The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pixies' Plot

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Title: Pixies' Plot

Creator: Eden Phillpotts

Release date: January 1, 2014 [eBook #47265]

Most recently updated: November 1, 2014

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIXIES' PLOT ***

PIXIES' PLOT

By

EDEN PHILLPOTTS

Author of

As the Wind Blows; Evander

Pan & the Twins

&c.

LONDON

GRANT RICHARDS LTD

St. Martin's Street, W.C.

1922

Printed in England at the Cloister Press, Heaton Mersey, near Manchester

To

GRANT RICHARDS

In beauty manifold are wrought

Your gardens, full of charm and grace,

That hold the best in every sort

But entrance yield to nothing base.

And 'mid their lawns, austere and bright,

Though statues gleam and fountains play,

There's one wild dingle where half light

Of faery never dies away.

There hang your wreath within a glade

Ere berries shrink and blossoms pine;

For pixy blooms too quickly fade

Plucked by this clumsy hand of mine.

Yet, howsoever swift their end,

They hold a more enduring seed

And bring you, from a kindly friend,

Good will, to dignify the deed.

E. P.

CONTENTS

1. Pixies' Plot

2. The Charm

3. Joe's Donkey

4. Diana

5. The Mouse and the Epitaph

6. Echo and Narcissus

7. The Sandhills

8. The Ghost

9. A Test

10. Dreams

11. The Fire-drake

12. The Seven Maidens

13. The Heron

14. The Grief

15. On the Ebb

16. Scandal

17. To a Bat

18. Moon-Moth

19. The Hunting

20. The Good Girl

21. The Lover

22. The Motor Car

23. The Sea Scouts

24. Song for the Spheres

25. The Circle

26. To Anthea's Bosom

27. Dust

28. Young Night

29. Jill Bassett

30. Tailpiece

THE PIXIES' PLOT

(A pleasant maxim of old time directed the gardener to leave one corner as nature planned it, for the little people. Thus welcomed, they might be trusted to show their human hosts goodwill, friendship, and service.)

You have it, or you have it not:

The cantle of the Pixies' plot,

Where never spade nor hoe shall ply

To break that treasured sanctity.

Touch no bloom there; uproot no weed;

Let what will blow.

Suffer the thistle, briar and thorn to grow,

The dandelion to seed.

Though full the garden of your mind,

Well planted on a soil that's kind;

Your hedges gay, your borders clean,

Your seasons fair, your clime serene,

Yet trammel not the Pixies' mite,

For well-coming

Chance little, wandering, weary, fairy thing

Lost in the dim owl-light.

Still virgin, free and set apart,

Ordain one dingle of your heart,

Where visions home and wing to you

The golden dreams that might come true.

Herein a gentler dawn than day

Shall often break

For foot-sore spirits, tired of reason's ache,

And children come to play.

THE CHARM

When chafers drone their litany

And pray, "Oh, Father, grant that we

From airy-mouse delivered be,"

Go seek the charm.

Under the sky, when a star shoots,

Beneath an oak, when the owl hoots,

Gather ye simples, dig ye roots

For the rare charm.

That glassy ghost upon a thorn--

The raiment of a snake outworn--

Must backward through the dark be borne

To feed the charm.

A glow-worm--she whose gentle light

Glimmers green-gold through a blue night

Beside the churchyard aconite--

Shall help the charm.

One willow from the cradle take

Where a boy baby lies awake,

And splinters off a coffin break

To build the charm.

A tarnished silver chalice bring,

Dead gossips gave at christening,

And dip the moonlight from a spring

To crown the charm.

This much, God wot, a child might do,

Yet all must fail if haply you

Lack a child's faith, so trusting, true,

To bless the charm.

Many the spells of high degree

And fruitful happiness I see

All lost, for faith to set them free

And work the charm.

JOE'S DONKEY

The harp of night had silver strings,

The moon was low, the stars burned dim,

When from a wood, with roaring wings,

Joe flushed a brace of cherubim.

His eye did bulge at sign so brave

To see the shining angels pass;

Then, happening beside her grave,

He met his dead and buried ass!

She'd broke a leg and so was slain

And buried here a week ago;

Now, all alive and sound again,

She brayed with joy to welcome Joe!

A holy cross that donkeys bear,

Since Jesus Christ did deign to ride,

The cherubs tempted to repair

That ancient beast in bone and hide.

The harp of morn had golden strings

Ere home they came--Joe's ass and he;

And when their neighbours heard these things

They praised the Lord right heartily.

DIANA

Look not upon a moon that's new,

For with her bitter sickle keen

She comes between, she comes between,

And cuts the tender from the true.

Look not upon a white full moon:

Her stiff-starched pudency doth shame

The throbbing pulse, the leaping flame,

And freezes passion at its noon.

Look not upon a moon that's old

With fallen breast and shadowy eyes,

Till the last hope of loving dies,

And heart's outworn and blood run cold.

THE MOUSE AND THE EPITAPH

In moonlight grey the hungry church-yard mouse

Sat on old William Blee--his narrow house.

Climbing the mound, an ancient slate he read,

Then spoke, with rustic frankness, to the dead.

"'A husband and a father dear': What then?

So much is true of mice as well as men.

'Friend to the poor'? That's humbug, Billy Blee!

When did you ever spare a crumb for me?"

ECHO AND NARCISSUS

Through the green dell she went,

Bright haired, with cheeks that burned;

Her passion hardly pent;

Her eyes upon him turned.

Her crocus-coloured gown

Over her white, young breast beat up and down.

Adream, he did not guess,

But dwelt upon his thought

Of perfect loveliness,

Nor heeded when she caught

A sigh his bosom breathed,

And murmured it again with music wreathed.

Oh, wasted wealth of love;

While Echo's heart will break,

Narcissus from above,

Within a glassy lake,

Beholds perfection lie

And, for the vision of himself, must die.

Now, hid in bare-ribbed rock

With crocus-coloured veins,

She guards from windy shock,

She shields from wild March rains,

Where grass and granite meet,

The daffodil that's budding at her feet.

THE SANDHILLS

Oh, naked-footed boy, with the wild hair

And laughing eyes, is it so long ago

Among these windy dunes you made your lair,

Beside the immutable sea's unwearied ebb and flow?

Above you sings the horrent bent; the sun

Finds you and burns your budding limbs to brown;

You race the waves and wade and leap and run,

Then in the sweet, hot sand, contented, cuddle down

You dream great dreams, while all the upper air

Is musical with mews; and round about,

Upon the flats among the sea-ways there,

The dim sea-lavender spreads her purple fingers out.

And still the sandhills roll and still the sea

Flings a straight line of everlasting blue

Athwart their shining hillocks; solemnly

The ships go by, but not the wondrous ships you knew.

When first your path among the sand dunes fell--

The dunes that stretched as now and shone of yore

In their bright nakedness--a magic spell

Of mystery they wove along the shining shore.

This poppy with the horn, this bindweed white

And salicornia in its crimson bands

Meant more, far more than beauty and delight:

They stood for treasure torn from drowning pirates' hands.

These amber weeds were then a garment brave;

These agate stones were gems of splendid size

Once decked a mermaid in a deep sea cave,

Lit by gigantic fish from their green, glimmering eyes.

The sandhills were your giants, cruel or kind;

Each falling billow told another tale;

Fairies and goblins flew upon the wind;

There lurked a tragedy in every sea-bird's wail.

And now the watchful sea doth bid me say;

The salt air whispers me to speak and tell

Where is that little boy from yesterday

Whom wind and wave and sand and sunshine knew so well?

"He was our playmate; us he understood

And ran to us with glory in his eyes;

We loved him and we wrought to work his good;

We made him strong and brave and with our wisdom wise.

"Will he not come again? The flowerets small

Have opened for his eager hands once more;

Among the yellow whins the linnets call,

The wrack and shells he sought still drift along the shore.

"He climbed the crests of all our ridges grey

And sang to us and paddled where our foam

Thins to a crystal film. But yesterday

A happy sprite was he; where now does our boy roam?

"Deep of the many voices, on whose face

No seal is set through all the centuries fled,

Laugh on at time, nor know the hurricane race

Of his few, hurtling years above a human head.

"And thou, old dune; the stars of heaven shall rove,

The galaxies break up to wheel about

And in new, glittering constellations move

Before thine hour-glass grey hath run its measure out.

"Your yesterday, you immemorial things,

Whereon the ages yet no shadow cast,

For me the hurrying and sleepless wings

Of year on stormy year have swept into the past.

"Yet think not I have lost that faith and joy

Felt when my world was young and I a part.

Oh, sea and sand and wild, west wind, your boy

Lies hidden safe within my steadfast, changeless heart."

THE GHOST

Night-foundered to the ruin he came

Nor recked of its uncanny fame;

A haunt of slumber opened here,

And weariness, that casts out fear,

His footsteps led.

The moon swam low; the woods were still;

Dog foxes barked upon the hill;

With zig-zag wing a flitter-mouse

Flew in and out the haunted house

And overhead.

Within, decaying wood and lime

Lifted their incense up to time;

The foot fell hollow; echoes woke,

And whispering, half-heard voices spoke

Behind the dark.

Aloft, the drowsy wanderer found

A chamber far above the ground;

Whose casement, rusty-ironed and high,

Gaped ivy-clad upon the sky,

Starlit and stark.

White-fingered now the moonbeams ran

To ripple on the resting man.

He saw their stealthy silver creep

As it would drown him in his sleep

With splendour mild.

And then a subtle shadow moved,

A spirit that the dead had loved:

For wanly limned against the gloom

Of that forbid, forgotten room

There ran a child.

She twinkled in her candid shift,

Light as a moth, so silent, swift,

And peeped and peered for what might be

Hid in that ancient nursery--

A babe of joy.

But something called the busy wight:

She faded sudden from his sight;

And, as her little glimmer paled

Like a glass bell, the ghostling wailed,

"Where is my toy?"

A TEST

He

"I'll bring bright rainbow gold--

The rainbow too, a gown for you

In glorious fold on fold.

"A necklace of white stars

About your throat shall hang and gloat;

And, for an ear-ring, Mars.

"Unto the ends of earth,

Oh, dearest Heart, will I depart

To glean their utmost worth.

"Until, with great amaze

At all I do, my Soul, for you,

The good round world shall gaze!"

She

"But these are gifts of dust,

Unfit to prove a hero's love

Or win a maiden's trust.

"To love's supreme degree

If you would come, then bide at home

And never tire of me."

DREAMS

When I have won to rest once more

In sanctity of night and sleep,

Drift visions from the shadow shore--

Small, patient forms that creep.

They move in drab; they wear no wings;

They are the dreams that might come true--

Meek phantoms of the modest things

That I have power to do.

Like azure shadows in the snow,

Or bloom upon the sun-kissed grape,

Sweep lovelier shapes, that gleam and glow

And don a rarer shape.

They smile with eyes of queens and kings;

They call on me to make them true--

The lordly, gracious, sovereign things

I have no power to do.

Remain such waking dreams as limn

Upon reality and truth,

Flying like holy seraphim

Whose rainbow wings drop ruth.

Born of the human sorrowings

That pierce our common nature through,

They challenge to the mightiest things

All men have power to do.

THE FIRE-DRAKE

An' it should be you'd make,

All for your sweetheart's joy,

A jewelly fire-drake,

This goes unto the toy:

A dragon-fly that's blue,

With little glow-worms two,

And morning drops of dew

Upon a spider's thread.

All these are simple things

And easy to be got,

But now the fire-drake's wings

Will puzzle you, God wot.

The flash that in them lies

Shall come not from the skies,

But lights the diamond eyes

In your dear sweetheart's head.

Lacking that pearly gleam,

So magical to see,

Your gift is but a dream:

The fire-drake cannot be.

But if the maiden pout

And anger peepeth out,

Ere she your heart would flout

Fly to the priest and wed.

Better to love she turn

At her fond lover's side

Than for the fire-drake burn

And ever be denied.

Go husband and go wife,

Without one thought of strife,

In blessing of shared life

The marriage way to tread.

THE SEVEN MAIDENS

In far away and olden times

Sped from their hamlet seven maids

To dim and moonlit heather glades,

Upon the hour of midnight chimes.

One passion drew them secretly;

One master joy their little feet

Called to that desolate retreat,

Where never mortal man might see.

'Twas blue-eyed Dian who led the dance,

With Linnette, Bethkin, Jennifer,

Avisa, Petronell and Nance.

Unknown they kept their nightly cheer;

Unguessed beneath the moon they kept

Brave frolic, while the village slept,

Nor dreamed the danger drawing near;

For on a holy Sabbath even,

When pirouette had been a shame,

Walking sedate, strange music came

To tempt the toes of all the seven--

Of blue-eyed Dian, who led the dance,

Of Linnette, Bethkin, Jennifer,

Avisa, Petronell and Nance.

The demon Piper tuned his reed

To madden each light-footed maid.

They listened, wondering, unafraid,

Nor thought upon the sorry speed

Awaiting any wanton one

Who'd sport upon the Lord's own Day;

Then, tripping through that dimpsy grey,

Quick fingers joined--the deed was done!

For blue-eyed Dian had dared to dance

With Linnette, Bethkin, Jennifer,

Avisa, Petronell and Nance.

Their eyes like emeralds through the gloom,

Leapt elves and fairies, gnomes and imps,

In fearful haste to win a glimpse

Of the unhappy maidens' doom;

For sudden rang a thunder-shock

And flashed blue lightning-fork, to show

Beneath its grim and baleful glow,

Each flying girl turned to a rock!

Alas for Dian, who led the dance,

For Linnette, Bethkin, Jennifer,

Avisa, Petronell and Nance.

And now, at every Hunter's moon,

That haggard cirque of stones so still

Awakens to immortal thrill,

And seven small maids in silver shoon,

'Twixt dark of night and white of day,

Twinkle upon the sere, old heath,

Like living blossoms in a wreath,

Then shrink again to granite grey.

So blue-eyed Dian shall ever dance

With Linnette, Bethkin, Jennifer,

Avisa, Petronell and Nance.

THE HERON

Where leaps the burn by granite stairs

Into an eddying pool, he stood,

Personifying solitude

And meditating his affairs.

A bird august beyond belief

Distinguished in his way of thought,

Yet the sworn enemy of sport--

A "poacher," "vagabond," and "thief."

Creation's lord, the heron knew,

Denied his right to fish for trout--

A fact that often made him doubt

Of justice on a general view.

Then me he saw, and, guessing not

I held him innocent to be,

He spread slow pinions heavily

And drifted to a lonelier spot;

But left a feather by the stream,

Deep in the plume, fair, silver grey,

With which I'll write upon the day:

"Live and let live" shall be my theme.

THE GRIEF

A grief came unto me at noon of night

Blown on a breath of silky, southern air

With scent of myrtles and a crown of light

For aureole: vanished loveliness was there

And old, lost, magical things, all gracious and all rare.

Wings of cloud-purple from the Inland Sea,

Foam-tipped, my Grief outspread; the southern sun

Burned for a diadem, and mystery,

From the dim smoke of olive orchards won,

Arrayed that delicate shape in silver they had spun.

How little, little 'twixt our joy and woe!

Not sorrow then, but glad epiphanies

Of treasured happiness from long ago,

Had been my dreaming; but in bitter wise

The Grief looked on my face with a dead woman's eyes.

ON THE EBB

The tide fell fast and foaming, the empty sand shone bright,

And by the ocean roaming, upon the edge of night,

I found a something stranded with sea-fowl mewing high--

A wondrous atom landed and left all high and dry.

Whoever yet suspected mer-babies on a beach?

Yet here, by tide neglected, lay one within my reach--

A dainty, winsome creature as pink as any rose,

His golden tail a feature to take the place of toes.

And through the billows splashing, the sunset in her hair,

Over the white foam flashing, there rode a lady fair.

His blue-eyed, wild mer-mother swam wailing on the sea.

She sparkled through the smother and clamoured mournfully.

In gentle hands and steady, I lifted her delight,

Made sure that she was ready, then flung with all my might.

She sprang, like salmon leaping; she laughed in radiant

And gathered to safe keeping her rosy, golden boy.

I'd earned a mother's blessing--a good thing any day;

But now one fell to guessing what Science had to say:

For such authentic wonders, upon an ebbing tide,

Show zoologic blunders that cannot be denied.

SCANDAL

An owl alighted in the yew

Beside a poet's little house;

The hour was nearly half-past two,

And, as he ate his juicy mouse,

A cuckoo clock made cheerful chime

Within and shouted out the time.

"O gracious God!" the owl began,

And rolled his round eyes at the moon,

"What a black piece of work is man--

Well might we miss cuckoo in June.

How mad, misguided, inhumane

To keep cuckoo upon a chain!

"But all the feathered folk must know;

This infamy I'll bring to light,

And hoot the horror high and low

And scream the crime by day and night.

No bird shall sing to him again

Who keeps a cuckoo on a chain."

TO A BAT

The sickle moon is in the west

And where, against the fading green,

A thicket darkles shall be seen

The humming chafers on their quest.

Come, leather-bird, rise up and gird!

Round sunset eaves there boom again

Great beetles on their sharded wings

And many air-borne lesser things

Are tapping at the window pane.

Come, flitter-mouse, and haunt my house.

But where the stygian water broods,

Dim twilight homes for evermore,

And bats beat up the dusky shore

For white, ghost-moths in phantom woods.

Come, pipistrelle, be off to hell.

MOON-MOTH

Beyond the sun, beside a crystal sea

She ruled her isle of lapis lazuli.

Her palaces of marble, agate, jade

Rose like a sheaf of savage flowers and laid

A splendour on the waves that only night could fade.

And for her nameless sins and cruelties,

Murders of love-mad men and lusts and lies,

Her sentence fell and she was swept away

From flaming pomps and crimes and royal sway,

Hurled from the joy of life, rapt from the light of day.

Yet, being fairest far and loveliest

Of any in a woman's body drest,

Fate banished not her beauty from the earth--

Only her evil happiness and mirth,

And left her living dead, doomed to eternal dearth.

The Shadows that do mould our destiny

Willed her a moon-moth evermore to be--

Woman and insect one in mingled state,

A chimera without a peer, or mate,

To ancient Night inscribed and Darkness dedicate.

By day she sleeps, even as the vampires sleep,

Behind her sombre wings, that fold and keep

Her body's glory hidden: they are brown,

Grizzled and amber, jagged and slashed adown

With faded serecloth grey--a winding-sheet for gown.

And while she hides within some tawny brake

Her shard but echoes the dead leaf and snake,

Where, tranced in slumber, through the long day's prime

Her motley coverings harmonious chime

With sad, crepuscular shades in dusky, twilight rhyme.

Invisible thus; but when returning night

Drowns with a purple torrent all the light,

She rises woman high and spreads her wing,

A rare, unparagoned, unearthly thing

Beyond the dream of joy or grief's imagining.

Upon her head two radiant feathery rays

Of crocus fire flash upward; but the gaze

From her dim, poisonous, and anguished eyes

Throbs out with passionate, violet miseries,

In hate that never fades and woe that never dies.

Her body, like the heart of a white rose,

Shines in the petals of her wings and glows;

Her pinions--azure, lilac, marigold--

Wide on the dark deliciously unfold

As any rainbow bright, as any glacier cold.

Lit with her own and inner gleam, she shines

Like a low meteor through the lians and vines,

Flies upward high beyond the forest towers,

Then swoops and hawks along night-hidden bowers,

To hang on murmuring plumes and drink the livid flowers.

Most fair, most foul, at Moira's stern decree

The radiant monster wanders wretchedly

Haunting each strand and isle of that lone shore

Where never human eye may see her more,

Or sentient soul delight and tremble and adore.

Yet deep in dreams I often faintly hear,

Like a sad wind that strokes my sleeping ear,

By fairy waters of that far lagoon,

The moon-moth wailing, wailing to the moon

Through many a silver night at hour of plenilune.

THE HUNTING

When red sun fox steals down the sky,

And darkness dims the heavens high,

There leap again upon his tracks

The eager, starry, hunting packs.

They glitter, glitter, gold and green,

With sparks of frosty fire between,

And Dian bright as day;

While in the gloaming, far below,

Brown owl doth shout "Hi! Tally Ho!

Sun fox hath gone away!"

To music of the spheres they sweep

Over the western world asleep;

Then in the east, with sudden rush,

Sun fox shall whisk his white-tipped brush.

The field is fading, gold and green,

With sparks of frosty fire between,

And Dian growing grey;

While morning leaps the hither hill

And herald lark shouts with a will,

"Sun fox hath gone away!"

Oh, Huntress fond and silly stars--

White Venus, fiery, futile Mars,

In vain your pack ye whirl and cast

Upon the marches of the vast;

In vain ye glitter, gold and green,

With sparks of frosty fire between,

And Dian's arrows fly

In silver shafts of broken light;

For ne'er shall day be caught by night,

And sun fox cannot die.

THE GOOD GIRL

When you were born, a shooting star did sunder

The nightly void, and flashed to earth and brought

Endowment of rare magic and sweet wonder

And gifts beyond your mother's highest thought.

Oh, blessed be your soul of cheerfulness,

Your mind content and steadfast set, to hold

Such level journeying through storm and stress

Of life's rough weather and hope's heat and cold.

You come, a restful breath of evening wind

Upon the parched day, and cannot see

Your winning humour hearten many a mind

Where you bestow yourself unconsciously.

Never the violet her own fragrance knew:

Even such a flowery innocent are you.

THE LOVER

Under the silver thatch, where dwells my love,

About her dormer window, in the straw,

The sparrows build, and with their morning talk

Often awaken her.

And by the lattice climbs a crimson rose,

Who, if he could but see my dinky dear,

Before her loveliness, so wonderful,

Would pale with jealousy.

When the first glow of honeysuckle dawn

Cuddles her cottage in the dayspring light,

I pass upon my woodland road to work

And whistle as I come.

And if she hear me and twinkle out of bed

To wave a kiss, then all my toil goes well;

But if she heed me not, for weariness,

How long the working day!

THE MOTOR CAR

Owlet sat, so quiet and good,

At the edge of Yarner Wood,

While a mother owl hard by

Sought his supper silently.

Sudden came two hideous screams,

Wakened owlet from his dreams;

Down the road, on unseen wing,

Swept a vast and awful thing.

Twice he heard the monster shriek,

Saw its head and shining beak

Twixt huge eyes, that burned the night,

Brighter than the moon was bright.

Hooting horribly it fled--

Where the water-meadows spread.

"He will catch," thought owlet now,

"That red thing they call the cow."

Came his parent presently:

Heard him squeak with fearful glee,

"Mother dear, I've seen and heard

Such a devil of a bird!"

THE SEA SCOUTS

While all alone I wandered

At even by the sea,

Where winds and water pondered

Of how they came to be;

Where kittiwakes were crying

And salty spindrift flying

Through daylight slowly dying

A Shape confronted me.

She faced the broad Atlantic--

That maid of stately mien,

Purer than foam, gigantic

As Amazonian Queen.

Her billowy robe, unknowing,

How wild the wind was blowing,

Showed not a throb or flowing,

Hung steady and serene.

It was no fellow being

For she stood ten feet high,

And seaward gazed, unseeing

The human passer-by;

But only billows roaming,

And wide-winged sea-fowl homing

Through crepuscule and gloaming

Beneath an ashen sky.

The spectre rose before me

Most woeful, wan and white

Upon that foreshore stormy

Between the day and night;

And such an apparition

In this unique position,

Despite her sad condition

Awoke my wild delight.

Then came three youthful creatures,

And them I bade with awe

Behold the mournful features

Of phantom on the shore.

They laughed and said she'd drifted

To land with bosom rifted--

A figure-head uplifted

From wreck of "Margery Dawe."

They dared, those sea-scout shavers

Who watched this lonely coast,

Assert in treble quavers

We stood before a post;

They treated as a fiction

My gratified conviction

That, in her pale affliction,

We'd met a salt-sea ghost!

Thus hard-eyed youth advances

By shadowless, stark way

Our middle-aged romances

To slight and scorn and slay;

Our make-believe to tatter;

Our gallant dreams to scatter;

To flout our faiths and shatter

Our twilight in their day.

SONG FOR THE SPHERES

A drop of fire from a flying sun--

Sing, old stars, the World's begun.

An ocean warm where electrons strive--

Sing, old stars, the World's alive.

Age upon age and link upon link--

Shout, old stars, the World can think.

War's red knife hisses home to the haft--

Mourn, old stars, the World runs daft.

Reason and Love shall conquer and reign--

Sing, old stars, the World grows sane.

Liberty, Liberty, Liberty!

Shout, old stars, the World is free.

THE CIRCLE

When shepherd darkness folds the fading day

And faints the West beneath the world's wide brim,

There stands a brotherhood, remote and dim,

Of cowled and hooded wights rolled up in granite grey.

Spirits of dusk from out a far-off prime

Beyond the shadowy pale of bygone eld,

Immutable and constant and unquelled,

They hold their everlasting state and tryst with Time.

These stones have seen the red-eyed wolf pack throng

To slay the fleeting elk upon the waste,

And they have marked the cave bear's clumsy haste,

Shuffling great golden furse and ragged rocks among.

O cirque, what meanest thou? Sepulchral lore,

Or ritual of the quick? Did thirsty god

Drink blood of sacrifice upon this sod?

Art thou a temple wrought for deities of yore?

What dread, what joy, what Neolithic rule,

What shouts of agony or pæans of praise

Awoke, ye stones, the morning of your days?

They answer not, but seek the shadowy crepuscule.

The Stone Man lifted them; his hairy hand

They felt and knew, when Night's eternal brow

Gleamed with another diadem than now

Ere Egypt's mountain graves pressed on the desert sand.

Bowed but enduring, Time hath failed to break

That emblem of eternity they trace

Upon the bosom of this desolate place;

And holy shall it be for their most ancient sake.

They have withdrawn upon the unseen light

Of immemorial time; the vanished past

Receives them once again to haunt her vast--

A sanctity beyond wild Chaos and old Night.

TO ANTHEA'S BOSOM

When that I went, a little lad, to school--

One half a cherub and one half a fool--

The weary pedant dinned upon my ears

That all the world is but two hemispheres.

Maybe I doubted then, for I was born

To laugh the wisdom of the wise to scorn;

But now, indeed, most surely it appears

That all the world is but two hemispheres.

DUST

A cone of dust is dancing at the lane end,

Caught from the surface of the thirsty trackway

And dropped again, into annihilation,

By gusts from nowhere.

Upon the wheel of little whirlwind moulded,

It billows in a wreath of spiral beauty,

But, swifter than the smoke of fire dislimning,

Endures no longer.

So I, intrinsical one slippery moment

Share with my brief, grey brother at the lane end

His buffet into being, then, unfettered,

A like dismissal.

Dust of the cosmos, you alone eternal

Immutable behind a myriad garments,

Your stars grow ripe upon the boughs of heaven;

But you bate nothing.

All one to you the forms and the reforming,

The fashion of the man, or mouse, or mountain:

So order be declared and conquered chaos

Dethroned for ever.

YOUNG NIGHT

When flitter-mice with zigzag flight

Specked the green sky at twilight dim;

When the wise bird from out the brim

Of forest darkness to the light

Floated and perched upon a height,

With mellow voice to welcome night;

When day was stolen from the dale

To leave, where little river goes,

One farewell, dusky gleam of rose;

When down the purple of the vale

A wingèd beetle boomed his tale

And night-moth drank from night-flow'r pale;

When grey churn-owl within a glade

Purred through the gloaming, till the sky

Throbbed with his goblin melody;

When, by her stone, the glow-worm played

And with an emerald lamp betrayed

The new-born dew-drops on the blade;

When young Night's self in starry dress

Came timid to her throne again--

Sweet anodyne for dead day's pain

And fire and wound and fevered stress--

With heart to soothe and will to bless,

Then how I loved her loveliness!

JILL BASSETT

Jill Bassett, she was dancing mad,

And any lad

Who'd win that most amazing maid

Must needs be a light-footed blade.

So said the folk; but I had pelf,

And when the elf

Found she might reign at Chadley Wood,

Though I weren't young, she thought it good.

She danced into my arms, and then,

Along of men

And some harsh words I'd got to say,

One autumn time she danced away.

She vanished, like a bow on rain,

And, to be plain,

I didn't feel no mighty wrench

Nor much bewail the giglet wench.

Then came a bit of funny news

From Billy Bewes:

He'd seen the wretch at Christmas time

Dancing in Plymouth pantomime!

For five good year no more was heard

Of the rash bird;

Then danced she back; but not to I:

Her mother took her in to die.

Her breathing parts was nearly gone,

Her dancing done.

She wilted, like a davered rose;

But I forgave her at the close.

With Bassett folk they dug her pit;

It wasn't fit

That she should lie where I shall go:

Her mother granted that was so.

Then, passing New Year's night, I saw

Upon the hoar

Of moony frost in churchyard ground

The woman dancing on her mound!

I'll take my oath afore my God

She swept the sod

With naked feet and showed her charms

And twirled about her twinkling arms.

A brace of owls that saw her too

Made their hulloo,

To which she danced so wondrous brave

Over the silver on her grave.

Mayhap the cold got in her bones

Under the stones,

And up the wilful ghostey came

To warm herself at her old game.

And I was on my hoss's back--

I'd had my whack,

But only just the usual three,

And no man ever doubted me.

TAILPIECE

At turn of night the wild geese fly

And waken drowsy wonder

Beneath their wingèd thunder;

Then silence falls again,

Until the homing barn-owls cry

And ring with hollow laughter,

From ivy-tod and rafter,

The farm upon the plain.

The lark's aloft, a bead of gold;

While yet the earth lies darkling,

His little body's sparkling:

The sun has risen for him.

A dotted track on dew-grey fold

The weary fox is leaving;

I hear the plovers peeving;

The morning star grows dim.

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