"The Enchanted People": a poem by Lord Dunsany

 

 

 

It came, it came again to the scented garden,

The call that they would not heed,

A clear wild note far up on the hills above them,

Blown on an elfin reed.

 

From the heath in the hidden dells of a moorland people

            It came so crystal clear

That they could not help a moment’s pause on their pathways,

            They could not choose but hear.

 

The very blackbird, perched on the wall by cherries,

            Ripe at the end of June,

Made never a stir through all of his glossy body,

            Learning that unknown tune.

 

They needs must hear as they walked in their valley garden,

            Surely they needs must heed

That it came from a folk as magical and enchanted

As ever blew upon reed.

 

Surely they must arise in the heavy valley,

            Sleepy with years of night,

And go to the old immortal things out of fable,

            That danced young on the height.

 

But the moss was black and old on the paths about them,

            And the weeds were old and deep,

And they could not remember who were high on the uplands;

            And they needed sleep.

And they thought that a day might come when someone would call them

            With a song more loud and plain.

And the call rang past like birds going over a desert,

            And it never came again.

 

Dunsany wrote of this poem: ‘One night in June, after I had gone to bed, there came to me the scene of a poem more vividly than one had ever come before. It is hard to say what it is about; indeed I do not entirely know. I only know that I saw the scene very vividly, and [...] the feeling that I ought to get up and write it there and then was as strong as the vision itself. So for the first time in my life I got out of bed and and went downstairs to write a poem, and it came without any difficulty, and I feel sure that I should never have been able to write it had I left it till morning. ... Most of my poems are simple and very clear, but sometimes a vision may come as if from a far country.’

 

Picture credits:

The Horns of Elfland Faintly Blowing - by Bernard Sleigh 

Faun at the Gates of Horn - by Bernard Sleigh