Trowa stretched his gleaming neck Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
Like a vessel at the launch
when her last restraint is gone.
Backwards up the mossy glen
turned and trooped the goblin men,
with their shrill repeated cry,
“Come buy, come buy!”
When they reached where Trowa was
they stood stock-still upon the moss,
leering at each other,
Brother with queer brother;
Signalling each other,
Brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down,
one reared his plate;
one began to weave a crown
of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown
(men sell not such in any town);
One heaved the golden weight
of dish and fruit to offer him:
“Come buy, come buy,” was still their cry.
Trowa stared but did not stir,
longed but had no money:
The whisk-tailed, foxy merchant bade him taste
In tones as smooth as honey,
the cat-faced one purred,
the rat-faced spoke a word
of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;
One parrot-voiced and jolly
cried “Pretty Goblin!” still for “Pretty Polly!;”—
One buzzed like a hummingbird.
But sweet-tooth Trowa spoke in haste:
“Good folk, I have no coin;
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather.”
“You have chocolate upon your head,”
they answered all together:
“Buy from us with a nutbrown curl.”
He clipped a precious nutbrown lock,
then dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than red rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flowed that juice;
he'd never tasted such before,
how should it cloy with length of use?
He sucked and sucked and sucked the more
fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
He sucked until his lips were sore;
then flung the emptied rinds away
but gathered up one kernel stone,
and knew not was it night or day
as he turned home alone.
Quatre met him at the gate,
full of wisest eye-light:
“Dear, you should not stay so late,
for striplings is not good twilight;
should not loiter in the glen
in the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Solo?
How he met them in the moonlight,
took their gifts both choice and many,
ate their fruits and wore their flowers
plucked from bowers
where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the noonlight,
he pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey;
Then fell with the first snow,
while to this day no grass will grow
where he lies low:
I planted daisies there a year ago
that never bloom.
You should not loiter so.”
“Nay, hush,” said Trowa:
“Nay, hush, my lover:
I ate and ate my fill,
yet my mouth waters still;
Tomorrow night I will
buy more;" and clasped him in the cover:
“Have done with sorrow;
I’ll bring you plums tomorrow
fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
you cannot think what figs
my teeth have met in,
what melons icy-cold
piled on a dish of gold
too huge for me to hold,
what peaches with a velvet nap,
pellucid grapes without one seed:
fragrant and cool indeed must be the mead
whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink
with lilies at the brink,
and sugar-sweet their sap.”
Golden head by nutbrown head,
like two pigeons in one nest
folded in each other’s wings,
they lay down in their curtained bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
like two flakes of new-fall’n snow,
like two wands of ivory
tipped with gold for dreadful kings.
Moon and stars gazed in at them,
breeze sang to them lullaby,
lumbering owls forbore to fly,
not a bat flapped to and fro
'round their rest:
Cheek to cheek and chest to chest,
locked together in one nest. Early in the morning,
when the rooster crowed his warning,
as sweet and busy as e'er before,
Quatre rose with Trowa:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
aired and set to rights the house,
kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
next churned butter, whipped up cream,
fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
Talked as modest striplings should:
Quatre with an open heart,
Trowa in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,
one longing for the night.
At length slow evening came:
They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
Quatre most placid in his look,
Trowa most like a leaping flame.
They drew the gurgling water from its deep;
Quatre plucked lavender and golden flags,
then turning homeward said: “The sunset flushes
those furthest loftiest crags;
Come, Trowa, not another stripling lags.
No wilful squirrel wags,
all in their dens are fast asleep.”
But Trowa loitered still among the rushes
and said the bank was steep.
And said the hour was early still,
the dew not fall’n, the wind not chill;
Listening ever, but not catching
the customary cry,
“Come buy, come buy!,”
with its iterated jingle
of sugar-baited words:
Not for all his watching
once discerning even one goblin
racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;
Let alone the herds
that used to tramp along the glen,
in groups or single,
of brisk fruit-merchant men.
Till Quatre urged, “O, Trowa, come;
I hear the fruit-call but I dare not look:
You should not loiter longer at this brook:
Come with me home.
The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,
each firefly winks her spark...
Let us get home before the night grows dark:
For clouds may gather
though this is summer weather,
put out the lights and drench us through;
Then, if we lost our way, what should we do?”
Trowa turned as cold as stone
To find his comrade heard that cry alone,
that goblin cry,
“Come buy our fruits, come buy!”
Must he then buy no more such dainty fruit?
Must he no more such succous pasture find,
gone deaf and blind?
His life had been plucked from the root:
he said not one word in his heart’s sore ache;
But peering through the dimness, nought discerning,
trudged home, his pitcher dripping all the way;
So crept to bed, and lay
silent till Quatre slept;
then sat up in a passionate yearning,
and gnashed his teeth for stopped desire, and wept
as if his heart would break.
Day after day, night after night,
Trowa kept watch in vain
In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
He never caught again the goblin cry:
“Come buy, come buy!”—
he never spied the goblin men
hawking their fruits along the glen:
But when the noon waxed bright,
his face turned pale and grey;
he dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
to swift decay and burn
her fire away.
One day, remembering his kernel-stone,
he set it by a wall that faced the south;
dewed it with tears, hoped for a root,
watched for a waxing shoot,
but there came none;
It never saw the sun,
it never felt the trickling moisture run:
While with sunk eyes and faded mouth
he dreamt of melons, as a traveller sees
false waves in desert drouth
with shade of leaf-crowned trees,
and burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.
He no more swept the house,
tended the hens or cows,
fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,
brought water from the brook:
but sat down listless in the chimney-nook
and would not eat.
Tender Quatre could not bear
to watch his comrade's cancerous care
yet not to share.
He night and morning
Caught the goblins’ cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy!”—
Beside the brook, along the glen,
he heard the tramp of goblin men,
the call and stir
poor Trowa could not hear;
longed to buy fruit to comfort him,
but feared to pay too dear.
He thought of Solo in the grave,
who should have taken war in stride;
But who for joys lads hope to have
fell sick and died
in his gay prime,
in earliest wintertime
with the first glazing rime,
with the first snow-fall of crisp wintertime.
Till Trowa dwindling
seemed knocking at death's door:
Then, Quatre weighed no more
better and worse;
but put a silver penny in his purse,
kissed Trowa, crossed the heath with clumps of furze
at twilight, halted by the brook:
And, for the first time in his life,
began to listen and look.
Laughed every goblin
when they spied him peeping:
Came towards him hobbling,
flying, running, leaping,
puffing and blowing,
chuckling, clapping, crowing,
clucking and gobbling,
mopping and mowing,
Full of airs and graces,
pulling wry faces,
demure grimaces,
Cat-like and rat-like,
badger- and wombat-like,
snail-paced in a hurry,
parrot-voiced whistler,
Helter skelter, hurry skurry,
chattering like magpies,
fluttering like pigeons,
gliding like fishies,—
Hugged him and kissed him,
squeezed and caressed him:
Stretched up their dishes,
panniers, and plates:
“Look at our cherries,
bite at our peaches,
Citrus and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and suck them,
Pomegranates, figs...”—
“Good folk,” said Quatre,
mindful as any:
“Give me much and many:"—
Held out his coattails,
tossed them his penny.
“Nay, take a seat with us,
honour and eat with us,”
They answered grinning:
“Our feast is but beginning.
Night yet is early,
warm and dew-pearly,
wakeful and starry:
Such fruits as these
no man can carry:
Half their bloom would fly,
half their dew would dry,
half their flavour would pass by.
Sit down and feast with us,
Be welcome guest with us,
Cheer you and rest with us.”—
“Thank you,” said Quatre: “But one waits
at home alone for me:
So without further parleying,
if you will not sell me any
of your fruits though much and many,
give me back my silver penny
I tossed you for a fee.”—
They began to scratch their pates,
no longer wagging, purring,
but visibly demurring,
grunting and snarling.
One called him proud,
Cross-grained, uncivil;
Their tones waxed loud,
their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails
They trod and hustled him,
elbowed and jostled him,
clawed his fair face with their nails;
Barking, meowing, hissing, mocking,
tore his coat and soiled his stockings,
twitched his fair hair by the roots,
stamped upon his tender feet,
held his wrists and squeezed their fruits
against his mouth to make him eat.
White and golden Quatre stood,
like a lily in a flood,—
like a rock of blue-veined stone
lashed by tides obstreperously,—
like a lighthouse left alone
in a hoary roaring sea,
sending up a golden fire,—
like a fruit-crowned orange-tree
white with blossoms honey-sweet
sore beset by swarm of bee,—
like a royal virgin town
topped with gilded dome and spire
close beleaguered by a fleet
mad to tug her standard down.
One may lead a horse to water,
Twenty cannot make him drink.
Though the goblins cuffed and caught him,
coaxed and fought him,
bullied and besought him,
scratched him, pinched him black as ink,
kicked and knocked him,
mauled and mocked him,
Quatre uttered not a word;
Would not open lip from lip
lest they should cram a mouthful in:
but laughed in heart to feel the drip
of juice that syrupped all his face,
and lodged in dimples and in chin,
and streaked his neck, which quaked like curd.
At last the evil people,
worn out by his resistance,
flung back the penny, kicked their fruit
along whichever road they took,
not leaving root, or stone, or shoot;
Some writhed into the ground,
some plunged into the brook
with ring and ripple,
some scudded on the gale without a sound,
some vanished in the distance.
In a smart, ache, tingle,
Quatre went his way;
knew not was it night or day;
sprang up the bank, tore through the furze,
threaded copse and dingle,
and heard his penny jingle
bouncing in his purse,—
its bounce was music to his ear.
He ran and ran
as if he feared some goblin man
sought him with rant or curse
or something worse:
But not one goblin scurried after,
Nor was he pricked by fear;
The kind heart made him windy-paced
that urged him home quite out of breath with haste
and inward laughter.
He cried, “Trowa!” up the garden,
“Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Trowa, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men.”
Trowa started from his chair,
flung his arms up in the air,
clutched his own fragile hair:
“Quatre... Quatre, have you tasted
for my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden,
your young life like mine be wasted,
undone in mine undoing,
and ruined in my ruin...
Thirsty, cancered, goblin-ridden?”—
He clung about his lover;
Kissed and kissed him under the cover,
tears once again
refreshed his sunken eyes,
dropping like rain
after long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,
he kissed and kissed with eager, hungry mouth.
His lips began to scorch,
That juice was absinthe to the tongue,
he loathed the feast:
Writhing as one possesed, he leapt and sung,
Rent all his shirt, and wrung
his hands in lamentable haste,
And beat his chest.
His quiff streamed like the torch
borne by a rider at full speed,
or like the mane of horses in their flight,
or like an eagle when she stems the light
straight towards the sun,
or like a caged thing freed,
or like a flying flag when armies run.
Swift fire spread through his veins, knocked at his heart,
met the fire smouldering there
and overbore its lesser flame;
he gorged on bitterness without a name:
Ah! fool, to choose such part
Of soul-consuming care!
Sense failed in the mortal strife:
Like a lightning-stricken mast,
Like a wind-uprooted tree
spun about, which nought can save,
like a foam-topped tidal wave
cast down headlong in the sea,
he fell at last;
Pleasure past and anguish past...
Is it death or is it life?
Life out of death.
That night long Quatre watched, astir,
counted his pulse’s flagging stir,
felt for his breath,
held water to his lips, and cooled his face
with tears and fanning leaves:
But when the first birds chirped about their eaves,
and early reapers plodded to the place
of golden sheaves,
and dew-wet grass
bowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass,
and new buds with new day
opened of cup-like lilies on the stream,
Trowa awoke as from a dream,
laughed in the innocent old way,
hugged Quatre once, not twice or thrice;
his skin showed not one speck of grey,
his breath was sweet as May,
and light danced in his eyes.
Days, weeks, months, years
