_Buy English posies!
Kent and Surrey may--
Violets of the Undercliff
Wet with Channel spray;
Cowslips from a Devon combe--
Midland furze afire--
Buy my English posies,
And I'll sell your heart's desire!_
Buy my English posies!
You that scorn the may,
Won't you greet a friend from home
Half the world away?
{63}
Green against the draggled drift,
Faint and frail and first--
Buy my Northern blood-root
And I'll know where you were nursed;
Robin down the logging-road whistles, "Come to me!"
Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free;
All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain.
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!
Buy my English posies!
Here's to match your need--
Buy a tuft of royal heath,
Buy a bunch of weed
White as sand of Muysenberg
Spun before the gale--
Buy my heath and lilies
And I'll tell you whence you hail!
Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie--
Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky--
Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain--
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again.
Buy my English posies!
You that will not turn--
Buy my hot-wood clematis
Buy a frond o' fern
{64}
Gather'd where the Erskine leaps
Down the road to Lorne--
Buy my Christmas creeper
And I'll say where you were born!
West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin--
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn--
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main--
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again.
Buy my English posies!
Here's your choice unsold!
Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom,
Buy the kowhai's gold
Flung for gift on Taupo's face,
Sign that spring is come--
Buy my clinging myrtle
And I'll give you back your home!
Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine--
Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the _ratas_ twine--
Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain--
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again.
Buy my English posies!
Ye that have your own
Buy them for a brother's sake
Overseas, alone.
{65}
Weed ye trample underfoot
Floods his heart abrim--
Bird ye never heeded,
O, she calls his dead to him.
Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;
Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!
Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land--
Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand.
_Rudyard Kipling._