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:
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