Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

March Thoughts from England

Margaret L. Woods (1856–1945)

O THAT I were lying under the olives,

Lying alone among the anemones!

Shell-colour’d blossoms they bloom there and scarlet,

Far under stretches of silver woodland,

Flame in the delicate shade of the olives.

O that I were lying under the olives!

Grey grows the thyme on the shadowless headland,

The long low headland, where white in the sunshine

The rocks run seaward. It seems suspended

Lone in an infinite gulf of azure.

There, were I lying under the olives,

Might I behold come following seaward,

Clear brown shapes in a world of sunshine,

A russet shepherd, his sheep too, russet.

Watch them wander the long grey headland

Out to the edge of the burning azure.

O that I were lying under the olives!

So should I see the far-off cities

Glittering low by the purple water,

Gleaming high on the purple mountain;

See where the road goes winding southward.

It passes the valleys of almond blossom,

Curves round the crag o’er the steep-hanging orchards,

Where almond and peach are aflush ’mid the olives—

Hardly the amethyst sea shines through them—

Over it cypress on solemn cypress

Lead to the lonely pilgrimage places.

O that I were dreaming under the olives

Hearing alone on the sun-steeped headland

A crystalline wave, almost inaudible,

Steal round the shore; and thin, far off,

The shepherd’s music! So did it sound

In fields Sicilian: Theocritus heard it,

Moschus and Bion piped it at noontide.

O that I were listening under the olives!

So should I hear behind in the woodland

The peasants talking. Either a woman,

A wrinkled grandame, stands in the sunshine,

Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets—

Large odorous violets—and answers slowly

A child’s swift babble; or else at noon

The labourers come. They rest in the shadow,

Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry.

Soft speech Provençal under the olives!

Like a queen’s raiment from days long perish’d,

Breathing aromas of old unremember’d

Perfumes and shining in dust-cover’d places

With sudden hints of forgotten splendour—

So on the lips of the peasant his language,

His only now, the tongue of the peasant.

Would I were listening under the olives!

So should I see in an airy pageant

A proud chivalrous pomp sweep by me;

Hear in high courts the joyous ladies

Devising of Love in a world of lovers;

Hear the song of the Lion-hearted,

A deep-voiced song—and oh! perchance,

Ghostly and strange and sweet to madness,

Rudel sing the Lady of Tripoli.