick on every blade and leaf. As we went round the gravel walks we perceived how completely all the earlier flowers had vanished ; even the lovely sweet peas were almost over. We have still, how- ever, the single dahlias, and marigolds, and nasturtiums, on whose level leaves the dew stood shining like globules of quicksilver; and the tall Michaelmas daisies make quite a white-topped thicket along the paling, while the rowan-berries are burning in big red bunches over the western hedge. In the corner near the limes we came upon a marvellous spectacle — a huge old 6 8i W. V. spider hanging out in his web in the sun, Uke a grim old fisherman floating in the midst of his nets at sea. A hand's breadth off, young bees and new-born flies were busy with the low perennial sunflowers ; he watch- ing them motionlessly, with his gruesome shadow silhouetted on a leaf hard by. In his immediate neighbourhood the fine threads of his web were invisible, but a little distance away one could distinguish their concentric curves, grey on green. Every now and then we heard the snapping of a stalk overhead, and a leaf pattered down from the limes. Every now and then, too, slight surges of breeze ran shivering through the branches. Nothing distracted the intense vigilance of the crafty fisherman. Scores of glimmering insects grazed the deadly snare, but none touched it. It must have been tantalising, but the creature's sullen patience was invinci- ble. W. V. at last dropped a piece of leaf- stalk on his web, out of curiosity. In a twinkling he was at the spot, and the frag- ment was dislodged with a single jerk. This is one of the things in which she delights — the quiet observation of the ways 82 Her Birthday of creatures. Nothing would please her better, could she but dwarf herself into an "aglet-baby," than to climb into those filmy meshes and have a chat in the sunshine with the wily ogre. She has no mistrust, she feels no repulsion from anything that has life. There is a warm place in her heart for the cool, dry toad, and she loves the horned snail, if not for his own sake, at least for his " darling little house " and the silver track he leaves on the gravel. Of course she wanted a story about a spider. I might have anticipated as much. Well, there was King Robert the Bruce, who was saved by a spider from his enemies when they were seeking his life. " And if they had found him, would they have sworded off his head? Really, father? Like Oliver Crumball did Charles King's?" Her grammar was defective, but her surmises were beyond dispute ; they would. Then there was the story of Sir Samuel Brown, who took his idea of a suspension bridge from a web which hung — but W. V. wanted something much more engrossing. 83 W. V. " Was n't there never no awful big spider that made webs in the Forest?" "And caught lions and bears?" She nodded approvingly. Oh, yes, there was — once upon a time, " And was there a little girl there?" There must have been for the story to be worth telling ; but the breakfast bell broke in on the opening chapter of that little girl's incredible adventures. After breakfast we followed the old birth- day custom, and " plunged " into the depths of the Forest. Some persons, I have heard, call our Forest the " East Woods," and report that though they are pleasant enough in summer, they are rather meagre and limited in area. Now, it is obvious that it would be impossible to " plunge " into any- thing less than a forest. Certainly, when W. V. is with me I am conscious of the Forest — the haunted, enchanted, aboriginal Forest; and I see with something of her illumined vision, the vision of W. V., who can double for herself the comfort of a fire on a chilly day by running into the next room 84 Her Birthday and returning with the tidings, " It 's very cold in the woods ! " If you are courageous enough to leave the paths and hazard yourself among the under- wood and the litter of bygone autumns, twenty paces will take you to the small Gothic doors of the Oak-men; twenty more to the cavern of the Great Bruin and the pollard tree on the top of which the foxes live ; while yet another twenty, and you are at the burrows of the kindliest of all insects, the leaf-cutter bees. Once — in parenthesis — when a little maid was weeping because she had lost her way at dusk in the Forest mazes, it was a leaf-cutter bee that tunnelled a straight line through the trees, so that the nearest road lamp, miles away, twinkled right into the Forest, and she was able to guide her- self home. Indeed, it will only take ten min- utes, if you do not dawdle, to get to the dread- ful webs of the Iron Spider, and when you do reach that spot, the wisest thing you can do is to follow the example of the tiny flame-elf when a match is blown out — clap on your cap of darkness and scuttle back to fairyland. W. V. What magical memories have we two of the green huddle and the dreamy lawns of that ancient and illimitable Forest ! We know the bosky dingles where we shall find pappa-trees, on whose lower branches a little girl may discover something to eat when she is good enough to deserve it. We know^ where certain green-clad foresters keep store of fruits which are supposed, by those who know no better, to grow only in orchards by tropical seas. Of course every one is aware that in the heart of the Forest there is a granite fountain ; but only we two have learned the secret that its water is the Water of Heart's-ease, and that if we con- tinue to drink it we shall never grow really old. We have still a great deal of the Forest to explore ; we have never reached the glade where the dog- daisies have to be chained because they grow so exceed- ingly wild ; nor have we found the blue thicket — it is blue because it is so distant — from which some of the stars come up into the dusk when it grows late ; but when W. V. has got her galloping-horse- bicycle we shall start with the first sun- 86 Her Birthday shine some morning, and give the whole day to the quest. We lowly folk dine before most people think of lunching, and so dinner was ready when we arrived home. Now, as decorum at table is one of the cardinal virtues W. V. dines by proxy. It is her charming young friend Gladys who gives us the pleasure of her company. It is strange how many things this bewildering daughter of mine can do as Gladys, which she cannot possibly accom- plish as W. V. W. V. is unruly, a chatter- box, careless, or at least forgetful, of the elegances of the social board ; whereas Gladys is a model of manners, an angel in a bib. W. V. cannot eat crusts, and rebels against porridge at breakfast ; Gladys idolises crusts, and as for porridge — "I am sur- prised your little girl does not like porridge. It is so good for her." After dinner, as I lay smoking in the gar- den lounge to-day, I fell a-thinking of W. V. and Gladys, and the numerous other little maids in whom this tricksy sprite has been 87 W. V. masquerading since she came into the world five years ago. She began the small comedy before she had well learned to balance her- self on her feet. As she sat in the middle of the carpet we would play at looking for the baby — where has the baby gone ? have you seen the baby? — and, oddly enough, she would take a part and pretend to wonder, or perhaps actually did wonder, what had be- come of herself, till at last we would discover her on the floor — to her own astonishment and irrepressible delight. Then, as she grew older, it was amusing to observe how she would drive away the naughty self, turn it literally out of doors, and return as the "Smiling Winifred." I presume she grew weary, as human nature is apt to grow, of a face which is wreathed in amaranthine smiles ; so the Smiling Winifred vanished, and we were visited by various sweet children with lovely names, of whom Gladys is the latest and the most indefatiga- ble. I cannot help laughing when 1 recall my three-year-old rebel listening for a few moments to a scolding, and when she con- sidered that the ends of justice had been 88 Her Birthday served, exclaiming, " I put my eyes down ! " — which meant that so far as she was concerned the episode was now definitively closed. My day-dream was broken by W. V. flying up to me with fern fronds fastened to her shoulders for wings. She fluttered round me, then flopped into my lap, and put her arms about my neck. " If I was a real swan, father, I would cuddle your head with my wings." " Ah, well, you are a real duck. Diddles, and that will do quite as well." She was tliinking of that tender Irish legend of the Children of Lir, changed into swans by their step-mother and doomed to suffer heat and cold, tempest and hunger, homelessness and sorrow, for nine hundred years, till the sound of the first Christian bell changed them again — to frail, aged mortals. It was always the sister, she knows, who solaced and strengthened the brothers beside the terrible sea of Moyle, shelter- ing them under her wings and warming them against her bosom. In such a case 89 W. V. as this an only child is at a disadvantage. Even M'rao, her furry playmate, might have served as a bewitched brother, but after many months of somnolent forbearance M'rao ventured into the great world beyond our limes, and returned no more. Flower of the quince, Puss once kissed Babs, and ever since She thinks he must be an enchanted prince. In a moment she was off again, an angel, flying about the garden and in and out of the house in the performance of helpful offices for some one ; or, perchance, a fairy, for her heaven is a vague and strangely-peopled region. Long ago she told me that the moon was "put up" by a black man — a saying which puzzled me until I came to understand that this negro divinity could only have been the " divine Dark " of the old Greek poet. Of course she says her brief, simple prayers ; but how can one con- vey to a child's mind any but the most provisional and elemental conceptions of the Invisible ? Once I was telling her the story of a wicked king, who put his trust in a fort 90 Her Birthday of stone on a mountain peak, and scoffed at a prophet God had sent to warn him. " He was n't very wise," said W. V., " for God and Jesus and the angels and the fairies are cleverer 'n we are ; they have wings." The " cleverness " of God has deeply impressed her. He can make rain and see through walls. She noticed some stone crosses in a sculptor's yard some time ago, and remarked : " Jesus was put on one of those ; " then, after some reflection : " Who was it put Jesus on the cross? Was it the church people, father?" Well, when one comes to think of it, it was precisely the church people — " not these church people, dear, but the church people of hundreds of years ago, when Jesus was alive." She had seen the world's tragedy in the stained glass windows and had drawn her own conclusion — the people who crucified would be the most likely to make a picture of the crucifixion ; Christ's friends would want to forget it and never to speak of it. In the main she does not much concern herself with theology or the unseen. She lives in the senses. Once, indeed, she 9^ W. V. began to communicate some interesting re- miniscences of what had happened " before she came here," to this planet ; but some- thing interrupted her, and she has not attempted any further revelation. There is nothing more puzzling in the world to her, I fancy, than an echo. She has forgotten that her own face in the mirror was quite as bewildering. A high wind at night is not a pleasant fellow to have shaking your window and muttering down your chimney ; but an intrepid father with a yard of brown oak is more than a match for him. Thunder and lightning she regards as " great friends \ they always come together." She is more per- ceptive of their companionship than of their air of menace towards mankind. Darkness, unless it be on the staircase, does not trouble her : when we have said good-night out goes the gas. But there seems to be some quality or influence in the darkness which makes her affectionate and considerate. Once and again when she has slept with me and wakened in the dead of night she has been most apologetic and self-abasing. She is so sorry to disturb me, she knows she is a 92 Her Birthday bother, but would I give her a biscuit or a drink of water? She has all along been a curious combina- tion of tenderness and savagery. In a sudden fit of motherhood she will bring me her dolly to kiss, and ten minutes later I shall see it lying undressed and abandoned in a corner of the room. She is a Spartan parent, and slight is the chance of her chil- dren being spoiled either by sparing the rod or lack of stern monition. It is not so long ago that we heard a curious sound of distress in the dining-room, and on her mother hurrying downstairs to see what was amiss, there was W. V. chastising her recalcitrant babe — and doing the weeping herself. This appeared to be a good opportunity for point- ing a moral. It was clear now that she knew what it was to be naughty and dis- obedient, and if she punished these faults so severely in her own children she must expect me to deal with her manifold and grievous offences in the same way. She looked very much sobered and concerned, but a few moments later she brought me a stout oak walking-stick : " Would that do, 93 W. V. father?" She shows deep commiseration for the poor imd old ; grey hairs and penury are sad bed-fellows ; but for the poor who are not old I fear she feels little sympathy. Perhaps we, or the conditions of life, are to blame for this limitation of feeling, for when we spoke to her of certain poor little girls with no mothers, she rejoined : " Why don't you take them, then?" Our compassion which stopped short of so simple a remedy must have seemed suspiciously like a pretence. To me one of the chief wonders of child- hood has been the manner in which this young person has picked up words, has learned to apply them, has coined them for herself, and has managed to equip herself with a stock of quotations. When she was yet little more than two and a half she applied of her own accord the name Dap- ple-grey to her first wooden horse. Then Dapple-grey was pressed into guardianship of her sleeping dolls, with this stimulative quotation : " Brave dog, watching by the baby's bed." There was some vacillation, I recollect, as to whether it was a laburnum or 94 Her Birthday a St. Bernard that saved travellers in the snow, but that was exceptional. The word " twins " she adapted prettily enough. Try- ing once in an emotional moment to put her love for me into terms of gold currency, she added : " And I love mother just the same ; you two are twins, you know." A little while after the University boat-race she drew my attention to a doll in a shop-window : " Is n't it beautiful ? And look at its Oxford eyes ! " To " fussle one," to disturb one by making a fuss, seems at once fresh and use- ful ; " sorefully " is an acutely expressive adverb; when you have to pick your steps in wet weather the road may be conveniently described as " picky ; " don't put wild roses on the cloth at dinner lest the maid should " crumb " them away ; and when one has a cold in the head how can one describe the condition of one's nose except as " hoarse " ? " Lost in sad thought," " Now I have some- thing to my heart's content," " Few tears are my portion," are among the story-book phrases which she has assimilated for week- day use. When she was being read to out of Kingsley's " Heroes," she asked her 95 W. V. mother to substitute "the Ladies" for "the Gorgons." She did not like the sound of the word ; " it makes me," drawing her breath with a sort of shiver through her teeth, " it makes me pull myself together." Once when she broke into a sudden laugh, for sheer glee of living I suppose, she explained : " I am just like a little squirrel biting myself." Her use of the word " live " is essential poetry ; the spark '* lives " inside the flint, the catkins " live " in the Forest ; and she pointed out to me the " lines " down a horse's legs where the blood " lives." A sign- board on a piece of waste land caused her some perplexity. It was not " The pub- lic are requested " this time, but " Forbidden to shoot rubbish here." Either big game or small deer she could have understood ; but — <' Who wants to shoot rubbish, father? " Have I sailed out of the trades into the doldrums in telling of this commonplace little body ? — for, after all, she is merely the average, healthy, merry, teasing, delightful mite who tries to take the whole of life at once into her two diminutive hands. Ah, 96 Her Birthday well, I want some record of these good, gay days of our early companionship ; something that may still survive when this right hand is dust ; a testimony that there lived at least one man who was joyously content with the small mercies which came to him in the beaten way of nature. For neither of us, little woman, can these childish, hilarious days last much longer now. Five arch, happy faces look out at me from the sections of an oblong frame ; all W. V.'s, but no two the same W. V. The sixth must go into another frame. You must say good-bye to the enchanted Forest, little lass, and travel into strange lands ; and the laws of infancy are harder than the laws of old Wales. For these ordained that when a person remained in a far country under such conditions that he could not freely revisit his own, his title to the ancestral soil was not extinguished till the ninth man; the ninth man could utter his "cry over the abyss," and save his portion. But when you have gone into the world beyond, and can no more revisit the Forest freely, no ear will ever listen to your " cry over the abyss." 7 97 W. V. When she had at last tired herself with angelic visits and thrown aside her fern wings, she returned to me and wanted to know if I would play at shop. No, I would not play at shop ; I would be neither pur- chaser nor proprietor, the lady she called " Cash " nor the stately gentleman she called '* Sign." Would I be a king, then, and refuse my daughter to her (she would be a prince) unless she built a castle in a single night; "better 'n't" she bring her box of bricks and the dominoes? No, like Caesar, I put by the crown. She took my refusals cheerfully. On the whole, she is tractable in these matters. " Fathers," she once told me, " know better than little girls, don't they?" " Oh, dear, no! how could they? Fathers have to go into the city ; they don't go to school like little girls." Doubtless there was something in that, but she per- sisted, " Well, even if little girls do go to school, fathers are wiser and know best." From which one father at least may derive encouragement. Well, would I blow soap- bubbles ? I think it was the flying thistledown in 98 Her Birthday June which first gave us the cue of the soap- bubbles. What a dehghtful game it is ; and there is a knack, too, in blowing these spheres of fairy glass and setting them off on their airy flight. Till you have blown bubbles you have no conception how full of waywardness and freakish currents the air is. Oh, you who are sad at heart, or weary of thought, or irritable with physical pain, coax, beg, borrow, or steal a four or five year old, and betake you to blowing bubbles in the sunshine of your recluse garden. Let the breeze be just a little brisk to set your bubbles drifting. Fill some of them with tobacco smoke, and with the wind's help bombard the old fisherman in his web. As the opaline globes break and the smoke escapes in a white puff along the grass or among the leaves, you shall think of historic battlefields, and muse whether the greater game was not quite as childish as this, and " sorefully " less innocent. The smoke- charges are only a diversion ; it is the crystal balls which delight most. The colours of all the gems in the world run molten through their fragile films. And what visions they 99 W. V. contain for crystal- gazers ! Among the gold and green, the rose and blue, you see the dwarfed reflection of your own trees and your own home floating up into the sunshine. These are your possessions, your surroundings — so lovely, so fairylike in the bubble ; in reality so prosaic and so inadequate when one considers the rent and rates. To W. V. the bubbles are like the wine of the poet — " full of strange continents and new discoveries." Flower of the sloe. When chance annuls the worlds we blow, Where does the soul of beauty in them go } "Tell me a story of a little girl who lived in a bubble," she asked when she had tired of creating fresh microcosms. I lifted her on to my knee, and as she settled herself comfortably she drew my right arm across her breast and began to nurse it. "Well, once upon a time " I GO HER BOOK lOI THE INQUISITION I WOKE at dead of night ; The room was still as death ; All in the dark I saw a sight Which made me catch my breath. Although she slumbered near, The silence hung so deep I leaned above her crib to hear If it were death or sleep. 103 W. V. As low — all quick — I leant, Two large eyes thrust me back ; Dark eyes — too wise — which gazed intent ; Blue eyes transformed to black. Heavens ! how those steadfast eyes Their eerie vigil kept ! Was this some angel in disguise Who searched us while we slept ; Who winnow'd every sin, Who tracked each slip and fall. One of God's spies — not Babbykin, Not Babbykin at all? Day came with golden air ; She caught the beams and smiled ; No masked inquisitor was there, Only a babbling child 1 104 THE FIRST MIRACLE THE huge weeds bent to let her pass, And sometimes she crept under ; She plunged through gulfs of flowery grass ; She filled both hands with plunder. The buttercups grew tall as she, Taller the big dog-daisies ; And so she lost herself, you see, Deep in the jungle mazes. I OS W. V. A wasp twang'd by ; a horned snail Leered from a great-leafed docken ; She shut her eyes, she raised a wail Deplorable, heart-broken. " Mamma ! " Two arms, flashed out of space Miraculously, caught her ; Fond mouth was pressed to tearful face — " What is it, little daughter? " 1 06 BY THE FIRESIDE RED-BOSOMED Robin, in the hard white weather She marks thee Hghtupon the ice to rest ; She sees the wintry glass glow with thy breast And let thee warm thy feet at thine own feather. 107 BY THE FIRESIDE n IN the April sun at baby- house she plays. Her rooms are traced with stones and bits of bricks ; For warmth she lays a hearth with little sticks, And one bright crocus makes a merry blaze ! 1 08 THE RAIDER HER happy, wondering eyes had ne'er Till now ranged summer meadows o'er : She would keep stopping everywhere To fill with flowers her pinafore. But when she saw how, green and wide, Field followed field, and each was gay With endless flowers, she laughed — then sighed, "No use ! " and threw her spoils away. [09 BABSIE-BIRD IN the orchard blithely waking, Through the blossom, loud and clear. Pipes the goldfinch, " Day is breaking ; Waken, Babsie ; May is here ! Bloom is laughing ; lambs are leaping ; Every new green leaflet sings ; Five chipp'd eggs will soon be cheeping ; God be praised for song and wings ! " no Her Book Warm and ruddy as an ember, Lilting sweet from bush to stone, On the moor in chill November Flits the stone-chat all alone : ** Snow will soon drift up the heather ; Days are short, nights cold and long ; Meanwhile in this glinting weather God be thanked for wings and song ! ' Round from Maytime to November Babsie lilts upon the wing, Far too happy to remember Thanks or praise for anything ; Save at bedtime, laughing sinner, When she gaily lisps along, For the wings and song within her — " Thank you, God, for wings and song III THE ORCHARD OF STARS AMID the orchard grass she 'd stood and watch'd with childish glee The big bright burning apples shower'd like star-falls from the tree ; So when the autumn meteors fell she cried, with outspread gown, " Oh my, papa, look ! Is n't God just shaking apples down?" ii: THE SWEET PEA OH, what has been bom in the night To bask in this blithe summer morn ? She peers, in a dream of delight, For something new-made or new-born. Not spider-webs under the tree, Not swifts in their cradle of mud, But — '* Look, father, Sweet Mrs. Pea Has two little babies in bud ! " "3 BROOK-SIDE LOGIC S the brook caught the blossoms she cast, Such a wonder gazed out from her face ! Why, the water was all running past, Yet the brook never budged from its place. A^ Oh, the magic of what was so clear ! I explained. And enlightened her? Nay — "Why but, father, I could rC t '=>\.z-^ here If I always was running away ! " 114 BUBBLE-BLOWING OUR plot is small, but sunny limes Shut out all cares and troubles ; And there my little girl at times And I sit blowing bubbles. The screaming swifts race to and fro, Bees cross the ivied paling, Draughts lift and set the globes we blow In freakish currents sailing. "5 W, V. They glide, they dart, they soar, they break. Oh, joyous little daughter, What lovely coloured worlds we make, What crystal flowers of water ! One, green and rosy, slowly drops ; One soars and shines a minute. And carries to the lime-tree tops Our home, reflected in it. The gable, with cream rose in bloom. She sees from roof to basement ; " Oh, father, there 's your little room ! " She cries in glad amazement. To her enchanted with the gleam. The glamour and the glory, The bubble home 's a home of dream, And I must tell its story ; Tell what we did, and how we played. Withdrawn from care and trouble — • A father and his merry maid, Whose house was in a bubble ! ii6 NEW VERSION OF AN OLD GAME THE storm had left the rain-butt brim- ming ; A dahha leaned across the brink ; Its mirrored self, beneath it swimming, Lit the dark water, gold and pink. Oh, rain, far fallen from heights of azure — Pure rain, from heavens so cold and lone — Dost thou not feel, and thrill with pleasure To feel a flower's heart in thine own ? Enjoy thy beauty, and bestow it, Fair dahlia, fenced from harm, mishap ! " See, Babs, this flower — and this below it." She looked, and screamed in rapture — « Snap 1 " 117 THE GOLDEN SWING-BOAT ACROSS the low dim fields we caught Faint music from a distant band — So sweet i' the dusk one might have thought It floated up from elfin-land. Then, o'er the tree-tops' hazy blue We saw the new moon, low i' the air : "Look, Dad," she cried, "a shuggy-shue ! Why, this must be a fairies' fair ! " ii^i ANOTHER NEWTON'S APPLE WE tried to show with lamp and ball How simply day and night were " made ; " How earth revolved, and how through all One half was sunshine, one was shade. One side, tho' turned and turned again, Was always bright. She mused and frowned, Then flashed — " It 's just an apple, then, 'at 's always rosy half way round ! " Oh, boundless tree of ranging blue, Star-fruited through thy heavenly leaves. Be, if thou canst be, good unto This apple-loving babe of Eve's. 119 NATURULA NATURANS BESIDE the water and the crumbs She laid her Httle birds of clay, For — " When some other sparrow comes Perhaps they '11 fly away." Ah, golden dream, to clothe with wings A heart of springing joy ; to know Two lives i' the happy sum of things To her their bliss will owe ! Day dawned ; they had not taken flight, Tho' playmates called from bush and tree. She sighed : " I hardly thought they might. Well, — God 's more clever 'n me ! " I20 WINGS AND HANDS GOD'S angels, dear, have six great wings Of silver and of gold ; Two round their heads, two round their hearts. Two round their feet they fold. The angel of a man I know Has just two hands — so small ! But they 're more strong than six gold wings To keep him from a fall. 121 FLOWERS INVISIBLE SHE 'D watched the rose-trees, how they grew With green hands full of flowers ; Such flowers made their hands sweet, she knew, But tenderness made ours. So now, o'er fevered brow and eyes Two small cold palms she closes. " Thanks, darling ! " " Oh, mamma," she cries, "Are my hands full of roses? " Z22 MAKING PANSIES " 'T^HREE faces in a hood." X Folk called the pansy so Three hundred years ago. Of course she understood ! Then, perching on my knee, She drew her mother's head To her own and mine, and said "That's mother, you, and me ! " And so it comes about We three, for gladness' sake, Sometimes a pansy make Before the gas goes out. 123 HEART-EASE LAST June — how slight a thing to tell ! — One straggling leaf beneath the limes Against the sunset rose and fell, Making a rhythm with coloured rhymes. No other leaf in all the air Seemed waking ; and my little maid Watched with me, from the garden-chair, Its rhythmic play of light and shade. Now glassy gold, now greenish grey, It dropped, it lifted. That was all. Strange I should still feel glad to-day To have seen that one leaf lift and fall. 124 "SI J'AVAIS UN ARPENT" O' ^H, had I but a plot of earth, on plain or vale or hill, With running water babbling through, in torrent, spring, or rill, I 'd plant a tree, an olive or an oak or willow tree, And build a roof of thatch, or tile, or reed, for mine and me. 125 W. V. Upon my tree a nest of moss, or down, or wool, should hold A songster — finch or thrush or blackbird with its bill of gold ; Beneath my roof a child, with brown or blond or chestnut hair, Should find in hammock, cradle or crib a nest, and slumber there. 1 ask for but a little plot ; to measure my domain, I 'd say to Babs, my bairn of bliss, " Go, alderliefest wean, " And stand against the rising sun ; your shadow on the grass Shall trace the limits of my world ; beyond I shall not pass. " The happiness one ?an't attain is dream and glamour-shine ! " These rhymes are Soulary's ; the thoughts are Babs's thoughts and mine. 126 HER FRIEND LITTLEJOHN [27 HER FRIEND LITTLEJOHN THE first time Littlejohn saw W. V. — a year or so ago — she was sitting on the edge of a big red flower-pot, into which she had managed to pack herself. A biil- hant Japanese sunshade was tilted over her shoulder, and close by stood a large green watering-can. This was her way of " playing at botany," but as the old gardener could not be prevailed upon to water her, there was not as much fun in the game as there ought to have been. W. V. was accordingly consoling herself with telling " Mr. Sandy " — the recalcitrant gardener — the authentic and incredible story of the little girl who was " just 'scruci- atingly good." Later, on an idyllic afternoon among the heather, Littlejohn heard all about that excel- Q I2Q W. V. rent and too precipitate child, who was so eager to obhge or obey that she rushed off before she could be told what to do ; and as this was the only story W. V. knew which had obviously a moral, W. V. made it a great point to explain that " little girls ought not to be too good ; if — they — ojily — did — what — they — were — told they would be good enough." W. V.'s mother had been taken seriously ill a few weeks before, and as a house of sickness is not the best place for a small child, nor a small child the most soothing presence in a patient's room, W. V. had undertaken a mar- vellous and what seemed an interminable jour- ney into the West Highlands. Her host and hostess were delighted with her and her odd sayings and quaint, fanciful ways ; and she, in the plenitude of her good-nature, extended a cheerful patronage to the grown-up people. Littlejohn had no children of his own, and it was a novel delight, full of charming sur- prises, to have a sturdy, imperious, sunny- hearted little body of four and a half as his constant companion. The child was pretty enough, but it was the alert, excitable little Her Friend Littlejohn soul of her which peered and laughed out of her blue eyes that took him captive. Like most healthy children, W. V. did not understand what sorrow, sickness, or death meant. Indeed it is told of her that she once exclaimed gleefully, " Oh, see, here's a funeral! Which is the bride?" The absence of her mother did not weigh upon her. Once she awoke at night and cried for her ; and on one or two occasions, in a sentimental mood, she sighed " I shoicld like to see my father ! Don't you think we could * run over ' ? " The immediate pres- ent, its fun and nonsense and grave respon- sibilities, absorbed all her energies and attention ; and what a divine dispensation it is that we who never forget can be forgotten so easily. I fancy, from what I have heard, that she must have regarded Littlejohn's ignorance of the ways of children as one of her respon- sibilities. It was really very deplorable to find a great-statured, ruddy-bearded fellow of two-and-thirty so absolutely wanting in tact, so incapable of "pretending," so desti- tute of the capacity of rhyming or of telling 131 W. V. a story. The way she took him in hand was kindly yet resolute. It began with her banging her head against something and howling. " Don't cry, dear," Littlejohn had entreated, with the crude pathos of an ama- teur; "come, don't cry." When W. V. had heard enough of this she looked at him disapprovingly, and said, " You should n't say that. You should just laugh and say, ' Come, let me kiss that crystal tear away ! ' " " Say it ! " she added after a pause. This was Littlejohn's first lesson in the airy art of consolation. Littlejohn as a lyric poet was a melancholy spectacle. "Now, you say, 'Come, let us go,' " W. V. would command. " I don't know it, dear." " I '11 say half for you — " Come, let us go where the people sell " But Littlejohn had n't the slightest notion of what they sold. " Bananas," W. V. prompted ; " say it." " Bananas." " And what ? " 132 Her Friend Littlejohn " Oranges ? " Littlejohn hazarded. " Pears ! " cried W. V. reproachfully ; " say it ! " "Pears." " And " with pauses to give her host chances of retrieving his honour ; " pine — ap — pel ! — ' Bananas and pears and pine-app^l,* of course. I don't think you can publish a poem." " I don't think I can, dear," Littlejohn confessed after a roar of laughter. " Papa and I published that poem. Pine- appel made me laugh at first. And after that you say — ' Away to the market I and let us buy A sparrow to make asparagus pie.' Say it ! " So in time Littlejohn found his memory becoming rapidly stocked with all sorts of nonsensical rhymes and ridiculous pronun- ciations. Inability to rhyme, like inability to reason, is a gift of nature, and one can overlook it, ^2>Z W. V. but Littlejohn's sheer imbecility in face of tiie demand for a story was a sore trial to W. V. After an impatient lesson or two, the way in which he picked up a substitute for imagination was really exceedingly credi- table. Having spent a day in the " Forest" — W. V. could pack some of her forests in a nutshell, and feel herself a woodlander of infinite verdure — Littlejohn learned which trees were " pappa- trees " ; how to knock and ask if any one was in ; how to make the dog inside bark if there was no one ; how to get an answer in the affirmative if he asked whether they could give his little girl a bis- cuit, or a pear, or a plum ; how to discover the fork in the branches where the gift would be found, and how to present it to W. V. with an air of inexhaustible surprise and dehght. Every Forest is full of "■ pappa- trees," as every verderer knows ; the crux of the situation presents itself when the tenant of the tree is cross, or the barking dog inti- mates that he has gone "to the City." Now, about a mile from Cloan Den, Little- john's house, there was a bit of the real " old ancient " Caledonian Forest. There 134 Her Friend Littlejohn was not much timber, it is true, but still enough ; and occasionally one came across a shattered shell of oak, which might have been a pillar of cloudy foliage in the days when woad was the fashionable dress mate- rial. I have reason to believe that W. V. invested all that wild region with a rosy atmosphere of romance for Littlejohn. Every blade of grass and fringe of larch was alive with wood-magic. She trotted about with him holding his hand, or swinging on before him with her broad boyish shoulders thrown well back and an air of unconscious proprietorship of man and nature. It was curious to note how her father's stories had taken hold of her, and Little- john, with some surprise at himself and at the nature of things at large, began to fancy he saw motive and purpose in some of these fantastic narratives. The legend of the girl that was "just 'scruciatingly good " had evi- dently been intended to correct a possible tendency towards priggishness. The boy whose abnormal badness expressed itself in *' I don't care " could not have been so irredeemably wicked, or he would never have ^35 W. V. succeeded in locking the bear and tiger up in the tree and leaving them there to dine off each other. And all the stories about little girls who got lost — there were several of these — were evidently lessons against fright and incentives to courage and self- confidence. W. V. quite believed that if a little girl got bewildered in the underwood the grass would whisper "This way, this way!" or some little furry creature would look up at her with its sharp beady eyes and tell her to follow. Even though one were hungry and thirsty as well as lost, there was nothing to be afraid of, if there were only oaks in the Forest. For when once on a time a little girl — whose name, strangely enough, was W. V. — got lost and began to cry, did not the door of an oak-tree open and a little, little, wee man all dressed in green, with green boots and a green feather in his cap, come out and ask her to "step inside," and have some fruit and milk? And didn't he say, "When you get lost, don't keep going this way and going that way and going the other way, but keep straight on and you are 136 Her Friend Littlejohn sure to come out at the other side? Only poor wild things in cages at the Zoo keep going round and round." And that is ''truly and really," W. V. would add, " because I saw them doing it at the Zoo." Even at the risk of being tedious, I must finish the story, for it was one that greatly delighted Littlejohn and haunted him in a pleasant fashion. Well, when this little girl who was lost had eaten the fruit and drunk the milk, she asked the wee green oak-man to go with her a little way, as it was growing dusk. And he said he would. Then he whistled, and close to, and then farther away, and still farther and farther, other little oak-men whis- tled in answer, till all the Forest was full of the sound of whisding. And the oak-man shouted, " Will you help this little girl out? " and you could hear " Yes, yes, yes, yes," far away right and left, to the very end of the Forest. And the oak-man walked a few yards with her, and pointed ; and she saw another oak and another oak-man ; and so she went on from one to another right through the Forest ; and she said, " Thank 137 \V. V. you, Mr. Oak-man." to each of them, and bent down and gave each of them a kiss, and they all laughod because they were pleased, and when she got out she could still hear them laughing quietly together. Another story that pleased littlejohn hugely, and he liked W. V. to tell it as he lay in a hollow among the heather with his bonnet pulled down to the tip of his nose, was about the lost little girl who NN-alked among the high grass — it was quite up to her eyes — till she \ras "tired to death." So she lay down, and just as she was begin- ning to doze otr she heard a very sot\ voice humming her to sleep, and she felt warm soft arms snuggling her close to a warm breast. And as she was wondering who it could be that was so kind to her, the soft \*oice whispered. ** It is only mother, dearie ; sleep-a- sleep, dearie ; only mother cuddling her little girl." And when she woke there was no one there, and she had been lying in quite a little gmssy nest in the hollow ot the ground. l.ittlejohn himself could hardly credit the chvXnge which this voluble, piquant, imperious Her Friend Littlcjohii young person had made not only in the ways of the house, but in his very being and in the material landscape itself. One of the oddest and most incongruous things he ever did in his life was to measure W, V, against a tree and inscribe her initials (her father always called her by her initials and she liked that form of her name best), and his own, and the date, above the score which marked her height. The late summer and the early autumn passed delightfully in this fashion. There was some talk at intervals of W. V. being packed, labelled, and despatched '< with care " to her own woods and oak-men in the most pleasant suburb of the great metropolis, but it never came to anything. Her father was persuaded to spare her just a little longer. The patter of the little feet, the chatter of the voluble, cheery voice, had grown well-nigh indispensable to Littlejohn and his wife, for though I have confined myself to Littlejohn's side of the story, I would not have it supposed that W. V.'s charm did not radiate into other lives. So the cold rain and the drifted leaf, the 139 W. V. first frost and the first snow came ; and in their train come Christmas and the Christ- mas-tree and the joyful vision of Santa Claus. Now to make a long story short, a polite note had arrived at Cloan Den asking for the pleasure of Miss W. V.'s company at Bar- geddie Mains — about a mile and a half be- yond the " old ancient " Caledonian Forest — where a Christmas-tree was to be despoiled of its fairy fruitage. The Bargeddie boys would drive over for Miss W. V. in the afternoon, and "Uncle Big- John " would perhaps come for the young lady in the evening, unless in- deed he would change his mind and allow her to stay all night. Uncle Big-John, of course, did not change his mind ; and about nine o'clock he reached the Mains. It was a sharp moonlight night, and the wide snowy strath sweeping away up to the vast snow-muffled Bens looked like a silvery expanse of fairyland. So far as I can gather it must have been well on the early side of ten when Littlejohn and W. V. (re- joicing in the spoils of the Christmas-tree) bade the Bargeddie people good-night and started homeward — the child warmly muf- 140 Her Friend Littlejohn fled, and chattering and laughing hilariously as she trotted along with her hand in his. It has often since been a subject of wonder that Littlejohn did not notice the change of the weather, or that, having noticed it, he did not return for shelter to the Mains. But we are all too easily wise after the event, and it is to be remembered that the distance from home was little over three miles, and that Littlejohn was a perfect giant of a man. They could have hardly been more than half a mile from Bargeddie when the snow storm began. The sparse big flakes thick- ened, the wind rose bitterly cold, and then, in a fierce smother of darkness, the moonlight was blotted out. For what follows the story depends principally on the recollections of W. v., and in a great measure on one's knowledge of Littlejohn's nature. The biting cold and the violence of the wind soon exhausted the small traveller. Little- john took her in his arms, and wrapped her in his plaid. For some time they kept to the highroad, but the bitter weather suggested the advisability of taking a crow-line across the Forest. 141 W. V. " You 're a jolly heavy lumpumpibus, In- fanta," Littlejohn said with a laugh ; " I think we had better try a short cut for once through the old oaks." When they got into some slight cover among the younger trees, Littlejohn paused to recover his breath. It was still blowing and snowing heavily. " Now, W. v., I think it would be as well if you knocked up some of your little green oak-men, for the Lord be good to me if I know where we are." " Vou must knock," said W. V., "but I don't think you will get any bananas." W. v. says that Littlejohn did knock and that the bark of the dog showed that the oak- man was not at home ! " I rather thought he would not be, W. v.," said Littlejohn; "they never are at home except only to the little people. We big ones have to take care of ourselves." "The oak-man said, 'Keep straight on, and you 're sure to come out at the other side,' " W. V. reminded him. "The oak-man spoke words of wisdom, Infanta," said Littlejohn. " Come along, W. 142 Her Friend Littlejohn V." And he lifted the child again in his arms. " Are you cold, my dearie-girl? " " No, only my face ; but I am so sleepy." " And so heavy, W. V. I did n't think a little girl could be so heavy. Come along, and let us try keeping straight on. The other side must be somewhere." How long he trudged on with the child in his arms and the bewildering snow beating and clotting on them both will never be known. W. V., with a spread of his plaid over her face, fell into a fitful slumber, from which she was awakened by a fall and a scramble. " You poor helpless bairn," he groaned, " have I hurt you? " W. V. was not hurt ; the snow-wreath had been too deep for that. " Well, you see, W. V., we came a lament- able cropper that time," said Littlejohn. " I think we must rest a httle, for I 'm fagged out. You see, VV. V., there is no grass to whisper, ' This way, this way ; ' and there are no furry things to say, ' Follow me ; ' and the oak-men are all asleep ; and — and, God forgive me, I don't know what to do ! " 143 W. V. "Are you crying, Uncle Big- John?" asked W. V. ; for " his voice sounded just hke as if lie was crying," she explained afterwards. " Crying ! no, my dear ; there 's no need to kiss the crystal tear away ! But, you see, I 'm tired, and it 's jolly cold and dark ; and, as Mother Earth is good to little children " He paused to see how he should be best able to make her understand. " You remember how that little girl that was lost went to sleep in a hollow of the grass and heard the Mother talking to her? Well, you must just lie snug like that, you see." "But I'm not lost." " Of course, you 're not lost. Only you must lie snug and sleep till it stops snowing, and I '11 sit beside you." Littlejohn took off his plaid and his thick tweed jacket. He wrapped the child in the latter, and half covered her with snow. With the plaid, propped up with his stick, he made a sort of tent to shelter her from the driving flakes. He then lay down beside her till she fell asleep. 144 Her Friend Littlejohn " It 's only mother, dearie ; mother cud- dHng her Uttle girl ; sleep-a-sleep." Then he must have arisen shuddering in his shirt-sleeves, and have lashed his arms again and again about his body for warmth. In the hollow in which they were found, the snow-wreath, with the exception of a narrow passage a few feet in width where they had blundered in, was impassably deep on all sides. All round and round the hollow the snow was very much trampled. Worn out with fatigue and exposure, the strong man had at last lain down beside the child. His hand was under his head. In that desperate circular race against cold and death he must have been struck by his own resemblance to the wild creatures pad- ding round and round in their cages in the Zoo, and what irony he must have felt in the counsel of the wee green oak-man. Well, he had followed the advice, had he not? And, when he awoke, would he not find that he had come out at the other side? Hours afterwards, when at last Littlejohn slowly drifted back to consciousness, he lay 10 145 W. V. staring for a moment or two with a dazed be- wildered brain. Then into his eyes there flashed a look of horror, and he struggled to pull himself together. " My God, my God, where is the Infant?" he groaned. W. V. was hurried into the room, oblivi- ously radiant. With a huge sigh Littlejohn sank back smiling, and held out his hand to her. Whereupon W. V., moving it gently aside, went up close to him and spoke, half in inquiry half in remonstrance, " You 're no^ going to be died, are you?" 146 HER BED-TIME '47 HER BED-TIME IN these winter evenings, thanks to the Great Northern, and to Hesperus who brings all things home, I reach my door- step about half-an-hour before W. V.'s bed- time. A sturdy, rosy, flaxen-haired little body opens to my well-known knock, takes a kiss on the tip of her nose, seizes my um- brella, and makes a great show of assisting me with my heavy overcoat. She leads me into the dining-room, gets my slippers, runs my bootlaces into Gordian knots in her im- petuous zeal, and announces that she has " set " the tea. At table she slips furtively on to my knee, and we are both happy till a severe voice, " Now, father ! " reminds us of the reign of law in general, and of that law in particular which enacts that it is shocking in little girls to want everything they see, 149 W. V. and most reprehensible in elderly people (I elderly !) to encourage them. We are glad to escape to the armchair, where, after I have lit my pipe and W. V. has blown the elf of flame back to fairyland, we conspire — not overtly indeed, but each in his deep mind — how we shall baffle do- mestic tyranny and evade, if but for a few brief minutes of recorded time, the cubicular moment and the inevitable hand of the bath- maiden. The critical instant occurs about half-way through my first pipe, and VV. V.'s devices for respite or escape are at once innumerable and transparently ingenious. I admit my connivance without a blush, though I may perchance weakly observe : " One sees so little of her, mother; " for how delightful it is when she sings or recites — and no one would be so rude as to interrupt a song or recitation — to watch the little hands wavin? in " the air so blue," the little fingers flick- ering above her head in imitation of the sparks at the forge, the little arms nursing an imaginary weeping dolly, the blue eyes lit up with excitement as they gaze abroad from 15° Her Bed-time the cherry-tree into the " foreign lands " beyond the garden wall. She has much to tell me about the day's doings. Yes, she has been clay-modelling. I have seen some of her marvellous baskets of fruit and birds' nests and ivy leaves; but to-day she has been doing what dear old Mother Nature did in one of her happy moods some millenniums ago — making a sea with an island in it ; and around the sea mountains, one a volcano with a crater blaz- ing with red crayon ; and a river with a bridge across it ; quite a boldly conceived and hospitable fragment of a new planet. Of course Miss Jessie helped her, but she would soon be able, all by herself, to create a new world in which there should be ever- blossoming spring and a golden age, and fairies to make the impossible common- place. W. V. does not put it in that way, but those, I fancy, would be the character- istics of a universe of her happy and inno- cent contriving. In her early art days W. V. was distinctly Darwinian. Which was the cow, and which the house, and which the lady, was always a W. V. nice question. One could differentiate with the aid of a few strokes of natural selection, but essentially they were all of the same pro- toplasm. Her explanations of her pictures afforded curious instances of the easy magic with which a breath of her little soul made all manner of dry bones live. I reproached her once with wasting paper which she had covered with a whirling scribble. " Why, father," she exclaimed with surprise, " that 's the north wind ! " Her latest masterpiece is a drawing of a stone idol ; but it is only exhibited on condition that, when you see it. you must " shake with fright." At a Kindergarten one learns, of course, many things besides clay-modelling, draw- ing, and painting : poetry, for instance, and singing, and natural history ; drill and ball- playing and dancing. And am I not curious — this with a glance at the clock which is on the stroke of seven — to hear the new verse of her last French song? Shall she recite " Purr, purr ! " or " The Swing " ? Or would it not be an agreeable change to have her sing "Up into the Cherry Tree," or "The Busy Blacksmith " ? 152 Her Bed-time Any or all of these would be indeed de- lectable, but parting is the same sweet sorrow at the last as at the first. However, we shall have one song. And after that a recitation by King Alfred ! The king is the most diminutive of china dolls dressed in green velvet. She steadies him on the table by one leg, and crouches down out of sight while he goes through his performance. The Fauntleroy hair and violet eyes are the eyes and hair of King Alfred, but the voice is the voice of W. V. When she has recited and sung I draw her between my knees and begin : " There was once a very naughty little girl, and her name was W. V." " No, father, a good little girl." " Well, there was a good little girl, and her name was Gladys." " No, father, a ^^^^ little girl called W. V." « Well, a good little girl called W. V. ; and she was ' quickly obedient ' ; and when her father said she was to go to bed, she said : 'Yes, father,' and she just fiew, and gave no trouble." " And did her father come up and kiss her ? " 153 W. V. " Why, of course, he did." A few minutes later she is kneeling on the bed with her head nestled in my breast, repeating her evening prayer : " Dear feather, whom I cannot see, Smile down from heaven on little me. Let angels through the darkness spread Their holy wings about my bed. And keep me safe, because I am The heavenly Shepherd's little lamb. Dear God our Father, watch and keep Father and mother while they sleep ; " and bless Dennis, and Ronnie, and Uncle John, and Auntie Bonnie, and Phyllis (did Phyllis used to squint when she was a baby ? Poor Phyllis !) ; and Madame, and Lucille (she is only a tiny little child ; a quarter past three years or something like that) : and Ivo and Wilfrid (he has bronchitis very badly; he can't come out this winter ; aren't you sorry for him? Really a dear little boy)." " Any one else ? " 154 Her Bed-time " Auntie Edie and Grandma. {^He will have plenty to do, won't He?) " "And ' Teach me ' " — I suggest. " Teach me to do what I am told, And help me to be good as gold." And a whisper comes from the pillow as I tuck in the eider-down : " Now He will be wondering whether I am going to be a good girl." 155 VARIOUS VERSES 157 EAST OF EDEN FAR down upon the plain the large round moon Sank red in jungle mist; but on the heights The cold clear darkness burned with restless stars : And, restless as the stars, the grim old King Paced with fierce choleric strides the mon- strous ridge Of boulders piled to make the city wall. Muttering his wrath within his cloudy beard, He moved, and paused, and turned. The starlight caught The huge bent gold that ringed his giant head, 159 W. V. Gleamed on the jewel-fringed vast lion- fells That clothed his stature, ran in dusky play Along the ponderous bronze that armed his spear. He fiercely scanned the East for signs of dawn; Then shook his clenched hand above his head, And blazed with savage eyes and brow thrown back To front the awful Presence he addressed : " Slay and make end ; or take some mortal form That I may strive with Thee ! Art Thou so strong And yet must smite me out of Thine Un- seen? Long centuries have passed since Thou didst place Thy mark upon me, lest at any time Men finding me should slay me. I have grown i6o East of Eden Feeble and hoary with the toil of years — An aged palsy — now, alas, no more That erst colossal adamant whereon Thine hand engraved its vengeance. Be Thou just, And answer when I charge Thee. Have I blenched Before Thy fury ; have I bade Thee spare ; Hath Thy long torture wrung one sob of pain. One cry of supplication from my mouth ? But Thou hast made Thyself unseen ; hast lain In ambush to afflict me. Day and night Thou hast been watchful. Thy vindictive eyes Have known no slumber. Make Thyself a man That I may seize Thee in my grips, and strive But once on equal terms with Thee — but once. Or send Thine angel with his sword of fire — But no ; not him ! Come Thou, come Thou Thyself; II i6i W. V. Come forth from Thine Invisible, and face In mortal guise the mortal Thou has plagued ! " The race of giants, sunk in heavy sleep Within the cirque of those cyclopean walls, Heard as it were far thunder in their dreams ; But answer came the^-e none from cloud or star. Then cried the aged King ; " A curse consume Thy blind night fevered with the glare of stars, Wild voices, and the agony of dreams ! Would it were day ! ^'' At last the gleam of dawn Swept in a long grey shudder from the East, Then reddened o'er the misty jungle tracts. The guards about the massive city gates Fell back with hurried whispers : " 'T is the King ! " And forth, with great white beard and gold- girt brows, Huge spear, and jewelled fells, the giant strode To slake his rage among the beasts of prey. 162 East of Eden The fierce white splendour of a tropic noon ; A sweltering waste of jungle, breathing flame ; Tiie sky one burning sapphire ! By a spring Within the shadow of a bluff of rock The hoary giant rested. At his feet The cool green mosses edged the crystal pool, And flowers of blue and gold and rose-red lulled The weary eye with colour. As he sat There rose a clamour from the sea of canes ; He. heard a crash of boughs, a rush of feet ; And, lo ! there bounded from the tangled growth A panting tiger mad with pain and rage. The beast sprang roaring, but the giant towered And pashed with one fell buffet bone and brain ; Then staggered with a groan, for, keen and swift, At that same instant from the jungle flew A shaft which to the feather pierced his frame, 163 W. V. Shrill cries of horror maddened round the bluff: " Oh, Elohim, 't is Cain the King, the King ! " And weeping, tearing hair, and wringing hands, About hiin raved his lawless giant brood. But Cain spoke slowly with a ghastly smile : " Peace, and give heed, for now I am but dead. Let no man be to blame for this my death ; Yea, swear a solemn oath that none shall harm A hair of him who gives me my release. Come hither, boy ! " And, weeping, Lamech went And stood before the face of Cain ; and Cain Who pressed a hand against his rushing wound Reddened his grandson's brow and kissed his cheek : *' The blood of Cain alight on him who lifts A hand against thy life. My spear, boys ! So. Let no foot follow. Cain must die alone. Let no man seek me till ye see in heaven A sign, and know that Cain is dead." 164 East of Eden He smiled, And from the hollow of his hand let fall A crimson rain upon the crystal spring, Which caught the blood in glassy ripple and whirl, And reddened moss and boulder. Swift of stride, With gold-girt brow thrown back to front the Unseen, The hoary giant through the jungle waste Plunged, muttering in his beard ; and on- ward pressed Through the deep tangle of the trackless growth To reach some lair, where hidden and un- heard His savage soul in its last strife might cope With God — perchance one moment visible. A sweltering tract of jungle, breathing flame ; A fiery silence ; all the depth of heaven One blinding sapphire ! Watching by the cliff, The giant brood stood waiting for the sign. 165 W. V. Behold ! a speck, high in the blazing blue, Hung black — a single speck above the waste ; Hung poised an hour ; then dropped through leagues of air, Plumb as a stone ; and as it dropped they saw Through leagues of high blue air, to north and south, To east and west, black specks that sprang from space. And then long sinuous lines of distant spots Which flew converging — growing, as they flew, To slanting streams and palpitating swarm? ; Which flew converging out of all the heavens. And blackened, as they flew, the sapphire blaze, And jarred the fiery hush with winnowing wings ; Which flew converging on a single point Deep in the jungle waste, and, as they swooped, Paused in the last long slide with dangling claws. Then dropped like stone. Thus knew the giant brood That Cain was dead. 166 East of Eden Beside a swamp they found Hoar hair, a litter of white colossal bones, Ensanguined shreds of jewelled lion-fells, The huge gold crown and ponderous spear of Cain, And, fixed between the ribs, the fatal shaft Which Lamech shot unwitting ; but against The life of Lamech no man lifted hand. 167 GOODWIN SANDS DID you ever read or hear How the Aid — (God bless the Aid! More earnest prayer than that was never prayed.) How the lifeboat, Aid of Ramsgate, saved the London Fusilier ? With a hundred souls on board, With a hundred and a score, — She was fast on Goodwin Sands. — (May the Lord Have pity on all hands — Crew and captain — when a ship *s on Goodwin Sands !) 1 68 Goodwin Sands In the smother and the roar Of a very hell of waters — hard and fast — She shook beneath the stroke Of each billow as it broke, And the clouds of spray were mingled with the clouds of swirling smoke As the blazing barrels bellowed in the blast ! And the women and the little ones were frozen dumb with fear ; And the strong men waited grimly for the last ; When — as clocks were striking two in Ramsgate town — The little Aid came down, The Aid, the plucky Aid — The Aid flew down the gale With the glimmer of the moon upon her sail; And the people thronged to leeward ; stared and prayed — Prayed and stared with tearless eye and breathless lip, While the little boat drew near. Ay, and then there rose a shout — 169 W. V. A clamour, half a sob and half a cheer — As the boatmen flung the lifeboat anchor out, And the gallant Aid sheered in beneath the ship. Beneath the shadow of the London Fusilier! " We can carry ?nay be thirty at a trip " (Hurrah for Ramsgate town ! ) " Quick, the women and the children / " O'er the side Two sailors, slung in bowlines, hung to help the women down — Poor women, shrinking back in their dismay- As they saw their ark of refuge, smothered up in spray, Ranging wildly this and that way in the rac- ing of the tide ; As they watched it rise and drop, with its crew of stalwart men, When a huge sea swung it upward to the bulwarks of the ship, And, sweeping by in thunder, sent it plung- ing down again. 170 Goodwin Sands Still they shipped them — nine-and-tvventy. (God be blessed ! ) When a man with glaring eyes Rushed up frantic to the gangway with a cry choked in his throat — Thrust a bundle in a sailor's ready hands. Honest Jack, he understands — Why, a blanket for a woman in the boat ! "Catch it, Bilir' And he flung it with a will ; And the boatman turned and caught it, bless him ! — caught it, tho' it slipped, And, even as he caught it, heard an infant's cries, While a woman shrieked, and snatched it to her breast — " My baby ! " So the thirtieth passenger was shipped ! Twice, and thrice, and yet again Flew the lifeboat down the gale With the moonlight on her sail — With the sunrise on her sail — 171 W. V. (God bless the lifeboat Aid and all her men !) Brought her thirty at a trip Thro' the hell of Goodwin waters as they raged around the ship, Saved each soul aboard the London Fusilier ! If you live to be a hundred, you will ne'er — You will ne'er in all your life, Until you die, my dear, Be nearer to your death by land or sea 1 Was she there? Who ? — my wife ? Why, the baby in the blanket — that was she ! 17: TRAFALGAR OTHE merry bells of Chester, ancient Chester on the Dee ! On that glittering autumn morning, eighteen five. Every Englishman was glad to be alive. It was good to breathe this English air, to see English earth, with autumn field and redden- ing tree, And to hear the bells of Chester, ancient Chester on the Dee. 173 W. V. For like morning-stars together, sweet and shrill, In a blithe recurrent cycle Sang St. Peter and St. Michael, John the Baptist and St. Mary on the Hill ; And the quick exulting changes of their peal Made the heavens above them laugh, and the jubilant city reel. In the streets the crowds were cheering. Like a shout From each spire the bickering bunting rol- licked out. O that buoyant autumn morning, eighteen five, Every Englishman rejoiced to be alive ; And the heart of England throbbed from sea to sea As the joy-bells clashed in Chester, jovial Chester on the Dee. Hark, in pauses of the revel — sole and slow — Old St. Werburgh swung a heavy note of woe ! 174 Trafalgar Hark, between the jocund peals a single toll, Stern and muffled, marked the passing of a soul ! English hearts were sad that day as sad could be ; English eyes so filled with tears they scarce could see ; And all the joy was dashed with grief in ancient Chester on the Dee ! Loss and triumph — joy and sorrow! Far away Drave the great fight's wreckage down Trafalgar Bay-. O that glorious autumn morning, eighteen five. Every Englishman was proud to be alive ! For the power of France was broken on the sea — But ten sail left of her thirty sail and three. Yet sad were English men as sad could be, For that, somewhere o'er the foreign wave, they knew Home to English ground and grass the dust of Nelson drew. 175 W. V. Would to God that on that morning, eighteen five, England's greatest man of all had been alive, If but to breathe this English air, to see English earth, with autumn field and yellow- ing tree, And to hear the bells of Chester, joyful Chester on the Dee ! 176 VIGNETTES 177 THE WANDERER I MET a waif i' the hills at close of day. He begged an alms ; I thought to say him nay. What was he? " Sir, a little dust," said he, " Which Ufe blows up and down, and death will lay." I gave — for love of beast and hill and tree, And all the dust that has been and shall be. 179 THE WANDERER n HE knows no home ; he only knows Hunger and cold and pain ; The four winds are his bedfellows ; His sleep is dashed with rain. 'T is naught to him who fails, who thrives ; He neither hopes nor fears ; Some dim primeval impulse drives His footsteps down the years. 180 The Wanderer He could not, if he would, forsake Lone road and field and tree. Yet, think ! it takes a God to make E'en such a waif as he. And once a maiden, asked for bread, Saw, as she gave her dole, No friendless vagrant, but, instead. An indefeasible Soul, i8i THE SCARECROW HAIL Goodman-gossip of the com ! When boughs are green and furrows sprout And blossom muffles every thorn, Poor soul ! the farmer boards him out. Men think, grim wight, his rags affright The winged thieves from root and ear ; But on his hat pert sparrows light — Crows have been friends too long to fear ! The schoolboy's sling he heedeth not ; No rancour nerves those palsied hands ; In shocking hat and ancient coat, A crazed and patient wretch he stands. 182 The Scarecrow Without a murmur in the wheat, Till fields are shorn aftd harvest 's won, He suffers cold, he suffers heat, From chilly stars ap4 scorching sun. Though men forget, he dreameth yet How in the golden past he stood, 'Mid flowers and wine, a shape divine Of marble or of carven wood ; How, in the loveliness and peace Of that blithe age and radiant clime, He was a garden-god of Greece. Oh, vanished world ! Oh, fleeting time ! Gaunt simulacrum — ghost forlorn — Grey exile from a splendid past — Last god (in rags) of a creed outworn — If pity '11 help thee, mine thou hast ! 183 THE HAUNTED BRIDGE WITH high-pitCi-^d arch, low parapet, And narrow thoroughfare, it stands As strong as when the mortar set Beneath the Roman mason's hands. An ancient ivy grips its walls, Tall grasses tuft its coping-stones ; Beneath, through citron shadow, falls The stream in drowsy undertones. 184 The Haunted Bridge No road leads hence. The stonechat flits Along green fallow grey with stone ; But here a dark- eyed urchin sits, To whom the Painted Men were known. Hush ! do not move, but only look. When sunny days are long and fine This Roman truant baits a hook, Drops o'er the keystone here a line. And, dangling sandalled feet, looks down To see the swift trout dart and gleam — Or scarcely see them, hanging brown With heads against the clear brown stream. 185 THE STONE AGE ''T^WAS not a vision ! Yet the oak J. O'erarched the paleolithic Age ; And homesteads of a pigmy folk Were clustered 'neath its foliage. Secreted in that sylvan space, To archaeologist unknown, Stood, reared by some untutored race, Strange rings and avenues of stone. The little thorp deserted seemed ; What prey had lured the tribe afar? One figure, lingering, sat and dreamed, As lonely as the evening star. i86 The Stone Age Bright-haired, blue-eyed, with naked feet, And young face ht with rosy blood. She rocked her babe, and dreamed the sweet Primeval dream of motherhood. A wondrous babe, that once had grown A branch among the branches green - For nurslings of the Age of Stone Are mainly bairns of wood, I ween. A mother strangely young, and sage Beyond the summers she had told. For mothers of that ancient Age Are usually five years old. God bless thy heart maternal, bless Thy bower of stone, thy sheltering tree. Thou small prospective ancestress Of generations yet to be ! 187 SEA-PICTURES BLITHE morning ; sun and sea ! Zone beyond zone, Blue frolic waves and gold clouds softly blown. One half the globe a sapphire glass which swings DoubUng the sun. No sail. No wink of wings. No haze of land. 1 88 Sea-Pictures Look ! who comes wafted here — What lone yet all unfearful mariner? You cannot see him ? No ; he mocks the sight — Mid such immensities so mere a mite. Look close ! That tiniest speck of brownish red, Perched on his single subtle spider-thread ! Trust, little aeronaut, thy filmy sail. Blow wind ! the reef and palm-tree shall not fail. 189 SEA-PICTURES II ENORMOUS sea ; immeasurable night .' The shoreless waters, heaving spec- tral-white, Vibrate with showers and chains of golden sparks. The black boat leaves a track of flame. Beneath Run trails of blazing em^ald, where the sharks Cross and re-cross. In many a starry wreath Innumerable medusae shine and float. igo Sea-Pictures Great luminaries, through the blue-green air, Gleam on the face of one who slowly dies. All through the night two cavernous glazed eyes Look blankly upward in a rigid stare. O Father in heaven, he cannot speak Thy name ; Take pity for the sake of Christ, Thy son ! There is no answer, none. No answer, none. Crossing, re-crossing underneath the boat, The lean sharks w^eave their web of emerald flame. 191 MOONLIGHT SWEET moon, endreaming tower and tree, Is thy pathetic radiance thrown From ice-cold wealds and cirques of stone — Hush'd moors where life has ceased to be ? Did grass, long ages back, and flowers Grow there ? Did living waters run ? Did happy creatures bless the sun And greet with joy this world of ours ? 192 Moonlight And, earlier yet, in one starred zone. Did this bright planet sweep through space Glebe of our glebe, race of our race — A part and parcel of our own? O moonlight silvering tower and tree ! O part of my world torn away, Part of my life, now lifeless clay, My dead, shine too — shine down on me 13 193 GREEN PASTURES WHEN springing meads are freshly dight, And trees new-leafed throw scarce a shadow, The green earth shows no fairer sight Than soft- eyed kine and blowing meadow. Too calm for care, too slow for mirth, Amid the shower, amid the gleam, The great mild mother-creatures seem Half-waking forms o' the dreamy earth. 194 Green Pastures And down the pathway through the grass To school the merry children pass, Singing a rhyme in the April morns, How — There ^s red for the furrows, and white for the daisies, Brown eyes for the brooks, for the trees crumpled horns ! When quivering leaves, and oes of light Between the leaves, the deep sward dapple, When may-boughs cream in curdling white. And maids envy the bloom o' the apple, The great mild mother-creatures lie, And grow, in absence of the sun. One with the moon and stars, and one With silvery cloud and darkest sky. And down the pathway through the grass To school the merry children pass. Singing a rhyme in the morns of June, How — There 's white for the cloudlets, and black for the darkness. And tivo polished horns for the sweet sickle moon. 19s THE LITTLE DIPPER LITFLE Dipper, piping sweet in the shrewd mid- winter weather ; Nesting in the linn, where spray splashes nest and sprinkles feather ; 'Neath the fringes of the ice, down the burn-side, blithely diving; Piping, piping with full throat, — bite the frost or be snow driving : Life's white winter comes apace ; oh, but gaily shall I bide it If my bosom, like thy nest, house a singing-bird inside it ! 196 IN THE HILLS HIS hoar breath stings with rime the skater's face. Mirrored in jet, beneath his hissing feet, The stars swarm past, and radiate as they fleet, The immemorial cold of cosmic space. 197 NATURE'S MAGIC GIVE her the wreckage of strife — Tumulus, tumbled tower, Each clod and each stone she '11 make her own With the grass and innocent flower. Give her the Candlemas snow, Smiling she '11 take the gift. And out of the flake a snowdrop make, And a lambkin out of the drift. 198 APRIL VOICES THE birches of your London square " Have leafed into an emerald haze " ? Then come — you promised ; come and share The fuller spring of our last April days. The ash, who wastes whole golden weeks in doubt, The very ash is long since out ; The apple-boughs are muffled — do but think ! — With crowded bloom of maid's blush, white and pink ; The whins are all ablaze ! 199 W. V. Picture the pigeons tumbling in bright air ! Fancy the jet-eyed squirrel on the bough ! Leave the poor birches in your London square ; The spring and we await you here, and now. Beneath our old world thatch your puise shall beat To the large-leisured rhythm of wood- land ease ; No feverish hurry haunts our otiose trees ; Your slumber shall be sweet. The little brown bird's nest, The four blue eggs beneath the patient breast. The lambkin's baby face, The joy of liquid air And azure space — Are these not better than your dingy square, 200 April Voices Your mazes of inhospitable stone, Your crowds who cannot call their souls their own, Your Dance of Life-in-death ? Come to the fields, where Toil draws whole- some breath, And Indigence still keeps her apron white. Enough that you arrive too late to hear The migrants in the night ! When wild March winds have dropt, and all is still, A spirit-touch unseals the dreaming eyes; One starts, and, leaning from the window- sill. Catches the liquid notes, heard fine and clear In hushed dark skies. How pleasant had it been to watch with you. Day after day, The fairy flowering of the hawthorn spray ! 20I W. V. Each thorn upon the stem Protects one rose-tipped, green-and- golden gem ; A bud, a thorn ! — 't is thus the whole tree through. No, — where in tender shoots the branches end There is no spear ! But bud and bud and bud are crowded here ; 'T is Nature's cue To lavish most what least she can defend. Come to the woods and see How in the warm wet sunny mist of mom Green leaves, like thoughts in dreamful hours, are born, And in the mist birds pipe on every tree. Come, and the mossy boulder on the hill Shall teach what beauty springs of sitting still. The world's work ! Is the life not more than meat? And is this shrill immitigable strife, This agony of existence, Ufe ? 202 April Voices The good earth calls with voices strangely sweet ; Come to your mother earth — th* old English earth, The ruddy mother of a mighty race — Dear ruddy earth, with early wheat Pale green on plough ridge and with kindly grass New sprung in fields that take no care ! Come to the friends who love your eager face ; Come share our rustic peace, our frugal mirth ; Come, and restrict for once your happy Muse To the four hundred words we yokels use For life and love and death — why all the lore Of ancient Egypt hardly needed more ! Will London miss her poet ? There, alas ! No man is missed. Come make our roof your own, And leave the birches dreaming in your square Of forests far beyond the maze of stone. 20' GREEN SKY GREY on the linden leaves ; Green in the west ; Under our gloaming eaves Swifts in the nest ; Over the mother a human roof; Over the fledglings a breast. 204 SUB UMBRA CRUCIS 205 THE SHEPHERD BEAUTIFUL OFT as I muse on Rome — and at her name Out of the darkness, flushed with blood and gold, Smoulders and flashes on her seven- fold height The imperial, murderous, harlot Rome of old, Rome of the lions, Rome of the awful light Where " living torches " flame — I thread in thought the Catacombs' blind maze, Marvelling how men could then draw happy breath, And cheer these sunless labyrinths of death With one sweet dream of Christ told many ways. 207 W. V. The Shepherd Beautiful! O good and sweet, O Shepherd ever lovely, ever young, Was it because they gathered at Thy feet, Because upon Thy pastoral pipe they hung. That they were happy in those evil days, That these grim crypts were arched with heavenly blue, And spaced in verdurous vistas lit with streams ? Ah, let me count the ways, Fair Shepherd of the world, in which they drew Thee in that most divine of human dreams. They limned Thee standing near the wattled shed, The strayed sheep on Thy shoulders, and the flock Bleating fond welcome. Seasons of the year — Spring gathering roses swung athwart the rock, 208 The Shepherd Beautiful Summer and Autumn, one with golden ear, And one with apple red, And shrivel' d Winter burning in a heap Dead leaves — they pictured round Thee ; for they said, " All the year round " — and joyous tears were shed — " All the year round. Thou, Shepherd, lov'st Thy sheep." Sometimes they showed Thee piping in the shade Music so sweet each mouth was raised from grass And ceased to hunger. In some dewy glade Where the cool waters ran as clear as glass. To this or that one Thou would'st seem to say, " Thou 'st made me glad, be happy thou in turn ! " And sometimes Thou would'st sit in weariness — My Shepherd ! " qu(zrens me 14 209 K W. V. Sedisti lassus " — while Thy dog would yearn, Eyes fixed on Thee, aware of Thy distress. So limned they Christ 3 and bold, yet not too bold, Smiled at the tyrant's torch, the lion's cry ; So nursed the child-like heart, the angelic mind, Goodwill to live, and fortitude to die, And love for men, and hope for all mankind. One Shepherd and one fold ! Such was their craving; none should be forbid ; All — all were Christ's ! And so they drew once more The Shepherd Beautiful. But now He bore No lamb upon His shoulders — just a kid. 210 THE MOSS WHEN black despair beats down my wings, And heavenly visions fade away — Lord, let me bend to common things, The tasks of every day ; As, when th' aurora is denied And blinding blizzards round him beat. The Samoyad stoops, and takes for guide The moss beneath his feet. 211 A CAROL THIS gospel sang the angels bright : Lord Jhesu shall be born this night ; Born not in house nor yet in hall, Wrapped not in purple nor iti pall, Rocked not in silver, neither gold ; This word the angels sang of old ; Nor christened with white ivitie ?ior red ; This word of old the angels said Of Him which holdeth in His hand The strong sea and green land. 212 A Carol This thrice and four times happy night - These tidings sang the angels bright — Forlorn, betwixen ear and horn, A babe shall Jhesu Lord be born, A weeping babe in all the cold ; — This word the angels sang of old — And wisps of hay shall be his bed; This word of old the angels said Of Him which keepeth in His hand The strong sea and green land. O babe and Lord, Thou Jhesu bright, — Let all and some now sing this night — Betwixt our sorrow and our sin. Be thou new-born our hearts within ; New-born, dear babe and little King, So letten some and all men sing — To wipe for us our tears away ! This night so letten all men say Of Him which spake, and lo ! they be — The green land and strong sea. 213 WHEN SNOW LIES DEEP TT THEN frost has burned the hedges VV black, And children cannot sleep for cold ; When snow lies deep on the withered leaves, And roofs are white from ridge to eaves ; When bread is dear, and work is slack, Take pity on the poor and old ! The faggot and the loaf of bread You could not miss would be their store. Upon how little the old can live ! Give like the poor — who freely give. Remember, when the fire burns red The wolf leaves sniffing at the door. 214 When Snow Lies Deep And you whose lives are left forlorn, Whose sons, whose hopes, whose fires have died. Oh, you poor pitiful people old. Remember this and be consoled — That Christ the Comforter was born, And still is born, in wintertide. 215 "TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS" CHAINED to the dungeon-wall she slept. Rome, moonlit, revelled overhead. She heard not. She had prayed and wept, Haggard with anguish, wild with dread. She was too fair, too young to die ; Life was too sweet, and home too dear ! God touch'd her with His sleep : a sigh — And she had ceased to weep or fear ! She slept, and, sleeping, seemed awake A fair Child held her virgin hand ; They walk'd by an enchanted lake ; They walk'd in a celestial land. 216 " Trees of Righteousness " One thing she saw, and one she heard. There were a thousand red-rose trees ; Each rose-red leaf sang like a bird, " What trees, dear Child," she asked, "are these?" " These," said the Child, " are called Love's Bower ; They fade not ; constantly they sing ; Each flower appears more fire than flower. Now, see the roots from which they spring ! " She looked ; she saw, far down the night, The earth, the city whence she came. And Nero's gardens red with light — The light of martyrs wrapped in flame. She woke with Heaven still in her eyes. Rome, moonlit, revelled overhead. She feared no more the lions' cries ; Flames were but flowers, and death was dead ! 217 I THE COMRADES N solitary rooms, when dusk is falling, I hear from fields beyond the haunted mountains. Beyond the unrepenetrable forests, — I hear the voices of my comrades calling, " Home ! home ! home ! " Strange ghostly voices, when the dusk is falling. Come from the ancient years ; and I remember The schoolboy shout, from plain and wood and river. The signal-cry of scattered comrades, calling, " Home ! home ! home ! " 218 The Comrades And home we wended when the dusk was falling ; The pledged companions, talking, laugh- ing, singing ; Home through the grey French country, no one missing. And now I hear the old-time voices calling, " Home ! home ! home ! " I pause and listen while the dusk is falling ; My heart leaps back through all the long estrangement Of changing faith, lost hopes, paths dis- enchanted ; And tears drop as I hear the voices calling, " Home ! home ! home ! " I hear you while the dolorous dusk is falling ; I sigh your names — the living — the departed ! O vanished comrades, is it yours the poignant Pathetic note among the voices calling, " Home, home, home "? 219 W. V. Call, and still call me, for the dusk is falling. Call for I fain, I fain would come, but cannot. Call, as the shepherd calls upon the moorland. Though mute, with beating heart I hear your calling, " Home ! home ! home ! " 2ZO *' CRYING ABBA, FATHER " ABBA, in Thine eternal years Bethink Thee of our fleeting day ; We are but clay ; Bear with our foolish joys, our foolish tears, And all the wilfulness with which we pray ! I have a little maid who, when she leaves Her father and her father's threshold, grieves. But being gone, and life all holiday, Forgets my love and me straightway ; Yet, when I write. Kisses my letters, dancing with delight, 221 W. V. Cries " Dearest father ! " and in all her glee For one brief live-long hour remembers me. Shall I in anger punish or reprove ? Nay, this is natural ; she cannot guess How one forgotten feels forgetfulness ; And I am glad thinking of her glad face, And send her little tokens of my love. And Thou — wouldst Thou be wroth in such a case? And crying Abba, I am fain To think no human father's heart Can be so tender as Thou art, So quick to feel our love, to feel our pain. When she is froward, querulous or wild, Thou knowest, Abba, how in each offence I stint not patience lest I wrong the child. Mistaking for revolt defect of sense. For wilfulness mere spriteliness of mind ; Thou know'st how often, seeing, I am blind ; How when I turn her face against the wall 222 " Crying Abba, Father " And leave her in disgrace, And will not look at her or speak at all, I long to speak and long to see her face ; And how, when twice, for something grievous done, I could but smite, and though I lightly smote, I felt my heart rise strangling in my throat ; And when she wept I kissed the poor red hands. All these things. Father, a father understands ; And am not I Thy son? Abba, in Thine eternal years Bethink Thee of our fleeting day ; From all the rapture of our eyes and ears How shall we tear ourselves away? At night my little one says nay, With prayers implores, entreats with tears For ten more flying minutes' play ; How shall we tear ourselves away? Yet call, and I '11 surrender The flower of soul and sense. Life's passion and its splendour, In quick obedience. 223 W. V. If not without the blameless human tears By eyes which slowly glaze and darken shed, Yet without questionings or fears For those I leave behind when I am dead. Thou, Abba, know'st how dear My little child's poor playthings are to her ; What love and joy She has in every darling doll and precious toy ; Yet when she stands between my knees To kiss good-night, she does not sob in sorrow, " Oh, father, do not break or injure these ! " She knows that I shall fondly lay them by For happiness to-morrow ; So leaves them trustfully. And shall not I ? Whatever darkness gather O'er coverlet or pall. Since Thou art Abba, Father, Why should I fear at all? Thou 'st seen how closely, Abba, when at rest My child's head nestles to my breast ; 224 "Crying Abba, Father" And how my arm her Uttle form enfolds, Lest in the darkness she should feel alone ; And how she holds My hands, my hands, my two hands in her own ? A little easeful sighing And restful turning round, And I too, on Thy love relying, Shall slumber sound. 225 THIS grace vouchsafe me for the rhymes I write. If any last, nor perish quick and quite, Lord, let them be My little images, to stand for me When I may stand no longer in Thy sight : Like those old statues of the King who said, " Carve me in that which needs nor sleep nor bread ; Let diorite pray, A King of stone, for this poor King of clay Who wearies often and must soon be dead ! " 226 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. RECD ID-Ult MAYZ? AUG 3 >^^^ J ^ Form L9-25»i-9,'47(A5618)444 rm LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES PR 4/4.15 Ca nt on - C2i The invisible 3 1158 00937 767 playmat e and W. V. her book. IUTpwO l/sp^^i E^A. ■frii fii> PR 4415 C2i