PEASE-BLOSSOM AND MUSTARD-SEED
Shyly we surveyed our guides
As through the gloomy woods we went
In the light that the straggling moonbeams lent:
We envied them their easy strides!
Pease-blossom in his crimson cap
And delicate suit of rose-leaf green,
His crimson sash and his jewelled dagger,
Strutted along with an elegant swagger
Which showed that he didn’t care one rap
For anything less than a Fairy Queen:
His eyes were deep like the eyes of a poet,
Although his crisp and curly hair
Certainly didn’t seem to show it!
While Mustard-seed was a devil-may-care
Epigrammatic and pungent fellow
Clad in a splendid suit of yellow,
With emerald stars on his glittering breast
And eyes that shone with a diamond light:
They made you feel sure it would always be best
To tell him the truth: he was not perhaps _quite_
So polite as Pease-blossom, but then who could be
_Quite_ such a debonair fairy as he?
We never could tell you one-half that we heard
And saw on that journey. For instance, a bird
Ten times as big as an elephant stood
By the side of a nest like a great thick wood:
The clouds in glimmering wreaths were spread
Behind its vast and shadowy head
Which rolled at us trembling below. (Its eyes
Were like great black moons in those pearl-pale skies.)
And we feared he might take us, perhaps, for a worm.
But he ruffled his breast with the sound of a storm,
And snuggled his head with a careless disdain
Under his huge hunched wing again;
And Mustard-seed said, as we stole thro’ the dark,
There was nothing to fear: it was only a Lark!
And so he cheered the way along
With many a neat little epigram,
While dear Pease-blossom before him swam
On a billow of lovely moonlit song,
Telling us why they had left their home
In Sherwood, and had hither come
To dwell in this magical scented clime,
This dim old Forest of sweet Wild Thyme.
“Men toil,” he said, “from morn till night
With bleeding hands and blinded sight
For gold, more gold! They have betrayed
The trust that in their souls was laid;
Their fairy birthright they have sold
For little disks of mortal gold;
And now they cannot even see
The gold upon the greenwood tree,
The wealth of coloured lights that pass
In soft gradations through the grass,
The riches of the love untold
That wakes the day from grey to gold;
And howsoe’er the moonlight weaves
Magic webs among the leaves
Englishmen care little now
For elves beneath the hawthorn bough:
Nor if Robin should return
Dare they of an outlaw learn;
For them the Smallest Flower is furled,
Mute is the music of the world;
And unbelief has driven away
Beauty from the blossomed spray.”
Then Mustard-seed with diamond eyes
Taught us to be laughter-wise,
And he showed us how that Time
Is much less powerful than a rhyme;
And that Space is but a dream;
“For look,” he said, with eyes agleam,
“Now you are become so small
You think the Thyme a forest tall;
But underneath your feet you see
A world of wilder mystery
Where, if you were smaller yet,
You would just as soon forget
This forest, which you’d leave above
As you have left the home you love!
For, since the Thyme you used to know
Seems a forest here below,
What if you should sink again
And find there stretched a mighty plain
Between each grass-blade and the next?
You’d think till you were quite perplexed!
Especially if all the flowers
That lit the sweet Thyme-forest bowers
Were in that wild transcendent change
Turned to Temples, great and strange,
With many a pillared portal high
And domes that swelled against the sky!
How foolish, then, you will agree,
Are those who think that all must see
The world alike, or those who scorn
Another who, perchance, was born
Where--in a different dream from theirs--
What they call sins to him are prayers!
We cannot judge; we cannot know;
All things mingle; all things flow;
There’s only one thing constant here--
Love--that untranscended sphere:
Love, that while all ages run
Holds the wheeling worlds in one;
Love that, as your sages tell,
Soars to heaven and sinks to hell.”
Even as he spoke, we seemed to grow
Smaller, the Thyme trees seemed to go
Farther away from us: new dreams
Flashed out on us with mystic gleams
Of mighty Temple-domes: deep awe
Held us all breathless as we saw
A carven portal glimmering out
Between new flowers that put to rout
Our other fancies: in sweet fear
We tiptoed past, and seemed to hear
A sound of singing from within
That told our souls of Peterkin:
Our thoughts of _him_ were still the same
Howe’er the shadows went and came!
So, on we wandered, hand in hand,
And all the world was fairy-land.
* * * * *
And as we went we seemed to hear
Surging up from distant dells
A solemn music, soft and clear
As if a field of lily-bells
Were tolling all together, sweet
But sad and low and keeping time
To multitudinous marching feet
With a slow funereal beat
And a deep harmonious chime
That told us by its dark refrain
The reason fairies suffered pain.
SONG
Bear her along
Keep ye your song
Tender and sweet and low:
Fairies must die!
Ask ye not why
Ye that have hurt her so.
_Passing away--flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!
Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and
the dust of its dreams on our grief._
Men upon earth
Bring us to birth
Gently at even and morn!
When as brother and brother
They greet one another
And smile--then a fairy is born!
But at each cruel word
Upon earth that is heard,
Each deed of unkindness or hate,
Some fairy must pass
From the games in the grass
And steal thro’ the terrible Gate.
_Passing away--flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!
Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and the
dust of its dreams on our grief._
If ye knew, if ye knew
All the wrong that ye do
By the thought that ye harbour alone,
How the face of some fairy
Grows wistful and weary
And the heart in her cold as a stone!
Ah, she was born
Blithe as the morn
Under an April sky,
Born of the greeting
Of two lovers meeting!
They parted, and so she must die!
_Passing away--flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!_
_Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and
the dust of its dreams on our grief._
Cradled in blisses,
Yea, born of your kisses,
Oh, ye lovers that met by the moon,
She would not have cried
In the darkness and died
If ye had not forgotten so soon!
Cruel mortals, they say,
Live for ever and aye,
And they pray in the dark on their knees!
But the flowers that are fled
And the loves that are dead,
What heaven takes pity on these?
_Bear her along--singing your song--tender and sweet and low!_
_Fairies must die! Ask ye not why--ye that have hurt her so._
Passing away--
Flower from the spray!
Colour and light from the leaf!
Soon, soon will the year
Shed its bloom on her bier
And the dust of its dreams on our grief!
* * * * *
Then we came through a glittering crystal grot
By a path like a pale moonbeam,
And a broad blue bridge of Forget-me-not
Over a shimmering stream,
To where, through the deep blue dusk, a gleam
Rose like the soul of the setting sun;
A sunset breaking through the earth,
A crimson sea of the poppies of dream,
Deep as the sleep that gave them birth
In the night where all earthly dreams are done.
And then, like a pearl-pale porch of the moon,
Faint and sweet as a starlit shrine,
Over the gloom
Of the crimson bloom
We saw the Gates of Ivory shine;
And, lulled and lured by the lullaby tune
Of the cradling airs that drowsily creep
From blossom to blossom, and lazily croon
Through the heart of the midnight’s mystic noon,
We came to the Gates of the City of Sleep.
Faint and sweet as a lily’s repose
On the broad black breast of a midnight lake,
The City delighted the cradling night:
Like a straggling palace of cloud it rose;
The towers were crowned with a crystal light
Like the starry crown of a white snowflake
As they pierced in a wild white pinnacled crowd,
Through the dusky wreaths of enchanted cloud
That swirled all round like a witch’s hair.
And we heard, as the sound of a great sea sighing,
The sigh of the sleepless world of care;
And we saw strange shadowy figures flying
Up to the Ivory Gates and beating
With pale hands, long and famished and thin;
Like blinded birds we saw them dash
Against the cruelly gleaming wall:
We heard them wearily moan and call
With sharp starved lips for ever entreating
The pale doorkeeper to let them in.
And still, as they beat, again and again,
We saw on the moon-pale lintels a splash
Of crimson blood like a poppy-stain
Or a wild red rose from the gardens of pain
That sigh all night like a ghostly sea
From the City of Sleep to Gethsemane.
And lo, as we neared that mighty crowd
An old blind man came, crying aloud
To greet us, as once the blind man cried
In the Bible picture--you know we tried
To paint that print, with its Eastern sun;
But the reds and the yellows _would_ mix and run,
And the blue of the sky made a horrible mess
Right over the edge of the Lord’s white dress.
And the old blind man, just as though he had eyes,
Came straight to meet us; and all the cries
Of the crowd were hushed; and a strange sweet calm
Stole through the air like a breath of the balm
That was wafted abroad from the Forest of Thyme
(For it rolled all round that curious clime
With its magical clouds of perfumed trees.)
And the blind man cried, “Our help is at hand,
Oh, brothers, remember the old command,
Remember the frankincense and myrrh,
Make way, make way for those little ones there;
Make way, make way, I have seen them afar
Under a great white Eastern star;
For I am the mad blind man who sees!”
Then he whispered, softly--_Of such as these_;
And through the hush of the cloven crowd
We passed to the gates of the City, and there
Our fairy heralds cried aloud--
_Open your Gates; don’t stand and stare;
These are the Children for whom our King
Made all the star-worlds dance in a ring!_
And lo, like a sorrow that melts from the heart
In tears, the slow gates melted apart;
And into the City we passed like a dream;
And then, in one splendid marching stream
The whole of that host came following through.
We were only children, just like you;
Children, ah, but we felt so grand
As we led them--although we could understand
Nothing at all of the wonderful song
That rose all round as we marched along.
SONG
_You that have seen how the world and its glory_
_Change and grow old like the love of a friend;_
_You that have come to the end of the story,_
_You that were tired ere you came to the end;_
_You that are weary of laughter and sorrow,_
_Pain and pleasure, labour and sin,_
_Sick of the midnight and dreading the morrow,_
_Ah, come in; come in._
_You that are bearing the load of the ages;_
_You that have loved overmuch and too late;_
_You that confute all the saws of the sages;_
_You that served only because you must wait,_
_Knowing your work was a wasted endeavour;_
_You that have lost and yet triumphed therein,_
_Add loss to your losses and triumph for ever;_
_Ah, come in; come in._
And we knew as we went up that twisted street,
With its violet shadows and pearl-pale walls,
We were coming to Something strange and sweet,
For the dim air echoed with elfin calls;
And, far away, in the heart of the City,
A murmur of laughter and revelry rose,--
A sound that was faint as the smile of Pity,
And sweet as a swan-song’s golden close.
And then, once more, as we marched along,
There surged all round us that wonderful song;
And it swung to the tramp of our marching feet;
But ah, it was tenderer now and so sweet
That it made our eyes grow wet and blind,
And the whole wide-world seem mother-kind,
Folding us round with a gentle embrace,
And pressing our souls to her soft sweet face.
SONG
_Dreams; dreams; ah, the memory blinding us,
Blinding our eyes to the way that we go;
Till the new sorrow come, once more reminding us
Blindly of kind hearts, ours long ago:
Mother-mine, whisper we, yours was the love for me!
Still, though our paths lie lone and apart,
Yours is the true love, shining above for me,
Yours are the kind eyes, hurting my heart._
_Dreams; dreams; ah, how shall we sing of them,_
_Dreams that we loved with our head on her breast:_
_Dreams; dreams; and the cradle-sweet swing of them;_
_Ay, for her voice was the sound we loved best:_
_Can we remember at all or, forgetting it,_
_Can we recall for a moment the gleam_
_Of our childhood’s delight and the wonder begetting it,_
_Wonder awakened in dreams of a dream?_
And, once again, from the heart of the City
A murmur of tenderer laughter rose,
A sound that was faint as the smile of Pity,
And sweet as a swan-song’s golden close;
And it seemed as if some wonderful Fair
Were charming the night of the City of Dreams,
For, over the mystical din out there,
The clouds were litten with flickering gleams,
And a roseate light like the day’s first flush
Quivered and beat on the towers above,
And we heard through the curious crooning hush
An elfin song that we used to love.
_Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn ..._
And the soft wind blew it the other way;
And all that we heard was--_Cow’s in the corn_;
But we never heard anything half so gay!
And ever we seemed to be drawing nearer
That mystical roseate smoke-wreathed glare,
And the curious music grew louder and clearer,
Till _Mustard-Seed_ said, “We are lucky, you see,
We’ve arrived at a time of festivity!”
And so to the end of the street we came,
And turned a corner, and--there we were,
In a place that glowed like the dawn of day,
A crowded clamouring City square
Like the cloudy heart of an opal, aflame
With the lights of a great Dream-Fair:
Thousands of children were gathered there,
Thousands of old men, weary and grey,
And the shouts of the showmen filled the air--
This way! This way! This way!
And _See-Saw_; _Margery Daw_; we heard a rollicking shout,
As the swing-boats hurtled over our heads to the tune of the roundabout;
And _Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn_, we heard the showmen cry,
And _Dickory Dock, I’m as good as a clock_, we heard the swings reply.
This way, this way to your Heart’s Desire;
Come, cast your burdens down;
And the pauper shall mount his throne in the skies,
And the king be rid of his crown:
And souls that were dead shall be fed with fire
From the fount of their ancient pain,
And your lost love come with the light in her eyes
Back to your heart again.
Ah, here be sure she shall never prove
Less kind than her eyes were bright;
This way, this way to your old lost love,
You shall kiss her lips to-night;
This way for the smile of a dead man’s face
And the grip of a brother’s hand,
This way to your childhood’s heart of grace
And your home in Fairy-land.
_Dickory Dock, I’m as good as a clock_, d’you hear my swivels chime?
To and fro as I come and go, I keep eternal time.
O, little Bo-peep, if you’ve lost your sheep
and don’t know where to find ’em,
Leave ’em alone and they’ll come home, and carry their tails behind ’em.
And _See-Saw_; _Margery Daw_; there came the chorussing shout,
As the swing-boats answered the roaring tune of the rollicking roundabout;
Dickory, dickory, dickory, dock, d’you hear my swivels chime?
Swing; swing; you’re as good as a king if you keep eternal time.
Then we saw that the tunes of the world were one;
And the metre that guided the rhythmic sun
Was at one, like the ebb and the flow of the sea,
With the tunes that we learned at our mother’s knee;
The beat of the horse-hoofs that carried us down
To see the fine Lady of Banbury Town;
And so, by the rhymes that we knew, we could tell
Without knowing the others--that all was well.
And then, our brains began to spin;
For it seemed as if that mighty din
Were no less than the cries of the poets and sages
Of all the nations in all the ages;
And, if they could only beat out the whole
Of their music together, the guerdon and goal
Of the world would be reached with one mighty shout,
And the dark dread secret of Time be out;
And nearer, nearer they seemed to climb,
And madder and merrier rose the song,
And the swings and the see-saws marked the time;
For this was the maddest and merriest throng
That ever was met on a holy-day
To dance the dust of the world away;
And madder and merrier, round and round
The whirligigs whirled to the whirling sound,
Till it seemed that the mad song burst its bars
And mixed with the song of the whirling stars,
The song that the rhythmic Time-Tides tell
To seraphs in Heaven and devils in Hell;
Ay; Heaven and Hell in accordant chime
With the universal rhythm and rhyme
Were nearing the secret of Space and Time;
The song of that ultimate mystery
Which only the mad blind men who see,
Led by the laugh of a little child,
Can utter; Ay, wilder and yet more wild
It maddened, till now--full song--it was out!
It roared from the starry roundabout--
_A child was born in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem,_
_A child was born in Bethlehem; ah, hear my fairy fable;_
_For I have seen the King of Kings, no longer thronged with angel wings,_
_But croodling like a little babe, and cradled in a stable._
_The wise men came to greet him with their gifts
of myrrh and frankincense,--_
_Gold and myrrh and frankincense they brought to make him mirth;_
_And would you know the way to win to little brother Peterkin,_
_My childhood’s heart shall guide you through the glories of the earth._
_A child was born in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem;_
_The wise men came to welcome him: a star stood o’er the gable;_
_And there they saw the Kings of Kings, no longer
thronged with angel wings,_
_But croodling like a little babe, and cradled in a stable._
And creeping through the music once again the fairy cry
Came freezing o’er the snowy towers to lead us on to Peterkin:
Once more the fairy bugles blew from lands beyond the sky,
And we all groped out together, dazed and blind, we knew not why;
Out through the City’s farther gates we went to look for Peterkin;
Out, out into the dark Unknown, and heard the clamour die
Far, far away behind us as we trotted on to Peterkin.
Then once more along the rare
Forest-paths we groped our way:
Here the glow-worm’s league-long glare
Turned the Wild Thyme night to day:
There we passed a sort of whale
Sixty feet in length or more,
But we knew it was a snail
Even when we heard it snore.
Often through the glamorous gloom
Almost on the top of us
We beheld a beetle loom
Like a hippopotamus;
Once or twice a spotted toad
Like a mountain wobbled by
With a rolling moon that glowed
Through the skin-fringe of its eye.
Once a caterpillar bowed
Down a leaf of Ygdrasil
Like a sunset-coloured cloud
Sleeping on a quiet hill:
Once we came upon a moth
Fast asleep with outspread wings,
Like a mighty tissued cloth
Woven for the feet of kings.
There above the woods in state
Many a temple dome that glows
Delicately like a great
Rainbow-coloured bubble rose:
Though they were but flowers on earth,
Oh, we dared not enter in;
For in that divine re-birth
Less than awe were more than sin!
Yet their mystic anthems came
Sweetly to our listening ears;
And their burden was the same--
“No more sorrow, no more tears!
Whither Peterkin has gone
You, assuredly, shall go:
When your wanderings are done,
All he knows you, too, shall know!”
So we thought we’d onward roam
Till earth’s Smallest Flower appeared,
With a less tremendous dome
Less divinely to be feared:
Then, perchance, if we should dare
Timidly to enter in,
Might some kindly doorkeeper
Give us news of Peterkin.
At last we saw a crimson porch
Far away, like a dull red torch
Burning in the purple gloom;
And a great ocean of perfume
Rolled round us as we drew anear,
And then we strangely seemed to hear
The shadow of a mighty psalm,
A sound as if a golden sea
Of music swung in utter calm
Against the shores of Eternity;
And then we saw the mighty dome
Of some mysterious Temple tower
On high; and knew that we had come,
At last, to that sweet House of Grace
Which wise men find in every place--
The Temple of the Smallest Flower.
And there--alas--our fairy friends
Whispered, “Here our kingdom ends:
You must enter in alone,
But your souls will surely show
Whither Peterkin is gone
And the road that you must go:
We, poor fairies, have no souls!
Hark, the warning hare-bell tolls;”
So “Good-bye, good-bye,” they said,
“Dear little seekers-for-the-dead.”
They vanished; ah, but as they went
We heard their voices softly blent
In some mysterious fairy song
That seemed to make us wise and strong;
For it was like the holy calm
That fills the bosomed rose with balm,
Or blessings that the twilight breathes
Where the honeysuckle wreathes
Between young lovers and the sky
As on banks of flowers they lie;
And with wings of rose and green
Laughing fairies pass unseen,
Singing their sweet lullaby,--
Lulla-lulla-lullaby!
Lulla-lulla-lullaby!
Ah, good night, with lullaby!
* * * * *
Only a flower? Those carven walls,
Those cornices and coronals,
The splendid crimson porch, the thin
Strange sounds of singing from within--
Through the scented arch we stept,
Pushed back the soft petallic door,
And down the velvet aisles we crept;
Was it a Flower--no more?
For one of the voices that we heard,
A child’s voice, clear as the voice of a bird,
Was it not?--nay, it could not be!
And a woman’s voice that tenderly
Answered him in fond refrain,
And pierced our hearts with sweet sweet pain,
As if dear Mary-mother hung
Above some little child, and sung
Between the waves of that golden sea
The cradle-songs of Eternity;
And, while in her deep smile he basked,
Answered whatsoe’er he asked.
_What is there hid in the heart of a rose,_
_Mother-mine?_
_Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows?_
_A man that died on a lonely hill_
_May tell you, perhaps, but none other will,_
_Little child._
_What does it take to make a rose,_
_Mother-mine?_
_The God that died to make it knows_
_It takes the world’s eternal wars,_
_It takes the moon and all the stars,_
_It takes the might of heaven and hell_
_And the everlasting Love as well,_
_Little child._
But there, in one great shrine apart
Within the Temple’s holiest heart,
We came upon a blinding light,
Suddenly, and a burning throne
Of pinnacled glory, wild and white;
We could not see Who reigned thereon;
For, all at once, as a wood-bird sings,
The aisles were full of great white wings
Row above mystic burning row;
And through the splendour and the glow
We saw four angels, great and sweet,
With outspread wings and folded feet,
Come gliding down from a heaven within
The golden heart of Paradise;
And in their hands, with laughing eyes,
Lay little brother Peterkin.
And all around the Temple of the Smallest of the Flowers
The glory of the angels made a star for little Peterkin;
For all the Kings of Splendour and all the Heavenly Powers
Were gathered there together in the fairy forest bowers
With all their globed and radiant wings to make a star for Peterkin,
The star that shone upon the East, a star that still is ours,
Whene’er we hang our stockings up, a star of wings for Peterkin.
Then all, in one great flash, was gone--
A voice cried, “Hush, all’s well!”
And we stood dreaming there alone,
In darkness. Who can tell
The mystic quiet that we felt,
As if the woods in worship knelt,
Far off we heard a bell
Tolling strange human folk to prayer
Through fields of sunset-coloured air.
And then a voice, “Why, here they are!”
And--as it seemed--we woke;
The sweet old skies, great star by star
Upon our vision broke;
Field over field of heavenly blue
Rose o’er us; then a voice we knew
Softly and gently spoke--
“See, they are sleeping by the side
Of that dear little one--who died.”