And I come, for this night at least, to my room. On the wall is a tiny silver Christ on a crucifix; and above that the portrait of a child, who fixes me in the surprise of innocence, questioning and loveable, the very look of warm April and timid but confiding light. I sleep with the knowledge of that over me, an assurance greater than that of all the guns of all the hosts. It is a promise. I may wake to the earth I used to know in the morning."
H. M. Tomlinson
[184].
The reader may speculate how it is that while room has been found here for this entrancing rhyme, none has been made for Macaulay's longer Lays, Browning's Cavalier Songs, and a host of poems equally gallant and spirited. Perhaps he will forgive their absence if he will consider what is said on page xxxiii, and if he will also remember that every chooser must make his choice.
There is, too, the story of the Woodcutter's son. This fuzzheaded boy, called Dick or Dickon, while playing on his elder pipe the tune of "Over the Hills" one dappled sunshine morning in the woods, fortuning to squinny his eye sidelong over his pipe, perceived a crooked and dwarf old man to be standing beside him where before was only a solitary bearded thistle. This old man, the twist of whose countenance showed him to be one with an ear for woodland music, invited the Woodcutter's son to descend with him into the orchards of the Gnomes—and to help himself. This he did, and marvellously he fared. On turning out his pockets that night—the next day being a Sunday—his Mother found (apart from the wondrous smouldering heap of fruits, amethyst, emerald, rubies and the topaz, which he had given her) two or three strange unpolished stones, and these also from the Old Man's orchards. And she climbed up with her candle, he being abed, and asked him why he had burdened himself with such things of little seeming value, when he might have carried off their weight in diamonds big as dumplings. "Well, you see, mother dear," he drowsily replied, "I chose of the best and brightest till my eyes dazzled; and then there was a bird that called, Dick! Dick! Dick! Dick! and those magic pebbles were among her eggs."
[185]. "We be the King's Men."
The Song of Soldiers from Act I., Scene I., Part i. of that mighty play, The Dynasts. "The time is a fine day in March, 1805. A highway crosses the ridge, which is near the sea, and the south coast is seen bounding the landscape below, the open Channel extending beyond."
[186]. Budmouth Dears
—from The Dynasts, Act II., Scene I., Part iii.—the song sung in Camp on the Plain of Vittoria by Sergeant Young (of Sturminster Newton) of the Fifteenth (King's) Hussars on the eve of the longest day in the year 1813 and of Wellington's victory.