The Return of Summer: An Eclogue

Scene: ASHDOWN FOREST IN MAY

Persons: H.--A POET; C.--HIS DAUGHTER

    H.    Here then, if you insist, my daughter: still,
            I must confess that I preferred the hill.
            The warm scent of the pinewood seemed to me
            The first true breath of summer; did you see
            The waxen hurt-bells with their promised fruit
            Already purple at the blossom's root,
            And thick among the rusty bracken strown
            Sunburnt anemones long overblown?
            Summer is come at last!

    C.                    And that is why
            Mine is a better place than yours to lie.
            This dark old yew tree casts a fuller shade
            Than any pine; the stream is simply made
            For keeping bottles cool; and when we've dined
            I could just wade a bit while you . . . reclined.

    H.    Empty the basket then, without more words . . .
            But I still wish we had not left the birds.

    C.    Father! you are perverse!    Since when, I beg,
            Have forest birds been tethered by the leg?
            They're everywhere!    What more can you desire?
            The cuckoo shouts as though he'd never tire,
            The nuthatch, knowing that of noise you're fond,
            Keeps chucking stones along a frozen pond,
            And busy gold-crest, somewhere out of sight,
            Works at his saw with all his tiny might.
            I do not count the ring-doves or the rooks,
            We hear so much about them in the books
            They're hardly real; but from where I sit
            I see two chaffinches, a long-tailed tit,
            A missel-thrush, a yaffle----

    H.                    That will do:
            I may have overlooked a bird or two.
            Where are the biscuits?    Are you getting cramp
            Down by the water there--it must be damp?

    C.    I'm only watching till your bottle's cool:
            It lies so snug beneath this glassy pool,
            Like a sunk battleship; and overhead
            The water-boatmen get their daily bread
            By rowing all day long, and far below
            Two little eels go winding, winding slow . . .
            Oh! there's a shark!

    H.                A what?

    C.                A miller's thumb.
            Don't move, I'll tempt him with a tiny crumb.

    H.    Be quick about it, please, and don't forget
            I am at least as dry as he is wet.

    C.    Oh, very well then, here's your drink.

    H.            That's good!
            I feel much better now.

    C.            I thought you would (exit quietly).

    H.    How beautiful the world is when it breathes
            The news of summer!--when the bronzy sheathes
            Still hang about the beech-leaf, and the oaks
            Are wearing still their dainty tasselled cloaks,
            While on the hillside every hawthorn pale
            Has taken now her balmy bridal veil,
            And, down below, the drowsy murmuring stream
            Lulls the warm noonday in an endless dream.
            O little brook, far more thou art to me
            Than all the pageantry of field and tree:
            Es singen wohl die Nixen--ah! 'tis truth--
            Tief unten ihren Reih'n--but only Youth
            Can hear them joyfully, as once I lay
            And heard them singing of the world's highway,
            Of wandering ended, and the maiden found,
            And golden bread by magic mill-wheel ground.
            Lost is the magic now, the wheel is still,
            And long ago the maiden left the mill:
            Yet once a year, one day, when summer dawns,
            The old, old murmur haunts the river-lawns,
            The fairies wake, the fairy song is sung,
            And for an hour the wanderer's feet are young (he dozes).

    C.    (returning) Father!    I called you twice.

    H.                I did not know:
            Where have you been?

    C.                Oh, down the stream.

    H.                Just so:
            Well, I went up.

    C.                I wish you'd been with me.

    H.    When East is West, my daughter, that may be.