Country Sentiment Read online

  What's in that cupboard, Mary?

  And this time tell me true.

  Mary

  White clothes for an unborn baby, mother,

  But what's the truth to you?

  THE BEACON.

  The silent shepherdess,

  She of my vows,

  Here with me exchanging love

  Under dim boughs.

  Shines on our mysteries

  A sudden spark--

  "Dout the candle, glow-worm,

  Let all be dark.

  "The birds have sung their last notes,

  The Sun's to bed,

  Glow-worm, dout your candle."

  The glow-worm said:

  "I also am a lover;

  The lamp I display

  Is beacon for my true love

  Wandering astray.

  "Through the thick bushes

  And the grass comes she

  With a heartload of longing

  And love for me.

  "Sir, enjoy your fancy,

  But spare me harm,

  A lover is a lover,

  Though but a worm."

  POT AND KETTLE.

  Come close to me, dear Annie, while I bind a lover's knot.

  A tale of burning love between a kettle and a pot.

  The pot was stalwart iron and the kettle trusty tin,

  And though their sides were black with smoke they bubbled love within.

  Forget that kettle, Jamie, and that pot of boiling broth,

  I know a dismal story of a candle and a moth.

  For while your pot is boiling and while your kettle sings

  My moth makes love to candle flame and burns away his wings.

  Your moth, I envy, Annie, that died by candle flame,

  But here are two more lovers, unto no damage came.

  There was a cuckoo loved a clock and found her always true.

  For every hour they told their hearts, "Ring! ting! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

  As the pot boiled for the kettle, as the kettle for the pot,

  So boils my love within me till my breast is glowing hot.

  As the moth died for the candle, so could I die for you.

  And my fond heart beats time with yours and cries, "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

  GHOST RADDLED.

  "Come, surly fellow, come! A song!"

  What, madmen? Sing to you?

  Choose from the clouded tales of wrong

  And terror I bring to you.

  Of a night so torn with cries,

  Honest men sleeping

  Start awake with glaring eyes,

  Bone-chilled, flesh creeping.

  Of spirits in the web hung room

  Up above the stable,

  Groans, knockings in the gloom,

  The dancing table.

  Of demons in the dry well

  That cheep and mutter,

  Clanging of an unseen bell,

  Blood choking the gutter.

  Of lust frightful, past belief,

  Lurking unforgotten,

  Unrestrainable endless grief

  From breasts long rotten.

  A song? What laughter or what song

  Can this house remember?

  Do flowers and butterflies belong

  To a blind December?

  NEGLECTFUL EDWARD.

  Nancy

  "Edward back from the Indian Sea,

  What have you brought for Nancy?"

  Edward

  "A rope of pearls and a gold earring,

  And a bird of the East that will not sing.

  A carven tooth, a box with a key--"

  Nancy

  "God be praised you are back," says she,

  "Have you nothing more for your Nancy?"

  Edward

  "Long as I sailed the Indian Sea

  I gathered all for your fancy:

  Toys and silk and jewels I bring,

  And a bird of the East that will not sing:

  What more can you want, dear girl, from me?"

  Nancy

  "God be praised you are back," said she,

  "Have you nothing better for Nancy?"

  Edward

  "Safe and home from the Indian Sea,

  And nothing to take your fancy?"

  Nancy

  "You can keep your pearls and your gold earring,

  And your bird of the East that will not sing,

  But, Ned, have you nothing more for me

  Than heathenish gew-gaw toys?" says she,

  "Have you nothing better for Nancy?"

  THE WELL-DRESSED CHILDREN.

  Here's flowery taffeta for Mary's new gown:

  Here's black velvet, all the rage, for Dick's birthday coat.

  Pearly buttons for you, Mary, all the way down,

  Lace ruffles, Dick, for you; you'll be a man of note.

  Mary, here I've bought you a green gingham shade

  And a silk purse brocaded with roses gold and blue,

  You'll learn to hold them proudly like colours on parade.

  No banker's wife in all the town half so grand as you.

  I've bought for young Diccon a long walking-stick,

  Yellow gloves, well tanned, at Woodstock village made.

  I'll teach you to flourish 'em and show your name is DICK,

  Strutting by your sister's side with the same parade.

  On Sunday to church you go, each with a book of prayer:

  Then up the street and down the aisles, everywhere you'll see

  Of all the honours paid around, how small is Virtue's share.

  How large the share of Vulgar Pride in peacock finery.

  THUNDER AT NIGHT.

  Restless and hot two children lay

  Plagued with uneasy dreams,

  Each wandered lonely through false day

  A twilight torn with screams.

  True to the bed-time story, Ben

  Pursued his wounded bear,

  Ann dreamed of chattering monkey men,

  Of snakes twined in her hair...

  Now high aloft above the town

  The thick clouds gather and break,

  A flash, a roar, and rain drives down:

  Aghast the young things wake.

  Trembling for what their terror was,

  Surprised by instant doom,

  With lightning in the looking glass,

  Thunder that rocks the room.

  The monkeys' paws patter again,

  Snakes hiss and flash their eyes:

  The bear roars out in hideous pain:

  Ann prays: her brother cries.

  They cannot guess, could not be told

  How soon comes careless day,

  With birds and dandelion gold,

  Wet grass, cool scents of May.

  TO E.M.--A BALLAD OF NURSERY RHYME.

  Strawberries that in gardens grow

  Are plump and juicy fine,

  But sweeter far as wise men know

  Spring from the woodland vine.

  No need for bowl or silver spoon,

  Sugar or spice or cream,

  Has the wild berry plucked in June

  Beside the trickling stream.

  One such to melt at the tongue's root,

  Confounding taste with scent,

  Beats a full peck of garden fruit:

  Which points my argument.

  May sudden justice overtake

  And snap the froward pen,

  That old and palsied poets shake

  Against the minds of men.

  Blasphemers trusting to hold caught

  In far-flung webs of ink,

  The utmost ends of human thought

  Till nothing's left to think.

  But may the gift of heavenly peace

  And glory for all time

  Keep the boy Tom who tending geese

  First made the nursery rhyme.

  By the brookside one August day,

  Using the sun for clock,

  Tom whiled the
languid hours away

  Beside his scattering flock.

  Carving with a sharp pointed stone

  On a broad slab of slate

  The famous lives of Jumping Joan,

  Dan Fox and Greedy Kate.

  Rhyming of wolves and bears and birds,

  Spain, Scotland, Babylon,

  That sister Kate might learn the words

  To tell to toddling John.

  But Kate who could not stay content

  To learn her lesson pat

  New beauty to the rough lines lent

  By changing this or that.

  And she herself set fresh things down

  In corners of her slate,

  Of lambs and lanes and London town.

  God's blessing fall on Kate!

  The baby loved the simple sound,

  With jolly glee he shook,

  And soon the lines grew smooth and round

  Like pebbles in Tom's brook.

  From mouth to mouth told and retold

  By children sprawled at ease,

  Before the fire in winter's cold,

  in June, beneath tall trees.

  Till though long lost are stone and slate,

  Though the brook no more runs,

  And dead long time are Tom, John, Kate,

  Their sons and their sons' sons.

  Yet as when Time with stealthy tread

  Lays the rich garden waste

  The woodland berry ripe and red

  Fails not in scent or taste,

  So these same rhymes shall still be told

  To children yet unborn,

  While false philosophy growing old

  Fades and is killed by scorn.

  JANE.

  As Jane walked out below the hill,

  She saw an old man standing still,

  His eyes in tranced sorrow bound

  On the broad stretch of barren ground.

  His limbs were knarled like aged trees,

  His thin beard wrapt about his knees,

  His visage broad and parchment white,

  Aglint with pale reflected light.

  He seemed a creature fall'n afar

  From some dim planet or faint star.

  Jane scanned him very close, and soon

  Cried, "'Tis the old man from the moon."

  He raised his voice, a grating creak,

  But only to himself would speak.

  Groaning with tears in piteous pain,

  "O! O! would I were home again."

  Then Jane ran off, quick as she could,

  To cheer his heart with drink and food.

  But ah, too late came ale and bread,

  She found the poor soul stretched stone-dead.

  And a new moon rode overhead.

  VAIN AND CARELESS.

  Lady, lovely lady,

  Careless and gay!

  Once when a beggar called

  She gave her child away.

  The beggar took the baby,

  Wrapped it in a shawl,

  "Bring her back," the lady said,

  "Next time you call."

  Hard by lived a vain man,

  So vain and so proud,

  He walked on stilts

  To be seen by the crowd.

  Up above the chimney pots,

  Tall as a mast,

  And all the people ran about

  Shouting till he passed.

  "A splendid match surely,"

  Neighbours saw it plain,

  "Although she is so careless,

  Although he is so vain."

  But the lady played bobcherry,

  Did not see or care,

  As the vain man went by her

  Aloft in the air.

  This gentle-born couple

  Lived and died apart.

  Water will not mix with oil,

  Nor vain with careless heart.

  NINE O'CLOCK.

  I.

  Nine of the clock, oh!

  Wake my lazy head!

  Your shoes of red morocco,

  Your silk bed-gown:

  Rouse, rouse, speck-eyed Mary

  In your high bed!

  A yawn, a smile, sleepy-starey,

  Mary climbs down.

  "Good-morning to my brothers,

  Good-day to the Sun,

  Halloo, halloo to the lily-white sheep

  That up the mountain run."

  II.

  Good-night to the meadow, farewell to the nine o'clock Sun,

  "He loves me not, loves me, he loves me not" (O jealous one!)

  "He loves me, he loves me not, loves me"--O soft nights of June,

  A bird sang for love on the cherry-bough: up swam the Moon.

  THE PICTURE BOOK.

  When I was not quite five years old

  I first saw the blue picture book,

  And Fraulein Spitzenburger told

  Stories that sent me hot and cold;

  I loathed it, yet I had to look:

  It was a German book.

  I smiled at first, for she'd begun

  With a back-garden broad and green,

  And rabbits nibbling there: page one

  Turned; and the gardener fired his gun

  From the low hedge: he lay unseen

  Behind: oh, it was mean!

  They're hurt, they can't escape, and so

  He stuffs them head-down in a sack,

  Not quite dead, wriggling in a row,

  And Fraulein laughed, "Ho, ho! Ho, ho!"

  And gave my middle a hard smack,

  I wish that I'd hit back.

  Then when I cried she laughed again;

  On the next page was a dead boy

  Murdered by robbers in a lane;

  His clothes were red with a big stain

  Of blood, he held a broken toy,

  The poor, poor little boy!

  I had to look: there was a town

  Burning where every one got caught,

  Then a fish pulled a nigger down

  Into the lake and made him drown,

  And a man killed his friend; they fought

  For money, Fraulein thought.

  Old Fraulein laughed, a horrid noise.

  "Ho, ho!" Then she explained it all

  How robbers kill the little boys

  And torture them and break their toys.

  Robbers are always big and tall:

  I cried: I was so small.

  How a man often kills his wife,

  How every one dies in the end

  By fire, or water or a knife.

  If you're not careful in this life,

  Even if you can trust your friend,

  You won't have long to spend.

  I hated it--old Fraulein picked

  Her teeth, slowly explaining it.

  I had to listen, Fraulein licked

  Her fingers several times and flicked

  The pages over; in a fit

  Of rage I spat at it...

  And lying in my bed that night

  Hungry, tired out with sobs, I found

  A stretch of barren years in sight,

  Where right is wrong, but strength is right,

  Where weak things must creep underground,

  And I could not sleep sound.

  THE PROMISED LULLABY.

  Can I find True-Love a gift

  In this dark hour to restore her,

  When body's vessel breaks adrift,

  When hope and beauty fade before her?

  But in this plight I cannot think

  Of song or music, that would grieve her,

  Or toys or meat or snow-cooled drink;

  Not this way can her sadness leave her.

  She lies and frets in childish fever,

  All I can do is but to cry

  "Sleep, sleep, True-Love and lullaby!"

  Lullaby, and sleep again.

  Two bright eyes through the window stare,

  A nose is flattened on the pane

  And
infant fingers fumble there.

  "Not yet, not yet, you lovely thing,

  But count and come nine weeks from now,

  When winter's tail has lost the sting,

  When buds come striking through the bough,

  Then here's True-Love will show you how

  Her name she won, will hush your cry

  With "Sleep, my baby! Lullaby!"

  RETROSPECT

  HAUNTED.

  Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine,

  Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing

  And lay ghost hands on everything,

  But leave the noonday's warm sunshine

  To living lads for mirth and wine.

  I met you suddenly down the street,

  Strangers assume your phantom faces,

  You grin at me from daylight places,

  Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet

  Dead men down the morning street.

  RETROSPECT: THE JESTS OF THE CLOCK.

  He had met hours of the clock he never guessed before--

  Dumb, dragging, mirthless hours confused with dreams and fear,

  Bone-chilling, hungry hours when the gods sleep and snore,

  Bequeathing earth and heaven to ghosts, and will not hear,

  And will not hear man groan chained to the sodden ground,

  Rotting alive; in feather beds they slumbered sound.