Collected Poems Volume I Part 9

O, many a lover sighs Beneath the summer skies For black or hazel eyes All day.

No light of hope can mar My whiter brighter star; I love a Princess far Away.

Now you that haste to meet Your love's returning feet Must plead for every sweet Caress; But, day and night and day, Without a prayer to pray, I love my far away Princess.

b.u.t.tERFLIES

Sun-child, as you watched the rain Beat the pane, Saw the garden of your dreams Where the clove carnation grows And the rose Veiled with shimmering shades and gleams, Mirrored colours, mystic gleams, Fairy dreams, Drifting in your radiant eyes Half in earnest asked, that day, Half in play, Where were all the b.u.t.terflies?

Where were all the b.u.t.terflies When the skies Clouded and their bowers of clover Bowed beneath the golden shower?

Every flower Shook and the rose was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over.

Ah, the dog-rose trembling over Thyme and clover, How it glitters in the sun, Now the hare-bells lift again Bright with rain After all the showers are done!

See, when all the showers are done, How the sun Softly smiling o'er the scene Bids the white wings come and go To and fro Through the maze of gold and green.

Magic webs of gold and green Rainbow sheen Mesh the maze of flower and fern, Cuckoo-gra.s.s and meadow-sweet, And the wheat Where the crimson poppies burn.

Ay; and where the poppies burn, They return All across the dreamy downs, Little wings that flutter and beat O'er the sweet Bluffs the purple clover crowns.

Where the fairy clover crowns Dreamy downs, And amidst the golden gra.s.s b.u.t.tercups and daisies blow To and fro When the shadowy billows pa.s.s;

Time has watched them pause and pa.s.s Where Love was; Ah, what fairy b.u.t.terflies, Little wild incarnate blisses, Coloured kisses, Floating under azure skies!

Under those eternal skies See, they rise: Mottled wings of moony sheen, Wings in whitest star-shine dipped, Orange tipped, Eyed with black and veined with green.

They were fairies plumed with green Rainbow-sheen Ere Time bade their host begone From that palace built of roses Which still dozes In the greenwood all alone.

In the greenwood all alone And unknown: Now they roam these mortal dells Wondering where that happy glade is, Painted Ladies, Admirals, and Tortoise-sh.e.l.ls,

O, Fritillaries, Admirals, Tortoise-sh.e.l.ls; You, like fragments of the skies Fringed with Autumn's richest hues, Dainty blues Patterned with mosaic dyes; Oh, and you whose peac.o.c.k dyes Gleam with eyes; You, whose wings of burnished copper Burn upon the sunburnt brae Where all day Whirrs the hot and grey gra.s.shopper;

While the grey gra.s.shopper whirrs In the furze, You that with your sulphur wings Melt into the gold perfume Of the broom Where the linnet sits and sings;

You that, as a poet sings, On your wings Image forth the dreams of earth, Quickening them in form and hue To the new Glory of a brighter birth;

You that bring to a brighter birth Dust and earth, Rapt to glory on your wings, All transfigured in the white Living light Shed from out the soul of things;

Heralds of the soul of things, You whose wings Carry heaven through every glade; Thus transfigured from the petals Death unsettles, Little souls of leaf and blade;

You that mimic bud and blade, Light and shade; Tinted souls of leaf and stone, Flower and sunny bank of sand, Fairyland Calls her children to their own; Calls them back into their own Great unknown; Where the harmonies they cull On their wings are made complete As they beat Through the Gate called Beautiful.

SONG OF THE WOODEN-LEGGED FIDDLER

(PORTSMOUTH 1805)

I lived in a cottage adown in the West When I was a boy, a boy; But I knew no peace and I took no rest Though the roses nigh smothered my snug little nest; For the smell of the sea Was much rarer to me, And the life of a sailor was all my joy.

CHORUS.--_The life of a sailor was all my joy!_

My mother she wept, and she begged me to stay Anch.o.r.ed for life to her ap.r.o.n-string, And soon she would want me to help with the hay; So I bided her time, then I flitted away On a night of delight in the following spring, With a pair of stout shoon And a seafaring tune And a bundle and stick in the light of the moon, Down the long road To Portsmouth I strode, To fight like a sailor for country and king.

CHORUS.--_To fight like a sailor for country and king._

And now that my feet are turned homeward again My heart is still crying Ahoy! Ahoy!

And my thoughts are still out on the Spanish main A-chasing the frigates of France and Spain, For at heart an old sailor is always a boy; And his nose will still itch For the powder and pitch Till the days when he can't tell t'other from which, Nor a grin o' the guns from a glint o' the sea, Nor a skipper like Nelson from lubbers like me.

CHORUS.--_Nor a skipper like Nelson from lubbers like me._

Ay! Now that I'm old I'm as bold as the best, And the life of a sailor is all my joy; Though I've swapped my leg For a wooden peg And my head is as bald as a new-laid egg, The smell of the sea Is like victuals to me, And I think in the grave I'll be crying Ahoy!

For, though my old carca.s.s is ready to rest, At heart an old sailor is always a boy.

CHORUS.--_At heart an old sailor is always a boy._

THE FISHER-GIRL

Where the old grey churchyard slopes to the sea, On the sunny side of a mossed headstone; Watching the wild white b.u.t.terflies pa.s.s Through the fairy forests of gra.s.s, Two little children with brown legs bare Were merrily, merrily Weaving a wonderful daisy-chain, And chanting the rhyme that was graven there Over and over and over again; While the warm wind came and played with their hair And laughed and was gone Out, far out to the foam-flowered lea Like an ocean-wandering memory.

_Eighteen hundred and forty-three, Dan Trevennick was lost at sea; And, buried here at her husband's side Lies the body of Joan, his bride, Who, a little while after she lost him, died._

This was the rhyme that was graven there, And the children chanted it quietly; As the warm wind came and played with their hair, And rustled the golden gra.s.ses against the stone, And laughed and was gone To waken the wild white flowers of the sea, And sing a song of the days that were, A song of memory, gay and blind As the sun on the graves that it left behind; For this, ah this, was the song of the wind.

I

She sat on the tarred old jetty, with a sailor's careless ease, And the clear waves danced around her feet and kissed her tawny knees; Her head was bare, and her thick black hair was coiled behind a throat Chiselled as hard and bright and bold as the bow of a sailing boat.

II

Her eyes were blue, and her jersey was blue as the lapping, slapping seas, And the rose in her cheek was painted red by the brisk Atlantic breeze; And she sat and waited her father's craft, while Dan Trevennick's eyes Were sheepishly watching her sunlit smiles and her soft contented sighs.

III

For he thought he would give up his good black pipe and his evening gla.s.ses of beer, And blunder to chapel on Sundays again for a holy Christian year, To hold that foot in his hard rough hand and kiss the least of its toes: Then he swore at himself for a great d.a.m.ned fool; which he probably was, G.o.d knows.