A Shropshire Lad | Page 6

find the primrose still,
And find
the windflower playing
With every wind at will,
But not the
daffodil,
Bring baskets now, and sally
Upon the spring's array,
And bear
from hill and valley
The daffodil away
That dies on Easter day.
XXX
Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:


If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.
More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,

And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.
Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way

Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there's neither heat nor cold.
But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,

And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.
XXXI
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin
heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn
snow the leaves.
'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city
stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed
another wood.
Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would
stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that
hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of
life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the
Roman, now 'tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be
gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
XXXII
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The
stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.

Now- for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apartTake
my hand quick
and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the
wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
XXXIII
If truth in hearts that perish
Could move the powers on high,
I think
the love I bear you
Should make you not to die.
Sure, sure, if stedfast meaning,
If single thought could save,
The
world might end to-morrow,
You should not see the grave.
This long and sure-set liking,
This boundless will to please,
-Oh,
you should live for ever
If there were help in these.
But now, since all is idle,
To this lost heart be kind,
Ere to a town
you journey
Where friends are ill to find.
XXXIV
THE NEW MISTRESS
_ "Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be?
You may be
good for something, but you are not good for me. Oh, go where you are
wanted, for you are not wanted here." _ And that was all the farewell
when I parted from my dear.
"I will go where I am wanted, to a lady born and bred
Who will dress
me free for nothing in a uniform of red;
She will not be sick to see me
if I only keep it clean:
I will go where I am wanted for a soldier of the
Queen."
"I will go where I am wanted, for the sergeant does not mind; He may
be sick to see me but he treats me very kind:
He gives me beer and

breakfast and a ribbon for my cap,
And I never knew a sweetheart
spend her money on a chap."
"I will go where I am wanted, where there's room for one or two, And
the men are none too many for the work there is to do;
Where the
standing line wears thinner and the dropping dead lie thick; And the
enemies of England they shall see me and be sick."
XXXV
On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I
hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear
to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.
East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,

Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay
the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.
XXXVI
White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;

White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:

My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.
The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the
track,
Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well,
The way will guide
one back.
But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in
the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.

XXXVII
As through the wild green hills of Wyre
The train ran, changing sky
and shire,
And far behind, a fading crest,
Low in the forsaken west

Sank the high-reared head of Clee,
My hand lay empty on my knee.

Aching on my knee it