I wonder if you’ve ever dreamed, In summer’s noonday sleep, Of what the thyme and heather seemed To ladybirds that creep Like little crimson shimmering gems Between the tiny twisted stems Of fairy forests deep; And what it looks like as they pass Through jungles of the golden grass.
If you could suddenly become As small a thing as they, A midget-child, a new Tom Thumb, A little gauze-winged fay, Oh then, as through the mighty shades Of wild thyme woods and violet glades You groped your forest-way, How fraught each fragrant bough would be With dark o’erhanging mystery. How high the forest aisles would loom, What wondrous wings would beat Through gloamings loaded with perfume In many a rich retreat, While trees like purple censers bowed And swung beneath a swooning cloud Mysteriously sweet, Where flowers that haunt no mortal clime Burden the Forest of Wild Thyme.
We’d watched the bats and beetles flit Through sunset-coloured air The night that we discovered it And all the heavens were bare: We’d seen the colours melt and pass Like silent ghosts across the grass To sleep--our hearts knew where; And so we rose, and hand in hand We sought the gates of fairy-land.
For Peterkin, oh Peterkin, The cry was in our ears, A fairy clamour, clear and thin From lands beyond the years; A wistful note, a dying fall As of the fairy bugle-call Some dreamful changeling hears, And pines within his mortal home Once more through fairy-land to roam. We left behind the pleasant row Of cottage window-panes, The village inn’s red-curtained glow, The lovers in the lanes; And stout of heart and strong of will We climbed the purple perfumed hill, And hummed the sweet refrains Of fairy tunes the tall thin man Taught us of old in Old Japan.
So by the tall wide-barred church-gate Through which we all could pass We came to where that curious plate, That foolish plate of brass, Said Peterkin was fast asleep Beneath a cold and ugly heap Of earth and stones and grass. It was a splendid place for play, That churchyard, on a summer’s day;
A splendid place for hide-and-seek Between the grey old stones; Where even grown-ups used to speak In awestruck whispering tones; And here and there the grass ran wild In jungles for the creeping child, And there were elfin zones Of twisted flowers and words in rhyme And great sweet cushions of wild thyme.