Soon may the whisp’ring blade
Bow the grey grasses,
Lo, the lush edge unfrayed
Where the scythe passes!
All with a stately speed
Shorn and soft whistle
Muted on nought of weed,
Burdock nor thistle.—
Grace hath possessed the sky,
Hope hath o’er-spanned it,
Parteth he hurriedly,
Storm, the black bandit.
Haste away,
Waters grey,
Spare of your shedding,
Till we bestow our hay
Safe in the steading.
“FOUR-PAWS”
Four-paws, the kitten from the farm,
Is come to live with Betsey-Jane,
Leaving the stack-yard for the warm
Flower-compassed cottage in the lane,
To wash his idle face and play
Among chintz cushions all the day.
Under the shadow of her hair
He lies, who loves him nor desists
To praise his whiskers and compare
The tabby bracelets on his wrists,—
Omelet at lunch and milk at tea
Suit Betsey-Jane and so fares he.
Happy beneath her golden hand
He purrs contentedly nor hears
His Mother mourning through the land,
The old grey cat with tattered ears
And humble tail and heavy paw
Who brought him up among the straw.
Never by day she ventures nigh,
But when the dusk grows dim and deep
And moths flit out of the strange sky
And Betsey has been long asleep—
Out of the dark she comes and brings
Her dark maternal offerings;—
Some field-mouse or a throstle caught
Near netted fruit or in the corn,
Or rat, for this her darling sought
In the old barn where he was born;
And all lest on his dainty bed
Four-paws were faint or under-fed.
Only between the twilight hours
Under the window-panes she walks
Shrewdly among the scented flowers
Nor snaps the soft nasturtium stalks,
Uttering still her plaintive cries
And Four-paws, from the house, replies,
Leaps from his cushion to the floor,
Down the brick passage scantly lit,
Waits wailing at the outer door
Till one arise and open it—
Then from the swinging lantern’s light
Runs to his Mother in the night.
“FOUR-PAWS” IN LONDON
Four-paws, we know the sun is white
At dawn in Hampshire when the night
Deserts those frozen miles,
When robin creaks from wintry bush
And early milk-boy’s breeches brush
The hoar-frost from the stiles;
Yet shall you never hear him more
Insistent at our cottage door
Nor of his spoils partake,
Alas, poor puss who stir and yawn
Uneasy in the London dawn
And, in a flat, awake.
Four-paws, forgive us! When apprised
Of our departure you devised,
No doubt, some darling plan
Of exodus that should surpass
His who removed last Michaelmas—
Your friend the dairy-man:—
A mightier waggon on the road
You pictured and so vast a load
That all should turn and look,—
Betsey precarious on the shaft,
Master and Mistress fore and aft,
The carter and the cook,
Nurse, with her knitting, in mid-air,
Carpets in bales, your favourite chair
And (the progressive path
With added glory to invest)
Our Four-paws couchant on the crest
Of an inverted bath.
Alas, what difference disgraced
Our flight! An obscure van replaced
The customary wain;
And you, with many a mournful cry,
Fettered by Betsey in the fly
And hampered in the train.
And now you’re here. Well, it may be
The sun _does_ rise in Battersea
Although to-day be dark,
Life is not shorn of loves and hates
While there are sparrows on the slates
And keepers in the Park:
And you yourself will come to learn
The ways of London and in turn
Assume your cockney cares,
Like other folk who live in flats,
Chasing your purely abstract rats
Upon the concrete stairs.