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A BOOK OF POEMS CONTAINING THE BALLAD OF HAMPSTEAD HEATH AND THE TWIN SONNETS OF BATHROLAIRE
_El hombre es el rey de la creación_; _vive_ (he lives) _en la tierra y cree_ (he believes) _en el cielo_
THE NEW AGE PRESS 140 FLEET STREET, LONDON 1908
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
PAGE INTRODUCTION 9 I. AT BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL 13 II. THE PROCLAMATION 17 III. THE MUTUAL EXTERMINATION CLUB 23 IV. THE EPISODE OF THE BABY 29 V. THE FLORENTINE LEAGUE 34 VI. OUTSIDE 43 VII. THE LAST MEN 54
I had been awake for I know not how many hours that summer dawn while the sun came over the hills and coloured the beautiful roses in my mother's garden. As I lay drowsily gazing through the window, I thought I had never known a morning so sultry, and yet so pleasant. Outside not a leaf stirred; yet the air was fresh, and the madrigal notes of the birds came to me with a peculiar intensity and clearness. I listened intently to the curious sound of trilling, which drew nearer and nearer, until it seemed to merge into a whirring noise that filled the room and crowded at my ears. At first I could see nothing, and lay in deadly fear of the unknown; but soon I thought I saw rims and sparks of spectral fire floating through the pane. Then I heard some one say, "I am the Wind." But the voice was so like that of an old friend whom one sees again after many years that my terror departed, and I asked simply why the Wind had come.
"I have come to you," he replied, "because you are the first man I have discovered who is after my own heart. You whom others call dreamy and capricious, volatile and headstrong, you whom some accuse of weakness, others of unscrupulous abuse of power, you I know to be a true son of Æolus, a fit inhabitant for those caves of boisterous song."
"Are you the North Wind or the East Wind?" said I. "Or do you blow from the Atlantic? Yet if those be your feathers that shine upon the pane like yellow and purple threads, and if it be through your influence that the garden is so hot to-day, I should say you were the lazy South Wind, blowing from the countries that I love."