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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
jj^^^
i^'
THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE
AND
W. V. HER BOOK
This book, for the publication of nvhich I am
indebted to Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Company,
contains "The Invisible Playmate^'' and "IV. V.,
Her Book,'''' re-vised, enlarged, and in the defini-
ti-ve and only form in --ivhich I desire to offer it to
the good ^will of the American people.
WILLIAM CANTON.
" Thank you, Mr. Oakman '
THE
Invisible Playmate
AND
W. V. HER BOOK
BY
WILLIAM CANTON
With T^wo Illustrations by C. E. Brock
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
M DCCC XCVIII
Copyright^ i8qb,
By Stone and Kimball.
Copyright, i8g8,
By Dodd, Mead and Company.
HitibcrsttD Prrss:'
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
^ 4415"
TO
THE MOTHER OF W. V.
April 26, 1897
Contents
The Invisible Playmate ....
Rhymes about a Little Woman
An Unknown Child-Poem
At a Wayside Station .
W. v., Her Birthday .
Her Book
The Inquisition
The First Miracle
By the Fireside. I.
By the Fireside. II.
The Raider
Babsie-Bird
The Orchard of Stars
The Sweet Pea .
Brook-side Logic .
Bubble-Blowing
New Version of an Old Game
The Golden Swing-Boat .
Another Newton's Apple
vii
PAGE
3
29
49
65
79
103
105
107
108
IC9
no
112
113
J14
115
117
118
119
Contents
PAGE
Naturula Naturans 120
Wings and Hands 121
Flowers Invisible 122
Making Pansies 123
Heart-ease 124
" Si j'avais un arpent ■" . . . . 125
Her Friend Littlejohn .... 129
Her Bed-time 149
Various Verses
East of Eden 159
Goodwin Sands 168
Trafalgar 173
Vignettes
The Wanderer. 1 179
The Wanderer. II 180
The Scarecrow 182
The Haunted Bridge 184
The Stone Age 186
Sea-Pictures. 1 188
Sea-Pictures. II 190
Moonlight 152
Green Pastures 194
The Little Dipper 196
In the Hills 197
Nature's Magic 198
April Voices 199
Green Sky 204
viii
Contents
Sub Umbra Crucis
The Shepherd Beautiful
The Moss
A Carol
When Snow Lies Deep
" Trees of Righteousness "
The Comrades . . . .
" Crying, Abba, Father" .
This Grace Vouchsafe .
PAGE
207
ZI I
212
214
216
218
221
226
iX
THE INVISIBLE
PLAYMATE
The poor lost image bro7ight back plain as
dreams.
Browning
No visual shade of some one lost.
But he, the Spirit himself, may come
When all the nerve of sense is niwib.
Tennyson
God, by God's ways occult,
May — doth, I -will believe — bring back
All wanderers to a single track.
Browning
Vous voyez sous mon rire mes larmes,
VIeux arbres, n'est-ce pas ? et vous n'avez pas cru
Que i'oublierai jamais le petit disparu.
THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE
THE following pages are taken from a
series of letters which I received a
year or two ago ; and since no one is now
left to be affected by the publication of
them it can be no abuse of the writer's
confidence to employ them for the purpose
I have in view. Only by such extracts can
I convey any clear impression of the char-
acter of the person most concerned.
To many the chief interest in what follows
will centre in the unconscious self-portraiture
of the writer. Others may be most attracted
by the frank and naive picture of child-life.
And yet a third class of readers may decide
that the one passage of any real value is
that which describes the incident with which
the record closes. On these matters, how-
3
The Invisible Playmate
ever, any comment from me appears to be
unnecessary.
I need only add that the writer of the
letters was twice married, and that just
before the death of his first wife their only
child, a girl, died at the age of six weeks.
" I never could understand why men
should be so insanely set on their first-born
being a boy. This of ours, I am glad to
say, is a girl. I should have been pleased
either way, but as a matter of fact I wanted
a girl. I don't know why, but somehow
with a girl one feels that one has provided
against the disillusionment, the discomfort,
the homelessness of old age and of mental
and physical decrepitude.
"For one thing above all others I am
grateful : that, so far as I can see, here-
dity has played no horrible pranks upon us.
The poor little mortal is wholesome and
shapely from her downy little poll to her
little pink toe-nails. She could not have
been lovelier if Math had made her out
of flowers (or was it Gwydion? You re-
member the Mabinogion). And she grips
4
The Invisible Playmate
hard enough already to remind one of her
remote arboreal ancestors. One of God's
own ape-lets in the Tree of Life ! "
" Exultant ! No, dear C — , anything but
that ! Glad as I am, I am morbidly appre-
hensive and alert to a myriad possibilities
of misery. I am all quick. I feel as though
I had shed my epidermis, and had but ' true
skin ' for every breath and touch of mis-
chance to play upon.
" / have been through it all before. I was
exultant then. I rode a bay trotting-horse,
and was proud of heart and wore gloves in
my cap. I feel sick at heart when I think
how I was wrapped up in that child ; how
in my idolatry of her I clean forgot the
savage irony of existence ; how, when I was
most unsuspecting, most unprepared —
unarmed, naked — I was — stabbed from
behind !
" I know what you will say. I see the
grave look on your face as you read this.
Perhaps I ought not to write it. I have
never said so much to any one before \ but
that is what I felt — what I feel.
5
The Invisible Playmate
" Do you think, if I can help it, I shall
give any one a chance of surprising me
so again? This poor little mite can bring
my heart with a leap into my throat, or send
it down shivering into my boots — that I
can't help — but never so long as I live,
and dote on her as I may, never shall I
again be taken at unawares. I have petri-
fied myself against disaster. Sometimes as
I am returning home in the grey dawn,
sometimes even when I am putting the
latch-key into the lock, I stop and hear an
inward voice whispering, * Baby is dead ' ;
and I reply, ' Then she is dead.' The rest
I suppress, ignore, refuse to feel or think.
It is not pleasant schooling; but I think
it is wise."
To this I presume I must have replied
with the usual obvious arguments, for he
writes later :
" No ; I dorCt think I lose more than I
gain. Trust me, I take all I can get : only,
I provide against reprisals. Yes ; unfortu-
nately all this does sound like Caliban on
6
The Invisible Playmate
Setebos. Is that Caliban's fault? Dear
man, I know I shock you. I almost shock
myself; but how can / trust ? Shall I bar-
gain and say, ' You took the other : ensure
me this one, and I will think You as good
and wise and merciful — as a man ? ' And
if I make no bargain, but simply profess
belief that ' all was for the best,' will that
destroy the memory of all that horror and
anguish ? Job ! The author of ' Job ' knew
more about astronomy than he knew about
fatherhood.
" The anguish and horror were perchance
meant for my chastening ! Am I a man to
be chastened in that way? Or will you say,
perhaps but for these you would have been
a lost soul by this? To such questionings
there is no end. As to selfishness, I will
suffer anything for her sake ; but how will
she profit by my suffering for the loss of
her?"
After an interval he wrote :
"You are very good to take so much
interest in the Heiress of the Ages. We
have experienced some of the ordinary
7
The Invisible Playmate
troubles — and let me gravely assure you
that this is the single point in which she
does resemble other children — but she is
well at present and growing visibly. The
Norse god who heard the growing of the
grass and of the wool on the sheep's back
would have been stunned with the tinta-
marre of her development.
"Thereto she noticeth. So saith her
mother; so averreth the nurse, an experi-
enced and unimpeachable witness. Think
of it, C ! As the human mind is the one
reality amid phenomena, this young person
is really establishing and giving permanence
to certain bits of creation. To that ex-
tent the universe is the more solid on her
account.
" Nor are her virtue and excellency con-
fined to noticing ; she positively radiates.
Where she is, that is the sunny side of the
house. I am no longer surprised at the
folk-belief about the passing of a maiden
making the fields fertile. I observe that
in the sheltered places where she is taken
for an airing the temperature is the more
genial, the trees are in greener leaf, and the
8
The Invisible Playmate
red half of the apple is that nearest the
road. . . .
" Accept for future use this shrewd dis-
covery from my experience. When a baby
is restless and fretful, hold its hands ! That
steadies it. It is not used to the speed at
which the earth revolves and the solar
system whirls towards the starry aspect of
Hercules (half a milhon miles a day!). Or
it may be that coming out of the vortex of
atoms it is sub-conscious of some sense
of faUing through the void. The gigantic
paternal hands close round the warm, tiny,
twitching fists, soft as grass and strong as
the everlasting hills.
" I wonder if those worthy old Accadians
had any notion of this when they prayed,
' Hold Thou my hands.' "
In several subsequent letters he refers
to the growth and the charming ways of
the "little quadruped," the " quadrunianous
angel," the "bishop" (from an odd resem-
blance in the pose of the head to the late
Bishop of Manchester). One passage must
be given :
The Invisible Playmate
" It is an ' animal most gracious and benig-
nant,' as Francesca calls Dante. Propped
up with cushions, she will sit for half an
hour on the rug at my feet while I am writ-
ing, content to have her fluffy head patted
at the end of every second paragraph.
''This evening she and I had the study
to ourselves. She on my knee, cosily snug-
gling within my arm, with a tiny hand clasped
about each thumb. We were sitting by the
window, and the western sky was filled with
a lovely green light, which died out very
slowly. It was the strangest and dreamiest
of afterglows. She was curiously quiet and
contented. As she sat like that, my mind
went back to that old life of mine, that past
which seems so many centuries away; and
I remembered how that poor little white
creature of those unforgettable six weeks sat
where she was now sitting — so unlike her,
so white and frail and old-womanish, with
her wasted arms crossed before her, and her
thin, worn face fading, fading, fading away
into the everlasting dark. Why does — how
can things like these happen?
" She would have been nine now if she
lO
The Invisible Playmate
had lived. How she would have loved this
tiny sister ! "
" You will be amused, perhaps you will be
amazed, at my foolishness. When the post-
man hands you Rhyjnes about a Little
Woman ^ you will understand what I mean.
In trotting up and down with the Immortal
in my arms, crooning her to sleep, these
rhymes came. I did not make them ! And
sing — don't read them. Seriously, the
noticeable thing about them is their unlike-
ness to fictitious child-poems. I did not
print them on that account, of course. But
to me it will always be a pleasant thing to
see, when I am very, very old, that genuine
bit of the past. And I like to fancy that
some day she will read — with eyes not dry
— these nonsense verses that her poor old
father used to sing to her in
' The days before
God shut the doorways of her head.' "
"You remember what I said about the
child's hands? When I went to bed very
1 See p. 27.
II
The Invisible Playmate
late last night, the words, 'Hold Thou my
hands/ kept floating about in my mind, and
then there grew on me the most perplexing
half- recollection of a lovely air. I could not
remember it quite, but it simply haunted
me. Then, somehow, these words seemed
to grow into it and out of it :
Hold Thou my hands !
In grief and joy, in hope and fear,
Lord, let xnQ/eel that Thou art near,
Hold Thou my hands 1
If e'er by doubts
Of Thy good fatherhood depressed,
I cannot find in Thee my rest.
Hold Thou my hands 1
Hold Thou my hands, —
These passionate hands too quick to smite,
These hands so eager for delight, —
Hold Thou my hands !
And when at length,
With darkened eyes and fingers cold,
I seek some last loved hand to hold,
Hold Thou my hands !
" I could endure it no longer, so I woke
N [his wife]. I was as gentle, gradual, con-
siderate as possible ! — just as if she were
12
The Invisible Playmate
waking naturally. And she re-mon-strat-ed !
* The idea of waking any one at three in the
morning to bother about a tune ! ' Dear,
dear !
" Well, it was from * The Yeoman of the
Guard.' You will know where by the rhythm
and refrain ! "
As the months went by the " benign an-
thropoid " developed into a " stodgy volatile
elephant with a precarious faculty of speech,"
and her father affected to be engrossed in
ethnological and linguistic studies based on
observation of her experiments in life and
language. I now extract without further
interpolation, merely premising that frequent
intervals elapsed between the writing of the
various passages, and that they themselves
are but a small selection from many similar :
II'
• The * golden ephelant ' is unquestion-
ably of Early-English origin. Perpend : we
in our degeneracy say ' milk ' ; she pre-
serves the Anglo-Saxon * meolc' Hengist
and Horsa would recognise her as a kins-
woman. Through the long ages between
13
The Invisible Playmate
them and her, the pleasant guttural pronun-
ciation of the ancient pastures has been
discarded by all but the traditional dairy-
man, and even he has modified the o into u.
Similarly a ' wheel ' is a ' hw^ol.' But, in-
deed, she is more A-S than the Anglo-
Saxons themselves. All her verbs end in
* en,' even * I am-en.' "
" It is singularly interesting to me to watch
the way in which she adapts words to her
purposes. As she sits so much on our knees,
she uses * knee ' for ' to sit down.' To-day
she made me * knee ' in the arm-chair beside
her. 'Too big' expresses, comically enough
sometimes, all kinds of impossibility. She
asked me to play one of her favourite tunes.
* Pappa cannot, dearie,' * Oh ! ' — with much
surprise — ' Too big? ' "
" Oh, man, man, what wonderful creatures
these bairnies are ! Did it ever occur to
you that they must be the majority of the
human race? The men and women com-
bined may be about as numerous, but they
must far outnumber the men or the women
14
The Invisible Playmate
taken separately, and as all the women and
most of the men — bad as they are — side
with them, what a political power they might
be, if they had their rights ! I have been
thinking of this swarming of the miniature
people, all over the globe, during the last few
days. Could one but make a poem of that!
I tried — and failed. * Too big ! ' But I did
the next best thing — conceived an Unknown
German Child-poe^n, and — what think you ?
— reviewed it.^ If after reading it, the
'Astrologer' [a hypercritical young friend]
tells you it reminds him of Carlyle, just ask
him whether he never, neverheavd of Richter."
" She delights in music and drawing. It
is curious how sharp she is to recognise
things. She picked out a baby in a picture
the other day, and discovered a robin among
the flowers and leaves high up on a painted
panel of the mirror. What a contrast to the
grown men of half-savage tribes one reads
of, who cannot distinguish a house from a
tree in a drawing ! She has, too, quite an
extraordinary ear for rhyme and rhythm. I
1 See p. 47-
15
The Invisible Playmate
find, to my amazement, that she can fill in
the rhymes of a nonsense poem of twenty
lines — * What shall we do to be rid of care ? '
by the way ^ — and when she does not know
the words of a verse, she times out the metre
with the right number of blanks.
" One is puzzled, all the while, to know
how much she understands. In one of her
rhymes she sings, 'Birds are singing in the
bowers.' The other day as she was chant-
ing it a dog went by ; ' That, bowers ! '
(bow-wows ! ) she cried suddenly, pointing
to the dog."
" To-day she was frightened for the first
time. We heard her roaring, *No, no,' in
great wrath in the garden. A sparrow had
dropped on the grass somewhere near her,
and she was stamping and waving her hands
in a perfect panic. When she found it was
not to be driven away, she came sweeping
in like a little elephant, screaming for < mam-
ma ' to take up arms against that audacious
' dicken.' It was really ludicrous to see her
terrorised by that handful of feathers.
J See p. 33.
16
The Invisible Playmate
" Yet she is not a bit afraid of big things.
The dog in the kennel barked the first time
she went near him. ' Oh ! ' she exclaimed,
with a little laugh of surprise, * coughing ! '
Now she says, ' He not bark ; only say good
morning.' She must kiss the donkey's fore-
head ; she invites the mother-hen to shake
hands, and the other day she was indignant
that I would not hold a locomotive till she
' t'oked it dear head.' She has a comfort-
able notion that things in general were in-
tended for her. If she wants a cow or a
yoke of horses with the ploughman for a play-
thing, it is but to * ask my pappa ' and have.
The wind and the rain and the moon * walk-
ing ' come out to see her, and the flowers
*wake up' with the same laudable object."
" Yes ; a child has a civilising effect. I
feel that I am less of a bear than I was. It
is with some men as it is with the black-
thorn ; the little v^\\\\.q, flower comes out first,
and then the whole gnarled faggot breaks
into leafy
" I came to-day across a beautiful little bit
from the letters of Marcus Aurelius. 'On
2 17
The Invisible Playmate
my return from Lorium I found my little lady
— dojfinulam ineam — in a fever ; ' later :
' You will be glad to hear that our little one
is better and running about the room.' The
old Emperor was one of ourselves. Indeed,
look at his face in those marble busts in the
Museum ; he might have been a man of our
own generation. It was he, I remember,
who wrote, * One prays — How shall I not
lose my little son ? Do thou pray thus —
How shall I not be afraid to lose him ? ' Ah,
how shall I not be afraid ! "
" We have had our first walk in the dark
— a dark crowded with stars. She had
never seen it before. It perplexed her, I
think, for she stood and looked and said
nothing. But it did not frighten her in the
least.
" I want her to have some one marvellous
thing impressed on her memory — some one
ineffable recollection of childhood ; and it is
to be the darkness associated with shining
stars and a safe feeling that her father took
her out into it. This is to last all through
her life — till the ' great dark ' comes ; so
The Invisible Playmate
that when it does come, it shall be with
an old familiar sense of fatherhood and
starlight.
" You will laugh at me — but oh, no !
you will not laugh — when I tell you what a
horror haunts me lest I should die before
her little brain has been stamped with a vivid
memory of me — clear as life, never to be
obliterated, never even to be blurred. Who
was it named Augustine ' the son of the tears
of St. Monica ' ? This child might well be
called the daughter of my tears — yet they
have not been bitter ones.
*' When she did speak — fluently at last —
it was to suppose that a good many pipes
were being lit up in the celestial spaces !
This was both prosy and impossible, yet what
could I say? Ah, well ! some day she shall
learn that the stars are not vestas, and that
the dark is only the planetary shadow of a
great rock in a blue and weary land —
though little cause have I now of all men to
call it weary ! Has that notion of the shadow
ever occurred to you? And do you ever
think of night on one of the small planetoids,
five miles in diameter? That were the
19
The Invisible Playmate
shadow of a mere boulder ; and yet on that
boulder, though there can be neither water
nor air there, what if there were some un-
known form of motherhood, of babyhood,
curled up asleep in the darkness?
" But to return to Pinaforifera. Thinking
these stars but vestas for the lighting of pipes,
what must she do but try to blow them out,
as she blows out her ' dad's ' ! I checked
that at once, for i' faith this young person's
powers are too miraculous to allow of any
trifling with the stellar systems."
" I fear I must weary you with these
' trivial fond records.' Really she is very in-
teresting. * Ever what you doing ? ' ' Upon
my word ! ' ' Dear iccle c'eature ! ' * Poor
my hands ! ' — just as people used to say,
'Good my lord!'"
"What heartless little wretches they are
after all ! Sometimes, when I ask her for a
kiss, she puts her head aside and coolly
replies, ' I don't want to ! ' What can you
say to that? One must respect her individ-
uality, though she is but a child. Now and
20
The Invisible Playmate
again she has her tender moments : * I shut-a
door and leave poor you ? * * Yes, you did,
dear.' * I stay with you ! ' — which means
inexpressible things. You should see the
odd coaxing way in which she says, 'My
father ! ' Then this to her doll : 'You cry?
I kiss you. You not cry no more.' "
" Upon my life I am growing imbecile
under the influence of this Pinaforifera. I
met a very old, wrinkled, wizened little
woman to-day, and as I looked at her poor
dim eyes and weathered face, it flashed upon
me like an inspiration — ' And she, too, was
once a rosy, merry little mortal who set some
poor silly dad doting 1 ' Then at the station
I came across what seemed to me quite an
incident — but, there, I have been daft
enough to write the matter out in full, and
you can read it, if paternity and its muddle-
headedness do not fill your soul with
loathing." ^
" By the way, she has got a new play-
thing. I do not know what suggested the
idea ; I don't think it came from any of us.
^ See p. 63.
21
The Invisible Playmate
Lately she has taken to nursing an invisible
* iccle gaal ' (little girl) whom she wheels
about in her toy perambulator, puts care-
fully to bed, and generally makes much of.
This is — 'Yourn iccle baby, pappa, old
man 1 ' if you please. When I sit down,
this accession to the family is manifest to
her on my right knee ; and she sits on my
left and calls it a ' nice lovely iccle thing.'
When she goes to bed she takes Struw-
welpeter, Sambo (a sweet being in black
india-rubber), and, of all people, Mrs.
Grundy; and when she has been tucked
in she makes place for * yourn iccle baby,'
which, of course, I have to give her with
due care. It is very odd to see her put
her hands together for it, palms upward, and
to hear her assurance, ' I not let her fall,
pappa.' "
" What droll little brains children have !
In Struwwelpeter, as probably you are not
aware, naughty Frederick hurts his leg, and
has to be put to bed ; and
' The doctor came and shook his head,
And gave him nasty physic too.'
22
The Invisible Playmate
This evening, as baby was prancing about
in her night-dress, her mother told her she
would catch cold, and then she would be
ill and would have to be put to bed. 'And
will the doctor come and shook my head ? '
she asked eagerly. Of course we laughed
outright ; but the young person was right
for all that. If the doctor was to do any
good, it could not conceivably be by shak-
ing his own head ! "
"I told you about her invisible play-
mate. Both N [his wife] and I have been
wondering whether the child is only what
is called making-believe, or whether she
really sees anything. I suppose you have
read Galton's account of the power of ' visu-
alising,' as he calls it; that is, of actually
seeing outside of one the appearance of
things that exist only in imagination. He
says somewhere that this faculty is very
strongly developed in some young children,
who are beset for years with the difficulty
of distinguishing between the objective and
the subjective. It is hard to say how one
should act in a case of this sort. To en-
23
The Invisible Playmate
courage her in this amusement might lead
to some morbid mental condition; to try
to suppress it might be equally injurious, for
this appears to be a natural faculty, not a
disease. Let nature have her own way?
" If I rest my foot on my right knee to
unlace my boot, she pulls my foot away —
* Pappa, you put youm foot on yourn iccle
baby.' She won't sit on my right knee at
all until I have pretended to transfer the
playmate to the other.
" This girl is going to be a novelist. We
have got a rival to the great Mrs. Harris.
She has invented Mrs. Briss. No one knows
who Mrs. Briss is. Sometimes she seems
to mean herself; at other times it is clearly
an interesting and inscrutable third person."
''The poor wee ape is ill. The doctor
doesn't seem to understand what is the
matter with her. We must wait a day or
two for some development."
" How these ten days and nights have
dragged past ! Do not ask me about her.
I cannot write. I cannot think."
24
The Invisible Playmate
" My poor darling is dead ! I hardly know
whether I am myself alive. Half of my indivi-
duality has left me. I do not know myself.
"Can you behave this? /cannot; and
yet I saw it. A little while before she died
I heard her speaking in an almost inaudible
whisper. I knelt down and leaned over
her. She looked curiously at me and said
faintly : * Pappa, I not let her fall.' ' Who,
dearie ? ' ' Yourn iccle baby. I gotten her
in here.' She moved her wasted little hand
as if to lift a fold of the bed-clothes. I
raised them gently for her, and she smiled
like her old self. How can I tell the rest ?
" Close beside her lay that other little one,
with its white worn face and its poor arms
crossed in that old-womanish fashion in front
of her. Its large, suffering eyes looked for
a moment into mine, and then my head
seemed filled with mist and my ears buzzed.
" / saw that. It was not hallucination. It
was there.
" Just think what it means, if that actually
happened. Think what must have been go-
ing on in the past, and I never knew. I re-
member, now, she never called it ' mamma's
25
The Invisible Playmate
baby ' ; it was always ' yourn.' Think of
the future, now that they are both — what ?
Gone?
" If it actually happened ! I saw it. I
am sane, strong, in sound health. I saw
it — saw it — do you understand ? And
yet how incredible it is ! "
Some months passed before I heard again
from my friend. In his subsequent letters,
which grew rarer and briefer as time went
on, he never again referred to his loss or to
the incident which he had described.
His silence was singular, for he was natu-
rally very communicative. But what most
surprised me was the absolute change of
character that seemed to have been brought
about in an instant — literally in the twink-
ling of an eye. One glimpse of the Unseen
(as he called it) and the embittered recollec-
tions of bereavement, the resentment, the dis-
trust, the spirit of revolt were all swept into
oblivion. Even the new bereavement had no
sting. There was no anguish; there were
no words of desolation. The man simply
stood at gaze, stunned with amazement.
26
RHYMES ABOUT A
LITTLE WOMAN
Seep. II.
27
She is my pride ; my plague : my rest ; my rack :
my bliss ; my bane :
She brings me sunshine of the heart : and soft'ning
of the brain.
28
RHYMES ABOUT A LITTLE WOMAN
SHE 's very, very beautiful ; but — alas ! —
Is n't it a pity that her eyes are glass ?
And her face is only wax, coloured up, you
know;
And her hair is just a fluff of very fine tow !
No ! — she 's not a doll. That will never
do —
Never, never, never, for it is not true !
Did they call you a doll? Did they say that
to you ?
Oh, your eyes are little heavens of an earth
made new ;
29
The Invisible Playmate
Your face, it is the blossom of mortal things ;
Your hair might be the down from an angel's
wings !
Oh, yes ; she 's beauti-beautiful ! What
else could she be?
God meant her for Himself first then
gave her to me.
30
II
SHE was a treasure ; she was a sweet ;
She was the darling of the Army and
the Fleet !
When — she — smiled
The crews of the line-of-battle ships went
wild !
When — she — cried —
Whole regiments reversed their arms and
sighed !
When she was sick, for her sake
The Queen took off her crown and sobbed
as if her heart would break.
31
Ill
LOOK at her shoulders now they are
bare;
Are there any signs of feathers growing
there ?
No, not a trace ; she cannot fly away ;
This wingless little angel has been sent to
stay.
32
IV
w
HAT shall we do to be rid of care ?
Pack up her best clothes and pay
her fare ;
Pay her fare and let her go
By an early train to Jer-I-Cho.
There in Judaea she will be
Slumbering under a green palm-tree ;
And the Arabs of the Desert will come
round
When they see her lying on the ground,
And some will say " Did you ever see
Such a remark-a-bil babee?"
3 33
The Invisible Playmate
And others, in the language the Arabs use,
" Nous n' avons jamais vu line telle papoose J "
And she will grow and grow ; and then
She will marry a chief of the Desert men ;
And he will keep her from heat and cold.
And deck her in silk and satin and gold —
With bangles for her feet and jewels for her
hair.
And other articles that ladies wear !
So pack up her best clothes, and let her go
By an early train to Jer-I-Cho !
Pack up her best clothes, and pay her fare ;
So we shall be rid of trouble and care !
34
TAKE the idol to her shrine ;
In her cradle lay her !
Worship her — she is divine ;
Offer up your prayer !
She will bless you, bed and board,
If befittingly adored.
35
VI
o
N a summer morning, Babsie up a tree ;
In came a Blackbird, sat on Babsie 's
knee.
Babsie to Blaclibird — " Blackbird, how you
do?"
Blackbird to Babsie — " Babsie, how was
you?
" How was you in this commodious tree —
How was^<?« and all your famu — ilu — ee ? "
36
VII
THIS is the way the ladies ride —
Saddle-a-side, saddle-a-side !
This is the way the gentlemen ride —
Sitting astride, sitting astride !
This is the way the grandmothers ride -
Bundled and tied, bundled and tied !
This is the way the babbykins ride —
Snuggled inside, snuggled inside !
This is the way, when they are late,
They all fly over a five-barred gate !
37
VIII
w
E are not wealthy ; but, you see,
Others are far worse off than we.
Here 's a gaberlunzie begging at the door —
If we gave him Babs, he 'd need no more !
Oh, she '11 fill your cup, and she '11 fill your
can ;
She '11 make you happy, happy ! Take her,
beggar man !
Give a beggar Babsie ? Give this child away ?
That would leave iis poor, and poor, for ever
and a day !
38
Rhymes about a Little Woman
After- thought —
The gaberlunzie man is sad ;
The Babe is far from glee ;
He with his poverty is plagued —
And with her poor teeth ^ she !
1 As who should say "poortith."
39
IX
OH, where have you been, and how do
you do,
And what did you beg, or borrow, or buy
For this little girl with the sash of blue ?
Why,
A cushie-coo ; and a cockatoo ;
And a cariboo ; and a kangaroo ;
And a croodlin' doo ; and a quag from the
Zoo —
And all for the girl with the sash of blue !
40
WHEN she 's very thirsty, what does
she do?
She croons to us in Doric ; she murmurs
" A-coo ! "
Oh, the Uttle Scotch girl, who would ever
think
She 'd want a coo — a whole coo — needing
but a drink !
Moo, moo ! — a coo !
Mammie 's gone to market ; Mamraie '11 soon
be here ;
41
The Invisible Playmate
Mammie 's bought a brindled coo ! Patience,
woman dear !
Don't you hear your Crummie lowing in the
lane?
She 's going up to pasture ; we '11 bring her
home again !
Moo, moo ! — a coo !
Grow sweet, you little wild flowers, about our
Crummie 's feet ;
Be glad, you green and patient grass, to have
our Crummie eat ;
And hasten, Crummie, hasten, or what shall
I do?
For here 's a waesome lassie skirlin' for a coo !
Moo, moo ! — a coo !
A moment yet ! The sun is set, and all the
lanes are red ;
And here is Crummie coming to the milking
shed !
42
Rhymes about a Little Woman
Why, mother, mother, don't you hear this
terrible to-do?
Depechez-vous ! A coo — a coo — a kingdom
for a coo !
Moo, moo ! — a coo !
43
XI
WHEN she laughs and waves about
Her pink small fingers, who can
doubt
She 's catching at the glittering plumes
Of angels flying round the rooms ?
44
XII
POOR Babbles is dead with sleep ;
Poor Babbles is dead with sleep !
Eyes she hardly can open keep ;
Lower the gas to a glimmering peep.
All good angels, hover and keep
Watch above her — poor Babbles ! — asleep.
45
AN UNKNOWN
CHILD-POEM
See p. 15.
47
Murmure indistinct, vague, obscur, confus, brouille :
Dieu, le bon vieux grand-pere, ecoute emerveille.
Hugo
48
AN UNKNOWN CHILD-POEM
OF all possible books in this age of
waste-paper, the wretched little vol-
ume before me, labelled Gedichte and bear-
ing the name of a certain " Arm : Altegans,"
is assuredly one of the unluckiest. Outside
the Fatherland it cannot by any chance be
known to mortal ; and among the author's
compatriots I have been unable to discover
man, woman, or child who has heard of
Altegans, or is aware of the existence of
these Poefns of his. Yet I venture to express
the opinion that this scarecrow of a duo-
decimo, with its worn-out village printer's
type and its dingy paper-bag pages, contains
some passages which for suggestiveness and
for melody of expression are not unworthy of
the exquisite " founts " and hand-made papers
of wealthier and, perhaps, less noticeable
smgers.
49
The Invisible Playmate
Thin as the book is, it contains, as most
books do, more than one cares to read ; but
even some of this superfluous material is in
a measure redeemed by its personal bearing.
One catches a glimpse of the man, and after
reading his " Erster Schulgang " — the one
real poem in the collection — I must confess
that I felt some little curiosity and interest in
regard to the author. One learns, for instance,
that in 1868, when the book was printed,
he was a winter-green " hoary-head " ; that
he had lost wife and child long ago, in " the
years still touched with morning- red " ; that
like Hans Sachs, he had —
" bending o'er his leather,
Made many a song and shoe together," —
the shoe better than the song, but, he adds
whimsically, " better perchance because of
the song " ; that he thought no place in the
earth- round could compare with his beloved
village of Wieheisstes in the pleasant crag-
and-fir region of Schlaraffenland (" Glad am
I to have been born in thee, thou heart's-
dearest village among the pines " ; and here,
by the way, have we not a reminiscence of
5°
An Unknown Child-Poem
Jean Paul, or is the phrase merely a coinci-
dence?) ; that as a matter of fact, however,
he had never during his seventy odd years
travelled as many miles as ten from his
Wieheisstes ; that though confined in a mere
nut-shell of a green valley he was a cos-
mopolite of infinite space ; that his heart
brimmed over with brotherly love for all
men — for all women especially, and still
more especially, poor hoary- head ! for all
children ; but truly for all men — regarding
even the levity with which they treated his
name rather as a token of affectionate famil-
iarity than as an evidence of ill-breeding,
and, indeed, humorously addressing himself
in more than one of the gedichte as " thou
Old- Goose." Which last play of fancy has
caused me to question — without, alas ! hope
of answer now — whether the abbreviated
prenomen on the title-page stands for a he-
roic " Arminius " or for an ironical " Armer "
or " Arme," as one prefers the gender ; giv-
ing us the net result " Poor Old-Goose ! "
Twenty years and more have elapsed since
the aged worker in leather and verse gave
the ** Erster Schulgang " — " First day at
£1
The Invisible Playmate
School," shall we say? — and these per-
sonal confidences to an apathetic Germania.
Doubtless he has, long since, been gathered
to his lost ones in the shadow of the grey-
stone blue-slated little church. Poor sing-
ing soul, he is deaf to anything that com-
patriot or " speech-cousin " can say now
of him or of his rhymes !
Let me, nevertheless, attempt to make
an impressioniste transcript of this " Erster
Schulgang." To reproduce the tender, sim-
ple music of its verse would be impossible ;
a mere prose translation would be indeed
a — traduction.
The poem opens with a wonderful vision
of children ; delightful as it is unexpected ;
as romantic in presentment as it is common-
place in fact. All over the world — and
all under it, too, when their time comes —
the children are trooping to school. The
great globe swings round out of the dark
into the sun ; there is always morning some-
where ; and for ever in this shifting iregion
of the morning-light the good Altegans sees
the little ones afoot — shining companies
and groups, couples and bright solitary fig-
52
An Unknown Child-Poem
ures ; for they all seem to have a soft
heavenly light about them !
He sees them in country lanes and rustic
villages ; on lonely moorlands, where narrow
brown foot-tracks thread the expanse of
green waste, and occasionally a hawk hovers
overhead, or a mountain-ash hangs its scarlet
berries above the huge fallen stones set up
by the Druids in the old days ; he sees
them on the hillsides ('* trails of little feet
darkening the grass all hoary with dew,"
he observes), in the woods, on the stepping-
stones that cross the brook in the glen, along
the sea-cliffs and on the wet ribbed sands ;
trespassing on the railway lines, making
short cuts through the corn, sitting in ferry-
boats ; he sees them in the crowded streets
of smoky cities, in small rocky islands, in
places far inland where the sea is known
only as a strange tradition.
The morning-side of the planet is alive
with them; one hears their pattering foot-
steps everywhere. And as the vast conti-
nents sweep " eastering out of the high
shadow which reaches beyond the moon"
(here, again, I would have suspected our
53
The Invisible Playmate
poet of an unconscious reminiscence of Jean
Paul, were it not that I remember Sir
Thomas Browne has some similar whimsical
phrase), and as new nations, with their cities
and villages, their fields, woods, mountains
and sea-shores, rise up into the morning-
side, lo ! fresh troops, and still fresh troops,
and yet again fresh troops of " these small
school-going people of the dawn ! "
How the quaint old man loves to linger
over this radiant swarming of young life !
He pauses for a moment to notice this or
that group, or even some single mite.
He marks their various nationalities — the
curious little faces of them, as the revolving
planet shows him (here he remembers with
a smile the coloured wall- maps of the school-
room) the red expanse of Europe, the green
bulk of America, or the huge yellow terri-
tory of the Asiatics. He runs off in a
discursive stanza in company with the
bird-nesting truant. Like a Greek divinity
leaning out of Olympus, he watches a pitched
battle between bands of these diminutive
Stone-age savages belonging to rival schools.
With tender humour he notes the rosy
54
An Unknown Child-Poem
beginning of a childish love-idyll between
some small Amazon and a smaller urchin
whom she has taken under her protection.
What are weather and season to this
incessant panorama of childhood? The
pigmy people trudge through the snow on
moor and hillside ; wade down flooded
roads; are not to be daunted by wind or
rain, frost or the white smother of " millers
and bakers at fisticuffs." Most beautiful
picture of all, he sees them travelling school-
ward by that late moonlight which now and
again in the winter months precedes the
tardy dawn.
Had the "Erster Schulgang" ended here,
I cannot but think the poem would have
been worth preserving. This vision, how-
ever, is but a prelude and as a prelude it is
perhaps disproportionately long. A blue-
eyed, flaxen-haired German madchen of
four is the heroine of this " First day at
School " — Altegans's own little maiden, per-
chance, in the years that were ; but of this
there is no evidence.
What an eventful day in each one's life,
55
The Invisible Playmate
he moralises, is this first day at school —
no other day more truly momentous; and
yet how few of us have any recollection
of it!
The first school-going is the most daring
of all adventures, the most romantic of all
marvellous quests. Palseocrystic voyages,
searches for northwest passages, wanderings
in the dwarf-peopled forests of dusky con-
tinents are trifling matters compared with
this. This is the veritable quest for the San-
greal ! *' Each smallest lad as he crosses the
home-threshold that morning is a Colum-
bus steering to a new world, to golden
Indies that truly lie — at last — beyond the
sunset. He is a little Ulysses outward-
bound on a long voyage, wherethrough help
him, thou dear Heaven, past the Calyp-
so Isles and Harpy-shores lest he perish
miserably ! "
And thus, continues Altegans, after a
page or two of such simple philosophising,
little " blue-eyed flax-head " goes forth, with
well-stored satchel and primer, and with a
mother's kiss ; gleeful, it may be ; reluctant,
perchance ; into the world, nay into the
56
An Unknown Child-Poem
universe, nay into the ilUmitable cosmos
beyond these flaming star-walls ; for of all
future knowing and loving, and serving and
revolt against service, is not this the actual
beginning ?
Very prettily does he picture the trot of
the small feet along the narrow pathway
through the fields where the old Adam —
the " red earth " of the furrows, he means —
is still visible through the soft green blades
of the spring corn ; the walk along the
lanes with their high hedges, and banks of
wild flowers, and overhanging clouds of leaf
and blossom ; the arrival at the nistic
schoolhouse ; the crowd of strange faces ;
the buzz and noise of conning and repetition.
And then, behold ! as the timid new
scholar sits on the well-polished bench, now
glancing about at her unknown comrades,
now trying to recollect the names and
shapes of the letters in her primer, the
schoolhouse vanishes into transparent air,
and the good Altegans perceives that this
little maiden is no longer sitting among
German fields !
Instead of the young corn, papyrus-reeds
57
The Invisible Playmate
are growing tall and thick ; the palm has
replaced the northern pine ; Nilus, that
ancient river, is flowing past; far away in
the distance he descries the peaks of the
Pyramids, while behind the child rises a
huge granite obelisk sculptured from apex
to base with hieroglyphic characters. For,
he asks by way of explaining this startling
dissolving view, does not every child when
it learns the alphabet sit in the shadow
of the sculptured " needle-pillars " of Egypt
the ancient?
Where could this simple village shoemaker
have picked up this crumb of knowledge?
It seems only yesterday that Professor Max
Miiller thought it a matter of sufficient
novelty to tell us that " whenever we wrote
an a or a ^ or a r, we wrote what was
originally a hieroglyphic picture. Our L is
the crouching lion ; our F the cerastes, a
serpent with two horns ; our H the Egyptian
picture of a sieve."
"O thou tenderest newly- blossomed little
soul-and-body, thou freshest-formed flower-
image of man," exclaims the emotional
58
An Unknown Child-Poem
Altegans, "how strange to see thee shining
with this newness in the shadow of the old,
old brain-travail, the old, old wisdom of a
world dead and buried centuries ago; how
strange to see thee, thou tiny prospective
ancestress, struggling with the omnipotent
tradition of antiquity !
" For, of a truth, of all things in this
world-round there is nothing more marvel-
lous than those carven characters, than the
many-vocabled colonies which have de-
scended from them, and which have peopled
the earth with so much speech and thought,
so much joy and sorrow, so much hope and
despair.
"Beware of these, thou little child, for
they are strong to kill and strong to save !
Verily, they are living things, stronger than
powers and principalities. When Moses
dropped the stone tablets, the wise Rabbis
say the letters flew to and fro in the air;
the visible form alone was broken, but the
divine law remains intact for ever. They
are, indeed, alive — they are the visible
shapes of what thou canst not see, of what
can never die.
59
The Invisible Playmate
" Heed well these strong ones — Aleph
the Ox, the golden cherub whose mighty
wings spread athwart the Temple of Solomon,
the winged bull that men worshipped in
Assyria ; him and all his fellows heed thou
carefully ! They are the lords of the earth,
the tyrants of the souls of men. No one can
escape them save him alone who hath mas-
tered them. He whom they master is lost,
for * the letter killeth.' But these things
thou dost not yet understand."
" Close now thy book, little learner. How
Socrates and Solomon would have marvelled
to hear the things that thou shalt learn !
Close thy book ; clap thy hands gladly on
the outgoing {Scoitice skaling) song ; hie
thee home ! Thy dear mother awaits thee,
and thy good grey grandfather will look down
on thee with shrewd and kindly eyes, and
question thee gaily. Run home, thou guile-
less scholarling ; thy mother's hands are fain
of thee."
A little abruptly perhaps, unless we recol-
lect that half is greater than the whole, the
60
An Unknown Child-Poem
simple poet flies off at a tangent from his
theme, and muses to his own heart :
" And we, too, are children ; this, our first
long day at school. Oh, gentle hand, be
fain for us when we come home at eventide ;
question us tenderly, Thou good Father,
Thou ancient One of days."
So the " Erster Schulgang " closes.
It may be that through temperament or
personal associations I have over-valued it.
The reader must judge. In any case, you
dead, unknown, gentle-hearted Old-Goose,
it has been a pleasant task to me to visit in
fancy your beloved village of Wieheisstes in
the romantic crag-and-fir region of Schlaraf-
fenland, and to write these pages about your
poem and yourself.
6i
AT A WAYSIDE
STATION
See p. 21.
63
■
I
L'adorable hasard d'etre pere est tombe
Sur ma tete, et m'a fait una douce felure.
Hugo
64
I
AT A WAYSIDE STATION
GOOD-BYE, my darling ! "
The voice shot out cheerily from
the window of a second-class carriage at a
small suburban station. The speaker evi-
dently did not care a pin who heard him.
He was a bustling, rubicund, white-whiskered
and white-waistcoated little man of about
sixty. As I glanced in his direction I saw
that his wife — a faded blue-eyed woman,
with a genius for reserve — was placidly
settling herself in her seat.
Perception of these details was instan-
taneous.
" Good-bye, my darling ! "
" Good-bye, papa ! "
The reply, in a clear, fresh voice, was
almost startling in its promptitude.
I looked round ; and then for the next
minute and a half, I laughed quietly to
myself.
5 65
The Invisible Playmate
For, first of all, the bright little girl, the
flower of the flock, the small, radiant beauty
to whom that voice should have belonged,
was a maiden of five and thirty, hopelessly
uncomely, and irredeemably high-coloured.
The unmistakable age, the unprepossessing
appearance, were thrown into ludicrous con-
trast by the girlish coyness and bashfulness
of her demeanour. When her eyes were not
raised to her father's face, they were cast
down with a demureness that was altogether
irresistible.
The little man mopped his bald scalp,
hurriedly arranged some of his belongings
in the rack, abruptly darted out another bird-
like look, and repeated his farewell.
" Good-bye, my darling ! "
" Good-bye, papa ! "
It was as though he had touched the
spring of a dutiful automaton.
The carriage doors were slammed, the
guard whistled, the driver signalled, the train
started.
" Good-bye, my darling ! "
" Good-bye, papa ! "
Comic as the whole scene was, its conclu-
66
At a Wayside Station
sion was a relief. One felt that if " Good-
bye, my darling," had been repeated a
hundred times, "Good-bye, papa," would
have been sprung out in response with the
same prompt, pleasant inflection, the same
bright, ridiculous, mechanical precision.
She tripped, with the vivacity of coquettish
maidenhood, for a few paces along the plat-
form beside the carriage window, stood still
a moment, watching the carriages as they
swept round the curve, and then, resuming
her air of unapproachable reserve, ascended
the station steps.
The reaction was as sudden as it was
unexpected. The ripple of her white muslin
dress had scarcely vanished before I felt
both ashamed and sorry that I had been so
much amused. The whole situation assumed
a different aspect, and I acknowledged with
remorse that I had been a cruel and despic-
able onlooker. The humor of the incident
had mastered me ; th.e pathos of it now
stared me in the face.
As I thought of her unpleasing colour,
of her ineligible uncomeliness, of her five
and thirty unmarried years, I wondered how
67
The Invisible Playmate
I could have ever had the heart to laugh at
what might well have been a cause for tears.
The pity of it ! That sweet fresh voice —
and it was singularly sweet and fresh —
seemed the one charm left of the years of
a woman's charms and a woman's chances.
The harmless prim ways and little coy tricks
of manner, so old-fashioned and out of place,
seemed to belong to the epoch of powder
and patches. They were irrefutable evidence
of the seclusion in which she had lived — of
the Httle world of home which had never
been invaded by any rash, handsome, self-
confident young man.
As I thought of the garrulous pride and
affection of her father, I knew that she must
be womanly and lovable in a thousand ways
which a stranger could not guess at. If no
one else in the world had any need of her,
she was at least his darling ; but, ah ! the pity
of the unfulfilled mission, of the beautiful
possibilities unrealised, of the honour and
holiness of motherhood denied. She would
never have any little being to call " her
darling," to rear in love and sorrow, in solici-
tude and joy ; never one even to lose
68
At a Wayside Station
" When God draws a new angel so
Through a house of a man up to His,"
— to lose and yet know it is not lost, to
surrender and yet feel it is safe for ever ; pre-
served beyond change and the estrangement
of the years and the sad transformations of
temperament — a sinless babe for evermore.,
" Good-bye, my darling ! "
How strangely, how tranquilly, with what
little sense of change must the years have
gone by for father and daughter ! One could
not but conjecture whether he saw her now
as she actually appeared in my eyes, or
whether she was still to him the small, inex-
pressibly lovely creature of thirty years ago.
Love plays curious tricks with our senses.
No man ever yet married an ugly woman,
and time is slow to wrinkle a beloved face.
To him, doubtless, she was yet a child, and
at forty or fifty she would be a child still.
Then I thought of her as an infant in her
cradle, and I saw the faded, reserved woman
and the florid little man, a youthful couple,
leaning over it, full of the happiness and
wonder that come with the first baby. I
thought of the endearing helplessness of
69
The Invisible Playmate
those early weeks ; of the anguish of the
first baby troubles ; of the scares and terrors,
of the prayers and thankfulness ; of the
delight in the first smile ; of the blissful
delusions that their little angel had begun to
notice, that she had tried to speak, that she
had recognised some one ; of the inexplic-
able brightness which made their home, the
rooms, the garden, the very street seem a
bit of heaven which had fallen to earth ; of
the foolish father buying the little one toys,
perhaps even a book, which she would not
be able to handle for many a day to come ;
of the more practical mother who exhausted
her ingenuity in hoods and frocks, bootees,
and dainty vanities of lace and ribbon.
I thought of the little woman when she
first began to toddle ; of her resolute efforts
to carry weights almost as heavy as herself;
of her inarticulate volubility ; of the marvel-
lous growth of intelligence — the quickness
to understand, associated with the inability
to express herself; of her indefatigable imi-
tative faculty ; and of the delight of her
father in all these.
Then, as years went by, I saw how she
70
At a Wayside Station
had become essential to his happiness, how
all his thoughts encompassed her, how she
influenced him, how much better a man she
made him; and as still the years elapsed,
I took into account her ambitions, her day-
dreams, her outlook into the world of men
and women, and I wondered whether she
too had her half-completed romance, of
which, perchance, no one, not even her
father, had an inkling. How near they were
to each other; and yet, after all, how far
apart in many things they might still be !
Her father's darling ! Just Heaven ! if
we have to give account of every foolish
word, for how much senseless and cruel
laughter shall we have to make reckoning?
For, as I let my thoughts drift to and fro
about these matters, I remembered the thou-
sands who have many children but no dar-
ling; the mothers whose hearts have been
broken, the fathers whose grey hairs have
been brought down in sorrow to the grave ;
and I mused on those in whom faith and
hope have been kept alive by prayer and the
merciful recollection of a never-to-be-for-
gotten childhood.
71
The Invisible Playmate
When I reached home I took down the
volume in which one of our poets ^ has
spoken in tenderest pathos of these last
in the beautiful verses entitled —
TWO SONS
I have two sons, Wife —
Two and yet the same ;
One his wild way runs, Wife,
Bringing us to shame.
The one is bearded, sunburnt, grim, and fights
across the sea;
The other is a little child who sits upon your
knee.
One is fierce and bold, Wife,
As the wayward deep,
Him no arms could hold, Wife,
Him no breast could keep.
He has tried our hearts for many a year, not
broken them ; for he
Is still the sinless little one that sits upon your
knee.
One may fall in fight. Wife —
Is he not our son .''
Pray with all your might, Wife,
For the wayward one ;
1 Robert Buchanan.
/ -
At a Wayside Station
Pray for the dark, rough soldier who fights across
the sea,
Because you love the little shade who smiles upon
your knee.
One across the foam, Wife,
As I speak may fall ;
But this one at home, Wife,
Cannot die at all.
They both are only one, and how thankful should
we be
We cannot lose the darling son who sits upon your
knee.
This one cannot die at all ! To how
many has this bright little shadow of the
vanished years been an enduring solace and
an undying hope ! And if God's love be no
less than that of an earthly father, what
mercies, what long-suffering, what infinite
pity may we grown-up, wilful and wayward
children not owe to His loving memory of
our sinless infancy ! But for those happy
parents who, as the years have gone by,
have never failed to see the " sinless little
one," now in the girl or boy, now in the
young man or maiden, and now in these no
longer young but still darlings, what a gra-
'r '>
4 ^
The Invisible Playmate
cious providence has encompassed their
lives !
When I had smiled in witless amusement
I had not thought of all this; and even
now it had not occurred to me that this
could have been no rare and exceptional
case — that there must be many such dar-
lings in the world. That same evening, how-
ever, as I glanced over the paper, I came
across the following notice in the column
of " Births, Deaths, and Marriages " :
" In memoriam, Louisa S , who died
suddenly on August 22, aged 40 ; my youngest,
most beloved, and affectionate daughter."
74
W. V. HER BOOK
75
HER BIRTHDAY
77
HER BIRTHDAY
WE are still on the rosy side of the
apple ; but this is the last Saturday
in September, and we cannot expect many
more golden days between this and the cry
of the cuckoo. But what a summer we have
had, thanks to one of W. V.'s ingenious sug-
gestions ! She came to us in April, when
the world is still a trifle bare and the wind
somewhat too bleak for any one to get com-
fortably lost in the Forest or cast up on a
coral reef; so we have made her birthday
a movable feast, -and whenever a fine free
Saturday comes round we devote it to
thankfulness that she' has been born, and
to the joy of our both be^ijig alive together.
W. V. sleeps in an eastern room, and
accordingly the sun rises on that side of the
house. Under the eaves and just above her
79
W. V.
window the martins have a nest plastered
against the wall, and their chattering awakens
her in the first freshness of the new morning.
She watches the black shadows of the birds
fluttering on the sunny blind, as, first one
and then another, they race up to the nest,
and vibrate in the air a moment before dart-
ing into it. When her interest has begun to
flag, she steals in to me in her nightdress,
and tugs gently at my beard till I waken and
sit up. Unhappily her mother wakens too.
"What, more birthdays ! " she exclaims in a
tone of stern disapproval ; whereat W. V.
and I laugh, for evasion of domestic law is
the sweet marjoram of our salad. But it t's
possible to coax even a Draconian parent into
assent, and oh !
Flower of the may,
If mamsie will not say her nay,
W. won't care what any one may say !
We first make a tour of the garden, and it
is delightful to observe W. V. prying about
with happy, eager eyes, to detect whether
nature has been making any new thing during
the dim, starry hours when people are too
So
Her Birthday
sound asleep to notice; delightful to hear
her little screams of ecstasy when she has
discovered something she has not seen be-
fore. It is singular how keenly she notes
every fresh object, and in what quaint and
pretty terms of phrase she expresses her
glee and wonderment. " Oh, father, have n't
the bushes got their hands quite full of
flowers ? " " Are n't the buds the trees' little
girls?"
This morning the sun was blissfully warm,
and the air seemed alive with the sparkle of
the dew, which lay thick on every blade and
leaf. As we went round the gravel walks
we perceived how completely all the earlier
flowers had vanished ; even the lovely sweet
peas were almost over. We have still, how-
ever, the single dahlias, and marigolds, and
nasturtiums, on whose level leaves the dew
stood shining like globules of quicksilver;
and the tall Michaelmas daisies make quite a
white-topped thicket along the paling, while
the rowan-berries are burning in big red
bunches over the western hedge.
In the corner near the limes we came
upon a marvellous spectacle — a huge old
6 8i
W. V.
spider hanging out in his web in the sun,
Uke a grim old fisherman floating in the
midst of his nets at sea. A hand's breadth
off, young bees and new-born flies were busy
with the low perennial sunflowers ; he watch-
ing them motionlessly, with his gruesome
shadow silhouetted on a leaf hard by. In
his immediate neighbourhood the fine threads
of his web were invisible, but a little distance
away one could distinguish their concentric
curves, grey on green. Every now and then
we heard the snapping of a stalk overhead,
and a leaf pattered down from the limes.
Every now and then, too, slight surges of
breeze ran shivering through the branches.
Nothing distracted the intense vigilance of
the crafty fisherman. Scores of glimmering
insects grazed the deadly snare, but none
touched it. It must have been tantalising,
but the creature's sullen patience was invinci-
ble. W. V. at last dropped a piece of leaf-
stalk on his web, out of curiosity. In a
twinkling he was at the spot, and the frag-
ment was dislodged with a single jerk.
This is one of the things in which she
delights — the quiet observation of the ways
82
Her Birthday
of creatures. Nothing would please her
better, could she but dwarf herself into an
"aglet-baby," than to climb into those filmy
meshes and have a chat in the sunshine with
the wily ogre. She has no mistrust, she feels
no repulsion from anything that has life.
There is a warm place in her heart for the
cool, dry toad, and she loves the horned
snail, if not for his own sake, at least for his
" darling little house " and the silver track he
leaves on the gravel.
Of course she wanted a story about a
spider. I might have anticipated as much.
Well, there was King Robert the Bruce, who
was saved by a spider from his enemies when
they were seeking his life.
" And if they had found him, would
they have sworded off his head? Really,
father? Like Oliver Crumball did Charles
King's?"
Her grammar was defective, but her
surmises were beyond dispute ; they would.
Then there was the story of Sir Samuel
Brown, who took his idea of a suspension
bridge from a web which hung — but W. V.
wanted something much more engrossing.
83
W. V.
" Was n't there never no awful big spider
that made webs in the Forest?"
"And caught lions and bears?"
She nodded approvingly. Oh, yes, there
was — once upon a time,
" And was there a little girl there?"
There must have been for the story to be
worth telling ; but the breakfast bell broke in
on the opening chapter of that little girl's
incredible adventures.
After breakfast we followed the old birth-
day custom, and " plunged " into the depths
of the Forest. Some persons, I have heard,
call our Forest the " East Woods," and
report that though they are pleasant enough
in summer, they are rather meagre and
limited in area. Now, it is obvious that it
would be impossible to " plunge " into any-
thing less than a forest. Certainly, when
W. V. is with me I am conscious of the
Forest — the haunted, enchanted, aboriginal
Forest; and I see with something of her
illumined vision, the vision of W. V., who
can double for herself the comfort of a fire on
a chilly day by running into the next room
84
Her Birthday
and returning with the tidings, " It 's very
cold in the woods ! "
If you are courageous enough to leave the
paths and hazard yourself among the under-
wood and the litter of bygone autumns,
twenty paces will take you to the small
Gothic doors of the Oak-men; twenty more
to the cavern of the Great Bruin and the
pollard tree on the top of which the foxes
live ; while yet another twenty, and you are
at the burrows of the kindliest of all insects,
the leaf-cutter bees. Once — in parenthesis
— when a little maid was weeping because
she had lost her way at dusk in the Forest
mazes, it was a leaf-cutter bee that tunnelled
a straight line through the trees, so that the
nearest road lamp, miles away, twinkled right
into the Forest, and she was able to guide her-
self home. Indeed, it will only take ten min-
utes, if you do not dawdle, to get to the dread-
ful webs of the Iron Spider, and when you
do reach that spot, the wisest thing you can
do is to follow the example of the tiny
flame-elf when a match is blown out — clap
on your cap of darkness and scuttle back to
fairyland.
W. V.
What magical memories have we two of
the green huddle and the dreamy lawns of
that ancient and illimitable Forest ! We
know the bosky dingles where we shall find
pappa-trees, on whose lower branches a little
girl may discover something to eat when she
is good enough to deserve it. We know^
where certain green-clad foresters keep store
of fruits which are supposed, by those who
know no better, to grow only in orchards by
tropical seas. Of course every one is aware
that in the heart of the Forest there is a
granite fountain ; but only we two have
learned the secret that its water is the
Water of Heart's-ease, and that if we con-
tinue to drink it we shall never grow really
old. We have still a great deal of the
Forest to explore ; we have never reached
the glade where the dog- daisies have to
be chained because they grow so exceed-
ingly wild ; nor have we found the blue
thicket — it is blue because it is so distant
— from which some of the stars come up
into the dusk when it grows late ; but
when W. V. has got her galloping-horse-
bicycle we shall start with the first sun-
86
Her Birthday
shine some morning, and give the whole day
to the quest.
We lowly folk dine before most people
think of lunching, and so dinner was ready
when we arrived home. Now, as decorum
at table is one of the cardinal virtues W. V.
dines by proxy. It is her charming young
friend Gladys who gives us the pleasure of
her company. It is strange how many things
this bewildering daughter of mine can do as
Gladys, which she cannot possibly accom-
plish as W. V. W. V. is unruly, a chatter-
box, careless, or at least forgetful, of the
elegances of the social board ; whereas
Gladys is a model of manners, an angel in a
bib. W. V. cannot eat crusts, and rebels
against porridge at breakfast ; Gladys idolises
crusts, and as for porridge — "I am sur-
prised your little girl does not like porridge.
It is so good for her."
After dinner, as I lay smoking in the gar-
den lounge to-day, I fell a-thinking of W. V.
and Gladys, and the numerous other little
maids in whom this tricksy sprite has been
87
W. V.
masquerading since she came into the world
five years ago. She began the small comedy
before she had well learned to balance her-
self on her feet. As she sat in the middle of
the carpet we would play at looking for the
baby — where has the baby gone ? have you
seen the baby? — and, oddly enough, she
would take a part and pretend to wonder, or
perhaps actually did wonder, what had be-
come of herself, till at last we would discover
her on the floor — to her own astonishment
and irrepressible delight.
Then, as she grew older, it was amusing
to observe how she would drive away the
naughty self, turn it literally out of doors,
and return as the "Smiling Winifred." I
presume she grew weary, as human nature is
apt to grow, of a face which is wreathed in
amaranthine smiles ; so the Smiling Winifred
vanished, and we were visited by various
sweet children with lovely names, of whom
Gladys is the latest and the most indefatiga-
ble. I cannot help laughing when 1 recall
my three-year-old rebel listening for a few
moments to a scolding, and when she con-
sidered that the ends of justice had been
88
Her Birthday
served, exclaiming, " I put my eyes down ! "
— which meant that so far as she was
concerned the episode was now definitively
closed.
My day-dream was broken by W. V. flying
up to me with fern fronds fastened to her
shoulders for wings. She fluttered round me,
then flopped into my lap, and put her arms
about my neck. " If I was a real swan,
father, I would cuddle your head with my
wings."
" Ah, well, you are a real duck. Diddles,
and that will do quite as well."
She was tliinking of that tender Irish
legend of the Children of Lir, changed into
swans by their step-mother and doomed to
suffer heat and cold, tempest and hunger,
homelessness and sorrow, for nine hundred
years, till the sound of the first Christian
bell changed them again — to frail, aged
mortals. It was always the sister, she knows,
who solaced and strengthened the brothers
beside the terrible sea of Moyle, shelter-
ing them under her wings and warming
them against her bosom. In such a case
89
W. V.
as this an only child is at a disadvantage.
Even M'rao, her furry playmate, might have
served as a bewitched brother, but after
many months of somnolent forbearance M'rao
ventured into the great world beyond our
limes, and returned no more.
Flower of the quince,
Puss once kissed Babs, and ever since
She thinks he must be an enchanted prince.
In a moment she was off again, an angel,
flying about the garden and in and out of the
house in the performance of helpful offices
for some one ; or, perchance, a fairy, for her
heaven is a vague and strangely-peopled
region. Long ago she told me that the
moon was "put up" by a black man — a
saying which puzzled me until I came to
understand that this negro divinity could
only have been the " divine Dark " of the
old Greek poet. Of course she says her
brief, simple prayers ; but how can one con-
vey to a child's mind any but the most
provisional and elemental conceptions of the
Invisible ? Once I was telling her the story
of a wicked king, who put his trust in a fort
90
Her Birthday
of stone on a mountain peak, and scoffed at
a prophet God had sent to warn him. " He
was n't very wise," said W. V., " for God and
Jesus and the angels and the fairies are
cleverer 'n we are ; they have wings." The
" cleverness " of God has deeply impressed
her. He can make rain and see through
walls. She noticed some stone crosses in a
sculptor's yard some time ago, and remarked :
" Jesus was put on one of those ; " then, after
some reflection : " Who was it put Jesus on
the cross? Was it the church people,
father?" Well, when one comes to think
of it, it was precisely the church people —
" not these church people, dear, but the
church people of hundreds of years ago,
when Jesus was alive." She had seen the
world's tragedy in the stained glass windows
and had drawn her own conclusion — the
people who crucified would be the most
likely to make a picture of the crucifixion ;
Christ's friends would want to forget it and
never to speak of it.
In the main she does not much concern
herself with theology or the unseen. She
lives in the senses. Once, indeed, she
9^
W. V.
began to communicate some interesting re-
miniscences of what had happened " before
she came here," to this planet ; but some-
thing interrupted her, and she has not
attempted any further revelation. There is
nothing more puzzling in the world to her,
I fancy, than an echo. She has forgotten
that her own face in the mirror was quite as
bewildering. A high wind at night is not
a pleasant fellow to have shaking your window
and muttering down your chimney ; but an
intrepid father with a yard of brown oak is
more than a match for him. Thunder and
lightning she regards as " great friends \ they
always come together." She is more per-
ceptive of their companionship than of their
air of menace towards mankind. Darkness,
unless it be on the staircase, does not trouble
her : when we have said good-night out goes
the gas. But there seems to be some quality
or influence in the darkness which makes
her affectionate and considerate. Once and
again when she has slept with me and
wakened in the dead of night she has been
most apologetic and self-abasing. She is so
sorry to disturb me, she knows she is a
92
Her Birthday
bother, but would I give her a biscuit or a
drink of water?
She has all along been a curious combina-
tion of tenderness and savagery. In a
sudden fit of motherhood she will bring me
her dolly to kiss, and ten minutes later I
shall see it lying undressed and abandoned
in a corner of the room. She is a Spartan
parent, and slight is the chance of her chil-
dren being spoiled either by sparing the rod
or lack of stern monition. It is not so long
ago that we heard a curious sound of distress
in the dining-room, and on her mother
hurrying downstairs to see what was amiss,
there was W. V. chastising her recalcitrant
babe — and doing the weeping herself. This
appeared to be a good opportunity for point-
ing a moral. It was clear now that she
knew what it was to be naughty and dis-
obedient, and if she punished these faults
so severely in her own children she must
expect me to deal with her manifold and
grievous offences in the same way. She
looked very much sobered and concerned,
but a few moments later she brought me a
stout oak walking-stick : " Would that do,
93
W. V.
father?" She shows deep commiseration
for the poor imd old ; grey hairs and penury
are sad bed-fellows ; but for the poor who
are not old I fear she feels little sympathy.
Perhaps we, or the conditions of life, are to
blame for this limitation of feeling, for when
we spoke to her of certain poor little girls
with no mothers, she rejoined : " Why don't
you take them, then?" Our compassion
which stopped short of so simple a remedy
must have seemed suspiciously like a
pretence.
To me one of the chief wonders of child-
hood has been the manner in which this
young person has picked up words, has
learned to apply them, has coined them for
herself, and has managed to equip herself
with a stock of quotations. When she was
yet little more than two and a half she
applied of her own accord the name Dap-
ple-grey to her first wooden horse. Then
Dapple-grey was pressed into guardianship
of her sleeping dolls, with this stimulative
quotation : " Brave dog, watching by the
baby's bed." There was some vacillation, I
recollect, as to whether it was a laburnum or
94
Her Birthday
a St. Bernard that saved travellers in the
snow, but that was exceptional. The word
" twins " she adapted prettily enough. Try-
ing once in an emotional moment to put her
love for me into terms of gold currency, she
added : " And I love mother just the same ;
you two are twins, you know." A little while
after the University boat-race she drew my
attention to a doll in a shop-window :
" Is n't it beautiful ? And look at its Oxford
eyes ! " To " fussle one," to disturb one by
making a fuss, seems at once fresh and use-
ful ; " sorefully " is an acutely expressive
adverb; when you have to pick your steps
in wet weather the road may be conveniently
described as " picky ; " don't put wild roses
on the cloth at dinner lest the maid should
" crumb " them away ; and when one has a
cold in the head how can one describe the
condition of one's nose except as " hoarse " ?
" Lost in sad thought," " Now I have some-
thing to my heart's content," " Few tears are
my portion," are among the story-book
phrases which she has assimilated for week-
day use. When she was being read to out
of Kingsley's " Heroes," she asked her
95
W. V.
mother to substitute "the Ladies" for "the
Gorgons." She did not like the sound of
the word ; " it makes me," drawing her
breath with a sort of shiver through her
teeth, " it makes me pull myself together."
Once when she broke into a sudden laugh, for
sheer glee of living I suppose, she explained :
" I am just like a little squirrel biting myself."
Her use of the word " live " is essential
poetry ; the spark '* lives " inside the flint,
the catkins " live " in the Forest ; and she
pointed out to me the " lines " down a
horse's legs where the blood " lives." A
sign- board on a piece of waste land caused
her some perplexity. It was not " The pub-
lic are requested " this time, but " Forbidden
to shoot rubbish here." Either big game or
small deer she could have understood ; but
— <' Who wants to shoot rubbish, father? "
Have I sailed out of the trades into the
doldrums in telling of this commonplace
little body ? — for, after all, she is merely the
average, healthy, merry, teasing, delightful
mite who tries to take the whole of life at
once into her two diminutive hands. Ah,
96
Her Birthday
well, I want some record of these good, gay
days of our early companionship ; something
that may still survive when this right hand is
dust ; a testimony that there lived at least
one man who was joyously content with the
small mercies which came to him in the
beaten way of nature. For neither of us,
little woman, can these childish, hilarious
days last much longer now. Five arch,
happy faces look out at me from the sections
of an oblong frame ; all W. V.'s, but no two
the same W. V. The sixth must go into
another frame. You must say good-bye to
the enchanted Forest, little lass, and travel
into strange lands ; and the laws of infancy
are harder than the laws of old Wales. For
these ordained that when a person remained
in a far country under such conditions that
he could not freely revisit his own, his title
to the ancestral soil was not extinguished
till the ninth man; the ninth man could
utter his "cry over the abyss," and save his
portion. But when you have gone into the
world beyond, and can no more revisit the
Forest freely, no ear will ever listen to your
" cry over the abyss."
7 97
W. V.
When she had at last tired herself with
angelic visits and thrown aside her fern
wings, she returned to me and wanted to
know if I would play at shop. No, I would
not play at shop ; I would be neither pur-
chaser nor proprietor, the lady she called
" Cash " nor the stately gentleman she called
'* Sign." Would I be a king, then, and
refuse my daughter to her (she would be a
prince) unless she built a castle in a single
night; "better 'n't" she bring her box of
bricks and the dominoes? No, like Caesar,
I put by the crown. She took my refusals
cheerfully. On the whole, she is tractable
in these matters. " Fathers," she once told
me, " know better than little girls, don't
they?" " Oh, dear, no! how could they?
Fathers have to go into the city ; they don't
go to school like little girls." Doubtless
there was something in that, but she per-
sisted, " Well, even if little girls do go to
school, fathers are wiser and know best."
From which one father at least may derive
encouragement. Well, would I blow soap-
bubbles ?
I think it was the flying thistledown in
98
Her Birthday
June which first gave us the cue of the soap-
bubbles. What a dehghtful game it is ; and
there is a knack, too, in blowing these
spheres of fairy glass and setting them off
on their airy flight. Till you have blown
bubbles you have no conception how full of
waywardness and freakish currents the air is.
Oh, you who are sad at heart, or weary of
thought, or irritable with physical pain, coax,
beg, borrow, or steal a four or five year old,
and betake you to blowing bubbles in the
sunshine of your recluse garden. Let the
breeze be just a little brisk to set your
bubbles drifting. Fill some of them with
tobacco smoke, and with the wind's help
bombard the old fisherman in his web. As
the opaline globes break and the smoke
escapes in a white puff along the grass or
among the leaves, you shall think of historic
battlefields, and muse whether the greater
game was not quite as childish as this, and
" sorefully " less innocent. The smoke-
charges are only a diversion ; it is the crystal
balls which delight most. The colours of
all the gems in the world run molten through
their fragile films. And what visions they
99
W. V.
contain for crystal- gazers ! Among the gold
and green, the rose and blue, you see the
dwarfed reflection of your own trees and
your own home floating up into the sunshine.
These are your possessions, your surroundings
— so lovely, so fairylike in the bubble ; in
reality so prosaic and so inadequate when
one considers the rent and rates. To W.
V. the bubbles are like the wine of the poet
— " full of strange continents and new
discoveries."
Flower of the sloe.
When chance annuls the worlds we blow,
Where does the soul of beauty in them go }
"Tell me a story of a little girl who lived
in a bubble," she asked when she had tired
of creating fresh microcosms.
I lifted her on to my knee, and as she
settled herself comfortably she drew my right
arm across her breast and began to nurse it.
"Well, once upon a time "
I GO
HER BOOK
lOI
THE INQUISITION
I WOKE at dead of night ;
The room was still as death ;
All in the dark I saw a sight
Which made me catch my breath.
Although she slumbered near,
The silence hung so deep
I leaned above her crib to hear
If it were death or sleep.
103
W. V.
As low — all quick — I leant,
Two large eyes thrust me back ;
Dark eyes — too wise — which gazed intent ;
Blue eyes transformed to black.
Heavens ! how those steadfast eyes
Their eerie vigil kept !
Was this some angel in disguise
Who searched us while we slept ;
Who winnow'd every sin,
Who tracked each slip and fall.
One of God's spies — not Babbykin,
Not Babbykin at all?
Day came with golden air ;
She caught the beams and smiled ;
No masked inquisitor was there,
Only a babbling child 1
104
THE FIRST MIRACLE
THE huge weeds bent to let her pass,
And sometimes she crept under ;
She plunged through gulfs of flowery grass ;
She filled both hands with plunder.
The buttercups grew tall as she,
Taller the big dog-daisies ;
And so she lost herself, you see,
Deep in the jungle mazes.
I OS
W. V.
A wasp twang'd by ; a horned snail
Leered from a great-leafed docken ;
She shut her eyes, she raised a wail
Deplorable, heart-broken.
" Mamma ! " Two arms, flashed out of space
Miraculously, caught her ;
Fond mouth was pressed to tearful face —
" What is it, little daughter? "
1 06
BY THE FIRESIDE
RED-BOSOMED Robin, in the hard
white weather
She marks thee Hghtupon the ice to rest ;
She sees the wintry glass glow with thy
breast
And let thee warm thy feet at thine own
feather.
107
BY THE FIRESIDE
n
IN the April sun at baby- house she plays.
Her rooms are traced with stones and
bits of bricks ;
For warmth she lays a hearth with little
sticks,
And one bright crocus makes a merry
blaze !
1 08
THE RAIDER
HER happy, wondering eyes had ne'er
Till now ranged summer meadows
o'er :
She would keep stopping everywhere
To fill with flowers her pinafore.
But when she saw how, green and wide,
Field followed field, and each was gay
With endless flowers, she laughed — then
sighed,
"No use ! " and threw her spoils away.
[09
BABSIE-BIRD
IN the orchard blithely waking,
Through the blossom, loud and clear.
Pipes the goldfinch, " Day is breaking ;
Waken, Babsie ; May is here !
Bloom is laughing ; lambs are leaping ;
Every new green leaflet sings ;
Five chipp'd eggs will soon be cheeping ;
God be praised for song and wings ! "
no
Her Book
Warm and ruddy as an ember,
Lilting sweet from bush to stone,
On the moor in chill November
Flits the stone-chat all alone :
** Snow will soon drift up the heather ;
Days are short, nights cold and long ;
Meanwhile in this glinting weather
God be thanked for wings and song ! '
Round from Maytime to November
Babsie lilts upon the wing,
Far too happy to remember
Thanks or praise for anything ;
Save at bedtime, laughing sinner,
When she gaily lisps along,
For the wings and song within her —
" Thank you, God, for wings and song
III
THE ORCHARD OF STARS
AMID the orchard grass she 'd stood
and watch'd with childish glee
The big bright burning apples shower'd
like star-falls from the tree ;
So when the autumn meteors fell
she cried, with outspread gown,
" Oh my, papa, look ! Is n't God
just shaking apples down?"
ii:
THE SWEET PEA
OH, what has been bom in the night
To bask in this blithe summer morn ?
She peers, in a dream of delight,
For something new-made or new-born.
Not spider-webs under the tree,
Not swifts in their cradle of mud,
But — '* Look, father, Sweet Mrs. Pea
Has two little babies in bud ! "
"3
BROOK-SIDE LOGIC
S the brook caught the blossoms she
cast,
Such a wonder gazed out from her face !
Why, the water was all running past,
Yet the brook never budged from its place.
A^
Oh, the magic of what was so clear !
I explained. And enlightened her?
Nay —
"Why but, father, I could rC t '=>\.z-^ here
If I always was running away ! "
114
BUBBLE-BLOWING
OUR plot is small, but sunny limes
Shut out all cares and troubles ;
And there my little girl at times
And I sit blowing bubbles.
The screaming swifts race to and fro,
Bees cross the ivied paling,
Draughts lift and set the globes we blow
In freakish currents sailing.
"5
W, V.
They glide, they dart, they soar, they break.
Oh, joyous little daughter,
What lovely coloured worlds we make,
What crystal flowers of water !
One, green and rosy, slowly drops ;
One soars and shines a minute.
And carries to the lime-tree tops
Our home, reflected in it.
The gable, with cream rose in bloom.
She sees from roof to basement ;
" Oh, father, there 's your little room ! "
She cries in glad amazement.
To her enchanted with the gleam.
The glamour and the glory,
The bubble home 's a home of dream,
And I must tell its story ;
Tell what we did, and how we played.
Withdrawn from care and trouble — •
A father and his merry maid,
Whose house was in a bubble !
ii6
NEW VERSION OF AN OLD GAME
THE storm had left the rain-butt brim-
ming ;
A dahha leaned across the brink ;
Its mirrored self, beneath it swimming,
Lit the dark water, gold and pink.
Oh, rain, far fallen from heights of azure —
Pure rain, from heavens so cold and
lone —
Dost thou not feel, and thrill with pleasure
To feel a flower's heart in thine own ?
Enjoy thy beauty, and bestow it,
Fair dahlia, fenced from harm, mishap !
" See, Babs, this flower — and this below
it."
She looked, and screamed in rapture —
« Snap 1 "
117
THE GOLDEN SWING-BOAT
ACROSS the low dim fields we caught
Faint music from a distant band —
So sweet i' the dusk one might have thought
It floated up from elfin-land.
Then, o'er the tree-tops' hazy blue
We saw the new moon, low i' the air :
"Look, Dad," she cried, "a shuggy-shue !
Why, this must be a fairies' fair ! "
ii^i
ANOTHER NEWTON'S APPLE
WE tried to show with lamp and ball
How simply day and night were
" made ; "
How earth revolved, and how through all
One half was sunshine, one was shade.
One side, tho' turned and turned again,
Was always bright. She mused and frowned,
Then flashed — " It 's just an apple, then,
'at 's always rosy half way round ! "
Oh, boundless tree of ranging blue,
Star-fruited through thy heavenly leaves.
Be, if thou canst be, good unto
This apple-loving babe of Eve's.
119
NATURULA NATURANS
BESIDE the water and the crumbs
She laid her Httle birds of clay,
For — " When some other sparrow comes
Perhaps they '11 fly away."
Ah, golden dream, to clothe with wings
A heart of springing joy ; to know
Two lives i' the happy sum of things
To her their bliss will owe !
Day dawned ; they had not taken flight,
Tho' playmates called from bush and tree.
She sighed : " I hardly thought they might.
Well, — God 's more clever 'n me ! "
I20
WINGS AND HANDS
GOD'S angels, dear, have six great wings
Of silver and of gold ;
Two round their heads, two round their
hearts.
Two round their feet they fold.
The angel of a man I know
Has just two hands — so small !
But they 're more strong than six gold wings
To keep him from a fall.
121
FLOWERS INVISIBLE
SHE 'D watched the rose-trees, how they
grew
With green hands full of flowers ;
Such flowers made their hands sweet, she
knew,
But tenderness made ours.
So now, o'er fevered brow and eyes
Two small cold palms she closes.
" Thanks, darling ! " " Oh, mamma," she
cries,
"Are my hands full of roses? "
Z22
MAKING PANSIES
" 'T^HREE faces in a hood."
X Folk called the pansy so
Three hundred years ago.
Of course she understood !
Then, perching on my knee,
She drew her mother's head
To her own and mine, and said
"That's mother, you, and me ! "
And so it comes about
We three, for gladness' sake,
Sometimes a pansy make
Before the gas goes out.
123
HEART-EASE
LAST June — how slight a thing to tell ! —
One straggling leaf beneath the limes
Against the sunset rose and fell,
Making a rhythm with coloured rhymes.
No other leaf in all the air
Seemed waking ; and my little maid
Watched with me, from the garden-chair,
Its rhythmic play of light and shade.
Now glassy gold, now greenish grey,
It dropped, it lifted. That was all.
Strange I should still feel glad to-day
To have seen that one leaf lift and fall.
124
"SI J'AVAIS UN ARPENT"
O'
^H, had I but a plot of earth, on plain
or vale or hill,
With running water babbling through, in
torrent, spring, or rill,
I 'd plant a tree, an olive or an oak or willow
tree,
And build a roof of thatch, or tile, or reed,
for mine and me.
125
W. V.
Upon my tree a nest of moss, or down, or
wool, should hold
A songster — finch or thrush or blackbird
with its bill of gold ;
Beneath my roof a child, with brown or
blond or chestnut hair,
Should find in hammock, cradle or crib a
nest, and slumber there.
1 ask for but a little plot ; to measure my
domain,
I 'd say to Babs, my bairn of bliss, " Go,
alderliefest wean,
" And stand against the rising sun ; your
shadow on the grass
Shall trace the limits of my world ; beyond I
shall not pass.
" The happiness one ?an't attain is dream
and glamour-shine ! "
These rhymes are Soulary's ; the thoughts
are Babs's thoughts and mine.
126
HER FRIEND LITTLEJOHN
[27
HER FRIEND LITTLEJOHN
THE first time Littlejohn saw W. V. — a
year or so ago — she was sitting on
the edge of a big red flower-pot, into which
she had managed to pack herself. A biil-
hant Japanese sunshade was tilted over her
shoulder, and close by stood a large green
watering-can. This was her way of " playing
at botany," but as the old gardener could
not be prevailed upon to water her, there
was not as much fun in the game as there
ought to have been.
W. V. was accordingly consoling herself
with telling " Mr. Sandy " — the recalcitrant
gardener — the authentic and incredible
story of the little girl who was " just 'scruci-
atingly good."
Later, on an idyllic afternoon among the
heather, Littlejohn heard all about that excel-
Q I2Q
W. V.
rent and too precipitate child, who was so
eager to obhge or obey that she rushed off
before she could be told what to do ; and
as this was the only story W. V. knew which
had obviously a moral, W. V. made it a
great point to explain that " little girls ought
not to be too good ; if — they — ojily — did
— what — they — were — told they would be
good enough."
W. V.'s mother had been taken seriously ill
a few weeks before, and as a house of sickness
is not the best place for a small child, nor a
small child the most soothing presence in a
patient's room, W. V. had undertaken a mar-
vellous and what seemed an interminable jour-
ney into the West Highlands. Her host and
hostess were delighted with her and her odd
sayings and quaint, fanciful ways ; and she,
in the plenitude of her good-nature, extended
a cheerful patronage to the grown-up people.
Littlejohn had no children of his own, and it
was a novel delight, full of charming sur-
prises, to have a sturdy, imperious, sunny-
hearted little body of four and a half as his
constant companion. The child was pretty
enough, but it was the alert, excitable little
Her Friend Littlejohn
soul of her which peered and laughed out of
her blue eyes that took him captive.
Like most healthy children, W. V. did
not understand what sorrow, sickness, or
death meant. Indeed it is told of her that
she once exclaimed gleefully, " Oh, see,
here's a funeral! Which is the bride?"
The absence of her mother did not weigh
upon her. Once she awoke at night and
cried for her ; and on one or two occasions,
in a sentimental mood, she sighed " I shoicld
like to see my father ! Don't you think we
could * run over ' ? " The immediate pres-
ent, its fun and nonsense and grave respon-
sibilities, absorbed all her energies and
attention ; and what a divine dispensation it
is that we who never forget can be forgotten
so easily.
I fancy, from what I have heard, that she
must have regarded Littlejohn's ignorance
of the ways of children as one of her respon-
sibilities. It was really very deplorable to
find a great-statured, ruddy-bearded fellow
of two-and-thirty so absolutely wanting in
tact, so incapable of "pretending," so desti-
tute of the capacity of rhyming or of telling
131
W. V.
a story. The way she took him in hand
was kindly yet resolute. It began with her
banging her head against something and
howling. " Don't cry, dear," Littlejohn had
entreated, with the crude pathos of an ama-
teur; "come, don't cry."
When W. V. had heard enough of this she
looked at him disapprovingly, and said,
" You should n't say that. You should just
laugh and say, ' Come, let me kiss that crystal
tear away ! ' " " Say it ! " she added after a
pause. This was Littlejohn's first lesson in
the airy art of consolation.
Littlejohn as a lyric poet was a melancholy
spectacle.
"Now, you say, 'Come, let us go,' " W.
V. would command.
" I don't know it, dear."
" I '11 say half for you —
" Come, let us go where the people sell "
But Littlejohn had n't the slightest notion
of what they sold.
" Bananas," W. V. prompted ; " say it."
" Bananas."
" And what ? "
132
Her Friend Littlejohn
" Oranges ? " Littlejohn hazarded.
" Pears ! " cried W. V. reproachfully ;
" say it ! "
"Pears."
" And " with pauses to give her host
chances of retrieving his honour ; " pine —
ap — pel ! —
' Bananas and pears and pine-app^l,*
of course. I don't think you can publish a
poem."
" I don't think I can, dear," Littlejohn
confessed after a roar of laughter.
" Papa and I published that poem. Pine-
appel made me laugh at first. And after
that you say —
' Away to the market I and let us buy
A sparrow to make asparagus pie.'
Say it ! "
So in time Littlejohn found his memory
becoming rapidly stocked with all sorts of
nonsensical rhymes and ridiculous pronun-
ciations.
Inability to rhyme, like inability to reason,
is a gift of nature, and one can overlook it,
^2>Z
W. V.
but Littlejohn's sheer imbecility in face of
tiie demand for a story was a sore trial to
W. V. After an impatient lesson or two,
the way in which he picked up a substitute
for imagination was really exceedingly credi-
table. Having spent a day in the " Forest"
— W. V. could pack some of her forests in a
nutshell, and feel herself a woodlander of
infinite verdure — Littlejohn learned which
trees were " pappa- trees " ; how to knock
and ask if any one was in ; how to make the
dog inside bark if there was no one ; how to
get an answer in the affirmative if he asked
whether they could give his little girl a bis-
cuit, or a pear, or a plum ; how to discover
the fork in the branches where the gift would
be found, and how to present it to W. V.
with an air of inexhaustible surprise and
dehght. Every Forest is full of "■ pappa-
trees," as every verderer knows ; the crux of
the situation presents itself when the tenant
of the tree is cross, or the barking dog inti-
mates that he has gone "to the City."
Now, about a mile from Cloan Den, Little-
john's house, there was a bit of the real
" old ancient " Caledonian Forest. There
134
Her Friend Littlejohn
was not much timber, it is true, but still
enough ; and occasionally one came across
a shattered shell of oak, which might have
been a pillar of cloudy foliage in the days
when woad was the fashionable dress mate-
rial. I have reason to believe that W. V.
invested all that wild region with a rosy
atmosphere of romance for Littlejohn.
Every blade of grass and fringe of larch was
alive with wood-magic. She trotted about
with him holding his hand, or swinging on
before him with her broad boyish shoulders
thrown well back and an air of unconscious
proprietorship of man and nature.
It was curious to note how her father's
stories had taken hold of her, and Little-
john, with some surprise at himself and at
the nature of things at large, began to fancy
he saw motive and purpose in some of these
fantastic narratives. The legend of the girl
that was "just 'scruciatingly good " had evi-
dently been intended to correct a possible
tendency towards priggishness. The boy
whose abnormal badness expressed itself in
*' I don't care " could not have been so
irredeemably wicked, or he would never have
^35
W. V.
succeeded in locking the bear and tiger up
in the tree and leaving them there to dine
off each other. And all the stories about
little girls who got lost — there were several
of these — were evidently lessons against
fright and incentives to courage and self-
confidence.
W. V. quite believed that if a little girl
got bewildered in the underwood the grass
would whisper "This way, this way!" or
some little furry creature would look up at
her with its sharp beady eyes and tell her to
follow. Even though one were hungry and
thirsty as well as lost, there was nothing to
be afraid of, if there were only oaks in the
Forest. For when once on a time a little
girl — whose name, strangely enough, was
W. V. — got lost and began to cry, did not
the door of an oak-tree open and a little,
little, wee man all dressed in green, with
green boots and a green feather in his cap,
come out and ask her to "step inside," and
have some fruit and milk? And didn't he
say, "When you get lost, don't keep going
this way and going that way and going the
other way, but keep straight on and you are
136
Her Friend Littlejohn
sure to come out at the other side? Only
poor wild things in cages at the Zoo keep
going round and round."
And that is ''truly and really," W. V.
would add, " because I saw them doing it
at the Zoo."
Even at the risk of being tedious, I must
finish the story, for it was one that greatly
delighted Littlejohn and haunted him in a
pleasant fashion. Well, when this little girl who
was lost had eaten the fruit and drunk the milk,
she asked the wee green oak-man to go with
her a little way, as it was growing dusk. And
he said he would. Then he whistled, and
close to, and then farther away, and still
farther and farther, other little oak-men whis-
tled in answer, till all the Forest was full of
the sound of whisding. And the oak-man
shouted, " Will you help this little girl out? "
and you could hear " Yes, yes, yes, yes," far
away right and left, to the very end of the
Forest. And the oak-man walked a few
yards with her, and pointed ; and she saw
another oak and another oak-man ; and so
she went on from one to another right
through the Forest ; and she said, " Thank
137
\V. V.
you, Mr. Oak-man." to each of them, and
bent down and gave each of them a kiss,
and they all laughod because they were
pleased, and when she got out she could
still hear them laughing quietly together.
Another story that pleased littlejohn
hugely, and he liked W. V. to tell it as he
lay in a hollow among the heather with his
bonnet pulled down to the tip of his nose,
was about the lost little girl who NN-alked
among the high grass — it was quite up to
her eyes — till she \ras "tired to death."
So she lay down, and just as she was begin-
ning to doze otr she heard a very sot\ voice
humming her to sleep, and she felt warm
soft arms snuggling her close to a warm
breast. And as she was wondering who it
could be that was so kind to her, the soft
\*oice whispered. ** It is only mother, dearie ;
sleep-a- sleep, dearie ; only mother cuddling
her little girl." And when she woke there
was no one there, and she had been lying
in quite a little gmssy nest in the hollow ot
the ground.
l.ittlejohn himself could hardly credit the
chvXnge which this voluble, piquant, imperious
Her Friend Littlcjohii
young person had made not only in the
ways of the house, but in his very being
and in the material landscape itself. One
of the oddest and most incongruous things
he ever did in his life was to measure W, V,
against a tree and inscribe her initials (her
father always called her by her initials and
she liked that form of her name best), and
his own, and the date, above the score which
marked her height.
The late summer and the early autumn
passed delightfully in this fashion. There
was some talk at intervals of W. V. being
packed, labelled, and despatched '< with
care " to her own woods and oak-men in
the most pleasant suburb of the great
metropolis, but it never came to anything.
Her father was persuaded to spare her just
a little longer. The patter of the little feet,
the chatter of the voluble, cheery voice, had
grown well-nigh indispensable to Littlejohn
and his wife, for though I have confined
myself to Littlejohn's side of the story, I
would not have it supposed that W. V.'s
charm did not radiate into other lives.
So the cold rain and the drifted leaf, the
139
W. V.
first frost and the first snow came ; and in
their train come Christmas and the Christ-
mas-tree and the joyful vision of Santa Claus.
Now to make a long story short, a polite
note had arrived at Cloan Den asking for the
pleasure of Miss W. V.'s company at Bar-
geddie Mains — about a mile and a half be-
yond the " old ancient " Caledonian Forest —
where a Christmas-tree was to be despoiled of
its fairy fruitage. The Bargeddie boys would
drive over for Miss W. V. in the afternoon,
and "Uncle Big- John " would perhaps come
for the young lady in the evening, unless in-
deed he would change his mind and allow
her to stay all night.
Uncle Big-John, of course, did not change
his mind ; and about nine o'clock he reached
the Mains. It was a sharp moonlight night,
and the wide snowy strath sweeping away up
to the vast snow-muffled Bens looked like a
silvery expanse of fairyland. So far as I can
gather it must have been well on the early
side of ten when Littlejohn and W. V. (re-
joicing in the spoils of the Christmas-tree)
bade the Bargeddie people good-night and
started homeward — the child warmly muf-
140
Her Friend Littlejohn
fled, and chattering and laughing hilariously
as she trotted along with her hand in his.
It has often since been a subject of wonder
that Littlejohn did not notice the change of
the weather, or that, having noticed it, he
did not return for shelter to the Mains. But
we are all too easily wise after the event, and
it is to be remembered that the distance from
home was little over three miles, and that
Littlejohn was a perfect giant of a man.
They could have hardly been more than
half a mile from Bargeddie when the snow
storm began. The sparse big flakes thick-
ened, the wind rose bitterly cold, and then,
in a fierce smother of darkness, the moonlight
was blotted out. For what follows the story
depends principally on the recollections of
W. v., and in a great measure on one's
knowledge of Littlejohn's nature.
The biting cold and the violence of the wind
soon exhausted the small traveller. Little-
john took her in his arms, and wrapped her
in his plaid. For some time they kept to
the highroad, but the bitter weather suggested
the advisability of taking a crow-line across
the Forest.
141
W. V.
" You 're a jolly heavy lumpumpibus, In-
fanta," Littlejohn said with a laugh ; " I
think we had better try a short cut for once
through the old oaks."
When they got into some slight cover
among the younger trees, Littlejohn paused
to recover his breath. It was still blowing
and snowing heavily.
" Now, W. v., I think it would be as well
if you knocked up some of your little green
oak-men, for the Lord be good to me if I
know where we are."
" Vou must knock," said W. V., "but I
don't think you will get any bananas."
W. v. says that Littlejohn did knock and
that the bark of the dog showed that the oak-
man was not at home !
" I rather thought he would not be, W.
v.," said Littlejohn; "they never are at
home except only to the little people. We
big ones have to take care of ourselves."
"The oak-man said, 'Keep straight on,
and you 're sure to come out at the other
side,' " W. V. reminded him.
"The oak-man spoke words of wisdom,
Infanta," said Littlejohn. " Come along, W.
142
Her Friend Littlejohn
V." And he lifted the child again in his
arms. " Are you cold, my dearie-girl? "
" No, only my face ; but I am so sleepy."
" And so heavy, W. V. I did n't think a
little girl could be so heavy. Come along,
and let us try keeping straight on. The
other side must be somewhere."
How long he trudged on with the child in
his arms and the bewildering snow beating
and clotting on them both will never be
known. W. V., with a spread of his plaid
over her face, fell into a fitful slumber, from
which she was awakened by a fall and a
scramble.
" You poor helpless bairn," he groaned,
" have I hurt you? "
W. V. was not hurt ; the snow-wreath had
been too deep for that.
" Well, you see, W. V., we came a lament-
able cropper that time," said Littlejohn. " I
think we must rest a httle, for I 'm fagged
out. You see, VV. V., there is no grass to
whisper, ' This way, this way ; ' and there are
no furry things to say, ' Follow me ; ' and the
oak-men are all asleep ; and — and, God
forgive me, I don't know what to do ! "
143
W. V.
"Are you crying, Uncle Big- John?"
asked W. V. ; for " his voice sounded just
hke as if lie was crying," she explained
afterwards.
" Crying ! no, my dear ; there 's no need
to kiss the crystal tear away ! But, you see,
I 'm tired, and it 's jolly cold and dark ; and,
as Mother Earth is good to little children
" He paused to see how he should
be best able to make her understand. " You
remember how that little girl that was lost
went to sleep in a hollow of the grass and
heard the Mother talking to her? Well,
you must just lie snug like that, you
see."
"But I'm not lost."
" Of course, you 're not lost. Only you
must lie snug and sleep till it stops snowing,
and I '11 sit beside you."
Littlejohn took off his plaid and his thick
tweed jacket. He wrapped the child in the
latter, and half covered her with snow.
With the plaid, propped up with his stick, he
made a sort of tent to shelter her from the
driving flakes. He then lay down beside her
till she fell asleep.
144
Her Friend Littlejohn
" It 's only mother, dearie ; mother cud-
dHng her Uttle girl ; sleep-a-sleep."
Then he must have arisen shuddering in
his shirt-sleeves, and have lashed his arms
again and again about his body for warmth.
In the hollow in which they were found,
the snow-wreath, with the exception of a
narrow passage a few feet in width where
they had blundered in, was impassably deep
on all sides. All round and round the
hollow the snow was very much trampled.
Worn out with fatigue and exposure, the
strong man had at last lain down beside the
child. His hand was under his head.
In that desperate circular race against cold
and death he must have been struck by his
own resemblance to the wild creatures pad-
ding round and round in their cages in the
Zoo, and what irony he must have felt in
the counsel of the wee green oak-man.
Well, he had followed the advice, had he
not? And, when he awoke, would he not
find that he had come out at the other side?
Hours afterwards, when at last Littlejohn
slowly drifted back to consciousness, he lay
10 145
W. V.
staring for a moment or two with a dazed be-
wildered brain. Then into his eyes there
flashed a look of horror, and he struggled to
pull himself together. " My God, my God,
where is the Infant?" he groaned.
W. V. was hurried into the room, oblivi-
ously radiant. With a huge sigh Littlejohn
sank back smiling, and held out his hand to
her. Whereupon W. V., moving it gently
aside, went up close to him and spoke, half
in inquiry half in remonstrance, " You 're no^
going to be died, are you?"
146
HER BED-TIME
'47
HER BED-TIME
IN these winter evenings, thanks to the
Great Northern, and to Hesperus who
brings all things home, I reach my door-
step about half-an-hour before W. V.'s bed-
time. A sturdy, rosy, flaxen-haired little
body opens to my well-known knock, takes
a kiss on the tip of her nose, seizes my um-
brella, and makes a great show of assisting
me with my heavy overcoat. She leads me
into the dining-room, gets my slippers, runs
my bootlaces into Gordian knots in her im-
petuous zeal, and announces that she has
" set " the tea. At table she slips furtively
on to my knee, and we are both happy till a
severe voice, " Now, father ! " reminds us of
the reign of law in general, and of that law
in particular which enacts that it is shocking
in little girls to want everything they see,
149
W. V.
and most reprehensible in elderly people
(I elderly !) to encourage them.
We are glad to escape to the armchair,
where, after I have lit my pipe and W. V.
has blown the elf of flame back to fairyland,
we conspire — not overtly indeed, but each
in his deep mind — how we shall baffle do-
mestic tyranny and evade, if but for a few
brief minutes of recorded time, the cubicular
moment and the inevitable hand of the bath-
maiden.
The critical instant occurs about half-way
through my first pipe, and VV. V.'s devices
for respite or escape are at once innumerable
and transparently ingenious. I admit my
connivance without a blush, though I may
perchance weakly observe : " One sees so
little of her, mother; " for how delightful it
is when she sings or recites — and no one
would be so rude as to interrupt a song or
recitation — to watch the little hands wavin?
in " the air so blue," the little fingers flick-
ering above her head in imitation of the
sparks at the forge, the little arms nursing
an imaginary weeping dolly, the blue eyes lit
up with excitement as they gaze abroad from
15°
Her Bed-time
the cherry-tree into the " foreign lands "
beyond the garden wall.
She has much to tell me about the day's
doings. Yes, she has been clay-modelling.
I have seen some of her marvellous baskets
of fruit and birds' nests and ivy leaves;
but to-day she has been doing what dear
old Mother Nature did in one of her happy
moods some millenniums ago — making a
sea with an island in it ; and around the sea
mountains, one a volcano with a crater blaz-
ing with red crayon ; and a river with a
bridge across it ; quite a boldly conceived
and hospitable fragment of a new planet.
Of course Miss Jessie helped her, but she
would soon be able, all by herself, to create
a new world in which there should be ever-
blossoming spring and a golden age, and
fairies to make the impossible common-
place. W. V. does not put it in that way,
but those, I fancy, would be the character-
istics of a universe of her happy and inno-
cent contriving.
In her early art days W. V. was distinctly
Darwinian. Which was the cow, and which
the house, and which the lady, was always a
W. V.
nice question. One could differentiate with
the aid of a few strokes of natural selection,
but essentially they were all of the same pro-
toplasm. Her explanations of her pictures
afforded curious instances of the easy magic
with which a breath of her little soul made
all manner of dry bones live. I reproached
her once with wasting paper which she had
covered with a whirling scribble. " Why,
father," she exclaimed with surprise, " that 's
the north wind ! " Her latest masterpiece
is a drawing of a stone idol ; but it is only
exhibited on condition that, when you see it.
you must " shake with fright."
At a Kindergarten one learns, of course,
many things besides clay-modelling, draw-
ing, and painting : poetry, for instance, and
singing, and natural history ; drill and ball-
playing and dancing. And am I not curious
— this with a glance at the clock which is on
the stroke of seven — to hear the new verse
of her last French song? Shall she recite
" Purr, purr ! " or " The Swing " ? Or would
it not be an agreeable change to have her
sing "Up into the Cherry Tree," or "The
Busy Blacksmith " ?
152
Her Bed-time
Any or all of these would be indeed de-
lectable, but parting is the same sweet sorrow
at the last as at the first. However, we shall
have one song. And after that a recitation
by King Alfred ! The king is the most
diminutive of china dolls dressed in green
velvet. She steadies him on the table by
one leg, and crouches down out of sight
while he goes through his performance.
The Fauntleroy hair and violet eyes are the
eyes and hair of King Alfred, but the voice
is the voice of W. V.
When she has recited and sung I draw her
between my knees and begin : " There was
once a very naughty little girl, and her name
was W. V."
" No, father, a good little girl."
" Well, there was a good little girl, and
her name was Gladys."
" No, father, a ^^^^ little girl called W. V."
« Well, a good little girl called W. V. ; and
she was ' quickly obedient ' ; and when her
father said she was to go to bed, she said :
'Yes, father,' and she just fiew, and gave no
trouble."
" And did her father come up and kiss her ? "
153
W. V.
" Why, of course, he did."
A few minutes later she is kneeling on the
bed with her head nestled in my breast,
repeating her evening prayer :
" Dear feather, whom I cannot see,
Smile down from heaven on little me.
Let angels through the darkness spread
Their holy wings about my bed.
And keep me safe, because I am
The heavenly Shepherd's little lamb.
Dear God our Father, watch and keep
Father and mother while they sleep ;
" and bless Dennis, and Ronnie, and Uncle
John, and Auntie Bonnie, and Phyllis (did
Phyllis used to squint when she was a baby ?
Poor Phyllis !) ; and Madame, and Lucille
(she is only a tiny little child ; a quarter
past three years or something like that) :
and Ivo and Wilfrid (he has bronchitis
very badly; he can't come out this winter ;
aren't you sorry for him? Really a dear
little boy)."
" Any one else ? "
154
Her Bed-time
" Auntie Edie and Grandma. {^He will
have plenty to do, won't He?) "
"And ' Teach me ' " — I suggest.
" Teach me to do what I am told,
And help me to be good as gold."
And a whisper comes from the pillow as I
tuck in the eider-down :
" Now He will be wondering whether I
am going to be a good girl."
155
VARIOUS VERSES
157
EAST OF EDEN
FAR down upon the plain the large round
moon
Sank red in jungle mist; but on the
heights
The cold clear darkness burned with restless
stars :
And, restless as the stars, the grim old King
Paced with fierce choleric strides the mon-
strous ridge
Of boulders piled to make the city wall.
Muttering his wrath within his cloudy beard,
He moved, and paused, and turned. The
starlight caught
The huge bent gold that ringed his giant
head,
159
W. V.
Gleamed on the jewel-fringed vast lion-
fells
That clothed his stature, ran in dusky play
Along the ponderous bronze that armed his
spear.
He fiercely scanned the East for signs of
dawn;
Then shook his clenched hand above his
head,
And blazed with savage eyes and brow thrown
back
To front the awful Presence he addressed :
" Slay and make end ; or take some mortal
form
That I may strive with Thee ! Art Thou so
strong
And yet must smite me out of Thine Un-
seen?
Long centuries have passed since Thou didst
place
Thy mark upon me, lest at any time
Men finding me should slay me. I have
grown
i6o
East of Eden
Feeble and hoary with the toil of years —
An aged palsy — now, alas, no more
That erst colossal adamant whereon
Thine hand engraved its vengeance. Be
Thou just,
And answer when I charge Thee. Have I
blenched
Before Thy fury ; have I bade Thee spare ;
Hath Thy long torture wrung one sob of
pain.
One cry of supplication from my mouth ?
But Thou hast made Thyself unseen ; hast
lain
In ambush to afflict me. Day and night
Thou hast been watchful. Thy vindictive
eyes
Have known no slumber. Make Thyself a
man
That I may seize Thee in my grips, and
strive
But once on equal terms with Thee — but
once.
Or send Thine angel with his sword of
fire —
But no ; not him ! Come Thou, come Thou
Thyself;
II i6i
W. V.
Come forth from Thine Invisible, and face
In mortal guise the mortal Thou has
plagued ! "
The race of giants, sunk in heavy sleep
Within the cirque of those cyclopean walls,
Heard as it were far thunder in their dreams ;
But answer came the^-e none from cloud or
star.
Then cried the aged King ;
" A curse consume
Thy blind night fevered with the glare of stars,
Wild voices, and the agony of dreams !
Would it were day ! ^''
At last the gleam of dawn
Swept in a long grey shudder from the East,
Then reddened o'er the misty jungle tracts.
The guards about the massive city gates
Fell back with hurried whispers : " 'T is the
King ! "
And forth, with great white beard and gold-
girt brows,
Huge spear, and jewelled fells, the giant strode
To slake his rage among the beasts of prey.
162
East of Eden
The fierce white splendour of a tropic noon ;
A sweltering waste of jungle, breathing flame ;
Tiie sky one burning sapphire !
By a spring
Within the shadow of a bluff of rock
The hoary giant rested. At his feet
The cool green mosses edged the crystal
pool,
And flowers of blue and gold and rose-red
lulled
The weary eye with colour. As he sat
There rose a clamour from the sea of
canes ;
He. heard a crash of boughs, a rush of feet ;
And, lo ! there bounded from the tangled
growth
A panting tiger mad with pain and rage.
The beast sprang roaring, but the giant
towered
And pashed with one fell buffet bone and
brain ;
Then staggered with a groan, for, keen and
swift,
At that same instant from the jungle flew
A shaft which to the feather pierced his
frame,
163
W. V.
Shrill cries of horror maddened round the
bluff:
" Oh, Elohim, 't is Cain the King, the King ! "
And weeping, tearing hair, and wringing
hands,
About hiin raved his lawless giant brood.
But Cain spoke slowly with a ghastly smile :
" Peace, and give heed, for now I am but dead.
Let no man be to blame for this my death ;
Yea, swear a solemn oath that none shall
harm
A hair of him who gives me my release.
Come hither, boy ! "
And, weeping, Lamech went
And stood before the face of Cain ; and Cain
Who pressed a hand against his rushing
wound
Reddened his grandson's brow and kissed his
cheek :
*' The blood of Cain alight on him who lifts
A hand against thy life. My spear, boys ! So.
Let no foot follow. Cain must die alone.
Let no man seek me till ye see in heaven
A sign, and know that Cain is dead."
164
East of Eden
He smiled,
And from the hollow of his hand let fall
A crimson rain upon the crystal spring,
Which caught the blood in glassy ripple and
whirl,
And reddened moss and boulder.
Swift of stride,
With gold-girt brow thrown back to front the
Unseen,
The hoary giant through the jungle waste
Plunged, muttering in his beard ; and on-
ward pressed
Through the deep tangle of the trackless
growth
To reach some lair, where hidden and un-
heard
His savage soul in its last strife might
cope
With God — perchance one moment visible.
A sweltering tract of jungle, breathing flame ;
A fiery silence ; all the depth of heaven
One blinding sapphire !
Watching by the cliff,
The giant brood stood waiting for the sign.
165
W. V.
Behold ! a speck, high in the blazing blue,
Hung black — a single speck above the waste ;
Hung poised an hour ; then dropped through
leagues of air,
Plumb as a stone ; and as it dropped they saw
Through leagues of high blue air, to north
and south,
To east and west, black specks that sprang
from space.
And then long sinuous lines of distant spots
Which flew converging — growing, as they
flew,
To slanting streams and palpitating swarm? ;
Which flew converging out of all the heavens.
And blackened, as they flew, the sapphire
blaze,
And jarred the fiery hush with winnowing
wings ;
Which flew converging on a single point
Deep in the jungle waste, and, as they
swooped,
Paused in the last long slide with dangling
claws.
Then dropped like stone.
Thus knew the giant brood
That Cain was dead.
166
East of Eden
Beside a swamp they found
Hoar hair, a litter of white colossal bones,
Ensanguined shreds of jewelled lion-fells,
The huge gold crown and ponderous spear
of Cain,
And, fixed between the ribs, the fatal shaft
Which Lamech shot unwitting ; but against
The life of Lamech no man lifted hand.
167
GOODWIN SANDS
DID you ever read or hear
How the Aid — (God bless the Aid!
More earnest prayer than that was never
prayed.)
How the lifeboat, Aid of Ramsgate, saved the
London Fusilier ?
With a hundred souls on board,
With a hundred and a score,
— She was fast on Goodwin Sands.
— (May the Lord
Have pity on all hands —
Crew and captain — when a ship *s on
Goodwin Sands !)
1 68
Goodwin Sands
In the smother and the roar
Of a very hell of waters — hard and fast —
She shook beneath the stroke
Of each billow as it broke,
And the clouds of spray were mingled with
the clouds of swirling smoke
As the blazing barrels bellowed in the blast !
And the women and the little ones were
frozen dumb with fear ;
And the strong men waited grimly for the
last ;
When — as clocks were striking two in
Ramsgate town —
The little Aid came down,
The Aid, the plucky Aid —
The Aid flew down the gale
With the glimmer of the moon upon her
sail;
And the people thronged to leeward ; stared
and prayed —
Prayed and stared with tearless eye and
breathless lip,
While the little boat drew near.
Ay, and then there rose a shout —
169
W. V.
A clamour, half a sob and half a cheer —
As the boatmen flung the lifeboat anchor out,
And the gallant Aid sheered in beneath the
ship.
Beneath the shadow of the London Fusilier!
" We can carry ?nay be thirty at a trip "
(Hurrah for Ramsgate town ! )
" Quick, the women and the children / "
O'er the side
Two sailors, slung in bowlines, hung to help
the women down —
Poor women, shrinking back in their dismay-
As they saw their ark of refuge, smothered
up in spray,
Ranging wildly this and that way in the rac-
ing of the tide ;
As they watched it rise and drop, with its
crew of stalwart men,
When a huge sea swung it upward to the
bulwarks of the ship,
And, sweeping by in thunder, sent it plung-
ing down again.
170
Goodwin Sands
Still they shipped them — nine-and-tvventy.
(God be blessed ! )
When a man with glaring eyes
Rushed up frantic to the gangway with a cry
choked in his throat —
Thrust a bundle in a sailor's ready hands.
Honest Jack, he understands —
Why, a blanket for a woman in the boat !
"Catch it, Bilir'
And he flung it with a will ;
And the boatman turned and caught it, bless
him ! — caught it, tho' it slipped,
And, even as he caught it, heard an infant's
cries,
While a woman shrieked, and snatched it to
her breast —
" My baby ! "
So the thirtieth passenger was shipped !
Twice, and thrice, and yet again
Flew the lifeboat down the gale
With the moonlight on her sail —
With the sunrise on her sail —
171
W. V.
(God bless the lifeboat Aid and all her men !)
Brought her thirty at a trip
Thro' the hell of Goodwin waters as they
raged around the ship,
Saved each soul aboard the London Fusilier !
If you live to be a hundred, you will ne'er —
You will ne'er in all your life,
Until you die, my dear,
Be nearer to your death by land or sea 1
Was she there?
Who ? — my wife ?
Why, the baby in the blanket — that was she !
17:
TRAFALGAR
OTHE merry bells of Chester, ancient
Chester on the Dee !
On that glittering autumn morning,
eighteen five.
Every Englishman was glad to be
alive.
It was good to breathe this English air, to see
English earth, with autumn field and redden-
ing tree,
And to hear the bells of Chester, ancient
Chester on the Dee.
173
W. V.
For like morning-stars together, sweet and
shrill,
In a blithe recurrent cycle
Sang St. Peter and St. Michael,
John the Baptist and St. Mary on the Hill ;
And the quick exulting changes of their peal
Made the heavens above them laugh, and
the jubilant city reel.
In the streets the crowds were cheering.
Like a shout
From each spire the bickering bunting rol-
licked out.
O that buoyant autumn morning, eighteen
five,
Every Englishman rejoiced to be alive ;
And the heart of England throbbed from sea
to sea
As the joy-bells clashed in Chester, jovial
Chester on the Dee.
Hark, in pauses of the revel — sole and
slow —
Old St. Werburgh swung a heavy note of woe !
174
Trafalgar
Hark, between the jocund peals a single
toll,
Stern and muffled, marked the passing of a
soul !
English hearts were sad that day as sad
could be ;
English eyes so filled with tears they scarce
could see ;
And all the joy was dashed with grief in
ancient Chester on the Dee !
Loss and triumph — joy and sorrow! Far
away
Drave the great fight's wreckage down
Trafalgar Bay-.
O that glorious autumn morning, eighteen five.
Every Englishman was proud to be alive !
For the power of France was broken on the
sea —
But ten sail left of her thirty sail and three.
Yet sad were English men as sad could be,
For that, somewhere o'er the foreign wave,
they knew
Home to English ground and grass the dust
of Nelson drew.
175
W. V.
Would to God that on that morning, eighteen
five,
England's greatest man of all had been alive,
If but to breathe this English air, to see
English earth, with autumn field and yellow-
ing tree,
And to hear the bells of Chester, joyful
Chester on the Dee !
176
VIGNETTES
177
THE WANDERER
I MET a waif i' the hills at close of day.
He begged an alms ; I thought to say
him nay.
What was he? " Sir, a little dust," said he,
" Which Ufe blows up and down, and death
will lay."
I gave — for love of beast and hill and tree,
And all the dust that has been and shall be.
179
THE WANDERER
n
HE knows no home ; he only knows
Hunger and cold and pain ;
The four winds are his bedfellows ;
His sleep is dashed with rain.
'T is naught to him who fails, who thrives ;
He neither hopes nor fears ;
Some dim primeval impulse drives
His footsteps down the years.
180
The Wanderer
He could not, if he would, forsake
Lone road and field and tree.
Yet, think ! it takes a God to make
E'en such a waif as he.
And once a maiden, asked for bread,
Saw, as she gave her dole,
No friendless vagrant, but, instead.
An indefeasible Soul,
i8i
THE SCARECROW
HAIL Goodman-gossip of the com !
When boughs are green and furrows
sprout
And blossom muffles every thorn,
Poor soul ! the farmer boards him out.
Men think, grim wight, his rags affright
The winged thieves from root and ear ;
But on his hat pert sparrows light —
Crows have been friends too long to fear !
The schoolboy's sling he heedeth not ;
No rancour nerves those palsied hands ;
In shocking hat and ancient coat,
A crazed and patient wretch he stands.
182
The Scarecrow
Without a murmur in the wheat,
Till fields are shorn aftd harvest 's won,
He suffers cold, he suffers heat,
From chilly stars ap4 scorching sun.
Though men forget, he dreameth yet
How in the golden past he stood,
'Mid flowers and wine, a shape divine
Of marble or of carven wood ;
How, in the loveliness and peace
Of that blithe age and radiant clime,
He was a garden-god of Greece.
Oh, vanished world ! Oh, fleeting time !
Gaunt simulacrum — ghost forlorn —
Grey exile from a splendid past —
Last god (in rags) of a creed outworn —
If pity '11 help thee, mine thou hast !
183
THE HAUNTED BRIDGE
WITH high-pitCi-^d arch, low parapet,
And narrow thoroughfare, it stands
As strong as when the mortar set
Beneath the Roman mason's hands.
An ancient ivy grips its walls,
Tall grasses tuft its coping-stones ;
Beneath, through citron shadow, falls
The stream in drowsy undertones.
184
The Haunted Bridge
No road leads hence. The stonechat flits
Along green fallow grey with stone ;
But here a dark- eyed urchin sits,
To whom the Painted Men were known.
Hush ! do not move, but only look.
When sunny days are long and fine
This Roman truant baits a hook,
Drops o'er the keystone here a line.
And, dangling sandalled feet, looks down
To see the swift trout dart and gleam —
Or scarcely see them, hanging brown
With heads against the clear brown stream.
185
THE STONE AGE
''T^WAS not a vision ! Yet the oak
J. O'erarched the paleolithic Age ;
And homesteads of a pigmy folk
Were clustered 'neath its foliage.
Secreted in that sylvan space,
To archaeologist unknown,
Stood, reared by some untutored race,
Strange rings and avenues of stone.
The little thorp deserted seemed ;
What prey had lured the tribe afar?
One figure, lingering, sat and dreamed,
As lonely as the evening star.
i86
The Stone Age
Bright-haired, blue-eyed, with naked feet,
And young face ht with rosy blood.
She rocked her babe, and dreamed the sweet
Primeval dream of motherhood.
A wondrous babe, that once had grown
A branch among the branches green -
For nurslings of the Age of Stone
Are mainly bairns of wood, I ween.
A mother strangely young, and sage
Beyond the summers she had told.
For mothers of that ancient Age
Are usually five years old.
God bless thy heart maternal, bless
Thy bower of stone, thy sheltering tree.
Thou small prospective ancestress
Of generations yet to be !
187
SEA-PICTURES
BLITHE morning ; sun and sea ! Zone
beyond zone,
Blue frolic waves and gold clouds softly blown.
One half the globe a sapphire glass which
swings
DoubUng the sun.
No sail. No wink of wings.
No haze of land.
1 88
Sea-Pictures
Look ! who comes wafted here —
What lone yet all unfearful mariner?
You cannot see him ? No ; he mocks the
sight —
Mid such immensities so mere a mite.
Look close ! That tiniest speck of brownish
red,
Perched on his single subtle spider-thread !
Trust, little aeronaut, thy filmy sail.
Blow wind ! the reef and palm-tree shall not
fail.
189
SEA-PICTURES
II
ENORMOUS sea ; immeasurable night .'
The shoreless waters, heaving spec-
tral-white,
Vibrate with showers and chains of golden
sparks.
The black boat leaves a track of flame.
Beneath
Run trails of blazing em^ald, where the sharks
Cross and re-cross. In many a starry wreath
Innumerable medusae shine and float.
igo
Sea-Pictures
Great luminaries, through the blue-green air,
Gleam on the face of one who slowly dies.
All through the night two cavernous glazed
eyes
Look blankly upward in a rigid stare.
O Father in heaven, he cannot speak Thy
name ;
Take pity for the sake of Christ, Thy son !
There is no answer, none. No answer, none.
Crossing, re-crossing underneath the boat,
The lean sharks w^eave their web of emerald
flame.
191
MOONLIGHT
SWEET moon, endreaming tower and tree,
Is thy pathetic radiance thrown
From ice-cold wealds and cirques of stone —
Hush'd moors where life has ceased to be ?
Did grass, long ages back, and flowers
Grow there ? Did living waters run ?
Did happy creatures bless the sun
And greet with joy this world of ours ?
192
Moonlight
And, earlier yet, in one starred zone.
Did this bright planet sweep through space
Glebe of our glebe, race of our race —
A part and parcel of our own?
O moonlight silvering tower and tree !
O part of my world torn away,
Part of my life, now lifeless clay,
My dead, shine too — shine down on me
13 193
GREEN PASTURES
WHEN springing meads are freshly
dight,
And trees new-leafed throw scarce a
shadow,
The green earth shows no fairer sight
Than soft- eyed kine and blowing meadow.
Too calm for care, too slow for mirth,
Amid the shower, amid the gleam,
The great mild mother-creatures seem
Half-waking forms o' the dreamy earth.
194
Green Pastures
And down the pathway through the grass
To school the merry children pass,
Singing a rhyme in the April morns,
How — There ^s red for the furrows, and
white for the daisies,
Brown eyes for the brooks, for the trees
crumpled horns !
When quivering leaves, and oes of light
Between the leaves, the deep sward dapple,
When may-boughs cream in curdling white.
And maids envy the bloom o' the apple,
The great mild mother-creatures lie,
And grow, in absence of the sun.
One with the moon and stars, and one
With silvery cloud and darkest sky.
And down the pathway through the grass
To school the merry children pass.
Singing a rhyme in the morns of June,
How — There 's white for the cloudlets, and
black for the darkness.
And tivo polished horns for the sweet sickle
moon.
19s
THE LITTLE DIPPER
LITFLE Dipper, piping sweet
in the shrewd mid- winter weather ;
Nesting in the linn, where spray
splashes nest and sprinkles feather ;
'Neath the fringes of the ice,
down the burn-side, blithely diving;
Piping, piping with full throat, —
bite the frost or be snow driving :
Life's white winter comes apace ;
oh, but gaily shall I bide it
If my bosom, like thy nest,
house a singing-bird inside it !
196
IN THE HILLS
HIS hoar breath stings with rime the
skater's face.
Mirrored in jet, beneath his hissing feet,
The stars swarm past, and radiate as they
fleet,
The immemorial cold of cosmic space.
197
NATURE'S MAGIC
GIVE her the wreckage of strife —
Tumulus, tumbled tower,
Each clod and each stone she '11 make her
own
With the grass and innocent flower.
Give her the Candlemas snow,
Smiling she '11 take the gift.
And out of the flake a snowdrop make,
And a lambkin out of the drift.
198
APRIL VOICES
THE birches of your London square
" Have leafed into an emerald haze " ?
Then come — you promised ; come and share
The fuller spring of our last April days.
The ash, who wastes whole golden weeks in
doubt,
The very ash is long since out ;
The apple-boughs are muffled — do but
think ! —
With crowded bloom of maid's blush, white
and pink ;
The whins are all ablaze !
199
W. V.
Picture the pigeons tumbling in bright air !
Fancy the jet-eyed squirrel on the
bough !
Leave the poor birches in your London
square ;
The spring and we await you here, and
now.
Beneath our old world thatch your puise
shall beat
To the large-leisured rhythm of wood-
land ease ;
No feverish hurry haunts our otiose
trees ;
Your slumber shall be sweet.
The little brown bird's nest,
The four blue eggs beneath the patient
breast.
The lambkin's baby face,
The joy of liquid air
And azure space —
Are these not better than your dingy
square,
200
April Voices
Your mazes of inhospitable stone,
Your crowds who cannot call their souls their
own,
Your Dance of Life-in-death ?
Come to the fields, where Toil draws whole-
some breath,
And Indigence still keeps her apron
white.
Enough that you arrive too late to hear
The migrants in the night !
When wild March winds have dropt, and all
is still,
A spirit-touch unseals the dreaming
eyes;
One starts, and, leaning from the window-
sill.
Catches the liquid notes, heard fine and
clear
In hushed dark skies.
How pleasant had it been to watch with you.
Day after day,
The fairy flowering of the hawthorn
spray !
20I
W. V.
Each thorn upon the stem
Protects one rose-tipped, green-and-
golden gem ;
A bud, a thorn ! — 't is thus the whole tree
through.
No, — where in tender shoots the branches
end
There is no spear !
But bud and bud and bud are crowded
here ;
'T is Nature's cue
To lavish most what least she can defend.
Come to the woods and see
How in the warm wet sunny mist of mom
Green leaves, like thoughts in dreamful
hours, are born,
And in the mist birds pipe on every tree.
Come, and the mossy boulder on the hill
Shall teach what beauty springs of sitting
still.
The world's work ! Is the life not more
than meat?
And is this shrill immitigable strife,
This agony of existence, Ufe ?
202
April Voices
The good earth calls with voices strangely
sweet ;
Come to your mother earth — th* old English
earth,
The ruddy mother of a mighty race —
Dear ruddy earth, with early wheat
Pale green on plough ridge and with kindly
grass
New sprung in fields that take no care !
Come to the friends who love your
eager face ;
Come share our rustic peace, our frugal
mirth ;
Come, and restrict for once your happy Muse
To the four hundred words we yokels use
For life and love and death — why all the
lore
Of ancient Egypt hardly needed more !
Will London miss her poet ? There, alas !
No man is missed. Come make our
roof your own,
And leave the birches dreaming in your
square
Of forests far beyond the maze of stone.
20'
GREEN SKY
GREY on the linden leaves ;
Green in the west ;
Under our gloaming eaves
Swifts in the nest ;
Over the mother a human roof;
Over the fledglings a breast.
204
SUB UMBRA CRUCIS
205
THE SHEPHERD BEAUTIFUL
OFT as I muse on Rome — and at her
name
Out of the darkness, flushed with blood
and gold,
Smoulders and flashes on her seven-
fold height
The imperial, murderous, harlot Rome of
old,
Rome of the lions, Rome of the awful
light
Where " living torches " flame —
I thread in thought the Catacombs' blind maze,
Marvelling how men could then draw
happy breath,
And cheer these sunless labyrinths of death
With one sweet dream of Christ told many
ways.
207
W. V.
The Shepherd Beautiful! O good and
sweet,
O Shepherd ever lovely, ever young,
Was it because they gathered at Thy feet,
Because upon Thy pastoral pipe they
hung.
That they were happy in those evil days,
That these grim crypts were arched with
heavenly blue,
And spaced in verdurous vistas lit with
streams ?
Ah, let me count the ways,
Fair Shepherd of the world, in which they
drew
Thee in that most divine of human
dreams.
They limned Thee standing near the wattled
shed,
The strayed sheep on Thy shoulders, and
the flock
Bleating fond welcome. Seasons of the
year —
Spring gathering roses swung athwart the
rock,
208
The Shepherd Beautiful
Summer and Autumn, one with golden
ear,
And one with apple red,
And shrivel' d Winter burning in a heap
Dead leaves — they pictured round
Thee ; for they said,
" All the year round " — and joyous tears
were shed —
" All the year round. Thou, Shepherd,
lov'st Thy sheep."
Sometimes they showed Thee piping in the
shade
Music so sweet each mouth was raised
from grass
And ceased to hunger. In some dewy glade
Where the cool waters ran as clear as
glass.
To this or that one Thou would'st seem to
say,
" Thou 'st made me glad, be happy thou
in turn ! "
And sometimes Thou would'st sit in
weariness —
My Shepherd ! " qu(zrens me
14 209
K
W. V.
Sedisti lassus " — while Thy dog would
yearn,
Eyes fixed on Thee, aware of Thy
distress.
So limned they Christ 3 and bold, yet not
too bold,
Smiled at the tyrant's torch, the lion's cry ;
So nursed the child-like heart, the
angelic mind,
Goodwill to live, and fortitude to die,
And love for men, and hope for all
mankind.
One Shepherd and one fold !
Such was their craving; none should be
forbid ;
All — all were Christ's ! And so they drew
once more
The Shepherd Beautiful. But now He bore
No lamb upon His shoulders — just a kid.
210
THE MOSS
WHEN black despair beats down my
wings,
And heavenly visions fade away —
Lord, let me bend to common things,
The tasks of every day ;
As, when th' aurora is denied
And blinding blizzards round him beat.
The Samoyad stoops, and takes for guide
The moss beneath his feet.
211
A CAROL
THIS gospel sang the angels bright :
Lord Jhesu shall be born this night ;
Born not in house nor yet in hall,
Wrapped not in purple nor iti pall,
Rocked not in silver, neither gold ;
This word the angels sang of old ;
Nor christened with white ivitie ?ior red ;
This word of old the angels said
Of Him which holdeth in His hand
The strong sea and green land.
212
A Carol
This thrice and four times happy night -
These tidings sang the angels bright —
Forlorn, betwixen ear and horn,
A babe shall Jhesu Lord be born,
A weeping babe in all the cold ; —
This word the angels sang of old —
And wisps of hay shall be his bed;
This word of old the angels said
Of Him which keepeth in His hand
The strong sea and green land.
O babe and Lord, Thou Jhesu bright, —
Let all and some now sing this night —
Betwixt our sorrow and our sin.
Be thou new-born our hearts within ;
New-born, dear babe and little King,
So letten some and all men sing —
To wipe for us our tears away !
This night so letten all men say
Of Him which spake, and lo ! they be —
The green land and strong sea.
213
WHEN SNOW LIES DEEP
TT THEN frost has burned the hedges
VV black,
And children cannot sleep for cold ;
When snow lies deep on the withered leaves,
And roofs are white from ridge to eaves ;
When bread is dear, and work is slack,
Take pity on the poor and old !
The faggot and the loaf of bread
You could not miss would be their store.
Upon how little the old can live !
Give like the poor — who freely give.
Remember, when the fire burns red
The wolf leaves sniffing at the door.
214
When Snow Lies Deep
And you whose lives are left forlorn,
Whose sons, whose hopes, whose fires have
died.
Oh, you poor pitiful people old.
Remember this and be consoled —
That Christ the Comforter was born,
And still is born, in wintertide.
215
"TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS"
CHAINED to the dungeon-wall she slept.
Rome, moonlit, revelled overhead.
She heard not. She had prayed and wept,
Haggard with anguish, wild with dread.
She was too fair, too young to die ;
Life was too sweet, and home too dear !
God touch'd her with His sleep : a sigh —
And she had ceased to weep or fear !
She slept, and, sleeping, seemed awake
A fair Child held her virgin hand ;
They walk'd by an enchanted lake ;
They walk'd in a celestial land.
216
" Trees of Righteousness "
One thing she saw, and one she heard.
There were a thousand red-rose trees ;
Each rose-red leaf sang like a bird,
" What trees, dear Child," she asked,
"are these?"
" These," said the Child, " are called Love's
Bower ;
They fade not ; constantly they sing ;
Each flower appears more fire than flower.
Now, see the roots from which they
spring ! "
She looked ; she saw, far down the night,
The earth, the city whence she came.
And Nero's gardens red with light —
The light of martyrs wrapped in flame.
She woke with Heaven still in her eyes.
Rome, moonlit, revelled overhead.
She feared no more the lions' cries ;
Flames were but flowers, and death was
dead !
217
I
THE COMRADES
N solitary rooms, when dusk is falling,
I hear from fields beyond the haunted
mountains.
Beyond the unrepenetrable forests, —
I hear the voices of my comrades calling,
" Home ! home ! home ! "
Strange ghostly voices, when the dusk is
falling.
Come from the ancient years ; and I
remember
The schoolboy shout, from plain and
wood and river.
The signal-cry of scattered comrades, calling,
" Home ! home ! home ! "
218
The Comrades
And home we wended when the dusk was
falling ;
The pledged companions, talking, laugh-
ing, singing ;
Home through the grey French country,
no one missing.
And now I hear the old-time voices calling,
" Home ! home ! home ! "
I pause and listen while the dusk is falling ;
My heart leaps back through all the
long estrangement
Of changing faith, lost hopes, paths dis-
enchanted ;
And tears drop as I hear the voices calling,
" Home ! home ! home ! "
I hear you while the dolorous dusk is falling ;
I sigh your names — the living — the
departed !
O vanished comrades, is it yours the
poignant
Pathetic note among the voices calling,
" Home, home, home "?
219
W. V.
Call, and still call me, for the dusk is falling.
Call for I fain, I fain would come, but
cannot.
Call, as the shepherd calls upon the
moorland.
Though mute, with beating heart I hear your
calling,
" Home ! home ! home ! "
2ZO
*' CRYING ABBA, FATHER "
ABBA, in Thine eternal years
Bethink Thee of our fleeting day ;
We are but clay ;
Bear with our foolish joys, our foolish tears,
And all the wilfulness with which we
pray !
I have a little maid who, when she leaves
Her father and her father's threshold, grieves.
But being gone, and life all holiday,
Forgets my love and me straightway ;
Yet, when I write.
Kisses my letters, dancing with delight,
221
W. V.
Cries " Dearest father ! " and in all her glee
For one brief live-long hour remembers me.
Shall I in anger punish or reprove ?
Nay, this is natural ; she cannot guess
How one forgotten feels forgetfulness ;
And I am glad thinking of her glad face,
And send her little tokens of my love.
And Thou — wouldst Thou be wroth in such
a case?
And crying Abba, I am fain
To think no human father's heart
Can be so tender as Thou art,
So quick to feel our love, to feel our
pain.
When she is froward, querulous or wild,
Thou knowest, Abba, how in each offence
I stint not patience lest I wrong the child.
Mistaking for revolt defect of sense.
For wilfulness mere spriteliness of mind ;
Thou know'st how often, seeing, I am blind ;
How when I turn her face against the wall
222
" Crying Abba, Father "
And leave her in disgrace,
And will not look at her or speak at all,
I long to speak and long to see her face ;
And how, when twice, for something grievous
done,
I could but smite, and though I lightly smote,
I felt my heart rise strangling in my throat ;
And when she wept I kissed the poor red hands.
All these things. Father, a father understands ;
And am not I Thy son?
Abba, in Thine eternal years
Bethink Thee of our fleeting day ;
From all the rapture of our eyes and ears
How shall we tear ourselves away?
At night my little one says nay,
With prayers implores, entreats with tears
For ten more flying minutes' play ;
How shall we tear ourselves away?
Yet call, and I '11 surrender
The flower of soul and sense.
Life's passion and its splendour,
In quick obedience.
223
W. V.
If not without the blameless human tears
By eyes which slowly glaze and darken shed,
Yet without questionings or fears
For those I leave behind when I am dead.
Thou, Abba, know'st how dear
My little child's poor playthings are to her ;
What love and joy
She has in every darling doll and precious toy ;
Yet when she stands between my knees
To kiss good-night, she does not sob in sorrow,
" Oh, father, do not break or injure these ! "
She knows that I shall fondly lay them by
For happiness to-morrow ;
So leaves them trustfully. And shall not I ?
Whatever darkness gather
O'er coverlet or pall.
Since Thou art Abba, Father,
Why should I fear at all?
Thou 'st seen how closely, Abba, when at rest
My child's head nestles to my breast ;
224
"Crying Abba, Father"
And how my arm her Uttle form enfolds,
Lest in the darkness she should feel alone ;
And how she holds
My hands, my hands, my two hands in her own ?
A little easeful sighing
And restful turning round,
And I too, on Thy love relying,
Shall slumber sound.
225
THIS grace vouchsafe me for the rhymes
I write.
If any last, nor perish quick and quite,
Lord, let them be
My little images, to stand for me
When I may stand no longer in Thy sight :
Like those old statues of the King who said,
" Carve me in that which needs nor sleep nor
bread ;
Let diorite pray,
A King of stone, for this poor King of clay
Who wearies often and must soon be dead ! "
226
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