Ah! the wand has laid its spell
Over cricket-fields and trees;
Presto!—woods, and mountains, shells,
Rocks, and sea-anemones;
Thrice turn round and shut your eyes,
Open to a fresh surprise.
Open on the level sward
Slid Gogerddan’s [16a] hills between,
When Gogerddan’s genial lord
Looked upon the starry green,
Lady-bright with summer stars,
Heard the schoolboys’ loud hurrahs.
Lo! the panting cricket train
Up the valley slowly creeps,
Lo! a boyish hurricane
E’en o’er Cader Idris sweeps.
Never in the good greenwood
Lived more gaily Robin Hood.
Little bits of fairy world,
Fairy streamlets, dropping rills,
And the Lery [16b] softly curled
In amongst the dreaming hills:
Never in the good greenwood
Lived more gaily Robin Hood.
East and west, and north and south,
As if we were shot from a cannon’s mouth,
Hurrah, hurrah! here we all are.
Never was heard in peace or war,
The first in the world are we,
Never, oh, never, was heard before,
Since a ball was a ball,
And a wall a wall,
And a boy to play was free,
That a school as old as an old oak-tree,
Fast by the roots, was flung up in the air,
Up in the air without thought or care,
And pitched on its feet by the sea, the sea,
Pitched on its feet by the sea.
VII.
RIPPLES.
Jolly, O, jolly, at eve,
When the golden waves
Are tumbling into the sun,
And the silent air
Is thinking of nothing, to run
Down to the shore,
Boys by the score,
Into the hollow way
Curved by the ebbing spray,
Chasing him back to his watery den,
Lightly, O, lightly he leaps out again.
Backward, O, backward we run
(Thinking-of-nothing-o fun),
Jolly wet every one.
Rare, O, rare,
Nought can compare
When the silent air
Is thinking of nothing, to run,
In thinking-of-nothing-o fun,
Out on the ebbing wave,
Chasing him back to his watery lair,
Jolly wet every one,
Thinking-of-nothing-o fun.
Jolly, O, jolly, at eve,
When the golden waves
Are tumbling into the sun,
And the silent air
Is thinking of nothing, to go,
All in a row,
A hundred or so,
Manfully take a stand,
Just on the edge of the land,
Just where the pebbles and inrushing sea
Battle, and rattle, and never agree,
Solemnly, solemnly, O!
Each his own pebble to throw,
With a heigho! jolly heigho!
Rare, O, rare,
Nought can compare
When the silent air
Is thinking of nothing, to go,
With a heigho! jolly heigho!
Solemnly, solemnly, throw
Pebbles and pebbles at our jolly foe,
Hundreds of heads in a row,
Thinking of nothing, heigho!
VIII.
THE LERY.
O happy days, O happy days,
Ye pass, but do not die,
Bright visitants, like summer rain
Dropped softly from the sky;
Which rests awhile on earth,
And sinks unseen, and reappears again
In wondrous birth on birth,
New born in herb and flower, in bud and tree,
And fountain waters flowing clear and free.