class="prologue">Her great grey eyes, like silent moorland tarns fringed with shadowy larches, were fixed on the handiwork of the Goddess who at that moment held the Ball.

She noticed the blue line thoughtfully traced across a vast tract of land, the line men call the River Amazon, and she watched the Designer proudly hold the Ball aloft to show her handiwork to her sisters.

"Surely it is the finest river we have yet traced!"

"Nay! let me see it."

"Can it be greater than that which Mortals call the Ganges?"

Then, as the Designer of the Amazon threw the Ball above the head of the youngest Goddess toward the lap of a weary, responsible-looking sister, the youngest Goddess leapt above the little silvern stars, and caught it in her lithe white arms.

A look of consternation went round the Universe.

"She is too young to play!"

But the youngest Goddess claspt the Ball to her breast.

"Let me play, just once," she pleaded. "I will make no earthquakes, no volcanoes, no geysers, nothing that could spoil the beauty of the Ball."

Then an old Goddess—so old that she could remember God calling order out of chaos, hobbled towards her.

"Child! thou hast seized the Ball, and play with it thou wilt, but disturb not the handiwork of thine elder sisters. Thou canst pattern only where they have not worked."

So the youngest Goddess held the Ball up to the glance of God to get a great light upon it, and by chance found one small space covered with heather and bilberry, a wild sad waste.

"Here, I may play! Oh! my sisters, I would make something rarer and more beautiful of my little wild heath than any of you have dreamed of for other parts of the Ball."

Lovingly she laid her outstretched hand upon the bosom of the moorland, and when she lifted it the uplands bore the soft imprint, and a little river flowed where each finger had rested.

Thus were created

Airedale,
Wharfedale,
Nidderdale,
Wensleydale, and
Swaledale.

And because the fingers of the youngest Goddess quivered with pleasure they are merry little dancing rivers, and even play underground as they ripple to the Ouse.

In this wise she fulfilled her desire to make something rarer and more beautiful of her moorland waste than her sisters had ever dreamed of for any other part of the Ball.

But, being very young, she boasted of her wondrous achievement, and, as a punishment, the other Goddesses prevented her from ever playing with the Ball again.

That is the reason there is only one Daleshire.

DALESHIRE

To E. A. B.

When sad home-longings, like little waifs,
    Come to my heart, in a stranger-land,
No thought of a house sweeps over me,
    No pleasant thorp does my heart demand;
        For the great blue open wold it cries,
        For the road that over the moorland lies.

For heather lands where the plovers wing,
    Where frail mists gather about the hills
Like mystic shapes that eerily cling,
    Where the air is hushed for the snipe-loved rills:
        All these my tired heart greets as "Home,"
        When and wherever I'm forced to roam.

In the dales the pollarded willows flower:
    I hear the wings of a mating thrush;
The river has gained its spated hour,
    Its mad, magnificent, tumbling rush;
        Ready to break their hearts or sing,
        My own sweet dales are expecting spring.

No flower-girt cottage means home to me,
    No stately, splendid ancestral pile,
No cosy house builded pleasantly
    Does my wandering-weary heart beguile,
        But the homesick heart of me longs to hail
        My county of lovering moor and dale!

BEAMSLEY BEACON.

ON OTLEY CHEVIN

Over the rough-hewn limestone wall,
I watched the serpenting river crawl
Adown the dale, thro' dimpled fields,
Daisy-brimmed, where Almscliffe shields
        With rocky crest
The lambs that play on the old Earth's breast.

Gently I felt God's hand in mine,
As the sun came forth with a strength benign:
"I have one request to make, dear God:
That when my body is 'neath the sod,
        My spirit still
May over this country roam at will."

On the wings of the wind I heard Him sigh:
"Unheedingly many—so many—pass by,
Tho' the world is full of My fairest thought,
Of all that My servant Time hath wrought,
        It is so rare
To hear that My work is surpassing fair."

"O! Grant my prayer, and let me stay
In this land where Thy little rivers stray,
For I love them, God, with a love so true,
Remembering they are a part of You.
        O! Speak and bless!"
And the wind from the uplands echoed "Yes."

WHARFEDALE.

THE SONG OF NIDDERDALE

As I came past the Brimham Rocks
    I heard the thrushes calling,
And saw the pleasant, winding Nidd
    In peaty ripples falling.
Its banks were gay with witching flowers,
    And all the folk did hail
Me back again so cheerily
    To bonnie Nidderdale.

The blackbirds in the birchen holts
    The live-long day were singing,
Where countless azure hyacinths
    Their perfumed bells were ringing.
And Guisecliff stands in loneliness
    Between the moor and vale,
Protecting with its rocky scaur
    My bonnie Nidderdale.

And as I passed thro' Pateley Brigg,
    A woman carolled blithely,
And up and down the cobbled streets
    The bairnies skipped so lithely.
The sky was blue, and silken clouds,
    Each like an elfin sail,
Swept o'er the waking larchen woods
    Of bonnie Nidderdale.

Where grey-stone dykes, and greyer garths
    Look down on Ramsgill village,
The thieving, gawmless, gay tomtits
    The little gardens pillage.
Grey Middlesmoor is perched upon
    The fellside azure pale,
A mist-girt, lonely sentinel
    O'er bonnie Nidderdale.

Above the dowly intake lands
    The great wide moor is calling,
Of heathered bens and brackened glens,
    Where peat-born rills are brawling.
O! land of ever-changing skies,
    Where wild winds storm and wail,
There is nowhere a land more loved
    Than bonnie Nidderdale.

NIDDERDALE.

SONG OF THE MISTS

When Twilight beckons from the ghyll
We follow, follow up the hill;
Garth, holt, and meadow we caress,
Enwreathing all with loveliness;
Small, silver, mauve-blue butterflies
Are born of our brief summer sighs;
Frail harebells in our arms we bring,
To curtsey to the reigning ling;
Bairnies who watch for us to rise
Steal azure from us for their eyes;
And poets