For you the country means a mood, Recalls a poem, lays a scene; For you its beauties are more good Sometimes than paintings: it has been Music to calm or move you, still A background to your thought and will. Nothing for me the country means: It is. The thrush's earliest song In the precocious sunshine cleans My soul of culture. Comes along The acrid smell of daffodil, Hard from the soil still wet and chill. These do not mean. I am content To look or listen, passion spent, Far beyond art and thought, and free From Vanity and Jealousy, As free as flower, or bird, or tree, Not to mean anything, but be. 1901. SPRING The sun crept into the peaceful earth And troubled her dream of fair content; He tempted the timorous blossoms to birth, The poor pink fools that laughing went Naked to meet him, their leaves without, And the meddlesome bees droned round and about. The sober grey that shrouded the head Of the pensive sea he ravished away; He twitched it from her, and gave instead The libertine breezes who ruffle her day; Who tease and tousle and toss anew Her mourning garment of exquisite blue. He cozened the mud-flies out on the heath, Ephemeral butterflies opened their wings; The credulous birds from their mates beneath Caught up the catch that Eternity sings-- Sings to the Echoes in Fools' Paradise-- "Shall not our folly befool the wise?" April 1903. REPLY TO MRS. JOWITT WHO SENT ME A PIECE OF GOOD NEWS IN A RHYMED LETTER _Wittering, April_ 1915 When all the world was very good (So says the nursery rhyme) The fairy Fays and Mays who stood As godmothers, from time to time, Would give their virtuous picaninnies A golden goblet filled with guineas. That was the golden age: and nurse Declared that ours grew worse and worse ("Don't bite the spoon, Miss Leslie!") Yet I believe that fairies still Can fill a cup, and over-fill,-- At any rate in Chelsea. Telling good news is reckoned kind (Except when Germans tell it,) To wrap it in a pleasant rind Of song was thought angelic By the good shepherds, and by me A piece of sweet _diablerie._ One cavil: though it ill becomes One who has in his time Bedragged the depths and skimmed the scums To catch a dubious rhyme, To scold a poetess who fell And, though she knew she shouldn't, Wrote down a name that rhymed with "well" Instead of one that wouldn't, Yet, frankly, tuneful, erring sister, Can one be musical to "Mister"? A monosyllable, I confess, Is what the Muse prefers: She cut a queen's name down to Bess And yours is worse than hers: Meanwhile it takes a better poet Than I to deal with Mrs. Jowitt. _TO_ GERALD SHOVE I like to let my fancy rove O'er all the charms of Mister Shoave. But oh! how very much above Such obvious charms are those of Shuv. Oh Shuv most intimate! Oh Shoave More pompous-fine! Yet interwove, How complex-sweet and meet for love The compound name of Gerald Shuv.