Dorothy Una Ratcliffe (Дороти Уна Рэтклифф)

Beggar's Gold

 I

Around me sounded effort manifold,
    As creaking cranes swung ponderously slow,
At intervals I heard the hiss of steam,
    The rhythmic beating of an iron's blow:
I thought,—this energy will sometime be
    Transmuted into that which all men crave,
The magic metal, Gold, great Titan Gold,
    Whom men make monarch when he should be slave.
And as I mused, above the jarring clang,
    I heard a faint sweet sound of flutterings,
A tender movement, musical and low,
    As of a fledgeling trying its young wings.
A gentle zephyr blew the casement wide,
    A woman glided past the tapestry,
With russet golden hair, all gowned in gold.
    She looked about her hesitatingly;
I heard her voice as if thro' beechen boughs,
    Caressive as a moor-born singing burn,
And thro' it ran the lisping of the pines,
    The lovely lilt of some gold-dying fern.

 II

(She sang):
    "Ye seek the gold of the city;
        Ye cheat, ye brag, ye lie;
    In quest of its sordid yellow
        Ye hunger until ye die.
    I offer ye gold for the having:
        The mint of October's glow,
    To warm your souls with its wonder,
        Your souls, in their greed-bound snow.
    Gold of the hedges I offer,
        Marvellous gold of the ghyll,
    Rowan-red gold from the forest,
        Take from me, ye who will.
    Gold ye need for your bodies,
        O men of the smoke-chained town.
    But know, that my gold's for the asking,
        Gold for a Beggar's Crown."

 III

    She silently sped
        As a star at morn
    In the saffron track,
        Of the day, dew-born,
    Leaving a longing
        Intensely strong
    To own for myself
    The gold of the song.
    The city I'll leave
    With footstep bold,
    To seek for myself
        The Beggar's Gold.

 IV

I woke and found a leaf upon the floor,
And two more golden leaves outside the door.

1. The Road
2. Saadi and the Rose
3. Song of the Primroses
4. On Early Rising
5. Jewels

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