Puck's Song
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_Words: Rudyard Kipling
Tune: Leslie Fish
MIDI / NWC / PDF _
See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
0 that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.
_And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
0 there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's._
See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
0 that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet.
_Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers._
See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book.
_See you our stilly woods of oak?
And the dread ditch beside?
0 that was where the Saxons broke
On the day that Harold died._
See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
0 that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came by.
_See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
0 there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house._
And see you, after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
0 that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul.
_And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
0 they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns._
Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!
_She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare._
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