RAINBOW GOLD
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
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MELBOURNE
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RAINBOW GOLD
POEMS OLD AND NEW
SELECTED FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
BY SARA TEASDALE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY DUGALD WALKER
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NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
_All rights reserved_
Printed in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY THE MACMILLAN CO.
Set up and published September, 1922
CONDÉ NAST PRESS GREENWICH, CONN.
TO THE BEAUTIFUL MEMORY
OF MY FATHER
JOHN WARREN TEASDALE
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PREFATORY NOTE
Every anthologist must adopt some plan for making selections. Mine has
been very simple. I have made a small collection of poems that would
have pleased the child I used to be and the boy who was my playmate.
Above all things I have striven to keep the book small, for the big
books of poetry on our shelves were always left to themselves. It was
the little books that became our intimate companions.
To make a selection for boys and girls from the countless riches of
lyric poetry in our language, and to reduce that selection to the
contents of so small a book as this one, is a grave task. It involves
the exclusion on the grounds of mere lack of space, of so much that one
loves. I should have liked to make a book of this size containing only
Elizabethan songs and early English ballads, another entirely devoted to
Georgian and Victorian poets, a third to living writers, and a fourth to
child-rhymes, parodies, nonsense verses and the like. If the grown-up
reader regrets omissions, I beg him to be sympathetic toward the
compiler, who has been a prey to those same regrets constantly during
the year in which she has been at work on the book. Alas that a volume
cannot have the advantages of being both a big book and a little one at
the same time!
In selecting the poems for the girl and boy who used to be, I have tried
always to read with their eyes. I have been guided from first to last by
their enjoyment or their boredom. The poems that they loved best had
highly accented rhythms, and took them into “a land of clear colors and
stories.” They enjoyed certain sad poems as much as merry ones, but
meditative, moralistic and gloomy poems were never read but once, if
they were read at all. And I am glad to say that poems full of
sentimentality fared no better. I have brought together much that has
been written since they were children, and boys and girls of to-day will
find among these poems many of the most enjoyable things in the book. To
mention only one recent poet that they would have loved, Walter de la
Mare, is to realize how much a child has missed who does not possess his
inimitable “Peacock Pie.”
A child’s enjoyment, as I said above, is what I have striven for in this
collection. We who have seen how poetry has come to our rescue with its
delight, its healing, and its new courage in times of stress and sorrow,
know that it is an inestimable possession. We cannot come to the
knowledge of it too early. If we can have a clear personal realization
while we are children, that we love poetry, no amount of well-meaning
but sometimes tactless and uninspired teaching of it in schools and
colleges can shake us in the knowledge of that love. I remember that the
first poem I was condemned to learn by heart in school was “The
Builders” by Longfellow. I say condemned, but it was not as a
punishment. Every child in the class had to learn it. It is one of the
poems that I am sure the poet himself would never have given to a child
to learn, beginning, as grown-up readers will remember:
“All are Architects of Fate
Working in these walls of Time.”
After committing the nine stanzas of this poem to memory, it took me a
long time to grow willing to read the stirring things that the same poet
has written, poems as interesting as this one is humdrum.
But education is better managed now than then. Teachers and parents
alike have come to feel that the love of poetry in general is more to be
desired for children than the knowledge of certain “well known” poems,
no matter how good, or even how great, these poems may be. Besides a
more tactfully managed education in the schools, there are children’s
rooms in the public libraries. I have wished many times during the
months spent in making this book, when visits to these rooms were an
inspiration, that I might have browsed among the low shelves long ago in
childhood, and talked with the same delightful librarians. I should like
to express my thanks to these librarians, who have been so kind in
various ways. I want especially to thank Annie Carroll Moore,
Supervisor of Work with Children in the New York Public Library, who
knows the heart of a child from long travelling on “The Roads to
Childhood.”
In closing I shall quote briefly from the introduction by Andrew Lang to
his anthology for children, “The Blue Poetry Book,” for he speaks my own
thoughts better than I can express them: “It does not appear to the
Editor that poems about children, or especially intended for children,
are those which a child likes best. A child’s imaginative life is spent
in the unknown future, and in the romantic past.... The poems written
for and about children rather appeal to the old, whose own childhood is
now to them a distant fairy world, as the man’s life is to the child....
We make a mistake when we ‘write down’ to children; still more do we err
when we tell a child not to read this or that because he cannot
understand it. He understands far more than we give him credit for, but
nothing that can harm him. The half-understanding of it, too, the sense
of a margin beyond, as in a wood full of unknown glades and birds and
flowers unfamiliar, is a great part of a child’s pleasure in reading....
The child does not want everything to be explained. In the unexplained
is great pleasure.”
A number of my friends have been kind in giving me the names of poems
that they liked best when they were children. The small compass of the
book has made it impossible to use all of the poems suggested in this
way, but it has been a pleasure to include as many of them as I could. I
want to acknowledge very gratefully my indebtedness for counsel and
suggestions to John Gould Fletcher, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Jessie
B. Rittenhouse, Louis Untermeyer, Jean Untermeyer, John Hall Wheelock
and Marguerite Wilkinson.
SARA TEASDALE
_New York City, 1922_
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due the following publishers for permission to include the
poems enumerated below:
To Messrs. Constable & Co., for “Berries,” “Jim Jay,” and “Off the
Ground,” by Walter de la Mare.
To Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co., for “A Prayer,” by Edwin Markham,
and “O Captain! My Captain,” by Walt Whitman.
To Messrs. Harper & Brothers for “When the Hounds of Spring,” by
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
To Messrs. Henry Holt & Co., for “Good Hours,” by Robert Frost; and
“Berries,” “Jim Jay” and “Off the Ground” from “Peacock Pie,” by
Walter de la Mare.
To Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Co., by whose permission and by special
arrangement with whom the following poems are included: “Fable,” by
Ralph Waldo Emerson; “The Fountain,” by James Russell Lowell; “My
Lost Youth,” and “The Skeleton in Armor,” by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow; and “A Song for My Mother,” by Anna Hempstead Branch.
To Mr. Alfred Knopf for “Nature’s Friend,” by William H. Davies.
To Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., for “The Snow,” by Emily Dickinson.
To The Macmillan Co., for “The Fairies,” and “The Lepracaun,” by
William Allingham; “The Forsaken Merman,” by Matthew Arnold; “The
Pied Piper of Hamelin,” and “Song: The Year’s at the Spring,” by
Robert Browning; “The Terrible Robber Men,” by Padraic Colum; “Moon
Folly,” by Fannie Stearns Gifford; “Time, You Old Gipsy Man,” by
Ralph Hodgson; “Sea Fever,” by John Masefield; “A Christmas
Carol,” by Christina Rossetti; “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” by
William Butler Yeats; and “The Ghosts of the Buffaloes,” by Vachel
Lindsay.
To Messrs. Macmillan & Co., for “The Fairies,” and “The Lepracaun,”
by William Allingham; “The Forsaken Merman,” by Matthew Arnold; and
“A Christmas Carol,” by Christina Rossetti.
To The Poetry Bookshop for “Star-Talk,” by Robert Graves.
To Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons for “Song of the Chattahoochee,”
by Sidney Lanier from “Poems of Sidney Lanier”; copyright 1884,
1891, 1918 by Mary D. Lanier, by permission of the publishers; and
“Escape at Bedtime,” and “Romance,” by Robert Louis Stevenson.
To Messrs. Frederick A. Stokes Co., for “Tree-Toad,” by Hilda
Conkling; and “A Song of Sherwood,” by Alfred Noyes, from his
Collected Poems, Volume I.
To the living poets who have generously allowed their poems to appear in
this book, the compiler expresses grateful thanks.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
KUBLA KHAN _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ 19
MEG MERRILIES _John Keats_ 22
BERRIES _Walter de la Mare_ 24
ROMANCE _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 28
HYMN OF PAN _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 29
WRITTEN IN MARCH _William Wordsworth_ 31
“WHEN THE HOUNDS OF SPRING” _Algernon Charles Swinburne_ 32
SONG _Robert Browning_ 36
“UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE” _William Shakespeare_ 37
TO VIOLETS _Robert Herrick_ 38
ON MAY MORNING _John Milton_ 39
THE LEPRACAUN _William Allingham_ 40
HUNTING SONG _Sir Walter Scott_ 44
THE LADY OF SHALOTT _Alfred Tennyson_ 46
HYMN TO DIANA _Ben Jonson_ 59
THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS _William Butler Yeats_ 60
THE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE _Christopher Marlowe_ 62
ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER _Author Unknown_ 64
A SEA SONG _Allan Cunningham_ 72
EPITAPH ON A HARE _William Cowper_ 73
THE PILGRIM _John Bunyan_ 76
LULLABY FOR TITANIA _William Shakespeare_ 78
ISRAFEL _Edgar Allan Poe_ 82
JAFFÁR _Leigh Hunt_ 87
A SONG OF SHERWOOD _Alfred Noyes_ 89
THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB _Lord Byron_ 92
IVRY _Thomas Babington Macaulay_ 94
THE TIGER _William Blake_ 98
THE TERRIBLE ROBBER MEN _Padraic Colum_ 100
SIR PATRICK SPENS _Author Unknown_ 101
“BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND” _William Shakespeare_ 108
THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN _Robert Browning_ 109
“TIME, YOU OLD GIPSY MAN” _Ralph Hodgson_ 124
THE SOLITARY REAPER _William Wordsworth_ 128
MY LOST YOUTH _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ 130
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC _Julia Ward Howe_ 133
GATHERING SONG OF DONALD DHU _Sir Walter Scott_ 135
THE MINSTREL-BOY _Thomas Moore_ 137
BANNOCKBURN _Robert Burns_ 138
FABLE _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 140
GOOD HOURS _Robert Frost_ 141
WINTER _William Shakespeare_ 142
A CHANTED CALENDAR _Sydney Dobell_ 143
THE CLOUD _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 145
BUGLE SONG _Alfred Tennyson_ 151
THE FORSAKEN MERMAN _Matthew Arnold_ 152
NURSE’S SONG _William Blake_ 158
TO A MOUSE _Robert Burns_ 159
THE FAIRIES _William Allingham_ 162
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI _John Keats_ 168
SPRING _Thomas Nashe_ 175
“I WANDERED LONELY” _William Wordsworth_ 176
THE GAY GOS-HAWK _Author Unknown_ 178
AN OLD SONG OF FAIRIES _Author Unknown_ 186
MOON FOLLY _Fannie Stearns Gifford_ 189
STAR-TALK _Robert Graves_ 193
JIM JAY _Walter de la Mare_ 197
THE GHOSTS OF THE BUFFALOES _Vachel Lindsay_ 199
A CHRISTMAS CAROL _Christina Rossetti_ 203
ESCAPE AT BEDTIME _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 205
SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE _Sidney Lanier_ 206
SEA FEVER _John Masefield_ 211
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! _Walt Whitman_ 212
THE SNOW _Emily Dickinson_ 214
A SONG FOR MY MOTHER _Anna Hempstead Branch_ 215
THE FOUNTAIN _James Russell Lowell_ 217
NATURE’S FRIEND _William H. Davies_ 221
TREE-TOAD _Hilda Conkling_ 223
AN ANCIENT CHRISTMAS CAROL _Author Unknown_ 225
AN OLD CHRISTMAS CAROL _Author Unknown_ 226
KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF
CANTERBURY _Author Unknown_ 228
THE SANDS OF DEE _Charles Kingsley_ 234
SISTER, AWAKE! _Author Unknown_ 236
THE SKELETON IN ARMOR _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ 237
BY BENDEMEER’S STREAM _Thomas Moore_ 244
A PRAYER _Edwin Markham_ 245
YOUNG LOCHINVAR _Sir Walter Scott_ 246
OFF THE GROUND _Walter de la Mare_ 249
AULD DADDY DARKNESS _James Ferguson_ 256
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ILLUSTRATIONS
KUBLA KHAN _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ Frontispiece
“WHEN THE HOUNDS OF SPRING” _Algernon Charles Swinburne_ 33
THE LADY OF SHALOTT _Alfred Tennyson_ 51
HYMN TO DIANA _Ben Jonson_ 58
ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER _Author Unknown_ 69
LULLABY FOR TITANIA _William Shakespeare_ 79
ISRAFEL _Edgar Allan Poe_ 83
SIR PATRICK SPENS _Author Unknown_ 105
“TIME, YOU OLD GIPSY MAN” _Ralph Hodgson_ 125
THE CLOUD _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 147
THE FAIRIES _William Allingham_ 165
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI _John Keats_ 169
SPRING _Thomas Nashe_ 174
MOON FOLLY _Fannie Stearns Gifford_ 191
STAR-TALK _Robert Graves_ 195
SEA FEVER _John Masefield_ 210
THE FOUNTAIN _James Russell Lowell_ 219
OFF THE GROUND _Walter de la Mare_ 251
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KUBLA KHAN
_A Vision in a Dream_
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail;
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach’d the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
_Samuel Taylor Coleridge_
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MEG MERRILIES
Old Meg she was a Gipsy,
And liv’d upon the Moors:
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,
And her house was out of doors.
Her apples were swart blackberries,
Her currants pods o’ broom;
Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,
Her book a churchyard tomb.
Her Brothers were the craggy hills,
Her Sisters larchen trees--
Alone with her great family
She liv’d as she did please.
No breakfast had she many a morn,
No dinner many a noon,
And ’stead of supper she would stare
Full hard against the Moon.
But every morn of woodbine fresh
She made her garlanding,
And every night the dark glen Yew
She wove, and she would sing.
And with her fingers old and brown
She plaited Mats o’ Rushes,
And gave them to the Cottagers
She met among the Bushes.
Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen
And tall as Amazon:
An old red blanket cloak she wore;
A chip hat had she on.
God rest her aged bones somewhere--
She died full long agone!--_John Keats_
[Illustration]
BERRIES
There was an old woman
Went blackberry picking
Along the hedges
From Weep to Wicking.
Half a pottle--
No more she had got,
When out steps a Fairy
From her green grot;
And says, “Well, Jill,
Would ’ee pick ’ee mo?”
And Jill, she curtseys,
And looks just so.
“Be off,” says the Fairy,
“As quick as you can,
Over the meadows
To the little green lane,
That dips to the hayfields
Of Farmer Grimes:
I’ve berried those hedges
A score of times;
Bushel on bushel
I’ll promise ’ee, Jill,
This side of supper
If ’ee pick with a will.”
She glints very bright,
And speaks her fair;
Then lo, and behold!
She has faded in air.
Be sure old Goodie
She trots betimes
Over the meadows
To Farmer Grimes.
And never was queen
With jewellery rich
As those same hedges
From twig to ditch;
Like Dutchmen’s coffers,
Fruit, thorn, and flower--
They shone like William
And Mary’s bower.
And be sure Old Goodie
Went back to Weep,
So tired with her basket
She scarce could creep.
When she comes in the dusk
To her cottage door,
There’s Towser wagging
As never before,
To see his Missus
So glad to be
Come from her fruit-picking
Back to he.
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And soon as next morning
Dawn was grey,
The pot on the hob
Was simmering away;
And all in a stew
And a hugger-mugger
Towser and Jill
A-boiling of sugar,
And the dark clear fruit
That from Faërie came,
For syrup and jelly
And blackberry jam.
Twelve jolly gallipots
Jill put by;
And one little teeny one,
One inch high;
And that she’s hidden
A good thumb deep,
Half way over
From Wicking to Weep.
_Walter de la Mare_
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ROMANCE
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_
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HYMN OF PAN
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
Liquid Penëus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion’s shadow outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.
I sang of the dancing Stars,
I sang of the daedal Earth,
And of Heaven, and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth.
And then I changed my pipings--
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus
I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept--as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
_Percy Bysshe Shelley_
[Illustration]
WRITTEN IN MARCH
The Cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!
Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The ploughboy is whooping--anon--anon
There’s joy in the mountains;
There’s life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!
_William Wordsworth_
“WHEN THE HOUNDS OF SPRING”
When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamor of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
[Illustration]
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins....
_Algernon Charles Swinburne_
[Illustration]
SONG
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His Heaven--
All’s right with the world!
_Robert Browning_
[Illustration]
“UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE”
Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i’ the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
_William Shakespeare_
[Illustration]
TO VIOLETS
Welcome, maids of honor,
You do bring
In the Spring,
And wait upon her.
She has virgins many,
Fresh and fair;
Yet you are
More sweet than any.
You’re the maiden posies,
And, so graced,
To be placed
’Fore damask roses.
Yet, though thus respected,
By and by
Ye do lie,
Poor girls, neglected.
_Robert Herrick_
[Illustration]
ON MAY MORNING
Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flow’ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire
Mirth and youth and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
_John Milton_
[Illustration]
THE LEPRACAUN OR FAIRY SHOEMAKER
[Illustration]
Little Cowboy, what have you heard,
Up on the lonely rath’s green mound?
Only the plaintive yellow bird
Sighing in sultry fields around,
Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee!--
Only the grasshopper and the bee?--
“Tip-tap, rip-rap,
Tick-a-tack-too!
Scarlet leather, sewn together,
This will make a shoe.
Left, right, pull it tight;
Summer days are warm;
Underground in winter,
Laughing at the storm!”
Lay your ear close to the hill.
Do you not catch the tiny clamour,
Busy click of elfin hammer,
Voice of the Lepracaun singing shrill
As he merrily plies his trade?
He’s a span
And a quarter in height.
Get him in sight, hold him tight,
And you’re a made
Man!
[Illustration]
You watch your cattle the summer day,
Sup on potatoes, sleep in the hay;
How would you like to roll in your carriage,
Look for a duchess’s daughter in marriage?
Seize the Shoemaker--then you may!
“Big boots a-hunting,
Sandals in the hall,
White for a wedding-feast,
Pink for a ball.
This way, that way,
So we make a shoe;
Getting rich every stitch,
Tick-tack-too!”
Nine-and-ninety treasure-crocks
This keen miser-fairy hath,
Hid in mountains, woods and rocks,
Ruin and round-tow’r, cave and rath,
And where the cormorants build;
From time of old
Guarded by him;
Each of them fill’d
Full to the brim
With gold!
[Illustration]
I caught him at work one day, myself,
In the castle-ditch, where foxglove grows,--
A wrinkled, wizen’d, and bearded Elf,
Spectacles stuck on his pointed nose,
Silver buckles to his hose,
Leather apron--shoe in his lap--
“Rip-rap, tip-tap,
Tack-tack-too!
(A grasshopper on my cap!
Away the moth flew!)
Buskins for a fairy prince,
Brogues for his son,--
Pay me well, pay me well,
When the job is done!”
The rogue was mine, beyond a doubt.
I stared at him; he stared at me;
‘Servant, Sir!’ ‘Humph!’ says he,
And pull’d a snuff-box out.
He took a long pinch, look’d better pleased,
The queer little Lepracaun;
Offer’d the box with a whimsical grace,--
Pouf! he flung the dust in my face,
And, while I sneezed,
Was gone!
_William Allingham_
[Illustration]
HUNTING SONG
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here,
With hawk, and horse, and hunting spear!
Hounds are in their couples yelling,
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling;
Merrily, merrily, mingle they,
‘Waken, lords and ladies gay.’
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
The mist has left the mountain grey,
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming;
And foresters have busy been,
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chant our lay,
‘Waken, lords and ladies gay.’
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
To the greenwood haste away;
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot, and tall of size;
We can show the marks he made,
When ’gainst the oak his antlers fray’d;
You shall see him brought to bay--
‘Waken, lords and ladies gay.’
Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth, and mirth, and glee,
Run a course as well as we;
Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk,
Stanch as hound, and fleet as hawk?
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay!
_Sir Walter Scott_
[Illustration]
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
[Illustration]
PART I
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow-veiled,
Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers “’Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.”
[Illustration]