So for a magic hour the music gushed,
Then faded to a close, and all was hushed,
And the tranced people woke and looked about,
And fell to wondering what had brought them out
On such a night of wind and piercing sleet,
Exposed with hatless heads and thin-shod feet.
Something, they knew, had chased their heavy sadness;
And for the years to come they still may keep,
As from a morning sleep,
Some broken gleam of half-remembered gladness.
But the wild fiddler on his feet of flame
Vanished and went the secret way he came.


SINGING WATER

I heard--'twas on a morning, but when it was and where,
Except that well I heard it, I neither know nor care--
I heard, and, oh, the sunlight was shining in the blue,
A little water singing as little waters do.

At Lechlade and at Buscot, where Summer days are long,
The tiny rills and ripples they tremble into song;
And where the silver Windrush brings down her liquid gems,
There's music in the wavelets she tosses to the Thames.

The eddies have an air too, and brave it is and blithe;
I think I may have heard it that day at Bablockhythe;
And where the Eynsham weir-fall breaks out in rainbow spray
The Evenlode comes singing to join the pretty play.