Green against the draggled drift,

Faint and frail and 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 o' 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 Muysenberg

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 beginThey that mock at Paradise woo at Cora LynnThrough 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 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?