The Forest Pool

LEAN down and see your little face
Reflected in the forest pool,
Tall foxgloves grow about the place,
Forget-me-nots grow green and cool.
Look deep and see the naiad rise
To meet the sunshine of your eyes.


Lean down and see how you are fair,
How gold your hair, your mouth how red;
See the leaves dance about your hair
The wind has left unfilleted.
What naiad of them can compare
With you for good and dear and fair?


Ah! look no more--the water stirs,
The naiad weeps your face to see,
Your beauty is more rare than hers,
And you are more beloved than she.
Fly! fly, before she steals the charms
The pool has trusted to her arms.

Through The Wood

THROUGH the wood, the green wood, the wet wood, the light wood,
Love and I went maying a thousand lives ago;
Shafts of golden sunlight had made a golden bright wood
In my heart reflected, because I loved you so.


Through the wood, the chill wood, the brown wood, the bare wood,
I alone went lonely no later than last year,
What had thinned the branches, and wrecked my dear and fair wood,
Killed the pale wild roses and left the rose-thorns sere?


Through the wood, the dead wood, the sad wood, the lone wood,
Winds of winter shiver through lichens old and grey,
You ride past forgetting the wood that was our own wood
All our own--and withered as ever a flower of May.

The Way Of The Wood

WHERE baby oaks play in the breeze
Among wood-sorrel and fringed fern,
Through the green garments of the trees
The quivering shafts of sunlight burn,


And all along the wet green ride
The dripping hazel-boughs between,
The spotted orchis, stiff with pride,
Stands guard before the eglantine.


Sweet chestnuts droop their long, sharp leaves
By knotted tree roots, mossed and brown,
Round which the honeysuckle weaves
Its scented golden wild-wood crown.


O wood, last year you saw us meet,
For her your leaves and buds were gay,
Your moss spread velvet for her feet.
Your flowers upon her bosom lay.


This year you wear your raiment bright,
As fair as ever yet you wore.
And, none the less, the world's delight
Walks in your ways no more, no more.

The Stolen God--Lazarus To Dives

We do not clamour for vengeance,
We do not whine for fear;
We have cried in the outer darkness
Where was no man to hear.
We cried to man and he heard not;
Yet we thought God heard us pray;
But our God, who loved and was sorry -
Our God is taken away.

Ours were the stream and the pasture,
Forest and fen were ours;
Ours were the wild wood-creatures,
The wild sweet berries and flowers.
You have taken our heirlooms from us,
And hardly you let us save
Enough of our woods for a cradle,
Enough of our earth for a grave.

You took the wood and the cornland,
Where still we tilled and felled;
You took the mine and quarry,
And all you took you held.
The limbs of our weanling children
You crushed in your mills of power;
And you made our bearing women toil
To the very bearing hour.

You have taken our clean quick longings,
Our joy in lover and wife,
Our hope of the sunset quiet
At the evening end of life;
You have taken the land that bore us,
Its soil and stone and sod;
You have taken our faith in each other -
And now you have taken our God.

When our God came down from Heaven
He came among men, a Man,
Eating and drinking and working
As common people can;
And the common people received Him
While the rich men turned away.
But what have we to do with a God
To whom the rich men pray?

He hangs, a dead God, on your altars,
Who lived a Man among men,
You have taken away our Lord
And we cannot find Him again.
You have not left us a handful
Of even the earth He trod . . .
You have made Him a rich man's idol
Who came as a poor man's God.

He promised the poor His heaven,
He loved and lived with the poor;
He said that the rich man's shadow
Should never darken His door:
But bishops and priests lie softly,
Drink full and are fully fed
In the Name of the Lord, who had not
Where to lay His head.

This is the God you have stolen,
As you steal all else--in His name.
You have taken the ease and the honour,
Left us the toil and the shame.
You have chosen the seat of Dives,
We lie where Lazarus lay;
But, by God, we will not yield you our God,
You shall not take Him away.

All else we had you have taken;
All else, but not this, not this.
The God of Heaven is ours, is ours,
And the poor are His, are His.
Is He ours? Is He yours? Give answer!
For both He cannot be.
And if He is ours--O you rich men,
Then whose, in God's name, are ye?