by Rudyard Kipling
To our private taste, there is always something a little exotic, almost artificial,
in songs which, under an English aspect and dress, are yet so manifestly the
product of other skies. They affect us like translations; the very fauna and
flora are alien, remote; the dog s-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for
the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly
in April as the English thrush.'
- THE ATHENAEUM .
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BUY my English posies
Kent and Surrey may
Violets of the Undercliff
Wet with Channel spray;
Cowslips from a Devon combe
Midland furze afire
Buy my English posies
And I ll sell your heart s desire !
Buy my English posies!
You that scorn the May,
Won t you greet a friend from home
Half the world away ?
Green against the draggled drift,
Faint and frail but first
Buy my Northern blood-root
And I ll know where you were nursed !
Robin down the logging-road whistles, ' Come to me!
Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free.
All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain.
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again !
Buy my English posies !
Here s to match your need
Buy a tuft of royal heath,
Buy a bunch of weed
White as sand of Muisenberg
Spun before the gale
Buy my heath and lilies
And I ll tell you whence you hail !
Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie -
Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky -
Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain -
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again !
Buy my English posies !
You that will not turn
Buy my hot-wood clematis,
Buy a frond o fern
Gathered where the Erskine leaps
Down the road to Lorne -
Buy my Christmas creeper
And I ll say where you were born !
West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin -
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn -
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main -
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again !
Buy my English posies !
Here s your choice unsold !
Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom,
Buy the kowhai s gold
Flung for gift on Taupo s face,
Sign that spring is come
Buy my clinging myrtle
And I ll give you back your home !
Broom behind the windy town, pollen of the pine -
Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine -
Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain -
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again !
Buy my English posies!
Ye that have your own
Buy them for a brother s sake
Overseas, alone!
Weed ye trample underfoot
Floods his heart abrim
Bird ye never heeded,
Oh, she calls his dead to him !
Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;
Woe for us if we forget we who hold by these!
Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land -
Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand !
