There's not a bird singing upon his bough But sings the sweeter in our English ears: There's not a n.o.bleness of heart, hand, brain But shines the purer; happiest is England now In those that fight, and watch with pride and tears.

JOHN DRINKWATER

MAY GARDEN

A shower of green gems on my apple tree This first morning of May Has fallen out of the night, to be Herald of holiday-- Bright gems of green that, fallen there, Seem fixed and glowing on the air.

Until a flutter of blackbird wings Shakes and makes the boughs alive, And the gems are now no frozen things, But apple-green buds to thrive On sap of my May garden, how well The green September globes will tell.

Also my pear tree has its buds, But they are silver-yellow, Like autumn meadows when the floods Are silver under willow, And here shall long and shapely pears Be gathered while the autumn wears.

And there are sixty daffodils Beneath my wall....

And jealousy it is that kills This world when all The spring's behaviour here is spent To make the world magnificent

THE MIDLANDS

Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky Deep as the bedded violets that fill March woods with dusky pa.s.sion. As I lie Abed between cool walls I watch the host Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain, And drowsily the habit of these most Beloved of English lands moves in my brain, While silence holds dominion of the dark, Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.

I see the valleys in their morning mist Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light, Happy with many a yeoman melodist: I see the little roads of twinkling white Busy with fieldward teams and market gear Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell The many-minded changes of the year, Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well; I see the sun persuade the mist away, Till town and stead are shining to the day.

I see the wagons move along the rows Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower, I see the lissom husbandman who knows Deep in his heart the beauty of his power, As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill With gossip as in generations gone, While wagon follows wagon from the hill.

I think how, when our seasons all are sealed, Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.

I see the barns and comely manors planned By men who somehow moved in comely thought, Who, with a simple shippon to their hand, As men upon some G.o.dlike business wrought; I see the little cottages that keep Their beauty still where since Plantagenet Have come the shepherds happily to sleep, Finding the loaves and cups of cider set; I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old, Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.

And now the valleys that upon the sun Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again, And the last light upon the wolds is done, And silence falls on flock and fields and men; And black upon the night I watch my hill, And the stars shine, and there an owly wing Brushes the night, and all again is still, And, from this land of worship that I sing, I turn to sleep, content that from my sires I draw the blood of England's midmost shires.

THE COTSWOLD FARMERS

Sometimes the ghosts forgotten go Along the hill-top way, And with long scythes of silver mow Meadows of moonlit hay, Until the c.o.c.ks of Cotswold crow The coming of the day.

There's Tony Turkletob who died When he could drink no more, And Uncle Heritage, the pride Of eighteen-twenty-four, And Ebenezer Barleytide, And others half a score.

They fold in phantom pens, and plough Furrows without a share, And one will milk a faery cow, And one will stare and stare, And whistle ghostly tunes that now Are not sung anywhere.

The moon goes down on Oakridge lea, The other world's astir, The Cotswold Farmers silently Go back to sepulchre, The sleeping watchdogs wake, and see No ghostly harvester.

RECIPROCITY

I do not think that skies and meadows are Moral, or that the fixture of a star Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees Have wisdom in their windless silences.

Yet these are things invested in my mood With constancy, and peace, and fort.i.tude, That in my troubled season I can cry Upon the wide composure of the sky, And envy fields, and wish that I might be As little daunted as a star or tree.

BIRTHRIGHT

Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed Because a summer evening pa.s.sed; And little Ariadne cried That summer fancy fell at last To dust; and young Verona died When beauty's hour was overcast.

Theirs was the bitterness we know Because the clouds of hawthorn keep So short a state, and kisses go To tombs unfathomably deep, While Rameses and Romeo And little Ariadne sleep.

OLTON POOLS

Now June walks on the waters, And the cuckoo's last enchantment Pa.s.ses from Olton pools.

Now dawn comes to my window Breathing midsummer roses, And scythes are wet with dew.

Is it not strange for ever That, bowered in this wonder, Man keeps a jealous heart?...

That June and the June waters, And birds and dawn-lit roses, Are gospels in the wind,

Fading upon the deserts, Poor pilgrim revelations?...

Hist ... over Olton pools!

WALTER DE LA MARE

THE SCRIBE