Fairies in the Forest, now the moon is mellow,
Dancing as they never danced through all the dreams of men;
While I sit in the firelight, like any other fellow,
Writing little lyrics with a fountain-pen:
_Poetry like a paint-box, red and blue and yellow;_
_Songs about the Homeland: God save the King!_
Scent of the wild thyme from the earth is springing,
Drifting like a galleon is the golden moon;
Hear the fairy voices, singing ever singing;
Faintly from the greenwood, I can hear them croon:
_Never mind the sense of it, if the verse is ringing!_
_Never mind how thin it is, keep to the tune!_
The Queen is in the parlour; Drake’s upon the high seas;
Newbolt’s in the schoolbooks and I’m there too;
For singing songs of England, of her seas (and my seas);
Songs about the homeland, red and white and blue:
They’ve put me in the schoolbooks, green and purple schoolbooks
Of England, O England (_that’s the way to sing_);
While Drake’s gone with the fairies, sailing where the dreams go:
_Never mind how thin they are if the verses ring_
_For we’re singing songs of England and God save the King!_
FROM A GREAT POLITICAL-BIOGRAPHICAL DRAMA, ‘BUBB BODINGTON’ NOT YET
WRITTEN BY MR JOHN DRINKWATER
_Two Chroniclers_:
_First Chronicler_:
Kinsmen who have known the Cotswold haze,
You will remember
April and June have thirty days,
So, too, November.
_Second Chronicler_:
Men’s sowings and their reapings will deflow’r
Each blossomed chine;
Yet will a stitch prompt to occasion’s hour
Give maintenance to nine.
_The two together_:
Circumstance brims all our years
With agonies and doubts and fears,
Generations that have flown
Harvesting but bitter loss;
Kinsmen, shall the moving stone
Garner yet its little moss?
_First Chronicler_:
Happy the spirits that can grow
In steadfastness,
Yet to the end possess
Their ardours.
_Second Chronicler_:
They alone shall know
Felicity, the wages of content,
Who thus transmute the vain and fleeting show
Into event.
_The two together_:
O vision on its lonely way shall find,
Kinsmen, it is an ill
And evil-blowing wind
That does not speak to someone of goodwill;
And a poor tale, shapeless indeed and crude,
Whose fragments we two cannot bind
With some such smooth and pompous platitude.