An Orchard Dance

ALL work is over at the farm

And men and maids are ripe for glee;

Love slips among them sly and warm

Or calls them to the chestnut-tree.

As Colin looks askance at Jane

He draws his hand across his mouth;

She understands the rustic pain,

And something of the tender south

About her milkmaid beauty flits.

Her dress of lilac print for guide

Draws shepherd Colin where she sits,

Who, faring to her lovely side

To snatch his evening pension tries,

But skimming like a bird from clutch

The maid escapes his Cupid touch,

And speeding down a passage flies

Not fast enough to cheat his eyes.

Ah, sweet-lip ways and sweet-lip days,

And sweetheart captures of the waist,

How swiftly still the virgin runs

She's sure at last to be embraced!

Now Colin fires at kiss delayed,

And faster flits the red stone floor

Till Fortune yields the tricky maid

A captive at the pantry door!

The farmer with his fifty years

Is not too old to join the fun;

He pulls the milkmaids' pinky ears

And bids a likely stripling run

To find the fiddlers for a dance:

And in the cherry orchard there

A tune shall mingle with romance,

And love be brave in open air.

The village wakens to the bliss,

The crones and gaffers crawl to see

The country game of step and kiss

Beneath the laden cherry-tree.

The chairs and benches now are set,

Old John is wheedled from his pet,

The cider cup with beady eyes

Responds to winkings of the skies.

The farmer, burly in his chair,

Now claps for ev'ry fond and fair

To foot it on the grassy patch

While rustic violinists snatch

From out those varnished birds of wood

A tune to jink it in the blood.

Now Jane and Colin in a trice

Float sweetly round not less than thrice

Before their motion draws a pair

To revel with the dancing air.

The thrush, that on his velvet wipes

His juicy bill, protesting pipes,

And, somewhat as a piccolo,

Doth race the concord of the bow.

A virgin yonder by the tree

Rejects a mate who saucily

Would press, if she might only start,

Her modest homespun to his heart.

Ah, sweet-lip ways and sweet-lip days,

And sweetheart captures of the waist,

Though like a finch the maiden flies

She's sure at last to be embraced.

The orchard now is in full bloom

With rosy cheek and snowdrop throat;

The stars invade the growing gloom,

And rarelier sounds the blackbird's note.

But in this dewy little park

Love burns the brighter for the dark,

And till he use a stricter rule

Dear Cicely's cheek shall never cool!

The fiddlers storm a tomboy tune,

The shepherds closer clasp the girls

While skirts the more desert the shoon,

And rebel leap the loely curls.

The farmer glows within his chair

And muses on the dancing time

When he and she--a matchless pair--

Were warm and nimble in their prime.

God bless the man who, duller grown,

Can feel the younger heaven anew

By granting to his maids and men

A romp by starlight in the dew!

Ah, greenwood ways and greenwood days,

And soft pursuings of the waist,

The cheek must yellow out of praise,

And bent be those who once embraced!

And now they pant against the trees,

And, using darkness for their plan,

Girls loose the garters at their knees

And mend the clumsiness of man.

One virgin, thankful for the dance,

About the music shyly trips--

Her Love's a fiddler, and her love

Pops fruit in Paganini's lips;

Or finding on the starlit tree

The wife and husband cherry there,

She hangs the couple at his cheek

And hides the stalk with tufts of hair.

The girls are at the cider-cup,

And shepherds tilt the yellow base

Until a giddy amber flood

Runs, kissing, over Cicely's face,

And Dora's upper lip doth shine

With winking beads of apple-wine.

The fiddlers scrape a farewell tune,

The dancers dwindle in the dusk

While summer puffs of easy wind

Bring hints of cottage garden musk.

And thus the revel dearly ends

With milkmaid's palm in shepherd's hand,

And lovers grow from only friends

Where plum and pear and apple stand.

Ah, sweet-lip ways and sweet-lip days,

And sweetheart captures of the waist,

How fast so-e'er the virgin flies

She's sure at last to be embraced!

Norman Rowland Gale

The Great Beech

WITH heart disposed to memory, let me stand

Near this monarch and this minstrel of the land,

Now that Dian leans so lovely from her car.

Illusively brought near by seeming falsely far,

In yon illustrious summit sways the tangled evening star.

From trembling towers of greenery there heaves

In glorious curves a precipice of leaves.

Superbly rolls thy passionate voice along,

Withstander of the tempest, grim and strong,

When at the wind's imperative thou burstest into song.

Still must I love thy gentle music most,

Utterly innocent of challenge or of boast,

And playmate of the sun's adoring beam.

Close kindred to thy softer tremblings seem

The sighs of her I covet, when she kindles in a dream.

Oft at thy branching altar have I knelt,

Searched for the secret, and thy lesson spelt

Before the athletes of the night had done

Their starry toil and joyous beams had run

To melt the ancient silversmith who loves the set of sun.

When Spring was budding in my heart anew,

Thy prayer for foliage soared into the blue.

Within thy branches myriad children heard:

Pale were their lips and fingers as they stirred

And promised leafiness enough to tempt thy favourite bird.

Quick was the wonder to amaze my sight:

Where stood the leafless suppliant towered a knight

Green to the helm and touching lips with May!

Far on the hill the wheatstalks stopped from play

To call across the valley love to leaves more fine than they.

Then wert thou vocal, hospitable king!

Safe in thy heart the birds were glad to sing,

For dove and stormcock to thy breast had come;

And at the perfect hour a moony foam

And starlight fell upon the thrush that made thy bosom home.

As gentle gatherer of the weary wing,

Happy to quaff from the eternal spring

That damps the woodwren's feather-swollen breast,

Thou lendest to my heart a deeper rest,

Working with priceless balm a miracle for thy guest.

On thee, in green and sunshine greatly stoled,

Thy kindred of the undulating wold

Obeisance, as befits their stature, spend:

Sweet is the embassy, with wind for friend,

When lofty limes of Todenham Church their fragrant homage send.

Rightly they worship. Rightly comes the maid

To look for love beneath thy bounteous shade;

Rightly as these the village children haste,

And with their sunburned fingers interlaced

Fasten a living girdle round thy cool and stalwart waist.

For games and grief thou hast an equal heart,

Giving to all petitioners the needed part.

Often I ask the shape of him who fled

To drink of knowledge at the fountain-head:

He pulses in the shadow as a fugitive from the dead.

Old noble of the county, once we twain

Beneath thy roof discoursed of bliss and pain;

And, looking upward for the star Content,

Laughed deep at soul to watch the sunbeams sent

In coveys glittering all along the field of firmament.

If ever the travelled spirit can return

Where once in earthly bliss 'twas proud to burn

In hard-won triumph over resolute clay,

'Tis here my friend shall fold his wings and stay

To fill my unforgetting heart with tremulous holiday.

The tryst is here. Brother, I shall not fail

Whether in Summer's ripeness, Winter's hail.

Come most in Autumn's sympathetic charms,

When opal hazes touch the red-roofed farms,

And in the night the beech-tree holds the red moon in his arms.

And tell me, Brother, if the shining plan

Of resurrection chooses only man;

If every friend of plain and upland dies.

For I would have this turreted tree arise

To lord it over beeches in the forest of Paradise.

Fast in the ample chamber of his bole

There dwells, perchance, an unintelligible soul

Destined to tower in some celestial wold,

Where you and I, conversing as of old,

May watch the Alps of Heaven become as mountains made of gold.

Or bend to watch how cunningly the earth

Tangles our kin in webs of tears and mirth,

And soils them even as they fly the stain;

And, seeing this, may find that Heaven is vain

To keep earth-broken hearts from breaking in Heaven again

Till shines the hour when Home is truly Home,

With all the brave and dear familiars come:

Assembled ripely in the lustrous sheaf

Of Love, and radiant in divine relief

From Joy that used to spoil the earth by whispering to Grief.

Norman Rowland Gale