Hill shepherds, hard north-country men,
Bring down the baa'ing blackface droves
To market or to shearing-pen
From the high places and the groves--
High places of the fox and gled,
Groves of the stone-pine on the scree,
Lone sanctuaries where we have said,
"The gods have been; the gods may be!"
'Mid conifer and fern and whin
I sat; the turf was warm and dry;
A sailing speck, the peregrine
Wheeled in the waste of azure sky;
The blue-grey clouds of pinewoods clung,
Their vanguard climbed the heathery steep;
A terrier with lolling tongue
Blinked in my shadow, half asleep.
The Legion's Way shone far beneath;
A javelin white as Adria's foam,
It gleamed across dark leagues of heath
To Rome, to everlasting Rome;
Likewise from Rome to Simon's Stack
(That's logical, at least), and so
It may have brought a Huntress back
On trails She followed long ago!
I watched my drifting smoke-wreaths rise,
And pictured Pagans plumed and tense
Who climbed the hill to sacrifice
To great Diana's excellence;
And--"Just the sort of church for me,"
I said, and heard a fir-cone fall;
The puppy bristled at my knee--
And that was absolutely all.
A queer thing is a clump of fir;
But, if it's old and on a hill,
Free to that ancient trafficker,
The wind, it's ten times queerer still;
Sometimes it's filled with bag-pipe skirls,
Anon with heathen whispering;
Just then it seemed alive with girls
Who laughed, and let a bowstring sing!
Yes, funny things your firwoods do:
They fill with elemental sounds;
Hence, one has fancied feet that flew
And the high whimpering of hounds;
A wind from down the corrie's cup--
"Only the wind," said I to Tramp;
He heard--stern down and hackles up,
I--with a forehead strangely damp.
* * * *
Wind? or the Woodland Chastity
Passing, as once, upon Her way,
That left a little dog and me
Confounded in the light of day?
A rabbit hopped across the track;
The pup pursued with shrill ki-yi;
I asked him which, when he came back;
He couldn't tell--no more can I.
P. R. CHALMERS.
Sept. 24, 1913.