We knew, we knew it by the rhyme,
Though we seemed, after all,
No tinier, yet the sweet wild thyme
Towered like a forest tall
All round us; oh, we knew not how,
And yet—we knew those monsters now:
Our dream’s divine recall
Had dwarfed us, as with magic words;
The dragons were but ladybirds!
And all around us as we gazed,
Half glad, half frightened, all amazed,
The scented clouds of purple smoke
In lurid gleams of crimson broke;
And o’er our heads the huge black trees
Obscured the sky’s red mysteries;
While here and there gigantic wings
Beat o’er us, and great scaly things
Fold over monstrous leathern fold
Out of the smouldering copses rolled;
And eyes like blood-red pits of flame
From many a forest-cavern came
To glare across the blazing glade,
Till, with the sudden thought dismayed,
We wondered if we e’er should find
The mortal home we left behind:
Fear clutched us in a grisly grasp,
We gave one wild and white-lipped gasp,
Then turned and ran, with streaming hair,
Away, away, and anywhere!
And hurry-skurry, heart and heel and hand, we tore along,
And still our flying feet kept time and pattered on for Peterkin,
For Peterkin, oh Peterkin, it made a kind of song
To prove the road was right although it seemed so dark and wrong,
As through the desperate woods we plunged and ploughed for little Peterkin,
Where many a hidden jungle-beast made noises like a gong
That rolled and roared and rumbled as we rushed along to Peterkin.
Peterkin, Peterkin, if you could only hear
And answer us; one little word from little lonely Peterkin
To take and comfort father, he is sitting in his chair
In the library: he’s listening for your footstep on the stair
And your patter down the passage, he can only think of Peterkin:
Come back, come back to father, for to-day he’d let us tear
His newest book to make a paper-boat for little Peterkin.
PART III
THE HIDEOUS HERMIT
Ah, what wonders round us rose
When we dared to pause and look,
Curious things that seemed all toes,
Goblins from a picture-book;
Ants like witches, four feet high,
Waving all their skinny arms,
Glared at us and wandered by,
Muttering their ancestral charms.
Stately forms in green and gold
Armour strutted through the glades,
Just as Hamlet’s ghost, we’re told,
Mooned among the midnight shades;
Once a sort of devil came
Scattering broken trees about,
Winged with leather, eyed with flame,—
He was but a moth, no doubt.
Here and there, above us clomb
Feathery clumps of palm on high:
Those were ferns, of course, but some
Really seemed to touch the sky;
Yes; and down one fragrant glade,
Listening as we onward stole,
Half delighted, half afraid,
Dong, we heard the hare-bells toll!
Something told us what that gleam
Down the glen was brooding o’er;
Something told us in a dream
What the bells were tolling for!
Something told us there was fear,
Horror, peril, on our way!
Was it far or was it near?
Near, we heard the night-wind say.
Toll, the music reeled and pealed
Through the vast and sombre trees,
Where a rosy light revealed
Dimmer, sweeter mysteries;
And, like petals of the rose,
Fairy fans in beauty beat,
Light in light—ah, what were those
Rhymes we heard the night repeat?