“_I know a bank where the wild thyme blows Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine._” Out of the undiscovered land So sweetly rang the song, We dreamed we wandered, hand in hand, The fragrant aisles along, Where long ago had gone to dwell In some enchanted distant dell The outlawed fairy throng When out of Sherwood’s wildest glen They sank, forsaking mortal men. And as we dreamed, the shadowy ground Seemed gradually to swell; And a strange forest rose around, But how--we could not tell-- Purple against a rose-red sky The big boughs brooded silently: Far off we heard a bell; And, suddenly, a great red light Smouldered before our startled sight. Then came a cry, a fiercer flash, And down between the trees We saw great crimson figures crash, Wild-eyed monstrosities; Great dragon-shapes that breathed a flame From roaring nostrils as they came: We sank upon our knees; And looming o’er us, ten yards high, Like battleships they thundered by. And then, as down that mighty dell We followed, faint with fear, We understood the tolling bell That called the monsters there; For right in front we saw a house Woven of wild mysterious boughs Bursting out everywhere In crimson flames, and with a shout The monsters rushed to put it out. And, in a flash, the truth was ours; And there we knew--we knew-- The meaning of those trees like flowers, Those boughs of rose and blue, And from the world we’d left above A voice came crooning like a dove To prove the dream was true: And this--we knew it by the rhyme Must be--the Forest of Wild Thyme. For out of the mystical rose-red dome Of heaven the voice came murmuring down: _Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home; Your house is on fire and your children are gone._ We knew, we knew it by the rhyme, Though _we_ seemed, after all, No tinier, yet the sweet wild thyme Towered like a forest tall All round us; oh, we knew not how, And yet--we knew those monsters now: Our dream’s divine recall Had dwarfed us, as with magic words; The dragons were but ladybirds!