SONG
Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn,
Summon the day of deliverance in: We are weary of bearing the burden of scorn
As we yearn for the home that we never shall win;
For here there is weeping and sorrow and sin.
And the poor and the weak are a spoil for the strong!
Ah, when shall the song of the ransomed begin?
The world is grown weary with waiting so long.
Little Boy Blue, you are gallant and brave,
There was never a doubt in those clear bright eyes.
Come, challenge the grim dark Gates of the Grave
As the skylark sings to those infinite skies!
This world is a dream, say the old and the wise,
And its rainbows arise o'er the false and the true;
But the mists of the morning are made of our sighs,—
Ah, shatter them, scatter them, Little Boy Blue!
Little Boy Blue, if the child-heart knows,
Sound but a note as a little one may;
And the thorns of the desert shall bloom with the rose,
And the Healer shall wipe all tears away;
Little Boy Blue, we are all astray,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn,
Ah, set the world right, as a little one may;
Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn!
Yes; and there between the trees
Circled with a misty gleam
Like the light a mourner sees
Round an angel in a dream;
Was it he? oh, brave and slim,
Straight and clad in æry blue,
Lifting to his lips the dim
Golden horn? We never knew!
Never; for a witch's hair
Flooded all the moonlit sky,
And he vanished, then and there,
In the twinkling of an eye: Just as either boyish cheek
Puffed to set the world aright,
Ere the golden horn could speak
Round him flowed the purple night.
* * * *
At last we came to a round black road
That tunnelled through the woods and showed,
Or so we thought, a good clear way
Back to the upper lands of day;
Great silken cables overhead
In many a mighty mesh were spread
Netting the rounded arch, no doubt
To keep the weight of leafage out.
And, as the tunnel narrowed down,
So thick and close the cords had grown
No leaf could through their meshes stray,
And the faint moonlight died away;
Only a strange grey glimmer shone
To guide our weary footsteps on,
Until, tired out, we stood before
The end, a great grey silken door.
Then from out a weird old wicket, overgrown with shaggy hair
Like a weird and wicked eyebrow round a weird and wicked eye,
Two great eyeballs and a beard
For one ghastly moment peered
At our faces with a sudden stealthy stare:
Then the door was open wide,
And a hideous hermit cried
With a shy and soothing smile from out his lair,
Won't you walk into my parlour? I can make you cosy there!
And we couldn't quite remember where we'd heard that phrase before,
As the great grey-bearded ogre stood beside his open door;
But an echo seemed to answer from a land beyond the sky—
Won't you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly!
Then we looked a little closer at the ogre as he stood
With his great red eyeballs glowing like two torches in a wood,
And his mighty speckled belly and his dreadful clutching claws
And his nose—a horny parrot's beak, his whiskers and his jaws;
Yet he seemed so sympathetic, and we saw two tears descend,
As he murmured, "I'm so ugly, but I've lost my dearest friend!
I tell you most lymphatic'ly, I've yearnings in my soul,"—
And right along his parrot's beak we saw the tear-drops roll;
He's an arrant sentimentalist, we heard a distant sigh,
Won't you weep upon my bosom? said the spider to the fly.
"If you'd dreamed my dreams of beauty, if you'd seen my works of art,
If you'd felt the cruel hunger that is gnawing at my heart,
And the grief that never leaves me and the love I can't forget,
(For I loved with all the letters in the Chinese alphabet!)
Oh, you'd all come in to comfort me: you ought to help the weak;
And I'm full of melting moments; and—I—know—the—thing—you—seek!"
And the haunting echo answered, Well, I'm sure you ought to try;
There's a duty to one's neighbour, said the spider to the fly.
So we walked into his parlour
Though a gleam was in his eye;
And it was the prettiest parlour
That ever we did spy!
But we saw by the uncertain
Misty light, shot through with gleams
Of many a silken curtain
Broidered o'er with dreadful dreams,
That he locked the door behind us! So we stood with bated breath
In a silence deep as death.
There were scarlet gleams and crimson
In the curious foggy grey,
Like the blood-red light that swims on
Old canals at fall of day,
Where the smoke of some great city loops and droops in gorgeous veils
Round the heavy purple barges' tawny sails.
Were those creatures gagged and muffled,
See—there—by that severed head?
Was it but a breeze that ruffled
Those dark curtains, splashed with red,
Ruffled the dark figures on them, made them moan like things in pain?
How we wished that we were safe at home again.
* * * *
"Oh, we want to hear of Peterkin; good sir, you say you know;
Won't you tell us, won't you put us in the way we want to go?"
So we pleaded, for he seemed so very full of sighs and tears
That we couldn't doubt his kindness, and we smothered all our fears;
But he said, "You must be crazy if you come to me for help;
Why should I desire to send you to your horrid little whelp?" And again, the foolish echo made a far-away reply,
Oh, don't come to me for comfort,
Pray don't look to me for comfort,
Heavens! you mustn't be so selfish, said the spider to the fly.
"Still, when the King of Scotland, so to speak, was in a hole,
He was aided by my brother; it's a story to console
The convict of the treadmill and the infant with a sum,
For it teaches you to try again until your kingdom's come!
The monarch dawdled in that hole for centuries of time
Until my own twin-brother rose and showed him how to climb:
He showed him how to swing and sway upon a tiny thread
Across a mighty precipice, and light upon his head
Without a single fracture and without a single pain
If he only did it frequently and tried and tried again:"
And once again the whisper like a moral wandered by,
Perseverance is a virtue, said the spider to the fly.
Then he moaned, "My heart is hungry; but I fear I cannot eat,
(Of course I speak entirely now of spiritual meat!)
For I only fed an hour ago, but if we calmly sat
While I told you all my troubles in a confidential chat
It would give me such an appetite to hear you sympathise,
And I should sleep the better—see, the tears are in my eyes!
Dead yearnings are such dreadful things, let's keep 'em all alive,—
Let's sit and talk awhile, my dears; we'll dine, I think, at five."
And he brought his chair beside us in his most engaging style,
And began to tell his story with a melancholy smile.—
"You remember Miss Muffet
Who sat on a tuffet
Partaking of curds and whey; Well, I am the spider
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away!
"There was nothing against her!
An elderly spinster
Were such a grammatical mate
For a spider and spinner,
I swore I would win her,
I knew I had met with my fate!
"That love was the purest
And strongest and surest
I'd felt since my first thread was spun;
I know I'm a bogey,
But she's an old fogey,
So why in the world did she run?
"When Bruce was in trouble,
A spider, my double,
Encouraged him greatly, they say!
Now, why should the spider
Who sat down beside her
Have frightened Miss Muffet away?"
He seemed to have much more to tell,
But we could scarce be listening well,
Although we tried with all our might
To look attentive and polite;
For still afar we heard the thin
Clear fairy-call to Peterkin;
Clear as a skylark's mounting song
It drew our wandering thoughts along.
Afar, it seemed, yet, ah, so nigh,
Deep in our dreams it scaled the sky,
In captive dreams that brooked no bars
It touched the love that moves the stars, And with sweet music's golden tether
It bound our hearts and heaven together.