Chapter L: D'o. Walters

STREET LANTERNS

Country roads are yellow and brown.
We mend the roads in London Town.

Never a hansom dare come nigh,
Never a cart goes rolling by.

An unwonted silence steals
In between the turning wheels.

Quickly ends the autumn day,
And the workman goes his way,

Leaving, midst the traffic rude,
One small isle of solitude,

Lit, throughout the lengthy night,
By the little lantern's light.

Jewels of the dark have we,
Brighter than the rustic's be.

Over the dull earth are thrown
Topaz, and the ruby stone.

MARY E. COLERIDGE

TO BETSEY-JANE, ON HER DESIRING
TO GO INCONTINENTLY TO HEAVEN

My Betsey-Jane, it would not do,
For what would Heaven make of you,
A little, honey-loving bear,
Among the Blessed Babies there?

Nor do you dwell with us in vain
Who tumble and get up again.
And try, with bruised knees, to smile--.
Sweet, you are blessed all the-while

And we in you: so wait, they'll come
To take your hand and fetch you home,
In Heavenly leaves to play at tents
With all the Holy Innocents.

HELEN PARRY EDEN

THE BRIDGE

Here, with one leap,
The bridge that spans the cutting; on its back
The load
Of the main-road,
And under it the railway-track.

Into the plains they sweep,
Into the solitary plains asleep,
The flowing lines, the parallel lines of steel--
Fringed with their narrow grass,
Into the plains they pass,
The flowing lines, like arms of mute appeal.

A cry
Prolonged across the earth--a call
To the remote horizons and the sky;
The whole east-rushes down them with its light,
And the whole west receives them, with its pall
Of stars and night--
The flowing lines, the parallel lines of steel.

And with the fall
Of darkness, see! the red,
Bright anger of the signal, where it flares
Like a huge eye that stares
On some hid danger in the dark ahead.
A twang of wire--unseen
The signal drops; and now, instead
Of a red eye, a green.

Out of the silence grows
An iron thunder--grows, and roars, and sweeps,
Menacing! The plain
Suddenly leaps,
Startled, from its repose--
Alert and listening. Now, from the gloom
Of the soft distance, loom
Three lights and, over them, a brush
Of tawny flame and flying spark--
Three pointed lights that rush,
Monstrous, upon the cringing dark.

And nearer, nearer rolls the sound,
Louder the throb and roar of wheels,
The shout of speed, the shriek of steam;
The sloping bank,
Cut into flashing squares, gives back the clank

And grind of metal, while the ground
Shudders and the bridge reels--
As, with a scream,
The train,
A rage of smoke, a laugh of fire,
A lighted anguish of desire,
A dream
Of gold and iron, of sound and flight,
Tumultuous roars across the night.

The train roars past--and, with a cry,
Drowned in a flying howl of wind,
Half-stifled in the smoke and blind,
The plain,
Shaken, exultant, unconfined,
Rises, flows on, and follows, and sweeps by,
Shrieking, to lose itself in distance and the sky.

J. REDWOOD ANDERSON

FEBRUARY

The robin on my lawn
He was the first to tell
How, in the frozen dawn,
This miracle befell,
Waking the meadows white
With hoar, the iron road
Agleam with splintered light,
And ice where water flowed:
Till, when the low sun drank
Those milky mists that cloak
Hanger and hollied bank,
The winter world awoke
To hear the feeble bleat
Of lambs on downland farms:
A blackbird whistled sweet;
Old beeches moved their arms
Into a mellow haze
Aerial, newly-born:
And I, alone, agaze,
Stood waiting for the thorn
To break in blossom white,
Or burst in a green flame....
So, in a single night,
Fair February came,
Bidding my lips to sing
Or whisper their surprise,
With all the joy of spring
And morning in her eyes.

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

SEA-FOAM

A fleck of foam on the shining sand,
Left by the ebbing sea,
But richer than man may understand
In magic and mystery--
Transient bubbles rainbow-bright,
Myriad-hued and strange,
Tremble and throb in the noonday light,
Flower and flush and change.

A million tides have come and gone,
Great gales of autumn and spring,
A million summoning moons have shone
To bring to birth this thing--
A foam-fleck left on the ribbed wet sand
By the wave of an outgoing sea,
With all the colour of Faeryland,
Wonder and mystery.

TERESA HOOLEY

A PETITION

All that a man might ask, thou hast given me, England,
Birth-right and happy childhood's long heart's-ease,
And love whose range is deep beyond all sounding
And wider than all seas.

A heart to front the world and find God in it,
Eyes blind enow, but not too blind to see
The lovely things behind the dross and darkness,
And lovelier things to be.

And friends whose loyalty time nor death shall weaken,
And quenchless hope and laughter's golden store;
All that a man might ask thou hast given me, England,
Yet grant thou one thing more:

That now when envious foes would spoil thy splendour,
Unversed in arms, a dreamer such as I
May in thy ranks be deemed not all unworthy,
England, for thee to die.

R. E. VERNÈDE

BLACK AND WHITE

I met a man along the road
To Withernsea;
Was ever anything so dark, so pale
As he?
His hat, his clothes, his tie, his boots
Were black as black
Could be,
And midst of all was a cold white face,
And eyes that looked wearily.

The road was bleak and straight and flat
To Withernsea,
Gaunt poles with shrilling wires their weird
Did dree;
On the sky stood out, on the swollen sky
The black blood veins
Of tree
After tree, as they beat from the face
Of the wind which they could not flee.

And in the fields along the road
To Withernsea,

"MIDST OF ALL WAS A COLD WHITE FACE"

Swart crows sat huddled on the ground
Disconsolately,
While overhead the seamews wheeled, and skirled
In glee;
But the black cows stood, and cropped where
they stood,
And never heeded thee,
O dark pale man, with the weary eyes,
On the road to Withernsea.

H. H. ABBOTT

THE OXEN

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few believe
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve
"Come; see the oxen kneel

In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

THOMAS HARDY