Eleanor Farjeon (Элинор Фарджон)
“Colin Clout, Come Home again!”
Through the grey and heavy air,
Through the January rain,
When old England nipped and bare
Shudders with the load of pain
Wept upon her by the eyes
Of sunless, sun-remembering skies:
When the soul of man is fain
Suddenly abroad to fare,
Questing, questing everywhere
The soul of beauty to regain,
Dreaming like a boy to snare
The great free bird no lure can chain,
Following in a dull despair
That cannot pierce their brief disguise
Random flights of pallid lies
Never fledged in Paradise:--
Comes the sound of gathering cries
Calling down the centuries
Urgently with might and main,
“Colin Clout, O Colin Clout!
Colin, Colin, Colin Clout!
England needs you, Colin Clout!
Colin Clout, come home again!”
Colin, can you never hear?
Colin, will you never rise
From the narrow plot of rest
That sang for joy of such a guest
To fill its dust with melodies,
And to make it year by year
Such a place of golden cheer,
Of flowering deed and jolly jest,
Of pastoral prettiness and the clear
Summons to be sailing West
Over oceans fabulous
Leading on to stranger shores
And distant ports adventurous--
That with its music in your ear,
Drawn from your own imagined stores,
You care to give no heed to us
Whose laughter has been soured by doubt,
Whose hearts are hedged with many a fear,
Who learn to hold our lives so dear
That all their wealth has trickled out,
Who joy and beauty hand in hand
Have driven homeless from the land
And put the old ideals to rout:--
Yet even because, returning here,
You needs must find your England thus,
Let not her children call in vain,
“Colin Clout, O Colin Clout!
Colin Clout, come home again!”
Hark! I hear a shepherd’s pipe
With three notes of music wipe
Discord from this troubled star;
I hear tumultuous gladness shake
The marrows of the land awake,
Wherein old slumbering visions are;
I hear the stirrings of a day
When all the earth will smell of may,
When eager men will fling aside
Their garments of enlightened pride
Where time the moth has had his way,
And don again the homespun dress
Of England’s ancient simpleness--
O piping shepherd-reed at play,
Blown with a poet’s golden breath,
How suddenly a heart as gay,
As innocent, as full of faith
As children’s hearts are, ’gins to beat
In the world’s bosom at my feet!
How all my sisters’ eyes grow strong,
And all my brothers’ eyes grow sweet,
And we who boast so loud to-day
Above our self-created strife
That we have lost our fear of death
Lose suddenly our fear of life,
And go with gladness down the way
To meet whatever is to meet.
Then, Colin! then about your knees
We’ll lie and list such fantasies
As keep the spirit bright and young
And guard the edge of youth as keen
As a new-tempered virgin sword;
We will re-learn the magic tongue,
And where the meadow-rings are green
Re-seek Titania and her lord,
For you will bring a flitting home
Of vanished Folk to English loam;
About our business we will go
With holiday-hearts whose dancing beat
Is measured to your piping sweet,
And on your music great will grow
In the redress of antique wrongs;
And from the richest of your songs,
O dreamer-lover, shepherd-knight,
Spell out a long-forgotten name,
Re-kindling the expiring glow
Of Chivalry’s high beacon-light,
Till by its heaven-pointing flame
Our generations understand
Their England is too fair a land
To suffer ugliness and blight
And the dishonourable bane
Of serfdom’s bowed and broken knee,
Too fine a trading mart to be
Where one may cause the many pain,
And foul self-interest men empowers
To turn to weeds what should be flowers.
For evil must be still to cope
When Colin Clout comes home again,
Because a world devoid of pain
Would be a world made bare of hope,
And both must act together till
Slipt from its spiritual trance
This globe is frozen to good and ill;
But ere the life here bound by chance
Flows to its last significance,
Colin! bring home the dream we lost
Because we grew too old for dreams,
And bring again the golden barque
With which in our high-hearted youth
We sailed wild seas and perilous streams;
And find again a road we crossed
In olden time and failed to mark;
And give us love of beauty back,
And set us on the grassy track
Of many an ancient-simple truth;
Re-teach our voices how to sing
Melodiously; and bring, O bring
The rustless lance of honour in
For men to strive again to win,
As in the days when knightlihood
For life’s most high expression stood,
And man reached forth to touch that goal
Not with his hands but with his soul.
Ah, Colin! ’tis a twice-told tale
How that the woods were heard to wail,
How birds with silence did complain,
And fields with faded flowers did mourn,
And flocks from feeding did refrain,
And rivers wept for your return.
Singer of England’s merriest hour,
Return! return and make her flower,
Charming your pipe unto your peers
As once you did in other years;
For we who wait on you, know this,
Whatever tune your reed shall play
Will hearken with as gladdened ears
As Cuddy and as Thestylis,
As Hobbinol and Lucida
And all the simple shepherd-train,
What time they gathered and ran, a gay
Rejoicing happy-hearted rout,
Across the sweetening meadow-hay
Each calling other:
“Come about!
The time of waiting is run out,
And Colin Clout, O, Colin Clout,
Colin Clout’s come home again!”
Eleanor Farjeon’s other poems:
