BLYTON, Enid

Bluebell Time

Oh, bluebell time is here again

And every little elf

Has picked a tiny bell to make

A bonnet for herself!

And all the brownies pick them too

To ring them as they go,

Jingle-jingle, hear the tune,

The prettiest one they know!

I'd like to creep into the wood

And see the bonnets blue,

And hear the bluebells ringing loud,

I wish I could - don't you?

On Dorset Hills

A dozen larks sweep upward from my feet

As I come by,

And in the hazy sky

They soar on wings that with their quivering beat

Keep tremulous time to sibilant sweet song

That downward spills

Like rainfall on the hills

Cascading round me, wild and sweet and strong.

And I and every living thing are held

In sheer delight;

The daisy, petalled white,

With golden eye upturned, is magic-spelled,

And primroses that nestle cheek to cheek

As children do,

Are still with listening too.

Bewitched, the blackbird sits with silent beak,

Dumb is the strident wren, the yaffle stays

His laughing cry,

And rabbits running by

Are sudden all enchanted with amaze.

Oh voice of spring, of youth, heart's mad delight,

Sing on, sing on,

And when the sun is gone

I'll warm me with your echoes through the night.

Evening of June

Slowly the sun slips over the hill,

The Shadows of the trees are long,

The blackbird opens his gleaming bill,

And whistles an evensong,

And slowly lumbering down the lane

The hay-wagon comes with its load again.

The hedges look on a the horses pass

And fling out a mischievous spray,

They catch at the burden of scented grass,

And pull little pieces away.

And by all their booty ’tis easy to know,

The way that the lumbering hay-wagons go.

Past the wild roses, delicate, frail,

Whose petals fall soft on the breeze,

Down the long hillside and into the vale

Beneath all the shadowy tress,

Past all the poppies that dance by the road

The hay-wagon carries its very last load.

The Clouds

On the grass I love to lie

And watch the clouds go sailing by;

Many things they seem to me,

Foam blown off a fairy sea,

Downy feathers from a goose,

Fleecy lambs wandering loose,

Scatterings of thistledown,

Snippings from a pixy’s gown,

Softly, silently the pass,

Trailing shadows on the grass.

But when the clouds I watch are low,

Dark and darker still they grow.

Thistledown no longer they

But cloaks for witches, wild and grey,

Purple tower vast and grand,

Clouds like hills from Giant Land

In whose inky depths there lie

Glints of lightning’s wicked eye.

Torn and ragged, wild and fast

The thunder clouds go racing past.