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 beginThey 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

102

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 o' the

pine

Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine

Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plainTake 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 that hold by these! Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and

land

Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and under

stand!

THE LAST RHYME OF TRUE THOMAS.

THE King has called for priest and cup,

The King has taken spur and blade

To dub True Thomas a belted knight,

And all for the sake o' the songs he made.

They have sought him high, they have sought

him low,

They have sought him over down and lea; They have found him by the milk-white thorn That guards the gates o' Faerie.

'Twas bent beneath and blue above,

Their eyes were held that they might not see
The kine that grazed between the knowes,
Oh, they were the Queens o' Faerie!

"Now cease your song," the King he said, "Oh, cease your song and get you dight To vow your vow and watch your arms, For I will dub you a belted knight.

"For I will give you a horse o' pride,

Wi' blazon and spur and page and squire;
Wi' keep and tail and seizin and law,
And land to hold at your desire."

True Thomas smiled above his harp,
And turned his face to the naked sky,
Where, blown before the wastrel wind,
The thistle-down she floated by.

"I ha' vowed my vow in another place,
And bitter oath it was on me,

I ha' watched my arms the lee-long night,
Where five-score fighting-men would flee.

"My lance is tipped o' the hammered flame,
My shield is beat o' the moonlight cold;
And I won my spurs in the Middle World,
A thousand fathoms beneath the mould.

"And what should I make wi' a horse o' pride, And what should I make wi' a sword so brown,

But spill the rings o' the Gentle Folk

And flyte my kin in the Fairy Town?

"And what should I make wi' blazon and belt,

Wi' keep and tail and seizin and fee,

And what should I do wi' page and squire
That am a king in my own countrie?

"For I send east and I send west,
And I send far as my will may flee,
By dawn and dusk and the drinking rain,
And syne my Sendings return to me.

"They come wi' news of the groanin' earth,
They come wi' news o' the roarin' sea,
Wi' word of Spirit and Ghost and Flesh,
And man that's mazed among the three."

The King he bit his nether lip,

And smote his hand upon his knee:

"By the faith o' my soul, True Thomas," he said, "Ye waste no wit in courtesie!

"As I desire, unto my pride.

Can I make Earls by three and three,

To run before and ride behind

And serve the sons o' my body."