Eleanor Farjeon

“ For in King Laurin's garden of roses
Waking thought shall be stilled asleep,
And the still heart dream itself half-awake ...
O the soft, soft dreams of the garden of roses!
They creep ... (I look not) ... but they steal and creep.
Laurin the king of the rosy garden
Has a magic girdle that none can break.
It makes the pulse of his life to leap
With twelve men's strength. ”

“ The secret of things musical—
All music ever will be, and all it ever was.
Ear close to earth inclining
I hear her wordless song
Of threads past man's divining
Woven the grass among.
Beneath these fragrant, tangled weeds
She sings the strain to which her seeds
March into life, push upward to heaven, and grow strong.
Then like a voice replying
Follows her cradle-croon
Lulling tired things that, dying,
Back to their Mother swoon.
For where the worlds of grasses spring
Both life and death their choral sing,
The spheres' eternal roundel circling an afternoon. ”

“ What though time's passage their soft lisp hush?
The seeds were scattered of lovers' blisses,
And year by year
We renew their tender caresses here. 48
We are born of joy, say these petals yellow,
Tinge of delight.
What though love's sunshine be lapped in night?
We, sprung from its seeds, rich-toned and mellow,
Perpetuate
The days when the orbit of love waxed great.
We are born, these red ones say, of passion,
Flush of the heart.
What though the sound of love's steps depart? ”

“ Serves for a secret feast to glut their hearts on.
For we have loved each other, thou and I,
And I have belted thee with golden arms,
And I have claspt thee daily with hot kisses,
And felt thee leap and pulse and answer to me
Like a shy maid grown bold and glad with love.
There's that in the core of thee that is so kin
To the core of me, it holds us twain inseverable,
Tho' from a billion blue-gold caverns of air 79
Translucent waves of space roll up an ocean
'Twixt earth and sun: our hearts beat time together. ”

“ Then while the Gods stood all aghast, Zeus spake:
"Go from among this immortal company 78
Which thou hast sinned against in daring so
To sin against me that am the head of all,
And learn to quell thy too fierce spirit, learn
To teach thy riotous blood obedience,
Serving the sons of men one year of days.
Go hence! thou art not of us for twelve moons."
I nothing said, and went. For when we Gods
Revolt among ourselves the end is near,
And Zeus must levy justice as he will. ”

“ Orpheus, killed thro' too great love and longing.
I had a son. He was Asklepios,
Could he be of my being and not know?
His wisdom girdled life and death in one;
Life smiled on him, because he smiled on death
And said: "Life is less conquerable than death." ”

“ And none of the songs is sweeter,
Or as sweet (by the infinite span
Which divides the work of man
From the work of his God) , as the thing
Which was the fountain and spring
Whence my heart drew its need to sing. ”

“ It is sin to wish for the garden of roses
In the heart of wild mountains where no men go.
Laurin is king of a rosy garden.
The lure of the roses is rare, O rare!
They tremble and brighten and throb and glow ...
I may not think of King Laurin's garden. ”

“ The seed of mischief and the seed of Zeus,
Brought equal at the last? Nay, is the beast
Sun's master, Helios? Shepherds are my subjects.
I do not sway high kingdoms of the air—
I drag my hoofs in the clay. ”

“ Two new young lovers seek your shrine.
Those loves of old with years grow fainter, dimmer,
But ours is warm and living and divine,
And time has not yet breathed upon its lustre,
And I am hers and she is all of mine! ”

“ Have found their three months as brief
As the life of a blade of grass, a leaf—
As eternal, too, as the leafage is
Have found their three months of bliss.
For us it is finished and over.
Our three months are spent when as lover and lover
We may roam these groves. ”

“ To draw the dazed, adoring eyes of men:
I am thy arm of vengeance, I the hand
Bestowing thy good gifts: I am thy Voice
Of mystic prophecy and divination
Thro' which thou keep'st thy fingers on men's souls. ”

“ Old sundial, you stand here for Time:
For Love, the vine that round your base
Its tendrils twines, and dares to climb
And lay one flower-capped spray in grace
Without the asking on your cold
Unsmiling and unfrowning face. ”

“ And no more hurt shall come from that I do.
Thou shalt not suffer by this term of service,
But see thy lands grow rich and bountiful,
And where thou lov'st I'll win thy love for thee,
And life shall prosper with thee,
"Life is sweet! ”

“ And Pan's a King, and shepherds are his subjects!"
Zeus, did it feed thy pride on proud Olympos,
Did it pleasure thee to hear the brutish God,
The disgustful animal we chafe to name
A God even as ourselves, thus flout thy son?
Asklepios! dead son! Asklepios!
Doomed to the solitariness of greatness
We watch, we lonely Gods on shrouded heights,
The careful, padded steps, the little lives,
The little trivial lives of men and women
That fear our anger and entreat our favour ”

“ Stands brazen champion for the world of flesh,
Determines souls that waver towards the Styx—
Worse! hales the souls back from beyond the Styx,
Bringing the dead to life. This is more craft,
Brother, than we may suffer in a man.
Shall he with careless finger sway at will
The Balance of Destiny? Avenge me, Zeus!"
A Cyclops forged a thunder-bolt for Zeus,
And, black-browed, Zeus did launch it ... Thus I lost
My son Asklepios, killed thro' too much knowledge. ”

“ With a foam of flowers, a foam of whispering flowers....
13
VAGRANT SONGS I
But yesterday the winds of March
Bent back the barren branches of the larch ...
But O! to-day
The bareness from the earth is swept away.
Deep through my swelling breast I hear
The wild call of the gipsy time o' year—
O, Vagrant Spring,
Brother o' mine, I'm for the gipsying!
The greening earth I stand upon
Tingles my feet: Brother, we must begone! ”

“ Up-turned, should I discover the seed from which it springs?
If I could unravel
The music of the grass,
Beyond those confines travel
Which mortals cannot pass,
I think that I should capture all
The secret of things musical—
All music ever will be, and all it ever was.
66
V
Hark! ”

“ In Arcady there lies a crystal spring
Ring'd all about with green melodious reeds
Swaying seal'd music up and down the wind.
Here on its time-defacèd pedestal
The image of a half-forgotten God
Crumbles to its complete oblivion. ”

“ The barrier of silence hold unbroken?
Men—you, too, being a man—have called you strong,
A doer of big deeds, great acts. But they are wrong.
You lack in courage. I, being woman, know
How often woman shapes man's enterprises,
Cloaking her work in manifold disguises
Lest he should chafe too large a debt to owe—
Strikes every blow up to the very hundredth blow 30 ”