The Gypsy Girl
'Come, try your skill, kind gentlemen,
A penny for three tries!'
Some threw and lost, some threw and won
A ten-a-penny prize.
She was a tawny gypsy girl,
A girl of twenty years,
I liked her for the lumps of gold
That jingled from her ears;
I liked the flaring yellow scarf
Bound loose about her throat,
I liked her showy purple gown
And flashy velvet coat.
A man came up, too loose of tongue,
And said no good to her;
She did not blush as Saxons do,
Or turn upon the cur;
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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The Moor
The world's gone forward to its latest fair
And dropt an old man done with by the way,
To sit alone among the bats and stare
At miles and miles and miles of moorland bare
Lit only with last shreds of dying day.
Not all the world, not all the world's gone by:
Old man, you're like to meet one traveller still,
A journeyman well kenned for courtesy
To all that walk at odds with life and limb;
If this be he now riding up the hill
Maybe he'll stop and take you up with him . . .
'But thou art Death?' 'Of Heavenly Seraphim
None else to seek thee out and bid thee come.'
'I only care that thou art come from Him,
Unbody me - I'm tired - and get me home.'
poem by Ralph Hodgson
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Time, You Old Gypsy Man,
Time, You Old Gypsy Man
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?
All things I'll give you
Will you be my guest,
Bells for your jennet
Of silver the best,
Goldsmiths shall beat you
A great golden ring,
Peacocks shall bow to you,
Little boys sing.
Oh, and sweet girls will
Festoon you with may,
Time, you old gypsy,
Why hasten away?
Last week in Babylon,
Last night in Rome,
Morning, and in the crush
Under Paul's dome;
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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Ghoul Care
Sour fiend, go home and tell the Pit
For once you met your master, -
A man who carried in his soul
Three charms against disaster,
The Devil and disaster.
Away, away, and tell the tale
And start your whelps a-whining,
Say 'In the greenwood of his soul
A lizard's eye was shining,
A little eye kept shining.'
Away, away, and salve your sores,
And set your hags a-groaning,
Say 'In the greenwood of his soul
A drowsy bee was droning,
A dreamy bee was droning.'
Prodigious Bat! Go start the walls
Of Hell with horror ringing.
Say 'In the greenwood of his soul
There was a goldfinch singing,
A pretty goldfinch singing.'
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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Babylon
If you could bring her glories back!
You gentle sirs who sift the dust
And burrow in the mould and must
Of Babylon for bric-a-brac;
Who catalogue and pigeon-hole
The faded splendours of her soul
And put her greatness under glass -
If you could bring her past to pass!
If you could bring her dead to life!
The soldier lad; the market wife;
Madam buying fowls from her;
Tip, the butcher's bandy cur;
Workmen carting bricks and clay;
Babel passing to and fro
On the business of a day
Gone three thousand years ago -
That you cannot; then be done,
Put the goblet down again,
Let the broken arch remain,
Leave the dead men's dust alone -
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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Eve
Eve, with her basket, was
Deep in the bells and grass,
Wading in bells and grass
Up to her knees,
Picking a dish of sweet
Berries and plums to eat,
Down in the bell and grass
Under the trees.
Mute as a mouse in a
Corner the cobra lay,
Circled round a bough of the
Cinnamon tall. . . .
Now to get even and
Humble proud heaven and
Now was the moment or
Never at all.
'Eva!' Each syllable
Light as a flower fell,
'Eva!' he whispered the
Wondering maid,
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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The Bride
The book was dull, its pictures
As leaden as its lore,
But one glad, happy picture
Made up for all and more:
'Twas that of you, sweet peasant,
Beside your grannie's door --
I never stopped so startled
Inside a book before.
Just so had I sat spell-bound,
Quite still with staring eyes,
If some great shiny hoopoe
Or moth of song-bird size
Had drifted to my window
And trailed its fineries --
Just so had I been startled,
Spelled with the same surprise.
It pictured you when springtime
In part had given place
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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The Royal Mails
For all its flowers and trailing bowers,
Its singing birds and streams,
This valley's not the blissful spot,
The paradise, it seems.
I don't forget a man I met
Beneath this very tree, -
The cooing of that cushat dove
Brings back his face to me, -
The merest lad, a sullen, sad,
Unhappy soul with eyes half mad,
Most sorrowful to see.
I asked him who he was, and what;
'Twas his affair, he answered, that,
And had no more to say:
'Twas all I'd feared, the tale I heard,
When he at last gave way.
I've not forgot the look he shot
Me through and through with then;
'What loathly land is this!' he cried,
And cursed it for a countryside
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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The Bull
See an old unhappy bull,
Sick in soul and body both,
Slouching in the undergrowth
Of the forest beautiful,
Banished from the herd he led,
Bulls and cows a thousand head.
Cranes and gaudy parrots go
Up and down the burning sky;
Tree-top cats purr drowsily
In the dim-day green below;
And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,
All disputing, go and come;
And things abominable sit
Picking offal buck or swine,
On the mess and over it
Burnished flies and beetles shine,
And spiders big as bladders lie
Under hemlocks ten foot high;
And a dotted serpent curled
Round and round and round a tree,
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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A Song of Honour
I climbed a hill as light fell short,
And rooks came home in scramble sort,
And filled the trees and flapped and fought
And sang themselves to sleep;
An owl from nowhere with no sound
Swung by and soon was nowhere found,
I heard him calling half-way round,
Holloing loud and deep;
A pair of stars, faint pins of light,
Then many a star, sailed into sight,
And all the stars, the flower of night,
Were round me at a leap;
To tell how still the valleys lay
I heard a watchdog miles away,
And bells of distant sheep.
I heard no sound of bird or bell,
The mastiff in a slumber fell,
I stared into the sky,
As wondering men have always done
Since beauty and the stars were one
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poem by Ralph Hodgson
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