Classic Poem

DEDICATED TO HELEN, ROSIE, AND BEATRIX


PERSONS OF THE TALE

OURSELVES
FATHER
MOTHER
LITTLE BOY BLUE
THE HIDEOUS HERMIT
THE KING OF FAIRY-LAND
PEASE-BLOSSOM
MUSTARD-SEED
Dragons, Fairies, Mammoths, Angels, etc.


APOLOGIA

One more hour to wander free
With Puck on his unbridled bee
Thro' heather-forests, leagues of bloom,
Our childhood's maze of scent and sun!
Forbear awhile your notes of doom,
Dear Critics, give me still this one
Swift hour to hunt the fairy gleam
That flutters thro' the unfettered dream.
It mocks me as it flies, I know:
All too soon the gleam will go;
Yet I love it and shall love
My dream that brooks no narrower bars
Than bind the darkening heavens above,
My Jack o'Lanthorn of the stars:
Then, I'll follow it no more,
I'll light the lamp: I'll close the door.


PRELUDE

Hush! if you remember how we sailed to old Japan,
Peterkin was with us then, our little brother Peterkin!
Now we've lost him, so they say: I think the tall thin man
Must have come and touched him with his curious twinkling fan
And taken him away again, our merry little Peterkin;
He'll be frightened all alone; we'll find him if we can;
Come and look for Peterkin, poor little Peterkin.

No one would believe us if we told them what we know,
Or they wouldn't grieve for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin!
If they'd only watched us roaming through the streets of Miyako,
And travelling in a palanquin where parents never go,
And seen the golden gardens where we wandered once with Peterkin,
And smelt the purple orchards where the cherry-blossoms blow,
They wouldn't mourn for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin.

Put away your muskets, lay aside the drum,
Hang it by the wooden sword we made for little Peterkin!
He was once our trumpeter, now his bugle's dumb,
Pile your arms beneath it, for the owlet light is come,
We'll wander through the roses where we marched of old with Peterkin,
We'll search the summer sunset where the Hybla beehives hum,
And--if we meet a fairy there--we'll ask for news of Peterkin.

He was once our cabin-boy and cooked the sweets for tea;
And O, we've sailed around the world with laughing little Peterkin;
From nursery floor to pantry door we've roamed the mighty sea,
And come to port below the stairs in distant Caribee,
But wheresoe'er we sailed we took our little lubber Peterkin,
Because his wide grey eyes believed much more than ours could see,
And so we liked our Peterkin, our trusty little Peterkin.

Peterkin, Peterkin, I think if you came back
The captain of our host to-day should be the bugler Peterkin,
And he should lead our smugglers up that steep and narrow track,
A band of noble brigands, bearing each a mighty pack
Crammed with lace and jewels to the secret cave of Peterkin,
And he should wear the biggest boots and make his pistol crack,--
The Spanish cloak, the velvet mask, we'd give them all to Peterkin.

Come, my brother pirates, I am tired of play;
Come and look for Peterkin, little brother Peterkin,
Our merry little comrade that the fairies took away,
For people think we've lost him, and when we come to say
Our good-night prayers to mother, if we pray for little Peterkin
Her eyes are very sorrowful, she turns her head away.
Come and look for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin.

God bless little Peterkin, wherever he may be!
Come and look for Peterkin, lonely little Peterkin:
I wonder if they've taken him again across the sea
From the town of Wonder-Wander and the Amfalula tree
To the land of many marvels where we roamed of old with Peterkin,
The land of blue pagodas and the flowery fields of tea!
Come and look for Peterkin, poor little Peterkin.


PART I

THE SPLENDID SECRET

Now father stood engaged in talk
With mother on that narrow walk
Between the laurels (where we play
At Red-skins lurking for their prey)
And the grey old wall of roses
Where the Persian kitten dozes
And the sunlight sleeps upon
Crannies of the crumbling stone
--So hot it is you scarce can bear
Your naked hand upon it there,
Though there luxuriating in heat
With a slow and gorgeous beat
White-winged currant-moths display
Their spots of black and gold all day.--

Well, since we greatly wished to know
Whether we too might some day go
Where little Peterkin had gone
Without one word and all alone,
We crept up through the laurels there
Hoping that we might overhear
The splendid secret, darkly great,
Of Peterkin's mysterious fate;
And on what high adventure bound
He left our pleasant garden-ground,
Whether for old Japan once more
He voyaged from the dim blue shore,
Or whether he set out to run
By candle-light to Babylon.

We just missed something father said
About a young prince that was dead,
A little warrior that had fought
And failed: how hopes were brought to nought
He said, and mortals made to bow
Before the Juggernaut of Death,
And all the world was darker now,
For Time's grey lips and icy breath
Had blown out all the enchanted lights
That burned in Love's Arabian nights;
And now he could not understand
Mother's mystic fairy-land,
"Land of the dead, poor fairy-tale,"
He murmured, and her face grew pale,
And then with great soft shining eyes
She leant to him--she looked so wise--
And, with her cheek against his cheek,
We heard her, ah so softly, speak.

"Husband, there was a happy day,
Long ago, in love's young May,
When with a wild-flower in your hand
You echoed that dead poet's cry--
'Little flower, but if I could understand!'
And you saw it had roots in the depths of the sky,
And there in that smallest bud lay furled
The secret and meaning of all the world."

He shook his head and then he tried
To kiss her, but she only cried
And turned her face away and said,
"You come between me and my dead!
His soul is near me, night and day,
But you would drive it far away;
And you shall never kiss me now
Until you lift that brave old brow
Of faith I know so well; or else
Refute the tale the skylark tells,
Tarnish the glory of that May,
Explain the Smallest Flower away."
And still he said, "Poor fairy-tales,
How terribly their starlight pales
Before the solemn sun of truth
That rises o'er the grave of youth!"

"Is heaven a fairy-tale?" she said,--
And once again he shook his head;
And yet we ne'er could understand
Why heaven should not be fairy-land,
A part of heaven at least, and why
The thought of it made mother cry,
And why they went away so sad,
And father still quite unforgiven,
For what could children be but glad
To find a fairy-land in heaven?

And as we talked it o'er we found
Our brains were really spinning round;
But Dick, our eldest, late returned
From school, by all the lore he'd learned
Declared that we should seek the lost
Smallest Flower at any cost.
For, since within its leaves lay furled
The secret of the whole wide world,
He thought that we might learn therein
The whereabouts of Peterkin;
And, if we found the Flower, we knew
Father would be forgiven, too;
And mother's kiss atone for all
The quarrel by the rose-hung wall;
We knew, not how we knew not why,
But Dick it was who bade us try,
Dick made it all seem plain and clear,
And Dick it is who helps us here
To tell this tale of fairy-land
In words we scarce can understand.
For ere another golden hour
Had passed, our anxious parents found
We'd left the scented garden-ground
To seek--the Smallest Flower.


PART II

THE FIRST DISCOVERY

O, grown-ups cannot understand
And grown-ups never will,
How short's the way to fairy-land
Across the purple hill:
They smile: their smile is very bland,
Their eyes are wise and chill;
And yet--at just a child's command--
The world's an Eden still.

Under the cloudy lilac-tree,
Out at the garden-gate,
We stole, a little band of three,
To tempt our fairy fate.
There was no human eye to see,
No voice to bid us wait;
The gardener had gone home to tea,
The hour was very late.

I wonder if you've ever dreamed,
In summer's noonday sleep,
Of what the thyme and heather seemed
To ladybirds that creep
Like little crimson shimmering gems
Between the tiny twisted stems
Of fairy forests deep;
And what it looks like as they pass
Through jungles of the golden grass.

If you could suddenly become
As small a thing as they,
A midget-child, a new Tom Thumb,
A little gauze-winged fay,
Oh then, as through the mighty shades
Of wild thyme woods and violet glades
You groped your forest-way,
How fraught each fragrant bough would be
With dark o'erhanging mystery.

How high the forest aisles would loom,
What wondrous wings would beat
Through gloamings loaded with perfume
In many a rich retreat,
While trees like purple censers bowed
And swung beneath a swooning cloud
Mysteriously sweet,
Where flowers that haunt no mortal clime
Burden the Forest of Wild Thyme.

We'd watched the bats and beetles flit
Through sunset-coloured air
The night that we discovered it
And all the heavens were bare:
We'd seen the colours melt and pass
Like silent ghosts across the grass
To sleep--our hearts knew where;
And so we rose, and hand in hand
We sought the gates of fairy-land.

For Peterkin, oh Peterkin,
The cry was in our ears,
A fairy clamour, clear and thin
From lands beyond the years;
A wistful note, a dying fall
As of the fairy bugle-call
Some dreamful changeling hears,
And pines within his mortal home
Once more through fairy-land to roam.

We left behind the pleasant row
Of cottage window-panes,
The village inn's red-curtained glow,
The lovers in the lanes;
And stout of heart and strong of will
We climbed the purple perfumed hill,
And hummed the sweet refrains
Of fairy tunes the tall thin man
Taught us of old in Old Japan.

So by the tall wide-barred church-gate
Through which we all could pass
We came to where that curious plate,
That foolish plate of brass,
Said Peterkin was fast asleep
Beneath a cold and ugly heap
Of earth and stones and grass.
It was a splendid place for play,
That churchyard, on a summer's day;

A splendid place for hide-and-seek
Between the grey old stones;
Where even grown-ups used to speak
In awestruck whispering tones;
And here and there the grass ran wild
In jungles for the creeping child,
And there were elfin zones
Of twisted flowers and words in rhyme
And great sweet cushions of wild thyme.

So in a wild thyme snuggery there
We stayed awhile to rest;
A bell was calling folk to prayer:
One star was in the West:
The cottage lights grew far away,
The whole sky seemed to waver and sway
Above our fragrant nest;
And from a distant dreamland moon
Once more we heard that fairy tune:

Why, mother once had sung it us
When, ere we went to bed,
She told the tale of Pyramus,
How Thisbe found him dead
And mourned his eyes as green as leeks,
His cherry nose, his cowslip cheeks.

That tune would oft around us float
Since on a golden noon
We saw the play that Shakespeare wrote
Of Lion, Wall, and Moon;
Ah, hark--the ancient fairy theme--
Following darkness like a dream!

The very song Will Shakespeare sang,
The music that through Sherwood rang
And Arden and that forest glade
Where Hermie and Lysander strayed,
And Puck cried out with impish glee,
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Though the masquerade was mute
Of Quince and Snout and Snug and Flute,
And Bottom with his donkey's head
Decked with roses, white and red,
Though the fairies had forsaken
Sherwood now and faintly shaken
The forest-scents from off their feet,
Yet from some divine retreat
Came the music, sweet and clear,
To hang upon the raptured ear
With the free unfettered sway
Of blossoms in the moon of May.
Hark! the luscious fluttering
Of flower-soft words that kiss and cling,
And part again with sweet farewells,
And rhyme and chime like fairy-bells.

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

Out of the undiscovered land
So sweetly rang the song,
We dreamed we wandered, hand in hand,
The fragrant aisles along,
Where long ago had gone to dwell
In some enchanted distant dell
The outlawed fairy throng
When out of Sherwood's wildest glen
They sank, forsaking mortal men.

And as we dreamed, the shadowy ground
Seemed gradually to swell;
And a strange forest rose around,
But how--we could not tell--
Purple against a rose-red sky
The big boughs brooded silently:
Far off we heard a bell;
And, suddenly, a great red light
Smouldered before our startled sight.

Then came a cry, a fiercer flash,
And down between the trees
We saw great crimson figures crash,
Wild-eyed monstrosities;
Great dragon-shapes that breathed a flame
From roaring nostrils as they came:
We sank upon our knees;
And looming o'er us, ten yards high,
Like battle-ships they thundered by.

And then, as down that mighty dell
We followed, faint with fear,
We understood the tolling bell
That called the monsters there;
For right in front we saw a house
Woven of wild mysterious boughs
Bursting out everywhere
In crimson flames, and with a shout
The monsters rushed to put it out.

And, in a flash, the truth was ours;
And there we knew--we knew--
The meaning of those trees like flowers,
Those boughs of rose and blue,
And from the world we'd left above
A voice came crooning like a dove
To prove the dream was true:
And this--we knew it by the rhyme
Must be--the Forest of Wild Thyme.

For out of the mystical rose-red dome
Of heaven the voice came murmuring down:
Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home;
Your house is on fire and your children are gone.

We knew, we knew it by the rhyme,
Though we seemed, after all,
No tinier, yet the sweet wild thyme
Towered like a forest tall
All round us; oh, we knew not how.
And yet--we knew those monsters now:
Our dream's divine recall
Had dwarfed us, as with magic words;
The dragons were but ladybirds!

And all around us as we gazed,
Half glad, half frightened, all amazed,
The scented clouds of purple smoke
In lurid gleams of crimson broke;
And o'er our heads the huge black trees
Obscured the sky's red mysteries;
While here and there gigantic wings
Beat o'er us, and great scaly things
Fold over monstrous leathern fold
Out of the smouldering copses rolled;
And eyes like blood-red pits of flame
From many a forest-cavern came
To glare across the blazing glade,
Till, with the sudden thought dismayed,
We wondered if we e