How the great sun is shining on the slope
Of strawberry-roots! Ah! there's my pet,
Running her white hands under the cool leaves,
Diving for the red fruit tassels. I'd have
Some painter now to catch her eager look,
Arch brows and lips out-blushed by berry juice;
And just that glint of gold athwart her brow,
Let through the rent in her broad summer hat,
That droops as languid as a poppy-flower
On her sunned shoulders. "Twould be a sketch
To hang in my Sir Joshua gallery.
A single word would bring her running up,
Her finger-tips like honeysuckle buds
Five-parted, deeply dyed with odorous stains
And holding some seed-speckled shining prize
Plucked with its brother-blossom. I'll take
The shady holme-walk leading to the root-house.
Old Joseph sees me coming down the path,
And wipes his forehead with a serious look.
I'll warrant, now, he's got some curious graft
Or monster flower to show. I hate such tricks
On Nature (plague take the parchment names
The pruning knave gives to God's simple flowers).
And yet there's something in the earthy man
That poses one; his shoes look just like roots.
I've watched him in the hothouse, muttering
To the long, hairy creeping plant, hung up
By four thin threads to the great branching vine;
And slow I've seen him dodge the bluebottles
With thick, unwieldy fingers 'cross the panes ;
Then stealthily go feed the Venus fly-trap,
And as the delicate green leaves curled round
The glistening villains, how the clod would grin!
And then, he grows such rare prize orchises,
Close-winged papilions, and hum-ceased bees
So delicately poised, they'd cheat a boy
With ready cap-he'll win the medal yet.
The broad sunflowers at the high noon stare,
Their comb-stored discs alive with busy drones;
Wide open stand the bell-mouthed cactus-plants-
Like thirsty tongues their golden pistils loll
Over the flaring scarlet; flashing spar,
Piled rockwise round the pond, burns up
The fine streaked feather-grass. Such noons
I love my great north drawing-room sketched round With sheathed water-lilies, and children white knee'd Striving 'gainst soft streams with minnow-nets;
And as the gauzy curtains swell,
To watch the black and yellow belted bees Towards the south peach wall, with dreamy sound Sail slowly by.
WESTMINSTER CLOISTERS.
THE thirteenth day of June-'twas hot enough
For one of those old summer noons, before
They meddled with the calendar, and nipped
Us of a fortnight's comfortable sun-
Thanks give I to the monks, with all my soul, For their cool cloister roof, and lay me down Full length along the mouldering Gothic bench, Envying almost that ancient abbot stern, Gervatias de Blois, who close beneath
Lies cut in stone. What might one better do
On sultry days, than lie upon one's back,
Along a cold stone flag, clothed all in stone,
In full straight folds down to one's very feet;
Whilst pendant gossamers, from bosses hung,
Rising and falling with slow stately swing,
Wave one asleep; or, as the eve came on,
Marking the bats across the cloister grass
Hurl themselves edgeways with delicious rush:
Such were cool dreaming, for the weather fit.
That old De Blois, he was a priest, indeed,
Clutching his crosier on his carvéd grave
As though he'd rule them from his very tomb.
The monks who stole here from refectory
To cool an after-dinner's bursting paunch,
Crept curve-wise round some yard or two, in awe
Of the old Norman's irritable bones;
Though, for the love they bore him, had they dared, His very name and date they would have scuffled out.
Abbot and priest, they've time enough, at last, In purgatorial graves to clear themselves.
Each slab we step on's answered from below,
By the fat marrow of some ancient monk,
Who yet grins up in hate through brass and stone,
As overhead some evangelic dean
Trips past in haste, to fill with serious look
The chair at "Pastoral Aid" Society.
Pastoral aid, indeed! listen beneath,
And hear them crunch their metacarpal bones,
As they would fix him there in grisly clutch,
His weasand clipping with their rosaries,
To stop his scheming 'gainst the Church's good.
But, hark! the diapason's throbbing bass
Trembles through windows pictured with the saints.
Now, by the sweat of tempted Anthony,
Were I the veriest mummy of a priest,
The sacred wafer in my gorge would rise,
To listen to these hated heretics!
'Tis Tallis day, and nimble-fingered Turle
Is torturing with stern Lutherian hymn
The rare organ's fine old Catholic breath.
Ir was the morning early,
The sun shone on the grass,
The dew-drops, pure and pearly,
Hung like fair beads of glass.
|