Tides. Drinkwater John

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      There is an old woman who looks each night

      Out of the wood.

      She has one tooth, that isn’t too white.

      She isn’t too good.

      She came from the north looking for me,

      About my jewel.

      Her son, she says, is tall as can be;

      But, men say, cruel.

      My girl went northward, holiday making,

      And a queer man spoke

      At the woodside once when night was breaking,

      And her heart broke.

      For ever since she has pined and pined,

      A sorry maid;

      Her fingers are slack as the wool they wind,

      Or her girdle-braid.

      So now shall I send her north to wed,

      Who here may know

      Only the little house of the dead

      To ease her woe?

      Or keep her for fear of that old woman,

      As a bird quick-eyed,

      And her tall son who is hardly human,

      At the woodside?

      She is my babe and my daughter dear,

      How well, how well.

      Her grief to me is a fourfold fear,

      Tongue cannot tell.

      And yet I know that far in that wood

      Are crumbling bones,

      And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good,

      In heathen tones.

      And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sigh

      In brambles there,

      And never a bird or beast to cry —

      Beware, beware, —

      While threading the silent thickets go

      Mother and son,

      Where scrupulous berries never grow,

      And airs are none.

      And her deep eyes peer at eventide

      Out of the wood,

      And her tall son waits by the dark woodside,

      For maidenhood.

      And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer;

      And a word is said.

      And some house knows, for many a year,

      But years of dread.

      Now love, her mantle thrown,

      Goes naked by,

      Threading the woods alone,

      Her royal eye

      Happy because the primroses again

      Break on the winter continence of men.

      I saw her pass to-day

      In Warwickshire,

      With the old imperial way,

      The old desire,

      Fresh as among those other flowers they went,

      More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.

      Those other years she made

      Her festival

      When the blue eggs were laid

      And lambs were tall,

      By the Athenian rivers while the reeds

      Made love melodious for the Ganymedes.

      And now through Cantlow brakes,

      By Wilmcote hill,

      To Avon-side, she makes

      Her garlands still,

      And I who watch her flashing limbs am one

      With youth whose days three thousand years are done.

      Blue skies are over Cotswold

      And April snows go by,

      The lasses turn their ribbons

      For April’s in the sky,

      And April is the season

      When Sabbath girls are dressed,

      From Rodboro’ to Campden,

      In all their silken best.

      An ankle is a marvel

      When first the buds are brown,

      And not a lass but knows it

      From Stow to Gloucester town.

      And not a girl goes walking

      Along the Cotswold lanes

      But knows men’s eyes in April

      Are quicker than their brains.

      It’s little that it matters,

      So long as you’re alive,

      If you’re eighteen in April,

      Or rising sixty-five,

      When April comes to Amberley

      With skies of April blue,

      And Cotswold girls are briding

      With slyly tilted shoe.

      Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill

      Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky

      Deep as the bedded violets that fill

      March woods with dusky passion. As I lie

      Abed between cool walls I watch the host

      Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain,

      And drowsily the habit of these most

      Beloved of English lands moves in my brain,

      While silence holds dominion of the dark,

      Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.

      I see the valleys in their morning mist

      Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light,

      Happy with many a yeoman melodist:

      I see the little roads of twinkling white

      Busy with fieldward teams and market gear

      Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell

      The many-minded changes of the year,

      Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well;

      I see the sun persuade the mist away,

      Till town and stead are shining to the day.

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