POETRY.
PRIVA,TE'S COMPLAINT AT THE LOSS OF AN ENGLISH SPRI.NG.
I Am thinking what good reason We could possibly have had For this monstrous change of season, This stride from good to bad, How we came to sell our spring/and For the naked southern fall.
When we get back to England (If we get back at all) They'll grow wild at our sombreros, And the Times will say cur race Is a race all made of heroes.
When they praise me to my face, I shall wrap my virtuous mantle Closely round and never tell How I lurked beneath an anthill When the Mauser bullets fell.
For our wages are our praises With a medal clasp and ring, But will no one keep us daisies From our lost English spring?
Won't the Queen in Council fasten The lilacs to their stem, Or by statute make it arson In the sun for burning them P Or prorogue the spring by shading The primrose, or forbid The purple violets fading , In the grass where they lie hid P 0 for one hour's clamber On my soft western hills !
From top to toe they're amber, I know, with daffodils.
For hedges white as fuller's Can wash the whitest things, Per fields whose divers colours Are meet for necks of kings.
Unheard, the lambs will utter Their bleat ; I shall not pass By paths where corn-craiks gutter Unseen in seas of grass, Till the stars begin to glisten And from far-off woods a wail Of music bids me listen To the throbbino. nightingale, At last to climb the ladder Of some patched and creaking floor, And sleep till larks grow madder And madder as they soar, And the blackbirds wake with laughter And song at break of day, And the sun strikes through the rafter On last year's scented hay.
And just because two nations Will fight and rend and tear, We have lost our constellations, Arcturus and the Bear, And Pleiades. Yet under The blazing Southern Cross At night we lie and wonder, And at times forget our loss, At the sword of great Orion Sinking down and down and down, While the golden horse and lion Contest the Southern Crown.
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