Under their feet in the grasses Over their heads in the branches. And draw them to my knees. Scent of smoke in the evening, Smell of rain in the night The hours, the days and the seasons, Till I make plain the meaning Till I fill their hearts with knowledge, PUCK'S SONG SEE you the ferny ride that steals Into the oak-woods far? O that was whence they hewed the keels That rolled to Trafalgar. And mark you where the ivy clings. See you the dimpled track that runs. O that was where they hauled the guns (Out of the Weald, the secret Weald, The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field, See you our little mill that clacks, She has ground her corn and paid her tax See you our stilly woods of oak, And the dread ditch beside? O that was where the Saxons broke See you the windy levels spread O that was where the Northmen fled, See you our pastures wide and lone, O there was a City thronged and known, And see you, after rain, the trace And see you marks that show and fade, Like shadows on the Downs? O they are the lines the Flint Men made, To guard their wondrous towns. Trackway and Camp and City lost, Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease, She is not any common Earth, But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye, Where you and I will fare! THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS THEY shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, There was once a road through the woods It is underneath the coppice and heath, Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods. Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate. They fear not men in the woods, Because they see so few You will hear the beat of a horse's feet, And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods. But there is no road through the woods. A THREE-PART SONG I'M JUST in love with all these three, The Weald and the Marsh and the Down countre. Nor I don't know which I love the most, The Weald or the Marsh or the white Chalk coast! I've buried my heart in a ferny hill, Twix' a liddle low shaw an' a great high gill. I've loosed my mind for to out and run I've given my soul to the Southdown grass, THE RUN OF THE DOWNS THE Weald is good, the Downs are best- Beachy Head and Winddoor Hill, They were once and they are still. Firle, Mount Caburn and Mount Harry Ditchling Beacon and Chanctonbury Ring, And what those two have missed between 'em, The Downs are sheep, the Weald is corn, BROOKLAND ROAD I WAS very well pleased with what I knowed, I reckoned myself no fool Till I met with a maid on the Brookland Road, That turned me back to school. Low down-low down! Where the liddle green lanterns shine- 'Twas right in the middest of a hot June night, With thunder duntin' round, And I see'd her face by the fairy light That beats from off the ground. She only smiled and she never spoke, She smiled and went away; But when she'd gone my heart was broke |