Collected Poems Volume II Part 38

[_Exeunt._]

SHADOW-OF-A-LEAF

[_Coming out into the moonlight and staring up after them._]

The nun! The nun! They'll whip me if I speak, For I am only Shadow-of-a-Leaf, the Fool.

[_Curtain._]

ACT II

_SCENE I. Sherwood Forest: An open glade, showing on the right the mouth of the outlaw's cave. It is about sunset. The giant figure of LITTLE JOHN comes out of the cave, singing._

LITTLE JOHN

[_Sings._]

When Spring comes back to England And crowns her brows with may, Round the merry moonlit world She goes the greenwood way.

[_He stops and calls in stentorian tones._]

Much! Much! Much! Where has he vanished now, Where has that monstrous giant the miller's son Hidden himself?

[_Enter MUCH, a dwarf-like figure, carrying a large bundle of ferns._]

MUCH

Hush, hush, child, here I am!

And here's our fairy feather-beds, ha! ha!

Come, praise me, praise me, for a thoughtful parent.

There's nothing makes a better bed than ferns Either for sleeping sound or rosy dreams.

LITTLE JOHN

Take care the fern-seed that the fairies use Get not among thy yellow locks, my t.i.tan, Or thou'lt wake up invisible. There's none Too much of Much already.

MUCH

[_Looking up at him impudently._]

It would take Our big barn full of fern-seed, I mis...o...b.., To make thee walk invisible, Little John, My sweet Tom Thumb! And, in this troublous age Of forest-laws, if we night-walking minions, We gentlemen of the moon, could only hunt Invisible, there's many and many of us With thumbs lopped off, eyes gutted and legs pruned, Slick, like poor pollarded pear-trees, would be lying Happy and whole this day beneath the boughs.

LITTLE JOHN

Invisible? Ay, but what would Jenny say To such a ghostly midge as thou would'st be Sipping invisibly at her cherry lips.

MUCH

Why, there now, that's a teaser. E'en as it is (Don't joke about it) my poor Jenny takes The smallness of her Much sorely to heart!

And though I often tell her half a loaf (Ground in our mill) is better than no bread, She weeps, poor thing, that an impartial heaven Bestows on her so small a crumb of bliss As me! You'd scarce believe, now, half the nostrums, Possets and strangely nasty herbal juices That girl has made me gulp, in the vain hope That I, the frog, should swell to an ox like thee.

I tell her it's all in vain, and she still cheats Her fancy and swears I've grown well nigh three feet Already. O Lord, she's desperate. She'll advance Right inward to the sources of creation, She'll take the reins of the world in hand. She'll stop The sun like Joshua, turn the moon to blood, And if I have to swallow half the herbs In Sherwood, I shall stalk a giant yet, Shoulder to shoulder with thee, Little John, And crack thy head at quarter-staff. But don't, Don't joke about it. 'Tis a serious matter.

LITTLE JOHN

Into the cave, then, with thy feather-bed.

Old Much, thy father, waits thee there to make A table of green turfs for Robin Hood.

We shall have guests anon, O merry times, Baron and Knight and abbot, all that ride Through Sherwood, all shall come and dine with him When they have paid their toll! Old Much is there Growling at thy delay.

MUCH

[_Going towards the cave._]

O, my poor father.

Now, there's a sad thing, too. He is so ashamed Of his descendants. Why for some nine years He shut his eyes whenever he looked at me; And I have seen him on the village green Pretend to a stranger, once, who badgered him With curious questions, that I was the son Of poor old Gaffer Bramble, the lame s.e.xton.

That self-same afternoon, up comes old Bramble White hair a-blaze and big red waggling nose All shaking with the palsy; bangs our door Clean off its hinges with his crab-tree crutch, And stands there--framed--against the sunset sky!

He stretches out one quivering fore-finger At father, like the great Destroying Angel In the stained window: straight, the milk boiled over, The cat ran, baby squalled and mother screeched.

Old Bramble asks my father--what--what--what He meant--he meant--he meant! You should have seen My father's hopeless face! Lord, how he blushed, Red as a beet-root! Lord, Lord, how he blushed!

'Tis a hard business when a parent looks Askance upon his offspring.

[_Exit into the cave._]

LITTLE JOHN

Skip, you chatterer!

Here comes our master.

[_Enter ROBIN HOOD._]

Master, where hast thou been?

I feared some harm had come to thee. What's this?

This was a cloth-yard shaft that tore thy coat!

ROBIN

Oh, ay, they barked my shoulder, devil take them.

I got it on the borders of the wood.

St. Nicholas, my lad, they're on the watch.

LITTLE JOHN

What didst thou there? They're on the watch, i' faith!

A squirrel could not pa.s.s them. Why, my namesake Prince John would sell his soul to get thy head, And both his ears for Lady Marian; And whether his ears or soul be worth the more, I know not. When the first lark flittered up To sing, at dawn, I woke; and thou wast gone.

What didst thou there?