Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PARK, by NEWMAN HOWARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PARK, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There is a park where oaks of atlas girth
Last Line: Lest on time's pitiless road I fall and faint!
Subject(s): Courts & Courtiers; Parks; Time; Trees; Royal Court Life; Royalty; Kings; Queens


I

THERE is a park where oaks of Atlas girth
Drop delicate goblets, wrought for elves' carouse,
And Titan beeches elbow mossy earth,
Beneath whose gnarled roots the faeries house.

The dews that bead the grass are elfin wine:
The best they cull from off the spiders' thread;
The hawthorn boughs, on whose red fruit they dine,
Will shake a silver shower-bath on your head.

To sway them you must stand full four feet high;
And then you top the bracken maze, and stoop
Hiding, and stir no limb, or else they spy,
And catch you quickly ere you call out, "Whoop!"

II

You dare not wander down the gloomy wood
Beyond the scented limes across the stream,
For there you meet the hag who wears the hood,
And bearded men, with horns, and eyes that gleam.

They watch you down the cloistral grassy track,
And though you run like mad, and say a prayer,
One creeps behind unheard, and grabs your back,
And hauls you through the greenwood by your hair.

There, too, the gray bird lives who haunts the dell:
You need not fear when overhead she flaps.
What lies beyond the wood I cannot tell:
The farthest edge of all the world perhaps.

III

But if you pass the woodman's hut, and skirt
The hazel copse, alive with foxglove spears,
And cross the field (the scarecrow does not hurt)
Just through the gate a marvellous thing appears.

Beside a leafy path a temple stands,
Built wondrously in white, and domed within,
Like fanes of heathen gods in far-off lands:
To worship there, they say, is deadly sin.

'Twas built, no doubt, a thousand years ago;
The plaster cracks, and shows the bricks inside.
Perhaps the gods live still: for who shall know
What strange wild things among those thickets hide?

IV

Hard by this temple once I met a man,
Who stopped and said his father laid the bricks:
Yet all folk know 'tis named the TEMPLE OF PAN:
These cottage fellows talk such fiddlesticks!

They love not ancient tales of nymph and faun,
Which tell how once a girl became a flute;
And how fays dance in rings upon the lawn;
And why by day the nightingale is mute.

To such I speak not; but to those who twine
Child-dreams like gossamers round some leafy lane,
I say there towers no carven dome or shrine
So wondrous fair as that bright woodland fane.

V

'Mid other marvels ambushed in those glades,
Behold a cedarn chalet, ringed about
With sweet sequestered lawns and tuneful shades,
Lapped by a river plashed with lightning trout.

A trellised balcony belts that fair domain,
Whence opes a garnished chamber, quaintly stored
With ancient shields and weapons, doubtless lain
Long hid, the relics of a barbarous horde.

Brave not the paths of yonder reedy swamp,
For haply there those savage spearsmen lurk,
And if you pluck the loosestrife, out they ramp,
Knives clenched atwixt their teeth for bloody work!

VI

Wherefore 'tis wiser not to dally here;
So turn and lightly run across the park.
Yet wait awhile to watch the slender deer,
Or scan the blue for yon mad minstrel lark;

Or stretched full length along the river side,
Peer at the weedy wonder-cities dim,
Where in and out the water people glide:
Then shake your head, and -- whish! away they swim!

White sheep are harmless, but beware the dun!
Go slowly by, and passing turn not back:
The souls of bad men dwell in every one:
That must be so, or wherefore are they black?

VII

The bracken mazes yield a sport so rare
That gods and babes alone the like may know, --
Or those who keep their youth without impair,
Or, like brave Cortez, conquer Mexico.

Each ardent pigmy player, dubbed a knight,
On threefold quest fares knee-deep through the ferns --
The first, a frond of perfect ivory white,
By which the doughty knave an earldom earns;

The next a harebell coronal, frail as fame,
Which crowns the finder duke; and last of all,
To win a kingdom, or a queen's acclaim, --
One rare white bell-flower, matchless! virginal!

VIII

Around a rotten oak the king holds court,
His throne, like many thrones, a stump decayed,
His laws, like many laws, of futile sort, --
Like most, far more debated than obeyed.

Oft was I king; but when in later days,
Passing I viewed again my realm and throne, --
The stump how dwarfed! How shorn of charm the maze!
Shrunk, too, the Titan trees, the faeries flown,

The woodland void of fauns, the swamp of foes,
The fane vile stucco, and the chalet paint!
Ah, should I pass again, mine eyes shall close,
Lest on Time's pitiless road I fall and faint!





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