Produced by Al Haines
THE
DALES OF ARCADY
BY
DOROTHY UNA RATCLIFFE
ERSKINE MACDONALD, LTD.
LONDON, W.C.1
_All Rights Reserved_
_First published November 1918_
DEDICATED TO
THE FIRST YORKSHIREMAN I SET EYES ON
DADDY
CONTENTS
Prologue Daleshire On Otley Chevin The Song of Nidderdale Song of the Mists Wander-Thirst The Road The Swaling of the Moor The Moors in Summer My Herbary Rushes Satan and I To the Wind Saadi and the Rose The Difference Song of the Primroses Lilies The Pear-Tree Beggar's Gold On Early Rising Jewels Bargaining Song of Good-Bye King Yesterday Kissing Philosophy A Thrush's Song A February Day Laus Deo "Past-Ten-O'Clock-Land" To Memory A War Prayer for a Little Boy Star-Scandal The First of July "The Ideal Man" To the Coming Spring Question The Dales of Arcady A War-time Grace Queen Mab's Awakening
PROLOGUE
_The youngest Goddess sat in a corner of the Universe and sulked.
For aeons, she had watched the older Goddesses play each in turn with the Earth-Ball, and every time the Ball passed her way, someone said,
"She is too young, and, if she played with the Ball, might injure it."
Another added,
"Even our honourable Sister E---- created baleful Etna in her ardent desire to give a beauteous mountain to flowering Sicily, and C----, when she designed the azure Mediterranean, raised her little finger all too hurriedly, causing the whirlpool so dreaded by Grecian sailors."
But the youngest Goddess had waited long and was becoming mutinous.
Her great grey eyes, like silent moorland tarns fringed with shadowy larches, were fixed on the handiwork of the Goddess who at that moment held the Ball.
She noticed the blue line thoughtfully traced across a vast tract of land, the line men call the River Amazon, and she watched the Designer proudly hold the Ball aloft to show her handiwork to her sisters.
"Surely it is the finest river we have yet traced!"
"Nay! let me see it."
"Can it be greater than that which Mortals call the Ganges?"