Mistrelsy.

Constable, The Cornfield, 1825

SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: MAY

Come, Queen of Months! in company

With all thy merry mistrelsy: —

The restless cuckoo, absent long,

And twittering swallows' chimney-song;

With hedgerow crickets' notes, that run

From every bank that fronts the sun;

And swarthy bees, about the grass,

That stop with every bloom they pass,

And every minute, every hour,

Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower;

And Toil, and Childhood's humming joys!

For there is music in the noise

When village children, wild for sport,

In school-time's leisure, ever short,

Alternate catch the bounding ball;

Or run along the church-yard wall,

Capp'd with rude figured slabs, whose claims

In time's bad memory have no names;

Or race around the nooky church;

Or raise loud echoes in the porch;

Throw pebbles o'er the weather-cock,

Viewing with jealous eyes the clock;

Or leap o'er grave-stones' leaning heights,

Uncheck'd by melancholy sights,

Though green grass swells in many a heap

Where kin, and friends, and parents sleep.

They think not, in their jovial cry,

The time will come, when they shall lie

As lowly and as still as they;

While other boys above them play,

Heedless, as they are now, to know

The unconscious dust that lies below.

The driving boy, beside his team,

Of May-month's beauty now will dream,

And cock his hat, and turn his eye

On flower, and tree, and deepening sky;

And oft burst loud in fits of song,

And whistle as he reels along;

Cracking his whip in starts of joy —

A happy, dirty, driving boy.

The youth, who leaves his corner stool

Betimes for neighbouring village-school,

Where, as a mark to guide him right,

The church spire's all the way in sight,

With cheerings from his parents given,

Beneath the joyous smiles of Heaven

Saunters, with many an idle stand,

With satchel swinging in his hand,

And gazes, as he passes by,

On every thing that meets his eye.

Young lambs seem tempting him to play,

Dancing and bleating in his way;

With trembling tails and pointed ears

They follow him, and lose their fears;

He smiles upon their sunny faces,

And fain would join their happy races.

The birds, that sing on bush and tree,

Seem chirping for his company; —

And all — in fancy's idle whim —

Seem keeping holiday, but him.

He lolls upon each resting stile,

To see the fields so sweetly smile —

To see the wheat grow green and long;

And lists the weeder's toiling song,

Or short note of the changing thrush

Above him in the white-thorn bush,

That o'er the leaning stile bends low

Its blooming mockery of snow.

Each hedge is cover'd thick with green;

And where the hedger late hath been,

Young tender shoots begin to grow

From out the mossy stumps below.

But woodmen still on Spring intrude,

And thin the shadow's solitude;

With sharpen'd axes felling down

The oak-trees budding into brown,

Which, as they crash upon the ground,

A crowd of labourers gather round.

These, mixing 'mong the shadows dark,

Rip off the crackling, staining bark;

Depriving yearly, when they come,

The green woodpecker of his home,

Who early in the Spring began,

Far from the sight of troubling man,

To bore his round holes in each tree

In fancy's sweet security;

Now, startled by the woodman's noise,

He wakes from all his dreary joys.

The blue-bells too, that thickly bloom

Where man was never known to come;

And stooping lilies of the valley,

That love with shades and dews to dally,

And bending droop on slender threads,

With broad hood-leaves above their heads,

Like white-robed maids, in summer hours,

Beneath umbrellas shunning showers; —

These, from the bark-men's crushing treads,

Oft perish in their blooming beds.

Stripp'd of its boughs and bark, in white

The trunk shines in the mellow light

Beneath the green surviving trees,

That wave above it in the breeze,

And, waking whispers, slowly bend,

As if they mourn'd their fallen friend.

Each morning, now, the weeders meet

To cut the thistle from the wheat,

And ruin, in the sunny hours,

Full many a wild weed with its flowers; —

Corn-poppies, that in crimson dwell,

Call'd " Head-achs, " from their sickly smell;

And charlocks, yellow as the sun,

That o'er the May-fields quickly run;

And " Iron-weed, " content to share

The meanest spot that Spring can spare —

E'en roads, where danger hourly comes,

Are not without its purple blooms,

Whose leaves, with threat'ning thistles round

Thick set, that have no strength to wound,

Shrink into childhood's eager hold

Like hair; and, with its eye of gold

And scarlet-starry points of flowers,

Pimpernel, dreading nights and showers,

Oft call'd " the Shepherd's Weather-glass, "

That sleeps till suns have dried the grass,

Then wakes, and spreads its creeping bloom

Till clouds with threatening shadows come —

Then close it shuts to sleep again:

Which weeders see, and talk of rain;

And boys, that mark them shut so soon,

Call " John that goes to bed at noon: "

And fumitory too — a name

That Superstition holds to fame —

Whose red and purple mottled flowers

Are cropp'd by maids in weeding hours,

To boil in water, milk, and whey,

For washes on a holiday,

To make their beauty fair and sleek,

And scare the tan from Summer's cheek;

And simple small " Forget-me-not, "

Eyed with a pin's-head yellow spot

I' the middle of its tender blue,

That gains from poets notice due: —

These flowers, that toil by crowds destroys,

Robbing them of their lowly joys,

Had met the May with hopes as sweet

As those her suns in gardens meet;

And oft the dame will feel inclined,

As Childhood's memory comes to mind,

To turn her hook away, and spare

The blooms it loved to gather there!

— Now young girls whisper things of love,

And from the old dames' hearing move;

Oft making " love-knots " in the shade,

Of blue-green oat or wheaten blade;

Or, trying simple charms and spells

Which rural Superstition tells,

They pull the little blossom threads

From out the knotweed's button heads,

And put the husk, with many a smile,

In their white bosoms for a while, —

Then, if they guess aright the swain

Their loves' sweet fancies try to gain,

'Tis said, that ere it lies an hour,

'Twill blossom with a second flower,

And from their bosom's handkerchief

Bloom as it ne'er had lost a leaf.

— But signs appear that token wet,

While they are 'neath the bushes met;

The girls are glad with hopes of play,

And harp upon the holiday: —

A high blue bird is seen to swim

Along the wheat, when skies grow dim

With clouds; slow as the gales of Spring

In motion, with dark-shadow'd wing

Beneath the coming storm he sails:

And lonely chirp the wheat-hid quails,

That come to live with Spring again,

But leave when Summer browns the grain;

They start the young girl's joys afloat,

With " wet my foot " — their yearly note: —

So fancy doth the sound explain,

And oft it proves a sign of rain!

The thresher, dull as winter days,

And lost to all that Spring displays,

Still 'mid his barn-dust forced to stand,

Swings round his flail with weary hand;

While o'er his head shades thickly creep,

That hide the blinking owl asleep,

And bats, in cobweb-corners bred,

Sharing till night their murky bed.

The sunshine trickles on the floor

Through ev'ry crevice of the door:

This makes his barn, where shadows dwell,

As irksome as a prisoner's cell;

And, whilst he seeks his daily meal,

As school-boys from their task will steal,

So will he stand with fond delay

To see the daisy in his way,

Or wild weeds flowering on the wall; —

For these to memory still recall

The joys, the sports that come with Spring, —

The twirling top, the marble ring,

The jingling halfpence hustled up

At pitch and toss, the eager stoop

To pick up heads , the smuggled plays

'Neath hovels upon sabbath-days, —

The sitting down, when school was o'er,

Upon the threshold of the door,

Picking from mallows, sport to please,

Each crumpled seed he call'd a cheese,

And hunting from the stack-yard sod

The stinking henbane's belted pod,

By youth's warm fancies sweetly led

To christen them his loaves of bread.

He sees, while rocking down the street

With weary hands and crimpling feet,

Young children at the self-same games,

And hears the self-same boyish names

Still floating on each happy tongue:

Touch'd with the simple scene so strong,

Tears almost start, and many a sigh

Regrets the happiness gone by;

Thus, in sweet Nature's holiday,

His heart is sad while all is gay.

How lovely now are lanes and balks,

For lovers in their Sunday-walks!

The daisy and the butter-cup —

For which the laughing children stoop

A hundred times throughout the day,

In their rude romping Summer play —

So thickly now the pasture crowd,

In a gold and silver sheeted cloud,

As if the drops of April showers

Had woo'd the sun, and changed to flowers.

The brook resumes her Summer dresses,

Purling 'neath grass and water-cresses,

And mint and flagleaf, swording high

Their blooms to the unheeding eye;

The Summer tracks about its brink

Are fresh again where cattle drink;

And on its sunny bank the swain

Stretches his idle length again;

While all that lives enjoys the birth

Of frolic Summer's laughing mirth.

John Clare