The poet cried, ‘ I am obsessed,
* And out of joint I find the times ;
Silent the Muse within my breast,
And lost my Dictionary of Rhymes.’
With that he bought an A B C,
And rose and twitched his mantle blue,
And caught a train at ten to three
At ‘ that world-earthquake, Waterloo.’
And ere the sun had made the round
Of Neptune’s wash and Tellus’ ground,
He lay full-fed on a sunny bank,
Where trees were leafy and grasses rank,
And meads were lush and berries ripe,
And filled and lit a favourite pipe,
And said to himself, ‘ I’ll dream all day
On a bank where the time is whiled away.’
Then, wooed by the sound of babbling streams,
Fair visions thronged from the land of dreams ;
They came to plague, but remained to bless
His mind’s subliminal consciousness.
The first was a maid with olive skin,
Dark hair looped up with a silver pin,
And night-black eyes, and an oval chin.
She spake to the poet : ‘ Wild thyme is sweet,
But don’t let it grow beneath your feet ;
Rise up, rise up, and follow me
To the banks of distant Italy :
For Italian skies and streams are blue,
And the shepherd pipes to the happy hills,
And sings that his love has proved untrue
In the way that loves so often do
And that love, after all, is for the few,
And is only one of the minor ills.
So rise, my friend, and follow me
To the land where hearts and morals are free,
And thee will I show
How the white lilies grow
On the banks of distant Italy.’
But the poet said, ‘ Though the streams be blue,
There are marshes, I’ve heard, and malaria too ;
And though you boast of your cloudless skies,
I understand there are clouds of flies ;
And as for Italian shepherds’ morals,
It wasn’t in ethics I earned my laurels ;
If hearts are free I will let them be,
And I will not go where the white lilies grow
(If the fact that you mention is really so)
On the banks of distant Italy.’
Italy passed ; and the next maid came,
And the poet immediately guessed her name ;
For she bore a harp, and her dress was green,
And her dusky hair made a shadowy screen,
And she walked with the grace of a royal race,
And Mr. Yeats would have called her Cathleen.
She spake, and her voice was sweet and soft
As a breeze in the eaves of an old hay-loft :
‘ Know’st thou the land where mists are drawn
O’er the face of eve and the face of dawn,
Where the wild hill sleeps as the wide mist creeps,
And weeping wakes and waking weeps ;
Where the maids are picturesquely dressed,
And their cheeks are caressed by the wet south-west ;
Where the pig in the bog for potatoes digs,
And the people partake of potatoes and pigs ;
Where, twilight and noon, the old wives croon
Of the land that lies beyond all eyes,
East of the sun and west of the moon?
I do be thinking,’ the maiden said,
‘ ‘Tis easy sailing from Holyhead.’
And the poet cried, ‘ I have often sailed
For the land of Erin, ” where all has failed ” ;
And the breeze that brushes
The maidens’ cheeks
As they go cutting rushes
On Macgillicuddy Reeks,
And the mists and potatoes and pigs, as you say,
Are doubtless excellent things in their way ;
But, though an impartial unprejudiced man,
I hold by the proverb of pjSev ayav,
Finding the pleasures of Ireland pall
When the Celtic twilight is over all :
Yes, pjSev ayav is the song I sing,
A motto to which I intend to cling ;
For it’s Old High Dutch for not too much,
Or moderation in everything?
And back to the land, where mists are drawn
O’er the face of eve and the face of dawn
Went Cathleen, daughter of Houlihaun.
Followed a hundred beautiful shades,
Their countries’ representative maids ;
Bretons and Normans and Danes and Swedes,
Dancers of Spain with castanets,
The graceful shapes the Maremma breeds,
Turkish houris with cigarettes,
Dutch, Tyrolese, and Portuguese,
Flemish and Basque O, a maiden-masque !
Then, as the threads of sleep unravelled,
The poet awoke : and he cried, ‘ I have travelled
Far from the land where I was born,
Through the Ivory Gate and the Gate of Horn.
And whether it be that nut-brown stingo
That’s making me feel so remarkably jingo,
Or what it may be I cannot explain
But I’m truly relieved to be home again.
maids, each one your country’s queen,
Pretty or plain, and puny or plump,
Types of Beauty or Hygiene,
Depart, evade, excede, erump !
Begone, burnous, Zouave, and smock,
And frills that tickle the foreign taste :
I know a maid in a holland frock
With a touch of Cambridge blue at the waist,
Who would tramp with me through highland ling,
Or moorland purples or midland greens,
When storm-clouds break and east winds sting,
Which would blow you chits to smithereens.
Give me but a corner of English ground,
And let me watch the endless round
Of flower and fruit and blossom and seed
In hill and valley and tilth and mead !
Shower or sun suffices us,
Or the march of the cirrho-cumulus,
Or the rains that roar, or the winds that whelm,
And the sun-dappled sward beneath the elm,
And the noble oaks that Time so gnarls
That the bumpkin says they hid King Charles ;
And the daffodils and sweet blue-bells,
And the wayside smells, and the dairy smells,
With Tennyson’s bees and doves in the trees,
And rivulets hurrying through the leas.’
And the poet went back to the Rose and Crown
And dined on a pound of steak, washed down
With a pint and a half of the true nut-brown,
And in the morning returned to town.
(Frank Sidgwick)
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