I
Around me sounded effort manifold,
As creaking cranes swung ponderously slow,
At intervals I heard the hiss of steam,
The rhythmic beating of an iron's blow:
I thought,—this energy will sometime be
Transmuted into that which all men crave,
The magic metal, Gold, great Titan Gold,
Whom men make monarch when he should be slave.
And as I mused, above the jarring clang,
I heard a faint sweet sound of flutterings,
A tender movement, musical and low,
As of a fledgeling trying its young wings.
A gentle zephyr blew the casement wide,
A woman glided past the tapestry,
With russet golden hair, all gowned in gold.
She looked about her hesitatingly;
I heard her voice as if thro' beechen boughs,
Caressive as a moor-born singing burn,
And thro' it ran the lisping of the pines,
The lovely lilt of some gold-dying fern.
II
(She sang):
"Ye seek the gold of the city;
Ye cheat, ye brag, ye lie;
In quest of its sordid yellow
Ye hunger until ye die.
I offer ye gold for the having:
The mint of October's glow,
To warm your souls with its wonder,
Your souls, in their greed-bound snow.
Gold of the hedges I offer,
Marvellous gold of the ghyll,
Rowan-red gold from the forest,
Take from me, ye who will.
Gold ye need for your bodies,
O men of the smoke-chained town.
But know, that my gold's for the asking,
Gold for a Beggar's Crown."
III
She silently sped
As a star at morn
In the saffron track,
Of the day, dew-born,
Leaving a longing
Intensely strong
To own for myself
The gold of the song.
The city I'll leave
With footstep bold,
To seek for myself
The Beggar's Gold.
IV
I woke and found a leaf upon the floor,
And two more golden leaves outside the door.
AIREDALE.