My Country Love

If you passed her in your city
You would call her badly dressed,
But the faded homespun covers
Such a heart in such a breast!
True, her rosy face is freckled
By the sun's abundant flame,
But she's mine with all her failings,
And I love her just the same.

If her hands are red they grapple
To my hands with splendid strength,
For she's mine, all mine's the beauty
Of her straight and lovely length!
True, her hose be think and homely
And her speech is homely, too;
But she's mine! her rarest charm is
She's for me, and not for you!

Song - Wait But A Little While

WAIT but a little while—
The bird will bring
A heart in tune for melodies
Unto the spring,
Till he who ’s in the cedar there
Is moved to trill a song so rare,
And pipe her fair.

Wait but a little while—
The bud will break;
The inner rose will open and glow
For summer’s sake;
Fond bees will lodge within her breast
Till she herself is plucked and prest
Where I would rest.

Wait but a little while—
The maid will grow
Gracious with lips and hands to thee,
With breast of snow.
To-day Love ’s mute, but time hath sown
A soul in her to match thine own,
Though yet ungrown.

Excuse me, Sweetheart, if I smear,
With wisdom learnt from ancient teachers,
Now winter time once more is here,
This grease upon your lengthy features!
Behaving thus, your loyal friend
No whit encourages deception:
Believe me, Fairest, in the end
This oil will better your complexion.
Fairest, believe!

Did you imagine in the bag
To sleep the sleep of Rip Van Winkle,
Removed from sunshine's golden flag
And duller daylight's smallest twinkle?
Well have you earned your rest; but yet,
Although disturbance seem uncivil,
Unless your cheeks and chin be wet
With oil, your beauteousness will shrivel.
Rarest, believe!

Absorb, that, when for our delight
The May unpacks its lovely blossom,
With beaming face, with shoulders bright
You leave the bag's congenial bosom.
Then shall the Lover and his Lass
Walk out toward the pitch together,
And, glorying in the shaven grass,
Tackle, with mutual faith, the leather.
Dearest, absorb!

NATURE and he went ever hand in hand
Across the hills and down the lonely lane;
They captured starry shells upon the strand
And lay enchanted by the musing main.
So She, who loved him for his love of her,
Made him the heir to traceries and signs
On tiny children nigh too small to stir
In great green plains of hazel leaf or vines.
She taught the trouble of the nightingale;
Revealed the velvet secret of the rose;
She breathed divinity into his heart,
That rare divinity of watching those
Slow growths that make a nettle learn to dart
The puny poison of its little throes.

Her miracles motion, butterflies,
Rubies and sapphires skimming lily-crests,
Carved on a yellow petal with their eye
Tranced by the beauty of their powdered breasts,
Seen in the mirror of a drop of dew,
He loved as friends and as a friend he knew.
The dust of gold and scarlet underwings
More precious was to him than nuggets torn
From all invaded treasure-crypts of time,
And every floating, painted, silver beam
Drew him to roses where it stayed to dream,
Or down sweet avenues of scented lime.

And Nature trained him tenderly to know
The rain of melodies in coverts heard.
Let him but catch the cadences that flow
From hollybush or lilac, elm or sloe,
And he would mate the music with the bird.
The faintest song a redstart ever sang
Was redstart’s piping, and the whitethroat knew
No cunning trill, no mazy shake that rang
Doubtful on ears unaided by the view.

But in his glory, as a young pure priest
In that great temple, only roofed by stars,
An angel hastened from the sacred East
To reap the wisest and to leave the least.
And as he moaned upon the couch of death,
Breathing away his little share of breath,
All suddenly he sprang upright in bed!
Life, like a ray, poured fresh into his face,
Flooding the hollow cheeks with passing grace.
He listened long, then pointed up above;
Laughed a low laugh of boundless joy and love—
That was a plover called he softly said,
And on his wife’s breast fell, serenely dead!

An Orchard Dance

All work is over at the farm
And men and maids are ripe for glee;
Love slips among them sly and warm
Or calls them to the chestnut-tree.
As Colin looks askance at Jane
He draws his hand across his mouth;
She understands the rustic pain,
And something of the tender south
About her milkmaid beauty flits.
Her dress of lilac print for guide
Draws shepherd Colin where she sits,
Who, faring to her lovely side
To snatch his evening pension tries,
But skimming like a bird from clutch
The maid escapes his Cupid touch,
And speeding down a passage flies
Not fast enough to cheat his eyes.
Ah, sweet-lip ways and sweet-lip days,
And sweetheart captures of the waist,
How swiftly still the virgin runs
She's sure at last to be embraced!
Now Colin fires at kiss delayed,
And faster flits the red stone floor
Till Fortune yields the tricky maid
A captive at the pantry door!

The farmer with his fifty years
Is not too old to join the fun;
He pulls the milkmaids' pinky ears
And bids a likely stripling run
To find the fiddlers for a dance:
And in the cherry orchard there
A tune shall mingle with romance,
And love be brave in open air.

The village wakens to the bliss,
The crones and gaffers crawl to see
The country game of step and kiss
Beneath the laden cherry-tree.
The chairs and benches now are set,
Old John is wheedled from his pet,
The cider cup with beady eyes
Responds to winkings of the skies.
The farmer, burly in his chair,
Now claps for ev'ry fond and fair
To foot it on the grassy patch
While rustic violinists snatch
From out those varnished birds of wood
A tune to jink it in the blood.
Now Jane and Colin in a trice
Float sweetly round not less than thrice
Before their motion draws a pair
To revel with the dancing air.
The thrush, that on his velvet wipes
His juicy bill, protesting pipes,
And, somewhat as a piccolo,
Doth race the concord of the bow.
A virgin yonder by the tree
Rejects a mate who saucily
Would press, if she might only start,
Her modest homespun to his heart.
Ah, sweet-lip ways and sweet-lip days,
And sweetheart captures of the waist,
Though like a finch the maiden flies
She's sure at last to be embraced.

The orchard now is in full bloom
With rosy cheek and snowdrop throat;
The stars invade the growing gloom,
And rarelier sounds the blackbird's note.
But in this dewy little park
Love burns the brighter for the dark,
And till he use a stricter rule
Dear Cicely's cheek shall never cool!
The fiddlers storm a tomboy tune,
The shepherds closer clasp the girls
While skirts the more desert the shoon,
And rebel leap the loely curls.
The farmer glows within his chair
And muses on the dancing time
When he and she--a matchless pair--
Were warm and nimble in their prime.
God bless the man who, duller grown,
Can feel the younger heaven anew
By granting to his maids and men
A romp by starlight in the dew!
Ah, greenwood ways and greenwood days,
And soft pursuings of the waist,
The cheek must yellow out of praise,
And bent be those who once embraced!

And now they pant against the trees,
And, using darkness for their plan,
Girls loose the garters at their knees
And mend the clumsiness of man.
One virgin, thankful for the dance,
About the music shyly trips--
Her Love's a fiddler, and her love
Pops fruit in Paganini's lips;
Or finding on the starlit tree
The wife and husband cherry there,
She hangs the couple at his cheek
And hides the stalk with tufts of hair.
The girls are at the cider-cup,
And shepherds tilt the yellow base
Until a giddy amber flood
Runs, kissing, over Cicely's face,
And Dora's upper lip doth shine
With winking beads of apple-wine.
The fiddlers scrape a farewell tune,
The dancers dwindle in the dusk
While summer puffs of easy wind
Bring hints of cottage garden musk.

And thus the revel dearly ends
With milkmaid's palm in shepherd's hand,
And lovers grow from only friends
Where plum and pear and apple stand.
Ah, sweet-lip ways and sweet-lip days,
And sweetheart captures of the waist,
How fast so-e'er the virgin flies
She's sure at last to be embraced!