“Colin Clout, Come Home Again!”

Through the grey and heavy air,Through the January rain,When old England nipped and bareShudders with the load of painWept upon her by the eyesOf sunless, sun-remembering skies:When the soul of man is fainSuddenly abroad to fare,Questing, questing everywhereThe soul of beauty to regain,Dreaming like a boy to snareThe great free bird no lure can chain,Following in a dull despairThat cannot pierce their brief disguiseRandom flights of pallid liesNever fledged in Paradise:--Comes the sound of gathering criesCalling down the centuriesUrgently with might and main,“Colin Clout, O Colin Clout!Colin, Colin, Colin Clout!England needs you, Colin Clout!Colin Clout, come home again!”

Colin, can you never hear?Colin, will you never riseFrom the narrow plot of restThat sang for joy of such a guestTo fill its dust with melodies,And to make it year by yearSuch a place of golden cheer,Of flowering deed and jolly jest,Of pastoral prettiness and the clearSummons to be sailing WestOver oceans fabulousLeading on to stranger shoresAnd distant ports adventurous--That with its music in your ear,Drawn from your own imagined stores,You care to give no heed to usWhose laughter has been soured by doubt,Whose hearts are hedged with many a fear,Who learn to hold our lives so dearThat all their wealth has trickled out,Who joy and beauty hand in handHave driven homeless from the landAnd put the old ideals to rout:--Yet even because, returning here,You needs must find your England thus,Let not her children call in vain,“Colin Clout, O Colin Clout!Colin Clout, come home again!”

Hark! I hear a shepherd’s pipeWith three notes of music wipeDiscord from this troubled star;I hear tumultuous gladness shakeThe marrows of the land awake,Wherein old slumbering visions are;I hear the stirrings of a dayWhen all the earth will smell of may,When eager men will fling asideTheir garments of enlightened prideWhere time the moth has had his way,And don again the homespun dressOf England’s ancient simpleness--O piping shepherd-reed at play,Blown with a poet’s golden breath,How suddenly a heart as gay,As innocent, as full of faithAs children’s hearts are, ’gins to beatIn the world’s bosom at my feet!How all my sisters’ eyes grow strong,And all my brothers’ eyes grow sweet,And we who boast so loud to-dayAbove our self-created strifeThat we have lost our fear of deathLose suddenly our fear of life,And go with gladness down the wayTo meet whatever is to meet.

Then, Colin! then about your kneesWe’ll lie and list such fantasiesAs keep the spirit bright and youngAnd guard the edge of youth as keenAs a new-tempered virgin sword;We will re-learn the magic tongue,And where the meadow-rings are greenRe-seek Titania and her lord,For you will bring a flitting homeOf vanished Folk to English loam;About our business we will goWith holiday-hearts whose dancing beatIs measured to your piping sweet,And on your music great will growIn the redress of antique wrongs;And from the richest of your songs,O dreamer-lover, shepherd-knight,Spell out a long-forgotten name,Re-kindling the expiring glowOf Chivalry’s high beacon-light,Till by its heaven-pointing flameOur generations understandTheir England is too fair a landTo suffer ugliness and blightAnd the dishonourable baneOf serfdom’s bowed and broken knee,Too fine a trading mart to beWhere one may cause the many pain,And foul self-interest men empowersTo turn to weeds what should be flowers.

For evil must be still to copeWhen Colin Clout comes home again,Because a world devoid of painWould be a world made bare of hope,And both must act together tillSlipt from its spiritual tranceThis globe is frozen to good and ill;But ere the life here bound by chanceFlows to its last significance,Colin! bring home the dream we lostBecause we grew too old for dreams,And bring again the golden barqueWith which in our high-hearted youthWe sailed wild seas and perilous streams;And find again a road we crossedIn olden time and failed to mark;And give us love of beauty back,And set us on the grassy trackOf many an ancient-simple truth;Re-teach our voices how to singMelodiously; and bring, O bringThe rustless lance of honour inFor men to strive again to win,As in the days when knightlihoodFor life’s most high expression stood,And man reached forth to touch that goalNot with his hands but with his soul.

Ah, Colin! ’tis a twice-told taleHow that the woods were heard to wail,How birds with silence did complain,And fields with faded flowers did mourn,And flocks from feeding did refrain,And rivers wept for your return.Singer of England’s merriest hour,Return! return and make her flower,Charming your pipe unto your peersAs once you did in other years;For we who wait on you, know this,Whatever tune your reed shall playWill hearken with as gladdened earsAs Cuddy and as Thestylis,As Hobbinol and LucidaAnd all the simple shepherd-train,What time they gathered and ran, a gayRejoicing happy-hearted rout,Across the sweetening meadow-hayEach calling other:“Come about!The time of waiting is run out,And Colin Clout, O, Colin Clout,Colin Clout’s come home again!”