Down-Adown-Derry Part 6

Three bowls he brims with sweet honeycomb To feast the b.u.mble bees, Saying, "O bees, be this your home, For grief is on the seas!"

He sate him lone in a coral grot, At the flowing in of the tide; When ebbed the billow, there was not, Save coral, aught beside.

So hairy apes in three white beds, And nightcaps, one and nine, On moonlit pillows lay three heads Bemused with dwarfish wine.

A tomb of coral, the dirge of bee, The grey apes' guttural groan For Alliolyle, for Lallerie, For thee, O Muziomone!

SUNK LYONESSE

In sea-cold Lyonesse, When the Sabbath eve shafts down On the roofs, walls, belfries Of the foundered town, The Nereids pluck their lyres Where the green translucency beats, And with motionless eyes at gaze Make minstrelsy in the streets.

The ocean water stirs In salt-worn casemate and porch Plies the blunt-snouted fish With fire in his skull for torch.

And the ringing wires resound; And the unearthly lovely weep, In lament of the music they make In the sullen courts of sleep.

Whose marble flowers bloom for aye, And--lapped by the moon-guiled tide-- Mock their carver with heart of stone, Caged in his stone-ribbed side.

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SLEEPING BEAUTY

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The scent of bramble fills the air, Amid her folded sheets she lies, The gold of evening in her hair, The blue of morn shut in her eyes.

How many a changing moon hath lit The unchanging roses of her face!

Her mirror ever broods on it In silver stillness of the days.

Oft flits the moth on filmy wings Into his solitary lair; Shrill evensong the cricket sings From some still shadow in her hair.

In heat, in snow, in wind, in flood, She sleeps in lovely loneliness, Half-folded like an April bud On winter-haunted trees.

BEWITCHED

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I have heard a lady this night, Lissom and jimp and slim, Calling me--calling me over the heather, 'Neath the beech boughs dusk and dim.

I have followed a lady this night, Followed her far and lone, Fox and adder and weasel know The ways that we have gone.

I sit at my supper 'mid honest faces, And crumble my crust and say Nought in the long-drawn drawl of the voices Talking the hours away.

I'll go to my chamber under the gable, And the moon will lift her light In at my lattice from over the moorland Hollow and still and bright.

And I know she will s.h.i.+ne on a lady of witchcraft, Gladness and grief to see, Who has taken my heart with her nimble fingers, Calls in my dreams to me:

Who has led me a dance by dell and dingle My human soul to win, Made me a changeling to my own, own mother, A stranger to my kin.

THE ENCHANTED HILL

From height of noon, remote and still, The sun s.h.i.+nes on the empty hill.

No mist, no wind, above, below; No living thing strays to and fro.

No bird replies to bird on high, Cleaving the skies with echoing cry.

Like dreaming water, green and wan, Gla.s.sing the snow of mantling swan, Like a clear jewel encharactered With secret symbol of line and word, Asheen, unruffled, slumbrous, still, The sunlight streams on the empty hill.

But soon as Night's dark shadows ride Across its shrouded Eastern side, When at her kindling, clear and full, Star beyond star stands visible; Then course pale phantoms, fleet-foot deer Lap of its waters icy-clear; Mounts the large moon, and pours her beams On bright-fish-flas.h.i.+ng, singing streams; Voices re-echo; coursing by, Hors.e.m.e.n, like clouds, wheel silently.

Glide then from out their pitch-black lair Beneath the dark's ensilvered arch, Witches becowled into the air; And iron pine and emerald larch, Tents of delight for ravished bird, Are by loud music thrilled and stirred.

Winging the light, with silver feet, Beneath their bowers of fragrance met, In dells of rose and meadowsweet, In mazed dance the fairies flit; While drives his share the Ploughman high Athwart the daisy-powdered sky: Till far away, in thickening dew, Piercing the Eastern shadows through Rilling in crystal clear and still, Light 'gins to tremble on the hill.

And like a mist on faint winds borne, Silent, forlorn, wells up the morn.

Then the broad sun with burning beams Steeps slope and peak and gilded streams.

Then no foot stirs; the brake shakes not; Soundless and wet in its green grot As if asleep, the leaf hangs limp; The white dews drip untrembling down, From bough to bough, orblike, unblown; And in strange quiet, s.h.i.+mmering and still, Morning enshrines the empty hill.

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THE RIDE-BY-NIGHTS

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Up on their brooms the Witches stream, Crooked and black in the crescent's gleam; One foot high, and one foot low, Bearded, cloaked, and cowled, they go.

'Neath Charlie's Wane they twitter and tweet, And away they swarm 'neath the Dragon's feet.

With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway, And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way.

Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair They hover and squeak in the empty air.

Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion; Up, then, and over to wheel amain, Under the silver, and home again.

OFF THE GROUND