XXXV
Once again I seemed to wake, the vision it had fled, sir,
There I lay upon the downs: the sky was like a peach;
Yus, with twelve bokays of corn-flowers blue beside my bed, sir,
More than usual 'andsome, so they'd bring me two-pence each.
Easy as a poet's dreams they blossomed round my head, sir,
All I had to do was just to lift my hand and reach,
Tie 'em with a bit of string, and earn my blooming bread, sir,
Selling little nose-gays on the bare-foot Brighton beach,
Nose-gays and a speech,
All about the bright blue eyes they matched on Brighton beach.
XXXVI
Overhead the singing lark and underfoot the heather,
Far and blue in front of us the unplumbed sky,
Me and stick and bundle, O, we jogs along together,
(Changeable the weather? Well, it ain't all pie!)
Weather's like a woman, sir, and if she wants to quarrel,
If her eyes begin to flash and hair begins to fly,
You've to wait a little, then—the story has a moral—
Ain't the sunny kisses all the sweeter by and bye?—
(Crumbs, it's 'ot and dry!
Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir!) the sweeter by and bye.
XXXVII
So the world's my sweetheart and I sort of want to squeeze 'er.
Toffs 'ull get no chance of heaven, take 'em in the lump!
Never laid in hay-fields when the dawn came over-sea, sir?
Guess it's true that story 'bout the needle and the hump! Never crept into a stack because the wind was blowing,
Hollered out a nest and closed the door-way with a clump,
Laid and heard the whisper of the silence, growing, growing,
Watched a thousand wheeling stars and wondered if they'd bump?
What I say would stump
Joshua! But I've done it, sir. Don't think I'm off my chump.
XXXVIII
If you try and lay, sir, with your face turned up to wonder,
Up to twenty million miles of stars that roll like one,
Right across to God knows where, and you just huddled under
Like a little beetle with no business of his own,
There you'd hear—like growing grass—a funny silent sound, sir,
Mixed with curious crackles in a steady undertone,
Just the sound of twenty billion stars a-going round, sir,
Yus, and you beneath 'em like a wise old ant, alone,
Ant upon a stone,
Waving of his antlers, on the Sussex downs, alone.