UNIV OF

Songs from Books

THE RECALL

I am the land of their fathers,
In me the virtue stays.

I will bring back my children,
After certain days.

Under their feet in the grasses
My clinging magic runs.

They shall return as strangers,
They shall remain as sons.

Over their heads in the branches
Of their new-bought, ancient trees,
I weave an incantation

And draw them to my knees.

Scent of smoke in the evening,
Smell of rain in the night,

The hours, the days and the seasons, Order their souls aright;

Till I make plain the meaning
Of all my thousand years

Till I fill their hearts with knowledge,
While I fill their eyes with tears.

PUCK'S SONG

See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?

O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
O there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's.

See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?

O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet.

Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,

The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers.

See you our little mill that clacks,

So busy by the brook?

She has ground her corn and paid her tax Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak?
And the dread ditch beside?

O that was where the Saxons broke
On the day that Harold died.

See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?

O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came by.

See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?

O there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house.

And see you, after rain, the trace

Of mound and ditch and wall?

O that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Cæsar sailed from Gaul.