Scent of the wild thyme from the earth is springing,
Drifting like a galleon is the golden moon;
Hear the fairy voices, singing ever singing;
Faintly from the greenwood, I can hear them croon:
Never mind the sense of it, if the verse is ringing!
Never mind how thin it is, keep to the tune!
The Queen is in the parlour; Drake’s upon the high seas;
Newbolt’s in the schoolbooks and I’m there too;
For singing songs of England, of her seas (and my seas);
Songs about the homeland, red and white and blue:
They’ve put me in the schoolbooks, green and purple schoolbooks
Of England, O England (that’s the way to sing);
While Drake’s gone with the fairies, sailing where the dreams go:
Never mind how thin they are if the verses ring
For we’re singing songs of England and God save the King!
FROM A GREAT POLITICAL-BIOGRAPHICAL
DRAMA, ‘BUBB BODINGTON’ NOT YET WRITTEN BY
MR JOHN DRINKWATER
Two Chroniclers:
First Chronicler:
Kinsmen who have known the Cotswold haze,
You will remember
April and June have thirty days,
So, too, November.
Second Chronicler:
Men’s sowings and their reapings will deflow’r
Each blossomed chine;
Yet will a stitch prompt to occasion’s hour
Give maintenance to nine.
The two together:
Circumstance brims all our years
With agonies and doubts and fears,
Generations that have flown
Harvesting but bitter loss;
Kinsmen, shall the moving stone
Garner yet its little moss?
First Chronicler:
Happy the spirits that can grow
In steadfastness,
Yet to the end possess
Their ardours.
Second Chronicler:
They alone shall know
Felicity, the wages of content,
Who thus transmute the vain and fleeting show
Into event.