Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch | Page 3

hatless heads and thin-shod feet.?Something, they knew, had chased their heavy sadness;?And for the years to come they still may keep,?As from a morning sleep,?Some broken gleam of half-remembered gladness.?But the wild fiddler on his feet of flame?Vanished and went the secret way he came.
SINGING WATER
I heard--'twas on a morning, but when it was and where,?Except that well I heard it, I neither know nor care--?I heard, and, oh, the sunlight was shining in the blue,?A little water singing as little waters do.
At Lechlade and at Buscot, where Summer days are long,?The tiny rills and ripples they tremble into song;?And where the silver Windrush brings down her liquid gems,?There's music in the wavelets she tosses to the Thames.
The eddies have an air too, and brave it is and blithe;?I think I may have heard it that day at Bablockhythe;?And where the Eynsham weir-fall breaks out in rainbow spray The Evenlode comes singing to join the pretty play.
But where I heard that music I cannot rightly tell;?I only know I heard it, and that I know full well:?I heard a little water, and, oh, the sky was blue,?A little water singing as little waters do.
FOR WILMA?(AGED FIVE YEARS)
Like winds that with the setting of the sun?Draw to a quiet murmuring and cease,?So is her little struggle fought and done;?And the brief fever and the pain?In a last sigh fade out and so release?The lately-breathing dust they may not hurt again.
Now all that Wilma was is made as naught:?Stilled is the laughter that was erst our pleasure;?The pretty air, the childish grace untaught,
The innocent wiles,?And all the sunny smiles,?The cheek that flushed to greet some tiny treasure;?The mouth demure, the tilted chin held high,?The gleeful flashes of her glancing eye;?Her shy bold look of wildness unconfined,?And the gay impulse of her baby mind?That none could tame,?That sent her spinning round,
A spirit of living flame?Dancing in airy rapture o'er the ground--?All these with that faint sigh are made to be?Man's breath upon a glass, a mortal memory.
Then from the silent room where late she played,?Setting a steady course toward the light,?Swifter than thistledown the little shade,
Reft from the nooks that she had made her own?And from the love that sheltered, fared alone?Forth through the gloomy spaces of the night,
Until at last she lit before the gate?Where all the suppliant shades must stand and wait.
Grim Cerberus, the foiler of the dead,?Keeping his everlasting vigil there?In deep-mouthed wrath?Athwart the rocky path,?Did at her coming raise his triple head?And lift his bristling hair;?But when he saw our tender little maid?Forlorn, but unafraid,?He blinked his flaming eyes and ceased to frown,?And, fawning on her, smoothed his shaggy crest,?Composed his savage limbs and settled down?With ears laid back and all his care at rest;?And so with kindly aspect beckoned in?The little playmate of his earthly kin.
For often she had tugged old Rollo's mane,?And often Lufra felt the loving check?Of childish arms about her glossy neck--?Lufra and Rollo, who with anxious faces?Now cast about the haunts and hiding-places?To find their friend, but ever cast in vain.
So now, set free from all that can oppress,?And in her own white innocence arrayed,?Made one for ever with all happiness,?Alert she wanders through the starry glade;?Or, where the blissful Shades intone their praise,
She from the lily-covered bowers?Heaping her arms with flowers?Soars and is borne along?The amaranthine the delightful ways,?Gushes the pretty notes and careless trills?Of her unstudied song,?And with her music all the joyous valley fills.
Yet, oh ye Powers whose rule is set above?These fair abodes that ring the firmament,?Spirits of Peace and Happiness and Love,?And thou, too, mild-eyed Spirit of Content,?Ye will not chide if sometimes in her play?The child should start and droop her shining head,?Turning in meek surmise?Her wistful eyes?Back tow'rd the dimness of our mortal day?And the loved home from which her soul was sped.?Soon shall our little Wilma learn to be
Amid the immortal blest?An unrepining guest,?Who now, dear heart, is young for your eternity.
CRAGWELL END
I
There's nothing I know of to make you spend?A day of your life at Cragwell End.?It's a village quiet and grey and old,?A little village tucked into a fold?(A sort of valley, not over wide)?Of the hills that flank it on either side.?There's a large grey church with a square stone tower,?And a clock to mark you the passing hour?In a chime that shivers the village calm?With a few odd bits of the 100th psalm.?A red-brick Vicarage stands thereby,?Breathing comfort and lapped in ease,?With a row of elms thick-trunked and high,?And a bevy of rooks to caw in these.
'Tis there that the Revd. Salvyn Bent?(No tie could be neater or whiter than his tie)?Maintains the struggle against dissent,?An Oxford scholar ex Aede Christi;?And there in his twenty-minute sermons?He makes mince-meat of the modern Germans,?Defying their apparatus criticus
Like a brave old Vicar,?A famous sticker?To Genesis,