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?"

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Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: The Dales of Arcady by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe
• 2: For the road that over the moorland lies
• 3: Lonely sentinel O'er bonnie Nidderdale
• 4: And the crooning voice of the fir top's sigh
• 5: A cordial welcome to Bilberry Hill
• 6: MY HERBARY I know a little garden very old
• 7: Hear the larches' fingers snapping
• 8: THE PEAR TREE A rain of petals the pear trees give
• 9: Come with me the ghyll is shady
• 10: KISSING Thou canst not kiss without consent
• 11: The thrush will dare To carol alone
• 12: Live in Past ten o'clock Caves
• 13: And the poppies weep o'er the red spilled lives O
• 14: The wind in your primrose hair
• 15: Known in the valleys of Arcady
• 16: To find this piper of beautiful phrases
• 17: I found Pan crouched by the river's edge
• 18: Maybe a windflower shows her shy white face
• 19: But QUEEN MAB does not hear him