Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch | Page 3

to be.
So for a magic hour the music gushed,
Then faded to a close, and all
was hushed,
And the tranced people woke and looked about,
And
fell to wondering what had brought them out
On such a night of wind
and piercing sleet,
Exposed with 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