



Produced by MWS, Carolyn Jablonski and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                                SONGS OF
                             THREE COUNTIES

                            AND OTHER POEMS




                        With an Introduction by
                        R. B. CUNNINGHAME-GRAHAM




                                   By
                       MARGUERITE RADCLYFFE-HALL




                                 LONDON
                          CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
                                 1913.




                               Dedicated

                                   to

                      The Marchioness of Anglesey




                                CONTENTS


              INTRODUCTION BY R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM ix
              RUSTIC COURTING:
                WALKING OUT                             1
                THE SHADOW OF RAGGEDSTONE               3
                THE LONG GREEN LANES OF ENGLAND         5
                THE HILLS                               7
                EASTNOR CHURCHYARD                      8
                THE MALVERN HILLS                       9
                THE FIRST CUCKOO                       11
                DUSK IN THE LANE                       12
                THE MEETING-PLACE                      13
                BY THE AVON                            15
                JEALOUSY                               16
                IN THE CITY                            18
                I BE THINKIN’                          19
                SUNDAY EVENING                         20
                THE LEDBURY TRAIN                      21
                JILTED                                 22
                CASEND HILL                            23
                THE LEDBURY ROAD                       24
                THE CALL TO LONDON                     25
                BREDON                                 27
                OUR DEAD                               28
                PRIMROSE FLOWERS                       29
                TRAMPING                               30
                THE BLIND PLOUGHMAN                    32
              MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:
                WHEN THE WIND COMES UP THE HILL        35
                PEACE                                  36
                LIME-TREES                             37
                A LITTLE SONG                          38
                THE SONG OF THE WATCHER                39
                BY THE RIVER                           41
                THE ROAD TO COLLA                      42
                PRAYER                                 43
                DAWN                                   45
                TO THE EARTH                           46
                DAWN AMONG THE OLIVE GROVES            48
                SILENT PLACES                          49
                ONE EVENING NEAR NICE                  50
                THOUGHTS AT AJACCIO                    51
                THREE CHILD-SONGS:
                  THE THRUSH’S SONG                    52
                  WILLOW WAND                          53
                  A WINTER SONG                        55
                AUTUMN IN SUSSEX                       56
                SI PARVA LICET COMPONERE MAGNIS        57
                TO ITALY                               59
                SUNDAY IN LIGURIA                      60
                GEORGETOWN, U.S.A.                     61
                ON THE POTOMAC RIVER, U.S.A.           63
                THE LOST WORD                          65
                COMPARISONS                            66
                A FRAGMENT                             67
              APPRECIATIONS                            69
              PRESS NOTICES                            73




                              INTRODUCTION


WITH as much grace as if a monoplanist should attempt to write a preface
to a book on flying for an albatross, so may a writer of mere prose
attempt to pen an introduction to a book of poetry.

The bird and man both use the air, but with a difference. So do the poet
and the man of prose use pen and ink.

Familiarity with tools, used in two branches of one art (or trade), is
apt to prove a snare.

Music and poetry, the most ethereal of the arts upon the face of them,
are in a way more mathematical than prose, for both have formulæ. Hence,
their appeal goes quicker to men’s minds, and oversteps countries and
languages to some degree, and makes it difficult to write about them. Of
late, young poets, those who have bulked the largest in the public eye,
those that the world has hailed as modern, have often been obscure. What
is modernity? To be modern is to touch the senses of the age you write
for. To me, a fool who owns a motor-car is just as great a fool as was a
fool of the stone age.

The only true modernity is talent, and Lucian of Samosata was as modern
to the full as Guy de Maupassant. The poet for whose verses I am writing
this my introduction, preface, foreword, call it what you will, is one
of those whose meaning he who runs may read.

Does she do well in making herself clear? I think so, for though there
are those who prefer a mist of words, holding apparently that poetry
should be written in Chinook, or Malagasy, this opinion must of
necessity be of the nature of what Ben Jonson called a “humour.”

Few men to-day read Eupheus and fewer Gongora. Yet in their time their
concepts were considered to be fine flowers of poetry. Those who wrote
so that all men could understand, as Sapho, Campion, Jorge Maurique,
Petrarca, Villon, and their fellow-singers in the celestial spheres
where poets sing, crowned with the bays of the approval of countless
generations, all wrote clearly. Their verses all were clear as is the
water running over chalk in a south country trout-stream, such as the
Itchin or the Test.

I take two specimens of Miss Radclyffe-Hall’s poetry to illustrate what
I have said. She writes of a blind ploughman, whose prayer is to his
friend to set him in the sun.

                     “Turn my face towards the East
                      And praise be to God.”

One sees him sitting, wrinkled and bent, and ploughworn in the sun, and
thanking God according to his faith, for light interior, for that
interior vision which all the mystics claim.

                     “God who made His sun to shine
                      On both you and me,
                      God who took away my eyes,
                      That my _soul_ might see.”

This shows the poet in an unusual light, for most poets write on far
different subjects; but here is one which is eternal, and has been
eternal since the time of Œdipus.

Again in the verses, “Thoughts at Ajaccio,” she shows a love of the
earth and of its fulness, a feeling which has been the birthright of all
English writers of good verse from the remotest times.

                “Fill me with scent of upturned ground,
                 Soft perfume from thy bosom drawn.”

This is the feeling that has inspired so many poets, and shows the
writer not striving to be modern or filled with strange conceits; but
with a love and trust of the brown earth, from which all poets take
their birth, and into which they all return.

                                               R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.




RUSTIC COURTING




 I

 WALKING OUT


 UPON a Sunday afternoon,
   When no one else was by,
 The little girl from Hanley way,
   She came and walked with I.

 We climbed nigh to the Beacon top,
   And never word spoke we,
 But oh! we heard the thrushes sing
   Within the cherry tree.

 The cherry tree was all a-bloom,
   And Malvern lay below,
 And far away the Severn wound—
   ’Twas like a silver bow.

 She took my arm, I took her hand,
   And never word we said,
 But oh! I knew her eyes were brown,
   Her lips were sweet and red.

 And when I brought her home again,
   The stars were up above,
 And ’twas the nightingale that swelled
   His little throat with love!




 II

 THE SHADOW OF RAGGEDSTONE


 O RAGGEDSTONE, you darksome hill,
   Your shadow fell for sure
 Upon my own dear love and I,
   Across the purple moor.

 For we were such a happy pair,
   The day we climbed your crest;
 And now my love she lays her head
   Upon another’s breast.

 She sits beside another man,
   And walks abroad with he,
 And never sheds a single tear,
   Or thinks a thought o’ me!

 My mind it seems a-fire like,
   My heart’s as cold as lead,
 My prayers they dry upon my lips
   And somehow won’t get said.

 I wish that I could lay me down,
   Upon the dreary plain
 That stretches out to Raggedstone,*
   And never rise again!

                           ------------------

* A legend is attached to Raggedstone Hill in Worcestershire. The Hill
was cursed by a Benedictine Monk. From time to time a great shadow rises
up from it, spreading across the surrounding country.