The Dales of Arcady
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The Dales of Arcady - Dorothy Una Ratcliffe
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dales of Arcady, by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe
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Title: The Dales of Arcady
Author: Dorothy Una Ratcliffe
Release Date: August 14, 2011 [EBook #37086]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DALES OF ARCADY ***
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 æons, 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?
Then, as the Designer of the Amazon threw the Ball above the head of the youngest Goddess toward the lap of a weary, responsible-looking sister, the youngest Goddess leapt above the little silvern stars, and caught it in her lithe white arms.
A look of consternation went round the Universe.
She is too young to play!
But the youngest Goddess claspt the Ball to her breast.
Let me play, just once,
she pleaded. I will make no earthquakes, no volcanoes, no geysers, nothing that could spoil the beauty of the Ball.
Then an old Goddess—so old that she could remember God calling order out of chaos, hobbled towards her.
Child! thou hast seized the Ball, and play with it thou wilt, but disturb not the handiwork of thine elder sisters. Thou canst pattern only where they have not worked.
So the youngest Goddess held the Ball up to the glance of God to get a great light upon it, and by chance found one small space covered with heather and bilberry, a wild sad waste.
"Here, I may play! Oh! my sisters, I