Читать книгу Poems, and The Spring of Joy - Mary Webb - Страница 28

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A fair town is Shrewsbury—

The world over

You’ll hardly find a fairer,

In its fields of clover

And rest-harrow, ringed

By hills where curlews call,

And, drunken from the heather,

Black bees fall.

Poplars, by Severn,

Lean hand in hand,

Like golden girls dancing

In elfland.

Early there come travelling

On market day

Old men and young men

From far away,

With red fruits of the orchard

And dark fruits of the hill,

Dew-fresh garden stuff,

And mushrooms chill,

Honey from the brown skep,

Brown eggs, and posies

Of gillyflowers and Lent lilies

And blush roses.

And sometimes, in a branch of blossom,

Or a lily deep,

An elf comes, plucked with the flower

In her sleep;

Lifts a languid wing, slow and weary,

Veined like a shell;

Listens, with eyes dark and eerie,

To the church bell;

Creeps further within her shelter

Of lilac or lily,

Weaving enchantments,

Laughing stilly.

Neither bells in the steeple

Nor books, old and brown,

Can disenchant the people

In the slumbering town.