Puck of Pooks Hill | Page 3

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PUCK OF POOK'S HILL
RUDYARD KIPLING

CONTENTS

Weland's Sword Puck's Song A Tree Song Young Men at the Manor
Sir Richard's Song The Knights of the Joyous Venture Harp Song of
the Dane Women Thorkild's Song Old Men at Pevensey The Runes on
Weland's Sword A Centurion of the Thirtieth 'Cities and Thrones and
Powers' A British-Roman Song On the Great Wall A Song to Mithras
The Winged Hats A Pict Song Hal o' the Draft 'Prophets have honour
all over the Earth' A Smugglers' Song 'Dymchurch Flit' The Bee Boy's
Song A Three-Part Song The Treasure and the Law Song of the Fifth
River The Children's Song

WELAND'S SWORD

Puck's Song
See you the dimpled track that runs, All hollow through the wheat? O
that was where they hauled the guns That smote King Philip's fleet!
See you our little mill that clacks, So busy by the brook? She has
ground her corn and paid her tax Ever since Domesday Book.
See you our stilly woods of oak, And the dread ditch beside? O that
was where the Saxons broke, On the day that Harold died!
See you the windy levels spread About the gates of Rye? O that was
where the Northmen fled, When Alfred's ships came by!
See you our pastures wide and lone, Where the red oxen browse? O
there was a City thronged and known, Ere London boasted a house!
And see you, after rain, the trace Of mound and ditch and wall? O that
was a Legion's camping-place, When Caesar sailed from Gaul!
And see you marks that show and fade, Like shadows on the Downs? O
they are the lines the Flint Men made, To guard their wondrous towns!
Trackway and Camp and City lost, Salt Marsh where now is corn; Old
Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease, And so was England born!
She is not any common Earth, Water or Wood or Air, But Merlin's Isle
of Gramarye, Where you and I will fare.

The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they
could remember of Midsummer Night's Dream. Their father had made
them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had
rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by
heart. They began when Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the

bushes with a donkey's head on his shoulders, and finds Titania, Queen
of the Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped to the part where Bottom asks
three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they
ended where he falls asleep in Titania's arms. Dan was Puck and Nick
Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. He wore a pointy- cloth cap for
Puck, and a paper donkey's head out of a Christmas cracker - but it tore
if you were not careful - for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of
columbines and a foxglove wand.
The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A little mill-stream,
carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent round one corner
of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large old Fairy Ring of
darkened grass, which was the stage. The millstream banks, overgrown
with willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient places to wait in
till your turn came; and a grown-up who had seen it said that
Shakespeare himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting
for his play. They were not, of course, allowed to act on Midsummer
Night itself, but they went down after tea on Midsummer Eve, when the
shadows were growing, and they took their supper - hard-boiled eggs,
Bath Oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope - with them. Three Cows
had been milked and were grazing steadily with a tearing noise that one
could hear all down the meadow; and the noise of the Mill at work
sounded like bare feet running on hard