Country Sentiment | Page 5

cricket or grass-hopper

Making prodigious jumps in air
While shaken crowds about me
stare
Aghast, and I sing, growing bolder
To fly up on my master's
shoulder
Rustling the thick strands of his hair.
He is older than the seas,
Older than the plains and hills,
And older
than the light that spills
From the sun's hot wheel on these.
He
wakes the gale that tears your trees,
He sings to you from window
sills.

At you he roars, or he will coo,
He shouts and screams when hell is
hot,
Riding on the shell and shot.
He smites you down, he succours
you,
And where you seek him, he is not.
To-day I see he has two heads
Like Janus--calm, benignant, this;

That, grim and scowling: his beard spreads
From chin to chin" this
god has power
Immeasurable at every hour:
He first taught lovers
how to kiss,
He brings down sunshine after shower,
Thunder and
hate are his also,
He is YES and he is NO.
The black beard spoke and said to me,
"Human frailty though you be,

Yet shout and crack your whip, be harsh!
They'll obey you in the
end:
Hill and field, river and marsh
Shall obey you, hop and skip

At the terrour of your whip,
To your gales of anger bend."
The pale beard spoke and said in turn
"True: a prize goes to the stern,

But sing and laugh and easily run
Through the wide airs of my
plain,
Bathe in my waters, drink my sun,
And draw my creatures
with soft song;
They shall follow you along
Graciously with no
doubt or pain."
Then speaking from his double head
The glorious fearful monster
said
"I am YES and I am NO,
Black as pitch and white as snow,

Love me, hate me, reconcile
Hate with love, perfect with vile,
So
equal justice shall be done
And life shared between moon and sun.

Nature for you shall curse or smile:
A poet you shall be, my son."
ROCKY ACRES.
This is a wild land, country of my choice,
With harsh craggy
mountain, moor ample and bare.
Seldom in these acres is heard any
voice
But voice of cold water that runs here and there
Through
rocks and lank heather growing without care.

No mice in the heath
run nor no birds cry
For fear of the dark speck that floats in the sky.

He soars and he hovers rocking on his wings,
He scans his wide
parish with a sharp eye,
He catches the trembling of small hidden
things,
He tears them in pieces, dropping from the sky:
Tenderness
and pity the land will deny,
Where life is but nourished from water
and rock
A hardy adventure, full of fear and shock.
Time has never journeyed to this lost land,
Crakeberries and heather
bloom out of date,
The rocks jut, the streams flow singing on either
hand,
Careless if the season be early or late.
The skies wander
overhead, now blue, now slate:
Winter would be known by his cold
cutting snow
If June did not borrow his armour also.
Yet this is my country be loved by me best,
The first land that rose
from Chaos and the Flood,
Nursing no fat valleys for comfort and rest,

Trampled by no hard hooves, stained with no blood.
Bold immortal
country whose hill tops have stood
Strongholds for the proud gods
when on earth they go,
Terror for fat burghers in far plains below.
ADVICE TO LOVERS.
I knew an old man at a Fair
Who made it his twice-yearly task
To
clamber on a cider cask
And cry to all the yokels there:--
"Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:

Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.
"Whistle, and Love will come to you,
Hiss, and he fades without a
word,
Do wrong, and he great wrong will do,
Speak, he retells what
he has heard.
"Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or
deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor
forget."
The old man's voice was sweet yet loud
And this shows what a man

was he,
He'd scatter apples to the crowd
And give great draughts of
cider, free.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S FALL.
Frowning over the riddle that Daniel told,
Down through the mist
hung garden, below a feeble sun,
The King of Persia walked: oh, the
chilling cold!
His mind was webbed with a grey shroud vapour-spun.
Here for the pride of his soaring eagle heart,
Here for his great hand
searching the skies for food,
Here for his courtship of Heaven's high
stars he shall smart, Nebuchadnezzar shall fall, crawl, be subdued.
Hot sun struck through the vapour, leaf strewn mould
Breathed sweet
decay: old Earth called for her child.
Mist drew off from his mind,
Sun scattered gold,
Warmth came and earthy motives fresh and wild.
Down on his knees he sinks, the stiff-necked King,
Stoops and kneels
and grovels, chin to the mud.
Out from his changed heart flutter on
startled wing
The fancy birds of his Pride, Honour, Kinglihood.
He crawls, he grunts, he is beast-like, frogs and snails
His diet, and
grass, and water with hand for cup.
He herds with brutes that have
hooves and horns and tails,
He roars in