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.’
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