Poems of To-Day: an Anthology Part 11

_William H. Davies._

49. THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

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And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the sh.o.r.e; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

_W. B. Yeats._

60. THE FLOWERS

_Buy English posies!

Kent and Surrey may-- Violets of the Undercliff Wet with Channel spray; Cowslips from a Devon combe-- Midland furze afire-- Buy my English posies, And I'll sell your heart's desire!_

Buy my English posies!

You that scorn the may, Won't you greet a friend from home Half the world away?

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Green against the draggled drift, Faint and frail and first-- Buy my Northern blood-root And I'll know where you were nursed;

Robin down the logging-road whistles, "Come to me!"

Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free; All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain.

Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

Here's to match your need-- Buy a tuft of royal heath, Buy a bunch of weed White as sand of Muysenberg Spun before the gale-- Buy my heath and lilies And I'll tell you whence you hail!

Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie-- Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky-- Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain-- Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again.

Buy my English posies!

You that will not turn-- Buy my hot-wood clematis Buy a frond o' fern

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Gather'd where the Erskine leaps Down the road to Lorne-- Buy my Christmas creeper And I'll say where you were born!

West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin-- They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn-- Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main-- Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again.

Buy my English posies!

Here's your choice unsold!

Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom, Buy the kowhai's gold Flung for gift on Taupo's face, Sign that spring is come-- Buy my clinging myrtle And I'll give you back your home!

Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine-- Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the _ratas_ twine-- Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain-- Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again.

Buy my English posies!

Ye that have your own Buy them for a brother's sake Overseas, alone.

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Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim-- Bird ye never heeded, O, she calls his dead to him.

Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas; Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!

Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land-- Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand.

_Rudyard Kipling._

61. THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

_A naked house, a naked moor, A s.h.i.+vering pool before the door, A garden bare of flowers and fruit And poplars at the garden foot.

Such is the place that I live in, Bleak without and bare within._

Yet shall your ragged moor receive The incomparable pomp of eve, And the cold glories of the dawn Behind your s.h.i.+vering trees be drawn; And when the wind from place to place Doth the unmoored cloud-galleons chase, Your garden gloom and gleam again, With leaping sun, with glancing rain.

Here shall the wizard moon ascend The heavens, in the crimson end

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Of day's declining splendour; here The army of the stars appear.

The neighbour hollows dry or wet, Spring shall with tender flowers beset; And oft the morning muser see Larks rising from the broomy lea, And every fairy wheel and thread Of cobweb dew-bediamonded.

When daisies go, shall winter time Silver the simple gra.s.s with rime; Autumnal frosts enchant the pool And make the cart-ruts beautiful; And when snow-bright the moor expands, How shall your children clap their hands!

To make this earth our hermitage, A cheerful and a changeful page, G.o.d's bright and intricate device Of days and seasons doth suffice.

_Robert Louis Stevenson._

52. THE OLD LOVE

Out of my door I step into The country, all her scent and dew, Nor travel there by a hard road, Dusty and far from my abode.

The country washes to my door Green miles on miles in soft uproar, The thunder of the woods, and then The backwash of green surf again.

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Beyond the feverfew and stocks, The guelder-rose and hollyhocks; Outside my trellised porch a tree Of lilac frames a sky for me.