Poems by Ralph Hodgson [1818] for My Mother Edited for the Web by Bob Blair

The Gipsy Girl

"COME, try your skill, kind gentlemen,

A penny for three tries!"

Some threw and lost, some threw and won

A ten-a-penny prize.

She was a tawny gipsy girl,

A girl of twenty years,

I liked her for the lumps of gold

That jingled from her ears;

I liked the flaring yellow scarf

Bound loose about her thoat,

I liked her showy purple gown

And flashy velvet coat.

A man came up, too loose of tongue,

And said no good to her;

She did not blush as Saxons do,

Or turn upon the cur;

She fawned and whined, "Sweet gentleman,

A penny for three tries!"

-- But oh, the den of wild things in

The darkness of her eyes!

Ralph Hodgson

A Song

WITH Love among the haycocks

We played at hide and seek;

   He shut his eyes and counted --

      We hid among the hay --

   Then he a haycock mounted,

      And spied us where we lay;

And O! the merry laughter

Across the hayfield after!

Ralph Hodgson

Time, You Old Gypsy Man

TIME, you old gipsy man,

   Will you not stay,

Put up your caravan

   Just for one day?

All things I'll give you

Will you be my guest,

Bells for your jennet

Of silver the best,

Goldsmiths shall beat you

A great golden ring,

Peacocks shall bow to you,

Little boys sing.

Oh, and sweet girls will

Festoon you with may,

Time, you old gipsy,

Why hasten away?

Last week in Babylon,

Last night in Rome,

Morning, and in the crush

Under Paul's dome;

Under Pauls' dial

You tighten your rein --

Only a moment,

And off once again;

Off to some city

Now blind in the womb,

Off to another

Ere that's in the tomb.

Time, you old gipsy man,

   Will you not stay,

Put up your caravan

   Just for one day?

Ralph Hodgson

Ghoul Care

SOUR fiend, go home and tell the Pit

For once you met your master, --

A man who carried in his soul

Three charms against disaster,

The Devil and disaster.

Away, away, and tell the tale

And start your whelps a-whining,

Say "In the greenwood of his soul

A lizard's eye was shining,

A little eye kept shining."

Away, away, and salve your sores,

And set your hags a-groaning,

Say "In the greenwood of his soul

A drowsy bee was droning,

A dreamy bee was droning."

Prodigious Bat! Go start the walls

Of Hell with horror ringing.

Say "In the greenwood of his soul

There was a goldfinch singing,

A pretty goldfinch singing."

And then come back, come, if you please,

A fiercer ghoul and ghaster,

With all the glooms and smuts of Hell

Behind you, I'm you master!

You know I'm still your master.

Ralph Hodgson

Eve

EVE, with her basket, was

Deep in the bells and grass,

Wading in bells and grass

Up to her knees,

Picking a dish of sweet

Berries and plums to eat,

Down in the bell and grass

Under the trees.

Mute as a mouse in a

Corner the cobra lay,

Circled round a bough of the

Cinnamon tall. . . .

Now to get even and

Humble proud heaven and

Now was the moment or

Never at all.

"Eva!" Each syllable

Light as a flower fell,

"Eva!" he whispered the

Wondering maid,

Soft as a bubble sung

Out of a linnet's lung,

Soft and most silverly

"Eva!" he said.

Picture that orchard sprite,

Eve, with her body white,

Supple and smooth to her

Slim finger tips.

Wondering, listening,

Listening, wondering,

Eve with a berry

Half-way to her lips.

Oh had our simple Eve

Seen through the make-believe!

Had she but known the

Pretender he was!

Out of the boughs he came,

Whispering still her name,

Tumbling in twenty rings

Into the grass.

Here was the strangest pair

In the world anywhere,

Eve in the bells and grass

Kneeling, and he

Telling the story low. . . .

Singing birds saw them go

Down the dark path to

The Blasphemous Tree.

O what a clatter when

Titmouse and Jenny Wren

Saw him successful and

Taking his leave!

How the birds rated him,

How they all hated him!

How they all pitied

Poor motherless Eve!

Picture her crying

Outside in the lane,

Eve, with no dish of sweet

Berries and plums to eat,

Haunting the gate of the

Orchard in vain. . . .

Picture the lewd delight

Under the hill to-night --

"Eva!" the toast goes round,

"Eva!" again.

Ralph Hodgson

The Song of Honour

I CLIMBED a hill as light fell short,

And rooks came home in scramble sort,

And filled the trees and flapped and fought

And sang themselves to sleep;

An owl from nowhere with no sound

Swung by and soon was nowhere found,

I heard him calling half-way round,

Holloing loud and deep;

A pair of stars, faint pins of light,

Then many a star, sailed into sight,

And all the stars, the flower of night,

Were round me at a leap;

To tell how still the valleys lay

I heard a watchdog miles away,

And bells of distant sheep.

I heard no sound of bird or bell,

The mastiff in a slumber fell,

I stared into the sky,

As wondering men have always done

Since beauty and the stars were one

Though none so hard as I.

It seemed, so still the valleys were,

As if the whole world knelt at prayer,

Save me and me alone;

So pure and wide that silence was

I feared to bend a blade of grass,

And there I stood like stone.

There, sharp and sudden, there I heard --

   Ah! some wild lovesick singing bird

   Woke singing in the trees?

   The nightingale and babble-wren

   Were in the English greenwood then,

   And you heard one of these?

The babble-wren and nightingale

Sang in the Abyssinian vale

That season of the year!

Yet, true enough, I heard them plain,

I heard them both again, again,

As sharp and sweet and clear

As if the Abyssinian tree

Had thrust a bough across the sea,

Had thrust a bough across to me

With music for my ear!

I heard them both, and oh! I heard

The song of every singing bird

That sings beneath the sky,

And with the song of lark and wren

The song of mountains, moths and men

And seas and rainbows vie!

I heard the universal choir,

The Sons of Light exalt their Sire

With universal song,

Earth's lowliest and loudest notes,

Her million times ten million throats

Exalt Him loud and long,

And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace

From every part and every place

Within the shining of His face,

The universal throng.

I heard the hymn of being sound

From every well of honour found

In human sense and soul:

The song of poets when they write

The testament of Beauty sprite

Upon a flying scroll,

The song of painters when they take

A burning brush for Beauty's sake

And limn her features whole --

The song of men divinely wise

Who look and see in starry skies

Not stars so much as robins' eyes,

And when these pale away

Hear flocks of shiny pleiades

Among the plums and apple trees

Sing in the summer day --

The song of all both high and low

To some blest vision true,

The song of beggars when they throw

The crust of pity all men owe

To hungry sparrows in the snow,

Old beggars hungry too --

The song of kings of kingdoms when

They rise about their fortune Men,

And crown themselves anew --

The song of courage, heart and will

And gladness in a fight,

Of men who face a hopeless hill

With sparking and delight,

The bells and bells of song that ring

Round banners of a cause or king

From armies bleeding white --

The song of sailors every one

When monstrous tide and tempest run

At ships like bulls at red,

When stately ships are twirled and spun

Like whipping tops and help there's none

And mighty ships ten thousand ton

Go down like lumps of lead --

And song of fighters stern as they

At odds with fortune night and day,

Crammed up in cities grim and grey

As thick as bees in hives,

Hosannas of a lowly throng

Who sing unconscious of their song,

Whose lips are in their lives --

And song of some at holy war

With spells and ghouls more dread by far

Than deadly seas and cities are

Or hordes of quarrelling kings --

The song of fighters great and small,

The song of pretty fighters all

And high heroic things --

The song of lovers -- who knows how

Twitched up from place and time

Upon a sigh, a blush, a vow,

A curve or hue of cheek or brow,

Borne up and off from here and now

Into the void sublime!

And crying loves and passions still

In every key from soft to shrill

And numbers never done,

Dog-loyalties to faith and friend,

And loves like Ruth's of old no end,

And intermission none --

And burst on burst for beauty and

For numbers not behind,

From men whose love of motherland

Is like a dog's for one dear hand,

Sole, selfless, boundless, blind --

And song of some with hearts beside

For men and sorrows far and wide,

Who watch the world with pity and pride

And warm to all mankind --

And endless joyous music rise

From children at their play,

And endless soaring lullabies

From happy, happy mothers' eyes,

And answering crows and baby-cries,

How many who shall say!

And many a song as wondrous well

With pangs and sweets intolerable

From lonely hearths too grey to tell,

God knows how utter grey!

And song from many a house of care

When pain has forced a footing there

And there's a Darkness on the stair

Will not be turned away --

And song -- that song whose singers come

With old kind tales of pity from

The Great Compassion's lips,

That makes the bells of Heaven to peal

Round pillows frosty with the feel

Of Death's cold finger tips --

The song of men all sorts and kinds,

As many tempers, moods and minds

As leaves are on a tree,

As many faiths and castes and creeds,

As many human bloods and breeds

As in the world may be;

The song of each and all who gaze

On Beauty in her naked blaze,

Or see her dimly in a haze,

Or get her light in fitful rays

And tiniest needles even,

The song of all not wholly dark,

Not wholly sink in stupor stark

Too deep for groping Heaven --

And alleluias sweet and clear

And wild with beauty men mishear,

From choirs of song as near and dear

To Paradise as they,

The everlasting pipe and flute

Of wind and sea and bird and brute,

And lips deaf men imagine mute

In woods and stone and clay,

The music of a lion strong

That shakes a hill a whole night long,

A hill as loud as he,

The twitter of a mouse among

Melodious greenery,

The ruby's and the rainbow's song,

The nightingale's -- all three,

The song of life that wells and flows

From every leopard, lark and rose

And everything that gleams or goes

Lack-lustre in the sea.

I heard it all, each, every note

Of every lung and tongue and throat,

Ay, every rhythm and rhyme

Of everything that lives and loves

And upward, ever upward moves

From lowly to sublime!

Earth's multitudinous Sons of Light

I heard them lift their lyric might

With each and every chanting sprite

That lit the sky that wondrous night

As far as eye could climb!

I heard it all, I heard the whole

Harmonious hymn of being roll

Up through the chapel of my soul

And at the altar die,

And in the awful quiet then

Myself I heard, Amen, Amen,

Amen I heard me cry!

I heard it all and then although

I caught my flying senses, Oh,

A dizzy man was I!

I stood and stared; the sky was lit,

The sky was stars all over it,

I stood, I knew not why,

Without a wish, without a will,

I stood upon that silent hill

And stared into the sky until

My eyes were blind with stars and still

I stared into the sky.

Ralph Hodgson

The Mystery

HE came and took me by the hand

   Up to a red rose tree,

He kept His meaning to Himself

   But gave a rose to me.

I did not pray Him to lay bare

   The mystery to me,

Enough the rose was Heaven to smell,

   And His own face to see.

Ralph Hodgson

Stupidity Street

I SAW with open eyes

Singing birds sweet

Sold in the shops

For people to eat,

Sold in the shops of

Stupidity Street.

I saw in vision

The worm in the wheat,

And in the shops nothing

For people to eat;

Nothing for sale in

Stupidity Street.

Ralph Hodgson

The Bells of Heaven

'TWOULD ring the bells of Heaven

The wildest peal for years,

If Parson lost his senses

And people came to theirs,

And he and they together

Knelt down with angry prayers

For tamed and shabby tigers

And dancing dogs and bears,

And wretched, blind pit ponies,

And little hunted hares.

Ralph Hodgson

The Journeyman

NOT baser than his own homekeeping kind

Whose journeyman he is --

Blind sons and breastless daughters of the blind

Whose darkness pardons his, --

About the world, while all the world approves,

The pimp of Fashion steals,

With all the angels mourning their dead loves

Behind his bloody heels.

It my be late when Nature cries Enough!

As one day cry she will,

And man may have the wit to put her off

With shifts a season still;

But man may find the pinch importunate

And fall to blaming men --

Blind sires and breastless mothers of his fate,

It may be late and may be very late,

Too late for blaming then.

Ralph Hodgson

The Bull

See an old unhappy bull,

Sick in soul and body both,

Slouching in the undergrowth

Of the forest beautiful,

Banished from the herd he led,

Bulls and cows a thousand head.

Cranes and gaudy parrots go

Up and down the burning sky;

Tree-top cats purr drowsily

In the dim-day green below;

And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,

All disputing, go and come;

And things abominable sit

Picking offal buck or swine,

On the mess and over it

Burnished flies and beetles shine,

And spiders big as bladders lie

Under hemlocks ten foot high;

And a dotted serpent curled

Round and round and round a tree,

Yellowing its greenery,

Keeps a watch on all the world,

ALl the world and this old bull

In the forest beautiful.

Bravely by his fall he came:

One he led, a bull of blood

Newly come to lustihood,

Fought and put his prince to shame,

Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head

Tameless even while it bled.

There they left him, every one,

Left him there without a lick,

Left him for the birds to pick,

Left him there for carrion,

Vilely from their bosom cast

Wisdom, worth and love at last.

When the lion left his lair

And roared his beauty through the hills,

And the vultures pecked their quills

And flew into the middle air,

Then this prince no more to reign

Came to life and lived again.

He snuffed the herd in far retreat,

He saw the blood upon the ground,

And snuffed the burning airs around

Still with beevish odours sweet,

While the blood ran down his head

And his mouth ran slaver red.

Pity him, this fallen chief,

All his spendour, all his strength,

All his body's breadth and length

Dwindled down with shame and grief,

Half the bull he was before,

Bones and leather, nothing more.

See him standing dewlap-deep

In the rushes at the lake,

Surly, stupid, half asleep,

Waiting for his heart to break

And the birds to join the flies

Feasting at his bloodshot eyes, --

Standing with his head hung down

In a stupor dreaming things:

Green savannas, jungles brown,

Battlefields and bellowings,

Bulls undone and lions dead

And vultures flapping overhead.

Dreaming things: of days he spent

With his mother gaunt and lean

In the valley warm and green,

Full of baby wonderment,

Blinking out of silly eyes

At a hundred mysteries;

Dreaming over once again

How he wandered with a throng

Of bulls and cows a thousand strong,

Wandered on from plain to plain,

Up the hill and down the dale,

Always at his mother's tail;

How he lagged behind the herd,

Lagged and tottered, weak of limb,

And she turned and ran to him

Blaring at the loathly bird

Stationed always in the skies,

Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Dreaming maybe of a day

When her drained and drying paps

Turned him to the sweets and saps,

Richer fountains by the way,

And she left the bull she bore

And he looked on her no more;

And his little frame grew stout,

And his little legs grew strong,

And the way was not so long;

And his little horns came out,

And he played at butting trees

And boulder-stones and tortoises,

Joined a game of knobby skulls

With the youngsters of his year,

All the other little bulls,

Learning both to bruise and bear,

Learning how to stand a shock

Like a little bull of rock.

Dreaming of a day less dim,

Dreaming of a time less far,

When the faint but certain star

Of destiny burned clear for him,

And a fierce and wild unrest

Broke the quiet of his breast,

And the gristles of his youth

Hardened in his comely pow,

And he came to fighting growth,

Beat his bull and won his cow,

And flew his tail and trampled off

Past the tallest, vain enough,

And curved about in spendour full

And curved again and snuffed the airs

As who should say Come out who dares!

And all beheld a bull, a Bull,

And knew that here was surely one

That backed for no bull, fearing none.

And the leader of the herd

Looked and saw, and beat the ground,

And shook the forest with his sound,

Bellowed at the loathly bird

Stationed always in the skies,

Wating for the flesh that dies.

Dreaming, this old bull forlorn,

Surely dreaming of the hour

When he came to sultan power,

And they owned him master-horn,

Chiefest bull of all among

Bulls and cows a thousand strong.

And in all the tramping herd

Not a bull that barred his way,

Not a cow that said him nay,

Not a bull or cow that erred

In the furnace of his look

Dared a second, worse rebuke;

Not in all the forest wide,

Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen,

Not another dared him then,

Dared him and again defied;

Not a sovereign buck or boar

Came a second time for more.

Not a serpent that survived

Once the terrors of his hoof

Risked a second time reproof,

Came a second time and lived,

Not serpent in its skin

Came again for discipline;

Not a leopard brght as flame,

Flashing fingerhooks of steel,

That a wooden tree might feel,

Met his fury once and came

For second reprimand,

Not a leopard in the land.

Not a lion of them all,

Not a lion of the hills,

Hero of a thousand kills,

Dared a second fight and fall,

Dared that ram terrific twice,

Paid a second time the price. . . .

Pity him, this dupe of dream,

Leader of the heard again

Only in his daft old brain,

Once again the bull supreme

And bull enough to bear the part

Only in his tameless heart.

Pity him that he must wake;

Even now the swarm of flies

Blackening his bloodshot eyes

Bursts and blusters round the lake,

Scattered from the feast half-fed,

By great shadows overhead.

And the dreamer turns away

From his visionary herds

And his splendid yesterday,

Turns to meet the loathly birds

Flocking round him from the skies,

Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Ralph Hodgson

Playmates

IT'S sixty years ago, the people say:

Two village children, neighbours born and bred,

One morning played beneath a rotten tree

That came down crash and caught them as they fled;

And one was killed and one was left unhurt

Except for certain fancies in his head.

And though it's all so very long ago

He's never left the wood a single day;

I've often met him peeping through the leaves

And chuckling to himself, an old man grey;

And once he started in his cracked old voice:

"We're playing I'm a merchant lost his way,

She's robbers in the wood behind yon tree,

The minute we grow up too big to play" --

Ralph Hodgson

The House Across the Way

THE leaves looked in at the window

Of the house across the way,

At a man that had sinned like you and me

And all poor human clay.

He muttered: "In a gambol

I took my soul astray,

But to-morrow I'll drag it back from danger,

In the morning, come what may;

For no man knows what season

He shall go his ghostly way."

And his face fell down upon the table,

And where it fell it lay.

And the wind blew under the carpet

And it said, or it seemed to say:

"Truly, all men must go a-ghosting

And no man knows his day."

And the leaves stared in at the window

Like the people at a play.

Ralph Hodgson

The Beggar

HE begged and shuffled on;

Sometimes he stopped to throw

A bit and benison

To sparrows in the snow,

And clap a frozen ear

And curse the bitter cold.

God send the good man cheer

And quittal hundredfold.

Ralph Hodgson

Babylon

IF you could bring her glories back!

You gentle sirs who sift the dust

And burrow in the mould and must

Of Babylon for bric-a-brac;

Who catalogue and pigeon-hole

The faded splendours of her soul

And put her greatness under glass --

If you could bring her past to pass!

If you could bring her dead to life!

The soldier lad; the market wife;

Madam buying fowls from her;

Tip, the butcher's bandy cur;

Workmen carting bricks and clay;

Babel passing to and fro

On the business of a day

Gone three thousand years ago --

That you cannot; then be done,

Put the goblet down again,

Let the broken arch remain,

Leave the dead men's dust alone --

Is it nothing how she lies,

This old mother of you all,

You great cities proud and tall

Towering to a hundred skies

Round a world she never knew,

Is it nothing, this, to you?

Must the ghoulish work go on

Till her very floors are gone?

While there's still a brick to save

Drive these people from her grave!

The Jewish seer when he cried

Woe to Babel's lust and pride

Saw the foxes at her gates;

Once again the wild thing waits.

Then leave her in her last decay

A house of owls, a foxes' den;

The desert that till yesterday

Hid her from the eyes of men

In its proper time and way

Will take her to itself again.

Ralph Hodgson

The Moor

THE world's gone forward to its latest fair

And dropt an old man done with by the way,

To sit alone among the bats and stare

At miles and miles and miles of moorland bare

Lit only with last shreds of dying day.

Not all the world, not all the world's gone by:

Old man, you're like to meet one traveller still,

A journeyman well kenned for courtesy

To all that walk at odds with life and limb;

If this be he now riding up the hill

Maybe he'll stop and take you up with him . . .

"But thou art Death?" "Of Heavenly Seraphim

None else to seek thee out and bid thee come."

"I only care that thou art come from Him,

Unbody me -- I'm tired -- and get me home."

Ralph Hodgson

February

A FEW tossed thrushes save

That carolled less than cried

Against the dying rave

And moan that never died,

No bird sang then; no thorn,

No tree was green beside

Them only never shorn --

The few by all the winds

And chill mutations born

Of Winter's many minds

Abused and whipt in vain --

Swarth yew and ivy kinds

And iron breeds germane.

Ralph Hodgson

The Late, Last Rook

THE old gilt vane and spire receive

The last beam eastward striking;

The first shy bat to peep at eve

Has found her to his liking.

The western heaven is dull and grey,

The last red glow has followed day.

The late, last rook is housed and will

With cronies lie till morrow;

If there's a rook loquacious still

In dream he hunts a furrow,

And flaps behind a spectre team,

Or ghostly scarecrows walk his dream.

Ralph Hodgson

The Birdcather

WHEN flighting time is on I go

With clap-net and decoy,

A-fowling after goldfinches

And other birds of joy;

I lurk among the thickets of

The Heart where they are bred,

And catch the twittering beauties as

They fly into my Head.

Ralph Hodgson

The Royal Mails

FOR all its flowers and trailing bowers,

Its singing birds and streams,

This valley's not the blissful spot,

The paradise, it seems.

I don't forget a man I met

Beneath this very tree, --

The cooing of that cushat dove

Brings back his face to me, --

The merest lad, a sullen, sad,

Unhappy soul with eyes half mad,

Most sorrowful to see.

I asked him who he was, and what;

'Twas his affair, he answered, that,

And had no more to say:

'Twas all I'd feared, the tale I heard,

When he at last gave way.

I've not forgot the look he shot

Me through and through with then;

"What loathly land is this!" he cried,

And cursed it for a countryside

Where devils masque as men.

I thought at first his brain was burst,

So senselessly he cried and cursed

And spat with rage and hate;

He writhed to hear the glossy dove

In song among the boughs above

Beside its gentle mate.

His fury passed away at last,

And when his reason came

He told me he was city bred,

A page about the Court, he said,

And coloured up with shame;

It made him wince to own a Prince

Of very famous fame.

"He looked for one with speed and strength

And youth, and picked on me at length

And ordered me to stand

Prepared to leave at break of day,

With letters naught must long delay,

For certain cities far away

Across this lonely land.

"He told me all the roads to take

And cautioned me to go

With ears and eyes and wits awake,

Alert from top to toe,

For spies and thieves wore out most shoes

Upon the roads that I must use,

As he had cause to know.

"I took my cloak as morning broke

And started down the hill,

With Castle-bells and Fare-ye-wells

And bugles sweet and shrill --

Sir Woodsman, though it's months ago,

I hear that music still.

"What matters now or ever how

I made the journey here!

I fed on berries from the bough,

Abundant everywhere,

Or if it failed, that luscious meat,

I dug up roots that wild hogs eat

And flourished on the fare;

At night I made a grassy bed

And went to sleep without a dread

And woke without a care --

"No matter how I managed now,

It all went well enough,

Until I saw this spot, I vow,

No man was better off.

"Last night as I came down this vale

In wind and rain full blast,

I turned about to hear a shout

Ho, master, whither so fast!

"A minute more and half a score

Of men were at my side,

Plain merchants all, they said they were,

And camping in a thicket near,

`Remain with us!' they cried.

" `Remain with us, our board is spread

With cheer the best, Ah, stay,' they said,

`Why go so proudly by!'

And there and then my legs were lead,

A weary man was I!

"They stared with wonder that I walked

These tangled hills and dales, and talked

Of better roads at hand,

Smooth roads without a hill to climb

A man could walk in half the time,

The finest in the land,

With more, -- but most of it I lost

Or did not understand.

" `So, come,' they cried, `our tents are tight,

Our fires are burning warm and bright!

How shall we let you go to-night

Without offending heaven!

Come, leave you shall with morning light,

Strong with the strength of seven!'

"True men they seemed, for me I dreamed

No whit of their design,

Their mildness would have clapped a hood

On sharper eyes than mine;

Ay, me they pressed awhile to rest,

Persuaded me to be their guest,

And stole the letters from my breast

When I fell down with wine!

"It all came crowding on my mind

With morning when I woke to find

How blind and blind and utter blind

And blind again I'd been;

Both tents and men had vanished then,

Were nowhere to be seen."

'Twas word for word a tale I'd heard

Not once or twice before,

Since first I made an axe ring out

Upon the timber hereabout,

But twenty times and more.

For many a year we've harboured here

A nest of thieves and worse,

Who watch for these young Castlemen

At night among the gorse,

It's hard to say if one in ten

Gets by with life and purse.

I wonder since 'twould serve the Prince

To square accounts with these, --

And many a score of footpads more

All like as pins or peas,

Who ply their trades at other glades

And plunder whom they please --

He does not rout the vermin out

And hang them to the trees.

But this poor lad -- for me I knew

Scarce what to think or say,

I pitied him, I pitied, too,

Those cities far away.

I asked him would he stay and be

A woodman in these woods with me,

Perhaps he did not hear,

Perhaps the dove in song above

Beside it mistress dear,

Was Castle-bells and Fare-ye-wells

And hornets in his ear;

An old grey man in all but years,

He pulled his cloak about his ears,

And went I know not where.

Ralph Hodgson

The Swallow

THE morning that my baby came

They found a baby swallow dead,

And saw a something, hard to name,

Flit moth-like over baby's bed.

My joy, my flower, my baby dear

Sleeps on my bosom well, but Oh!

If in the Autumn of the year

When swallows gather round and go --

Ralph Hodgson

A Wood Song

NOW one and all, you Roses,

   Wake up, you lie too long!

This very morning closes

   The Nightingale his song;

Each from its olive chamber

   His babies every one

This very morning clamber

   Into the shining sun.

You Slug-a-beds and Simples,

   Why will you so delay!

Dears, doff your olive wimples,

   And listen while you may.

Ralph Hodgson

Reason Has Moons

REASON has moons, but moons not hers,

   Lie mirror'd on the sea,

Confounding her astronomers,

   But O! delighting me.

   

.    .    .    .    .

BABYLON -- where I go dreaming

When I weary of to-day,

Weary of a world grown grey.

   

.    .    .    .    .

GOD loves an idle rainbow,

No less than labouring seas.

Ralph Hodgson

The Bride

THE book was dull, its pictures

As leaden as its lore,

But one glad, happy picture

Made up for all and more:

'Twas that of you, sweet peasant,

Beside your grannie's door --

I never stopped so startled

Inside a book before.

Just so had I sat spell-bound,

Quite still with staring eyes,

If some great shiny hoopoe

Or moth of song-bird size

Had drifted to my window

And trailed its fineries --

Just so had I been startled,

Spelled with the same surprise.

It pictured you when springtime

In part had given place

But not surrendered wholly

To summer in your face;

When still your slender body

Was all a childish grace

Though woman's richest glories

Were building there apace.

'Twas blissful so to see you,

Yet not without a sigh

I dwelt upon the people

Who saw you not as I,

But in your living sweetness,

Beneath your native sky;

Ah, bliss to be the people

When you went tripping by!

I sat there, thinking, wondering,

Abut your life and home,

The happy days behind you,

The happy days to come,

Your grannie in her corner,

Upstairs the little room

Where you wake up each morning

To dream all day -- of Whom?

That ring upon your finger,

Who gave you that to wear?

What blushing smith or farm lad

Came stammering at your ear

A million-time-told story

No maid but burns to hear,

And went about his labours

Delighting in his dear!

I thought of you sweet lovers,

The things you say and do,

The pouts and tears and partings

And swearings to be true,

The kissings in the barley --

You brazens, both of you!

I nearly burst out crying

With thinking of you two.

It put me in a frenzy

Of pleasure nearly pain,

A host of blurry faces

'Gan shaping in my brain,

I shut my eyes to see them

Come forward clear and plain,

I saw them come full flower,

And blur and fade again.

One moment so I saw them,

One sovereign moment so,

A host of girlish faces

All happy and aglow

With Life and Love it dealt them

Before it laid them low

A hundred years, a thousand,

Ten thousand years ago.

One moment so I saw them

Come back with time full tide,

The host of girls, your grannies,

Who lived and loved and died

To give your mouth its beauty,

Your soul its gentle pride,

Who wrestled with the ages

To give the world a bride.

Ralph Hodgson

After

"HOW fared you when you mortal were?

   What did you see on my peopled star?"

"Oh well enough," I answered her,

   "It went for me where mortals are!

"I saw blue flowers and the merlin's flight

   And the rime on the wintry tree,

Blue doves I saw and summer light

   On the wings of the cinnamon bee."

Ralph Hodgson