Gods Good Man | Page 9

thy flowers and thy green, Right welcome be thou, faire, freshe, Maye! I hope that I some green here getten may!"
Smiling at the antique simplicity and freshness of the lines as they rang across his brain like the musical jingle of an old-world spinet, his ears suddenly caught the sound of young voices singing at a distance.
"Here come the children!" he said; and stepping out from his open window into the garden, he again bent his ear to listen. The tremulous voices came nearer and nearer, and words could now be distinguished, breaking through the primitive quavering melody of 'The Mayers' Song' known to all the country side since the thirteenth century:
"Remember us poor Mayers all.-- And thus do we begin, To lead our lives in righteousness, Or else we die in sin.
We have been rambling all this night, And almost all this day, And now returning back again, We bring you in the May.
The hedges and trees they are so green, In the sunne's goodly heat, Our Heavenly Father He watered them With His Heavenly dew so sweet.
A branch of May we have brought you---"
Here came a pause and the chorus dropped into an uncertain murmur. John Walden heard his garden gates swing back on their hinges, and a shuffling crunch of numerous small feet on the gravel path.
"G'arn, Susie!" cried a shrill boy's voice--"If y'are leadin' us, lead! G'arn!"
A sweet flute-like treble responded to this emphatic adjuration, singing alone, clear and high,
"A branch of May---" and then all the other voices chimed in:
"A branch of May we have brought you And at your door it stands, 'Tis but a sprout, But 'tis budded out By the work of our Lord's hands!"
And with this, a great crown of crimson and white blossoms, set on a tall, gaily-painted pole and adorned with bright coloured ribbons, came nid-nodding down the box-tree alley to the middle of the lawn opposite Walden's study window, where it was quickly straightened up and held in position by the eager hands of some twenty or thirty children, of all sizes and ages, who, surrounding it at its base, turned their faces, full of shy exultation towards their pastor, still singing, but in more careful time and tune:
"The Heavenly gates are open wide, Our paths are beaten plain, And if a man be not too far gone, He may return again.
The moon shines bright and the stars give light A little before it is day, So God bless you all, both great and small, And send you a merrie May!"

II
For a moment or two Walden found himself smitten by so strong a sense of the mere simple sensuous joy of living, that he could do no more than stand looking in silent admiration at the pretty group of expectant young creatures gathered round the Maypole, and huddled, as it were, under its cumbrous crown of dewy blossoms, which showed vividly against the clear sky, while the long streamers of red, white and blue depending from its summit, trailed on the daisy- sprinkled grass at their feet.
Every little face was familiar and dear to him. That awkward lad, grinning from ear to ear, with a particularly fine sprig of flowering hawthorn in his cap, was Dick Styles;--certainly a very different individual to Chaucer's knight, Arcite, but resembling him in so far that he had evidently gone into the woods early, moved by the same desire: "I hope that I some green here getten may!" That tiny girl, well to the front, with a clean white frock on and no hat to cover her tangle of golden curls, was Baby Hippolyta,--the last, the very last, of the seemingly endless sprouting olive branches of the sexton, Adam Frost. Why the poor child had been doomed to carry the name of Hippolyta, no one ever knew. When he, Walden, had christened her, he almost doubted whether he had heard the lengthy appellation aright, and ventured to ask the godmother of the occasion to repeat it in a louder voice. Whereupon 'Hip-po-ly-ta' was uttered in such strong tones, so thoroughly well enunciated, that he could no longer mistake it, and the helpless infant, screaming lustily, left the simple English baptismal font burdened with a purely Greek designation. She was, however, always called 'Ipsie' by her playmates, and even her mother and father, who were entirely responsible for her name in the first instance, found it somewhat weighty for daily utterance and gladly adopted the simpler sobriquet, though the elders of the village generally were rather fond of calling her with much solemn unction: 'Baby Hippolyta,' as though it were an elaborate joke. Ipsie was one of the loveliest children in the village, and though she was only two-and-a-half years old, she was fully aware of her own charms. She was pushed to