THE FIRST DISCOVERY

O, grown-ups cannot understand

And grown-ups never will,

How short's the way to fairy-land

Across the purple hill:

They smile: their smile is very bland,

Their eyes are wise and chill;

And yet — at just a child's command —

The world's an Eden still.

Under the cloudy lilac-tree,

Out at the garden-gate,

We stole, a little band of three,

To tempt our fairy fate.

There was no human eye to see,

No voice to bid us wait;

The gardener had gone home to tea,

The hour was very late.

I wonder if you've ever dreamed,

In summer's noonday sleep,

Of what the thyme and heather seemed

To ladybirds that creep

Like little crimson shimmering gems

Between the tiny twisted stems

Of fairy forests deep;

And what it looks like as they pass

Through jungles of the golden grass.

If you could suddenly become

As small a thing as they,

A midget-child, a new Tom Thumb,

A little gauze-winged fay,

Oh then, as through the mighty shades

Of wild thyme woods and violet glades

You groped your forest-way,

How fraught each fragrant bough would be

With dark o'erhanging mystery.

How high the forest aisles would loom,

What wondrous wings would beat

Through gloamings loaded with perfume

In many a rich retreat,

While trees like purple censers bowed

And swung beneath a swooning cloud

Mysteriously sweet,

Where flowers that haunt no mortal clime

Burden the Forest of Wild Thyme.

We'd watched the bats and beetles flit

Through sunset-coloured air

The night that we discovered it

And all the heavens were bare:

We'd seen the colours melt and pass

Like silent ghosts across the grass

To sleep — our hearts knew where;

And so we rose, and hand in hand

We sought the gates of fairy-land.

For Peterkin, oh Peterkin,

The cry was in our ears,

A fairy clamour, clear and thin

From lands beyond the years;

A wistful note, a dying fall

As of the fairy bugle-call

Some dreamful changeling hears,

And pines within his mortal home

Once more through fairy-land to roam.

We left behind the pleasant row

Of cottage window-panes,

The village inn's red-curtained glow,

The lovers in the lanes;

And stout of heart and strong of will

We climbed the purple perfumed hill,

And hummed the sweet refrains

Of fairy tunes the tall thin man

Taught us of old in Old Japan.

So by the tall wide-barred church-gate

Through which we all could pass

We came to where that curious plate,

That foolish plate of brass,

Said Peterkin was fast asleep

Beneath a cold and ugly heap

Of earth and stones and grass.

It was a splendid place for play,

That churchyard, on a summer's day;

A splendid place for hide-and-seek

Between the grey old stones;

Where even grown-ups used to speak

In awestruck whispering tones;

And here and there the grass ran wild

In jungles for the creeping child,

And there were elfin zones

Of twisted flowers and words in rhyme

And great sweet cushions of wild thyme.

So in a wild thyme snuggery there

We stayed awhile to rest;

A bell was calling folk to prayer:

One star was in the West:

The cottage lights grew far away,

The whole sky seemed to waver and sway

Above our fragrant nest;

And from a distant dreamland moon

Once more we heard that fairy tune:

Why, mother once had sung it us

When, ere we went to bed,

She told the tale of Pyramus,

How Thisbe found him dead

And mourned his eyes as green as leeks,

His cherry nose, his cowslip cheeks.

That tune would oft around us float

Since on a golden noon

We saw the play that Shakespeare wrote

Of Lion, Wall, and Moon;

Ah, hark — the ancient fairy theme —

Following darkness like a dream!

The very song Will Shakespeare sang,

The music that through Sherwood rang

And Arden and that forest glade

Where Hermie and Lysander strayed,

And Puck cried out with impish glee,

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Though the masquerade was mute

Of Quince and Snout and Snug and Flute,

And Bottom with his donkey's head

Decked with roses, white and red,

Though the fairies had forsaken

Sherwood now and faintly shaken

The forest-scents from off their feet,

Yet from some divine retreat

Came the music, sweet and clear,

To hang upon the raptured ear

With the free unfettered sway

Of blossoms in the moon of May.

Hark! the luscious fluttering

Of flower-soft words that kiss and cling,

And part again with sweet farewells,

And rhyme and chime like fairy-bells.

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

Out of the undiscovered land

So sweetly rang the song,

We dreamed we wandered, hand in hand,

The fragrant aisles along,

Where long ago had gone to dwell

In some enchanted distant dell

The outlawed fairy throng

When out of Sherwood's wildest glen

They sank, forsaking mortal men.

And as we dreamed, the shadowy ground

Seemed gradually to swell;

And a strange forest rose around,

But how — we could not tell —

Purple against a rose-red sky

The big boughs brooded silently:

Far off we heard a bell;

And, suddenly, a great red light

Smouldered before our startled sight.

Then came a cry, a fiercer flash,

And down between the trees

We saw great crimson figures crash,

Wild-eyed monstrosities;

Great dragon-shapes that breathed a flame

From roaring nostrils as they came:

We sank upon our knees;

And looming o'er us, ten yards high,

Like battle-ships they thundered by.

And then, as down that mighty dell

We followed, faint with fear,

We understood the tolling bell

That called the monsters there;

For right in front we saw a house

Woven of wild mysterious boughs

Bursting out everywhere

In crimson flames, and with a shout

The monsters rushed to put it out.

And, in a flash, the truth was ours;

And there we knew — we knew —

The meaning of those trees like flowers,

Those boughs of rose and blue,

And from the world we'd left above

A voice came crooning like a dove

To prove the dream was true:

And this — we knew it by the rhyme

Must be — the Forest of Wild Thyme.

For out of the mystical rose-red dome

Of heaven the voice came murmuring down:

Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home;

Your house is on fire and your children are gone.

We knew, we knew it by the rhyme,

Though we seemed, after all,

No tinier, yet the sweet wild thyme

Towered like a forest tall

All round us; oh, we knew not how.

And yet — we knew those monsters now:

Our dream's divine recall

Had dwarfed us, as with magic words;

The dragons were but ladybirds!

And all around us as we gazed,

Half glad, half frightened, all amazed,

The scented clouds of purple smoke

In lurid gleams of crimson broke;

And o'er our heads the huge black trees

Obscured the sky's red mysteries;

While here and there gigantic wings

Beat o'er us, and great scaly things

Fold over monstrous leathern fold

Out of the smouldering copses rolled;

And eyes like blood-red pits of flame

From many a forest-cavern came

To glare across the blazing glade,

Till, with the sudden thought dismayed,

We wondered if we e'er should find

The mortal home we left behind:

Fear clutched us in a grisly grasp,

We gave one wild and white-lipped gasp,

Then turned and ran, with streaming hair,

Away, away, and anywhere!

And hurry-skurry, heart and heel and hand, we tore along,

And still our flying feet kept time and pattered on for Peterkin,

For Peterkin, oh Peterkin, it made a kind of song

To prove the road was right although it seemed so dark and wrong,

As through the desperate woods we plunged and ploughed for little

Peterkin,

Where many a hidden jungle-beast made noises like a gong

That rolled and roared and rumbled as we rushed along to Peterkin.

Peterkin, Peterkin, if you could only hear

And answer us, one little word from little lonely Peterkin

To take and comfort father, he is sitting in his chair

In the library: he's listening for your footstep on the stair

And your patter down the passage, he can only think of Peterkin:

Come back, come back to father, for to-day he'd let us tear

His newest book to make a paper-boat for little Peterkin.