Dear, they are praising your beauty,
The grass and the sky:
The sky in a silence of wonder,
The grass in a sigh.
I too would sing for your praising,
Dearest, had I
Speech as the whispering grass,
Or the silent sky.
These have an art for the praising
Beauty so high.
Sweet, you are praised in a silence,
Sung in a sigh.
_Ralph Hodgson_
This exquisite poet was born in Northumberland about 1879. One of the
most graceful of the younger word-magicians, Ralph Hodgson will retain
his freshness as long as there are lovers of such rare and timeless
songs as his. It is difficult to think of any anthology of English
poetry compiled after 1917 that could omit "Eve," "The Song of Honor,"
and that memorable snatch of music, "Time, You Old Gypsy Man." One
succumbs to the charm of "Eve" at the first reading; for here is the
oldest of all legends told with a surprising simplicity and still more
surprising freshness. This Eve is neither the conscious sinner nor the
Mother of men; she is, in Hodgson's candid lines, any young, English
country girl--filling her basket, regarding the world and the serpent
itself with a mild and childlike wonder.
Hodgson's verses, full of the love of all natural things, a love that
goes out to
"an idle rainbow
No less than laboring seas,"
were originally brought out in small pamphlets, and distributed by
_Flying Fame_.