Poems of To-Day: an Anthology

And the night has come, and planets glinted,
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!

O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath;
Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.

    Robert Louis Stevenson.

30. IN CITY STREETS

Yonder in the heather there's a bed for sleeping,
Drink for one athirst, ripe blackberries to eat;
Yonder in the sun the merry hares go leaping,
And the pool is clear for travel-wearied feet.

Sorely throb my feet, a-tramping London highways,
(Ah! the springy moss upon a northern moor!)
Through the endless streets, the gloomy squares and byways,
Homeless in the City, poor among the poor!

London streets are gold—ah, give me leaves a-glinting
'Midst grey dykes and hedges in the autumn sun!
London water's wine, poured out for all unstinting—
God! For the little brooks that tumble as they run!

Oh, my heart is fain to hear the soft wind blowing,
Soughing through the fir-tops up on northern fells!
Oh, my eye's an ache to see the brown burns flowing
Through the peaty soil and tinkling heather-bells.

    Ada Smith.

31. MARGARET'S SONG

Too soothe and mild your lowland airs
For one whose hope is gone:
I'm thinking of a little tarn,
Brown, very lone.

Would now the tall swift mists could lay
Their wet grasp on my hair,
And the great natures of the hills
Round me friendly were.

In vain!—For taking hills your plains
Have spoilt my soul, I think,
But would my feet were going down
Towards the brown tarn's brink.

    Lascelles Abercrombie.

32. TO S. R. CROCKETT

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!

Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races,
And winds, austere and pure:

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
And hear no more at all.

    Robert Louis Stevenson.

33. CHILLINGHAM

I

Through the sunny garden
The humming bees are still;
The fir climbs the heather,
The heather climbs the hill.

The low clouds have riven
A little rift through.
The hill climbs to heaven,
Far away and blue.

II

O the high valley, the little low hill,
And the cornfield over the sea,
The wind that rages and then lies still,
And the clouds that rest and flee!

O the gray island in the rainbow haze,
And the long thin spits of land,