Puck's Song
See you the ferny ride
that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
0 that was whence they
hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.
And mark you where the
ivy clings
To Bayharn's mouldering
walls?
0 there we cast the stout
railings
That stand around St.
Paul's.
See you the dimpled track
that runs
All hollow through the
wheat?
0 that was where they
hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's
fleet.
(Out of the Weald, the
secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at
Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)
See you our little mill
that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn
and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book.
See you our stilly woods
of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
0 that was where the
Saxons broke
On the day that Harold
died.
See you the windy levels
spread
About the gates of Rye?
0 that was where the
Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came
by.
See you our pastures wide
and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
0 there was a City thronged
and known,
Ere London boasted a
house.
And see you, after rain,
the trace
Of mound and ditch and
wall?
0 that was a Legion's
camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from
Gaul.
And see you marks that
show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
0 they are the lines
the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous
towns.
Trackway and Camp and
City lost,
Salt Marsh where now
is corn-
Old Wars, old Peace,
old Arts that cease,
And so was England born.
She is not any common
Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of
Gramarye,
Where you and I will
fare.
By Rudyard Kipling