Selections from THE DAFFODIL FIELDS. I Between the barren pasture and the wood There is a patch of poultry-stricken grass, Where, in old time, Ryemeadows' Farmhouse stood, And human fate brought tragic things to pass. A spring comes bubbling up there, cold as glass, It bubbles down, crusting the leaves with lime, Babbling the self-same song that it has sung through time. Ducks gobble at the selvage of the brook, But still it slips away, the cold hill-spring, Past the Ryemeadows' lonely woodland nook Where many a stubble gray-goose preens her wing, On, by the woodland side. You hear it sing Past the lone copse where poachers set their wires, Past the green hill once grim with sacrificial fires. Another water joins it; then it turns, Runs through the Ponton Wood, still turning west, Past foxgloves, Canterbury bells, and ferns, And many a blackbird's, many a thrush's nest; The cattle tread it there; then, with a zest It sparkles out, babbling its pretty chatter Through Foxholes Farm, where it gives white-faced cattle water. Under the road it runs, and now it slips Past the great ploughland, babbling, drop and linn, To the moss'd stumps of elm trees which it lips, And blackberry-bramble-trails where eddies spin. Then, on its left, some short-grassed fields begin, Red-clayed and pleasant, which the young spring fills With the never-quiet joy of dancing daffodils. There are three fields where daffodils are found; The grass is dotted blue-gray with their leaves; Their nodding beauty shakes along the ground Up to a fir-clump shutting out the eaves Of an old farm where always the wind grieves High in the fir boughs, moaning; people call This farm The Roughs, but some call it the Poor Maid's Hall. There, when the first green shoots of tender corn Show on the plough; when the first drift of white Stars the black branches of the spiky thorn, And afternoons are warm and evenings light, The shivering daffodils do take delight, Shaking beside the brook, and grass comes green, And blue dog-violets come and glistening celandine. And there the pickers come, picking for town Those dancing daffodils; all day they pick; Hard-featured women, weather-beaten brown, Or swarthy-red, the colour of old brick. At noon they break their meats under the rick. The smoke of all three farms lifts blue in air As though man's passionate mind had never suffered there. And sometimes as they rest an old man comes, Shepherd or carter, to the hedgerow-side, And looks upon their gangrel tribe, and hums, And thinks all gone to wreck since master died; And sighs over a passionate harvest-tide Which Death's red sickle reaped under those hills, There, in the quiet fields among the daffodils. THE RIVER. The steaming river loitered like old blood On which the tugboat bearing Michael beat, Past whitened horse bones sticking in the mud. The reed stems looked like metal in the heat. Then the banks fell away, and there were neat; Red herds of sullen cattle drifting slow. A fish leaped, making rings, making the dead blood flow. Wormed hard-wood piles were driv'n in the river bank, The steamer threshed alongside with sick screws Churning the mud below her till it stank; Big gassy butcher-bubbles burst on the ooze. There Michael went ashore; as glad to lose One not a native there, the Gauchos flung His broken gear ashore, one waved, a bell was rung. The bowfast was cast off, the screw revolved, Making a bloodier bubbling; rattling rope Fell to the hatch, the engine's tune resolved Into its steadier beat of rise and slope; The steamer went her way; and Michael's hope Died as she lessened; he was there alone. The lowing of the cattle made a gradual moan. He thought of Mary, but the thought was dim; That was another life, lived long before. His mind was in new worlds which altered him. The startling present left no room for more. The sullen river lipped, the sky, the shore Were vaster than of old, and lonely, lonely. Sky and low hills of grass and moaning cattle only. THE RETURN. Soon he was at the Foxholes, at the place Whither, from over sea, his heart had turned Often at evening-ends in times of grace. But little outward change his eye discerned; A red rose at her bedroom window burned, Just as before. Even as of old the wasps Poised at the yellow plums; the gate creaked on its hasps And the white fantails sidled on the roof Just as before; their pink feet, even as of old, Printed the frosty morning's rime with proof. Still the zew-tallat's thatch was green with mould; The apples on the withered boughs were gold. Men and the times were changed: "And I," said he, "Will go and not return, since she is not for me. "I'll go, for it would be a scurvy thing To spoil her marriage, and besides, she cares For that half-priest she married with the ring. Small joy for me in seeing how she wears, Or seeing what he takes and what she shares. That beauty and those ways: she had such ways, There in the daffodils in those old April days. So with an impulse of good will he turned, Leaving that place of daffodils; the road Was paven sharp with memories which burned; He trod them strongly under as he strode. At the Green Turning's forge the furnace glowed; Red dithying sparks flew from the crumpled soft Fold from the fire's heart; down clanged the hammers oft. That was a bitter place to pass, for there Mary and he had often, often stayed To watch the horseshoe growing in the glare. It was a tryst in childhood when they strayed. There was a stile beside the forge; he laid His elbows on it, leaning, looking down. The river-valley stretched with great trees turning brown. Infinite, too, because it reached the sky, And distant spires arose and distant smoke; The whiteness on the blue went stilly by; Only the clinking forge the stillness broke. Ryemeadows brook was there; The Roughs, the oak

lass="i0">By God, I know your beauty now too well.
We are each other’s, flesh and soul, we two.”
“That was sweet knowledge once,” she said; “we knew
That truth of old. Now, in a strange man’s bed,
I read it in my soul, and find it written red.”