And she caught up and clutched him by the elbow. I heard her speak in her unhappy voice, you scarcely heard it for the noise of the traffic.
“You have forgotten me,” she complained to him. “You have forsaken me here.”
She pointed to Coventry with a wide wave of her arm and seemed to indicate other cities beyond. And he gruffly told her to keep pace with him and that he did not forsake her. And she went on with her pitiful lamentation.
“My anemones are dead for miles,” she said, “all my woods are fallen and still the cities grow. My child Man is unhappy and my other children are dying, and still the cities grow and you have forgotten me!”
And then he turned angrily on her, almost stopping in that stride of his that began when the stars were made.
“When have I ever forgotten you?” he said, “or when forsaken you ever? Did I not throw down Babylon for you? And is not Nineveh gone? Where is Persepolis that troubled you? Where Tarshish and Tyre? And you have said I forget you.”
And at this she seemed to take a little comfort. I heard her speak once more, looking wistfully at her companion. “When will the fields come back and the grass for my children?”
“Soon, soon,” he said: then they were silent. And he strode away, she limping along behind him, and all the clocks in the towers chimed as he passed.
The Song of the Blackbird
As the poet passed the thorn-tree the blackbird sang.
“How ever do you do it?” the poet said, for he knew bird language.
“It was like this,” said the blackbird. “It really was the most extraordinary thing. I made that song last Spring, it came to me all of a sudden. There was the most beautiful she-blackbird that the world has ever seen. Her eyes were blacker than lakes are at night, her feathers were blacker than the night itself, and nothing was as yellow as her beak; she could fly much faster than the lightning. She was not an ordinary she-blackbird, there has never been any other like her at all. I did not dare go near her because she was so wonderful. One day last Spring when it got warm again — it had been cold, we ate berries, things were quite different then, but Spring came and it got warm — one day I was thinking how wonderful she was and it seemed so extraordinary to think that I should ever have seen her, the only really wonderful she-blackbird in the world, that I opened my beak to give a shout, and then this song came, and there had never been anything like it before, and luckily I remembered it, the very song that I sang just now. But what is so extraordinary, the most amazing occurence of that marvellous day, was that no sooner had I sung the song than that very bird, the most wonderful she-blackbird in the world, flew right up to me and sat quite close to me on the same tree. I never remember such wonderful times as those.
“Yes, the song came in a moment, and as I was saying…”
And an old wanderer walking with a stick came by and the blackbird flew away, and the poet told the old man the blackbird’s wonderful story.
“That song new?” said the wanderer. “Not a bit of it. God made it years ago. All the blackbirds used to sing it when I was young. It was new then.”
The Messengers
One wandering nigh Parnassus chasing hares heard the high Muses.
“Take us a message to the Golden Town.”
Thus sang the Muses.
But the man said: “They do not call to me. Not to such as me speak the Muses.”
And the Muses called him by name.
“Take us a message,” they said, “to the Golden Town.”
And the man was downcast for he would have chased hares.
And the Muses called again.
And when whether in valleys or on high crags of the hills he still heard the Muses he went at last to them and heard their message, though he would fain have left it to other men and chased the fleet hares still in happy valleys.
And they gave him a wreath of laurels carved out of emeralds as only the Muses can carve. “By this,” they said, “they shall know that you come from the Muses.”
And the man went from that place and dressed in scarlet silks as befitted one that came from the high Muses. And through the gateway of the Golden Town he ran and cried his message, and his cloak floated behind him. All silent sat the wise men and the aged, they of the Golden Town; cross-legged they sat before their houses reading from parchments a message of the Muses that they sent long before.
And the young man cried his message from the Muses.
And they rose up and said: “Thou art not from the Muses. Otherwise spake they.” And they stoned him and he died.
And afterwards they carved his message upon gold; and read it in their temples on holy days.
When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? They sent another messenger to the Golden Town. And they gave him a wand of ivory to carry in his hand with all the beautiful stories of the world wondrously carved thereon. And only the Muses could have carved it. “By this,” they said, “they shall know that you come from the Muses.”
And he came through the gateway of the Golden Town with the message he had for its people. And they rose up at once in the Golden street, they rose from reading the message that they had carved upon gold. “The last who came,” they said, “came with a wreath of laurels carved out of emeralds, as only the Muses can carve. You are not from the Muses.”
And even as they had stoned the last so also they stoned him. And afterwards they carved his message on gold and laid it up in their temples.
When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? Even yet once again they sent a messenger under the gateway into the Golden Town. And for all that he wore a garland of gold that the high Muses gave him, a garland of kingcups soft and yellow on his head, yet fashioned of pure gold and by whom but the Muses, yet did they stone him in the Golden Town. But they had the message, and what care the Muses?
And yet they will not rest, for some while since I heard them call to me.
“Go take our message,” they said, “unto the Golden Town.”
But I would not go. And they spake a second time. “Go take our message,” they said.
And still I would not go, and they cried out a third time: “Go take our message.”
And though they cried a third time I would not go. But morning and night they cried and through long evenings.
When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? And when they would not cease to call to me I went to them and I said: “The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone.”
“Go take our message,” they cried.
And I said to the high Muses: “You do not understand. You have no message for the Golden Town, the holy city no longer.”
“Go take our message,” they cried.
“What is your message?” I said to the high Muses.
And when I heard their message I made excuses, dreading to speak such things in the Golden Town; and again they bade me go.
And I said: “I will not go. None will believe me.”
And still the Muses cry to me all night long.
They do not understand. How should they know?
The Three Tall Sons
And at last Man raised on high the final glory of his civilization, the towering edifice of the ultimate city.
Softly beneath him in the deeps of the earth purred his machinery fulfilling all his needs, there was no more toil for man. There he sat at ease discussing the Sex Problem.
And sometimes painfully out of forgotten fields, there came to his outer door, came to the furthest rampart of the final glory of Man, a poor old woman begging. And always they turned her away. This glory of Man’s achievement, this city was not for her.
It was Nature that came thus begging in from the fields, whom they always turned away.
And away she went again alone to her fields.