I'll keep a garden, green and bright,
        Then I'll forget approaching night.

A garden dear—with quaint-cut yews—
    Bound by a hedge of bronzing beech,
And just before them I shall choose
    The great white lilies that beseech,
        With upturned faces, pure and staid,
        Love from the little Mother Maid.

And close beside the lichened wall,
    Lilies, aflame like scarlet fire,
Shall watch the little swallows fall
    From out their nestlet in the byre;
        And where the path strays to the stream,
        The golden ones shall dying dream.

Then where the garden greets the wood,
    A host of lily-bells shall ring
Their message clear that "all is good
    Where God reigns over everything."
        My garden-beauty, all shall see,
        Is mirrored from Eternity.

A GARDEN IN AIREDALE.

THE PEAR-TREE

A rain of petals the pear-trees give,
As a pearly toll for the right to live.

Fragile petals that gently fall,
Like tears down the face of the old grey wall.

Around the bole, where the grasses grow,
Is a circle white as of melting snow.

An enchanted circle, flower-entwined,
Where hyacinth fingers the grasses bind.

The youngling thrushes soon learn how
To alight and shake the flowers from each bough.

The swallows tell their babes such tales!
That the tree is a ship with flower-white sails,

Anchored to Earth in the harbour of May;
But one moonless night she will sail away,

And a prim green tree will take the place
Of the phantom ship with its sails of lace.

Then in autumn the Orchardist Time will come,
And bear the fruit away to his home.

And later on he will heave a sigh,
That the little white tree some day must die.

So I write this verse to the little Pear-tree,
That both be remembered—it and me.

COXWOLD.

BEGGAR'S GOLD

I

Around me sounded effort manifold,
    As creaking cranes swung ponderously slow,
At intervals I heard the hiss of steam,
    The rhythmic beating of an iron's blow:
I thought,—this energy will sometime be
    Transmuted into that which all men crave,
The magic metal, Gold, great Titan Gold,
    Whom men make monarch when he should be slave.
And as I mused, above the jarring clang,
    I heard a faint sweet sound of flutterings,
A tender movement, musical and low,
    As of a fledgeling trying its young wings.
A gentle zephyr blew the casement wide,
    A woman glided past the tapestry,
With russet golden hair, all gowned in gold.
    She looked about her hesitatingly;
I heard her voice as if thro' beechen boughs,
    Caressive as a moor-born singing burn,
And thro' it ran the lisping of the pines,
    The lovely lilt of some gold-dying fern.

II

(She sang):
    "Ye seek the gold of the city;
        Ye cheat, ye brag, ye lie;
    In quest of its sordid yellow
        Ye hunger until ye die.
    I offer ye gold for the having:
        The mint of October's glow,
    To warm your souls with its wonder,
        Your souls, in their greed-bound snow.
    Gold of the hedges I offer,
        Marvellous gold of the ghyll,
    Rowan-red gold from the forest,
        Take from me, ye who will.
    Gold ye need for your bodies,
        O men of the smoke-chained town.
    But know, that my gold's for the asking,
        Gold for a Beggar's Crown."

III

    She silently sped
        As a star at morn
    In the saffron track,
        Of the day, dew-born,
    Leaving a longing
        Intensely strong
    To own for myself
    The gold of the song.
    The city I'll leave
    With footstep bold,
    To seek for myself
        The Beggar's Gold.

IV

I woke and found a leaf upon the floor,
And two more golden leaves outside the door.

AIREDALE.

ON EARLY RISING

THE LOVER:

    Why not rise with dawn, my Lady?
        Why miss these sweet hours?
    Come with me: the ghyll is shady,
        Carpeted with flowers;
        Why miss these sweet hours?

    Now thou liest a-bed, my jewel,
        How canst thou still sleep?
    To encase thyself is cruel—
        Beauty thus to keep.
        How canst thou still sleep?

HIS LADY:

    At this hour, my simple lover,
        I prefer to rest
    Than to watch the tireless plover
        Rise from dewy nest;
        I prefer to rest.

    Beauty such as mine, my lover,
        (This I know is right)
    Even thou wilt soon discover
        Is more meet for night
        (This I know is right).

THE SONG-MAKER:

    In the daytime chirp the thrushes;
        But the nightingale
    Waits until the moonlit hushes
        To pour forth her tale;
        Wiser nightingale!

JEWELS

O! Gold I lack; I am a man
Who cannot give as others can;
No costly gems of value rare
Are mine to give, my Lady Fair!

Yet would I give, and of my best,
So delve the kingdom of mine eyes:
What say'st thou to a rope of pearls
Strung from the cirro-clouded skies?

A sunlit beck, just after rain,
Should from its ripples lend a chain
Of sparkling diamonds, very meet
To grace thy wrist, my Lady Sweet.

A peaty tarn, lost 'mong the hills,
Of beryl tint should make a ring;
The moors should yield a coronet
Of amethyst, from summer ling.
*****
Rubies? Already thou hast two!
They are the gems for which I sue.

RIBBLESDALE.

BARGAINING

There are many, many forests lying north, south, east, and west,
    There are many, many rivers moving slowly to the sea,
    But there's a wood of budding beech that claims the heart of me,
And there's a little singing beck that falls from heathered crest.

O! I would give the universe to own that singing stream,
    And watch the stars a-hiding from the rosy-fingered morn,