Buy my English posies!-- Here's your choice unsold! Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom, Buy the kowhai's gold Flung for gift on Taupo's face Sign that spring is come-- Buy my clinging myrtle And I'll give you back your home! Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine-- Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the _ratas_ twine-- Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain-- Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! Buy my English posies! Ye that have your own Buy them for a brother's sake Overseas, alone. Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim-- Bird ye never heeded, Oh, she calls his dead to him! Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas. Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these! Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land-- Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand! THE LAST RHYME OF TRUE THOMAS. The King has called for priest and cup, The King has taken spur and blade To dub True Thomas a belted knight, And all for the sake o' the songs he made. They have sought him high, they have sought him low, They have sought him over down and lea; They have found him by the milk-white thorn That guards the gates o' Faerie. _'Twas bent beneath and blue above, Their eyes were held that they might not see The kine that grazed between the knowes, Oh, they were the Queens o' Faerie!_ "Now cease your song," the King he said, "Oh, cease your song and get you dight To vow your vow and watch your arms, For I will dub you a belted knight. "For I will give you a horse o' pride, Wi' blazon and spur and page and squire; Wi' keep and tail and seizin and law, And land to hold at your desire." True Thomas smiled above his harp, And turned his face to the naked sky, Where, blown before the wastrel wind, The thistle-down she floated by. "I ha' vowed my vow in another place, And bitter oath it was on me, I ha' watched my arms the lee-long night, Where five-score fighting-men would flee. "My lance is tipped o' the hammered flame, My shield is beat o' the moonlight cold; And I won my spurs in the Middle World, A thousand fathoms beneath the mould. "And what should I make wi' a horse o' pride, And what should I make wi' a sword so brown, But spill the rings o' the Gentle Folk And flyte my kin in the Fairy Town? "And what should I make wi' blazon and belt, Wi' keep and tail and seizin and fee, And what should I do wi' page and squire That am a king in my own countrie?