All the shores when day is done Fade into the setting sun, So the story tries to teach More than can be told in speech. Beauty is a fading flower, Truth is but a wizard’s tower, Where a solemn death-bell tolls, And a forest round it rolls. We have come by curious ways To the Light that holds the days; We have sought in haunts of fear For that all-enfolding sphere: And lo! it was not far, but near. We have found, O foolish-fond, The shore that has no shore beyond. Deep in every heart it lies With its untranscended skies; For what heaven should bend above Hearts that own the heaven of love? Carol, Carol, we have come Back to heaven, back to home. FOREST OF WILD THYME To HELEN, ROSIE and BEATRIX APOLOGIA Critics, you have been so kind, I would not have you think me blind To all the wisdom that you preach; Yet before I strictlier run In straiter lines of chiselled speech, Give me one more hour, just one Hour to hunt the fairy gleam That flutters through this childish dream. It mocks me as it flies, I know: All too soon the gleam will go; Yet I love it and shall love My dream that brooks no narrower bars Than bind the darkening heavens above, My Jack o’Lanthorn of the stars: Then, I’ll follow it no more, I’ll light the lamp: I’ll close the door. PRELUDE Hush! if you remember how we sailed to old Japan, Peterkin was with us then, our little brother Peterkin! Now we’ve lost him, so they say: I think the tall thin man Must have come and touched him with his curious twinkling fan And taken him away again, our merry little Peterkin; He’ll be frightened all alone; we’ll find him if we can; Come and look for Peterkin, poor little Peterkin. No one would believe us if we told them what we know, Or they wouldn’t grieve for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin; If they’d only watched us roaming through the streets of Miyako, And travelling in a palanquin where parents never go, And seen the golden gardens where we wandered once with Peterkin, And smelt the purple orchards where the cherry-blossoms blow, They wouldn’t mourn for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin. Put away your muskets, lay aside the drum, Hang it by the wooden sword we made for little Peterkin! He was once our trumpeter, now his bugle’s dumb, Pile your arms beneath it, for the owlet light is come, We’ll wander through the roses where we marched of old with Peterkin, We’ll search the summer sunset where the Hybla beehives hum, And--if we meet a fairy there--we’ll ask for news of Peterkin.