Produced by Al Haines THE DALES OF ARCADY BY DOROTHY UNA RATCLIFFE ERSKINE MACDONALD, LTD. LONDON, W.C.1 _All Rights Reserved_ _First published November 1918_ DEDICATED TO THE FIRST YORKSHIREMAN I SET EYES ON DADDY CONTENTS Prologue Daleshire On Otley Chevin The Song of Nidderdale Song of the Mists Wander-Thirst The Road The Swaling of the Moor The Moors in Summer My Herbary Rushes Satan and I To the Wind Saadi and the Rose The Difference Song of the Primroses Lilies The Pear-Tree Beggar's Gold On Early Rising Jewels Bargaining Song of Good-Bye King Yesterday Kissing Philosophy A Thrush's Song A February Day Laus Deo "Past-Ten-O'Clock-Land" To Memory A War Prayer for a Little Boy Star-Scandal The First of July "The Ideal Man" To the Coming Spring Question The Dales of Arcady A War-time Grace Queen Mab's Awakening PROLOGUE _The youngest Goddess sat in a corner of the Universe and sulked. For æons, she had watched the older Goddesses play each in turn with the Earth-Ball, and every time the Ball passed her way, someone said, "She is too young, and, if she played with the Ball, might injure it." Another added, "Even our honourable Sister E---- created baleful Etna in her ardent desire to give a beauteous mountain to flowering Sicily, and C----, when she designed the azure Mediterranean, raised her little finger all too hurriedly, causing the whirlpool so dreaded by Grecian sailors." But the youngest Goddess had waited long and was becoming mutinous. Her great grey eyes, like silent moorland tarns fringed with shadowy larches, were fixed on the handiwork of the Goddess who at that moment held the Ball. She noticed the blue line thoughtfully traced across a vast tract of land, the line men call the River Amazon, and she watched the Designer proudly hold the Ball aloft to show her handiwork to her sisters. "Surely it is the finest river we have yet traced!" "Nay! let me see it." "Can it be greater than that which Mortals call the Ganges?" Then, as the Designer of the Amazon threw the Ball above the head of the youngest Goddess toward the lap of a weary, responsible-looking sister, the youngest Goddess leapt above the little silvern stars, and caught it in her lithe white arms. A look of consternation went round the Universe. "She is too young to play!" But the youngest Goddess claspt the Ball to her breast. "Let me play, just once," she pleaded. "I will make no earthquakes, no volcanoes, no geysers, nothing that could spoil the beauty of the Ball." Then an old Goddess--so old that she could remember God calling order out of chaos, hobbled towards her. "Child! thou hast seized the Ball, and play with it thou wilt, but disturb not the handiwork of thine elder sisters. Thou canst pattern only where they have not worked."