TABLE OF CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| The Story of this Book | [vii] |
| Morning and May | [1] |
| Mother, Home, and Sweetheart | [19] |
| Feasts: Fairs: Beggars: Gipsies | [63] |
| Beasts of the Field: Fowls of the Air | [87] |
| Ouph: Elphin: Fay | [117] |
| Summer: Greenwood: Solitude | [135] |
| War | [165] |
| Dance, Music and Bells | [195] |
| Autumn Leaves: Winter Snow | [217] |
| "Like Stars upon some Gloomy Grove" | [249] |
| Far | [289] |
| "Lily Bright and Shine-a" | [343] |
| "Echo then shall again Tell her I follow" | [371] |
| Old Tales and Balladry | [413] |
| Evening and Dream | [447] |
| The Garden | [479] |
| About and Roundabout | [495] |
| Acknowledgments | [671] |
| Index of Authors | [677] |
| Index of Poems | [683] |
THE STORY OF THIS BOOK
In my rovings and ramblings as a boy I had often skirted the old stone house in the hollow. But my first clear remembrance of it is of a hot summer's day. I had climbed to the crest of a hill till then unknown to me, and stood there, hot and breathless in the bright slippery grass, looking down on its grey walls and chimneys as if out of a dream. And as if out of a dream already familiar to me.
My real intention in setting out from home that morning had been to get to a place called East Dene. My mother had often spoken to me of East Dene—of its trees and waters and green pastures, and the rare birds and flowers to be found there. Ages ago, she had told me, an ancestor of our family had dwelt in this place. But she smiled a little strangely when I asked her to take me there. "All in good time, my dear," she whispered into my ear, "all in very good time! Just follow your small nose." What kind of time, I wondered, was very good time. And follow my nose—how far? Such reflections indeed only made me the more anxious to be gone.
Early that morning, then, I had started out when the dew was still sparkling, and the night mists had but just lifted. But my young legs soon tired of the steep, boulder-strown hills, the chalky ravines, and burning sun, and having, as I say, come into view of the house in the valley, I went no further. Instead, I sat down on the hot turf—the sweet smell of thyme in the air, a few harebells nodding around me—and stared, down and down.
After that first visit, scarcely a week passed but that I found myself on this hill again. The remembrance of the house stayed in my mind; would keep returning to me, like a bird to its nest. Sometimes even in the middle of the night I would wake up and lie unable to sleep again for thinking of it—seeing it in my head; solemn, secret, strange.