A Shropshire Lad

Say, lad, have you things to do?

Quick then, while your day's at prime.

Quick, and if 'tis work for two,

Here am I man: now's your time.

Send me now, and I shall go;

Call me, I shall hear you call;

Use me ere they lay me low

Where a man's no use at all;

Ere the wholesome flesh decay

And the willing nerve be numb,

And the lips lack breath to say,

"No, my lad, I cannot come."

This time of year a twelvemonth past,

When Fred and I would meet,

We needs must jangle, till at last

We fought and I was beat.

So then the summer fields about,

Till rainy days began,

Rose Harland on her Sundays out

Walked with the better man.

The better man she walks with still,

Though now 'tis not with Fred:

A lad that lives and has his will

Is worth a dozen dead.

Fred keeps the house all kinds of weather,

And clay's the house he keeps;

When Rose and I walk out together

Stock-still lies Fred and sleeps.

Along the field as we came by

A year ago, my love and I,

The aspen over stile and stone

Was talking to itself alone.

"Oh who are these that hiss and pass?

A country lover and his lass;

Two lovers looking to be wed;

And time shall put them both to bed,

But she shall lie with earth above,

And he beside another love."

And sure enough beneath the tree

There walks another love with me,

And overhead the aspen heaves

Its rainy-sounding silver leaves;

And I spell nothing in their stir,

But now perhaps they speak to her,

And plain for her to understand

They talk about a time at hand

When I shall sleep with clover clad,

And she beside another lad.

THE WELSH MARCHES

High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam

Islanded in Severn stream;

The bridges from the steepled crest

Cross the water east and west.

The flag of morn in conqueror's state

Enters at the English gate:

The vanquished eve, as night prevails,

Bleeds upon the road to Wales.

Ages since the vanquished bled

Round my mother's marriage-bed;

There the ravens feasted far

About the open house of war:

When Severn down to Buildwas ran

Coloured with the death of man,

Couched upon her brother's grave

That Saxon got me on the slave.

The sound of fight is silent long

That began the ancient wrong;

Long the voice of tears is still

That wept of old the endless ill.

In my heart it has not died,

The war that sleeps on Severn side;

They cease not fighting, east and west,

On the marches of my breat.

Here the truceless armies yet

Trample, rolled in blood and sweat;

They kill and kill and never die;

And I think that each is I.

None will part us, none undo

The knot that makes one flesh of two,

Sick with hatred, sick with pain,

Strangling-- When shall we be slain?

When shall I be dead and rid

Of the wrong my father did?

How long, how long, till spade and hearse

Puts to sleep my mother's curse?

THE LENT LILY

'Tis spring; come out to ramble

The hilly brakes around,

For under thorn and bramble

About the hollow ground

The primroses are found.

And there's the windflower chilly

With all the winds at play,

And there's the Lenten lily

That has not long to stay

And dies on Easter day.

And since till girls go maying

You find the primrose still,

And find the windflower playing

With every wind at will,

But not the daffodil,

Bring baskets now, and sally

Upon the spring's array,

And bear from hill and valley

The daffodil away

That dies on Easter day.

Others, I am not the first,

Have willed more mischief than they durst:

If in the breathless night I too

Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.

More than I, if truth were told,

Have stood and sweated hot and cold,

And through their reins in ice and fire

Fear contended with desire.

Agued once like me were they,

But I like them shall win my way

Lastly to the bed of mould

Where there's neither heat nor cold.

But from my grave across my brow

Plays no wind of healing now,

And fire and ice within me fight

Beneath the suffocating night.

If truth in hearts that perish

Could move the powers on high,

I think the love I bear you

Should make you not to die.

Sure, sure, if stedfast meaning,

If single thought could save,

The world might end to-morrow,

You should not see the grave.

This long and sure-set liking,

This boundless will to please,

--Oh, you should live for ever,

If there were help in these.

But now, since all is idle,

To this lost heart be kind,

Ere to a town you journey

Where friends are ill to find.

THE NEW MISTRESS

"Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be?

You may be good for something, but you are not good for me.

Oh, go where you are wanted, for you are not wanted here.

And that was all the farewell when I parted from my dear.

"I will go where I am wanted, to a lady born and bred

Who will dress me free for nothing in a uniform of red;

She will not be sick to see me if I only keep it clean:

I will go where I am wanted for a soldier of the Queen.

"I will go where I am wanted, for the sergeant does not mind;

He may be sick to see me but he treats me very kind:

He gives me beer and breakfast and a ribbon for my cap,

And I never knew a sweetheart spend her money on a chap.

"I will go where I am wanted, where there's room for one or two,

And the men are none too many for the work there is to do;

Where the standing line wears thinner and the dropping dead lie thick;

And the enemies of England they shall see me and be sick."

On the idle hill of summer,

Sleepy with the flow of streams,

Far I hear the steady drummer

Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder

On the roads of earth go by,

Dear to friends and food for powder,

Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten

Bleach the bones of comrades slain,

Lovely lads and dead and rotten;

None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,

High the screaming fife replies,

Gay the files of scarlet follow:

Woman bore me, I will rise.

As through the wild green hills of Wyre

The train ran, changing sky and shire,

And far behind, a fading crest,

Low in the forsaken west

Sank the high-reared head of Clee,

My hand lay empty on my knee.

Aching on my knee it lay:

That morning half a shire away

So many an honest fellow's fist

Had well-nigh wrung it from the wrist.

Hand, said I, since now we part

From fields and men we know by heart,

For strangers' faces, strangers' lands,--

Hand, you have held true fellows' hands.

Be clean then; rot before you do

A thing they'll not believe of you.

You and I must keep from shame

In London streets the Shropshire name;

On banks of Thames they must not say

Severn breeds worse men than they;

And friends abroad must bear in mind

Friends at home they leave behind.

Oh, I shall be stiff and cold

When I forget you, hearts of gold;

The land where I shall mind you not

Is the land where all's forgot.

And if my foot returns no more

To Teme nor Corve nor Severn shore,

Luck, my lads, be with you still

By falling stream and standing hill,

By chiming tower and whispering tree,

Men that made a man of me.

About your work in town and farm

Still you'll keep my head from harm,

Still you'll help me, hands that gave

A grasp to friend me to the grave.

The winds out of the west land blow,

My friends have breathed them there;

Warm with the blood of lads I know

Comes east the sighing air.

It fanned their temples, filled their lungs,

Scattered their forelocks free;

My friends made words of it with tongues

That talk no more to me.

Their voices, dying as they fly,

Thick on the wind are sown;

The names of men blow soundless by,

My fellows' and my own.

Oh lads, at home I heard you plain,

But here your speech is still,

And down the sighing wind in vain

You hollo from the hill.

The wind and I, we both were there,

But neither long abode;

Now through the friendless world we fare

And sigh upon the road.

'Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town

The golden broom should blow;

The hawthorn sprinkled up and down

Should charge the land with snow.

Spring will not wait the loiterer's time

Who keeps so long away;

So others wear the broom and climb

The hedgerows heaped with may.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,

Gold that I never see;

Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge

That will not shower on me.

Into my heart an air that kills

From yon far country blows:

What are those blue remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

In my own shire, if I was sad,

Homely comforters I had:

The earth, because my heart was sore,

Sorrowed for the son she bore;

And standing hills, long to remain,

Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.

And bound for the same bourn as I,

On every road I wandered by,

Trod beside me, close and dear,

The beautiful and death-struck year:

Whether in the woodland brown

I heard the beechnut rustle down,

And saw the purple crocus pale

Flower about the autumn dale;

Or littering far the fields of May

Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,

And like a skylit water stood

The bluebells in the azured wood.

Yonder, lightening other loads,

The seasons range the country roads,

But here in London streets I ken

No such helpmates, only men;

And these are not in plight to bear,

If they would, another's care.

They have enough as 'tis: I see

In many an eye that measures me

The mortal sickness of a mind

Too unhappy to be kind.

Undone with misery, all they can

Is to hate their fellow man;

And till they drop they needs must still

Look at you and wish you ill.

THE MERRY GUIDE

Once in the wind of morning

I ranged the thymy wold;

The world-wide air was azure

And all the brooks ran gold.

There through the dews beside me

Behold a youth that trod,

With feathered cap on forehead,

And poised a golden rod.

With mien to match the morning

And gay delightful guise

And friendly brows and laughter

He looked me in the eyes.

Oh whence, I asked, and whither?

He smiled and would not say.

And looked at me and beckoned,

And laughed and led the way.

And with kind looks and laughter

And nought to say beside,

We two went on together,

I and my happy guide.

Across the glittering pastures

And empty upland still

And solitude of shepherds

High in the folded hill,

By hanging woods and hamlets

That gaze through orchards down

On many a windmill turning

And far-discovered town,

With gay regards of promise

And sure unslackened stride

And smiles and nothing spoken

Led on my merry guide.

By blowing realms of woodland

With sunstruck vanes afield

And cloud-led shadows sailing

About the windy weald,

By valley-guarded granges

And silver waters wide,

Content at heart I followed

With my delightful guide.

And like the cloudy shadows

Across the country blown

We two fare on for ever,

But not we two alone.

With the great gale we journey

That breathes from gardens thinned,

Borne in the drift of blossoms

Whose petals throng the wind;

Buoyed on the heaven-ward whisper

Of dancing leaflets whirled

From all the woods that autumn

Bereaves in all the world.

And midst the fluttering legion

Of all that ever died

I follow, and before us

Goes the delightful guide,

With lips that brim with laughter

But never once respond,

And feet that fly on feathers,

And serpent-circled wand.