So it's Jeremiah, Jeremiah, When you meet the garland girls All around my gala hat I wear a wreath of roses The reason why I wear it is My own love, my true love Is coming home to-day. And it's buy a bunch of violets for the lady (It's lilac-time in London; it's lilac-time in London!) Buy a bunch of violets for the lady While the sky burns blue above: On the other side the street you'll find it shady (It's lilac-time in London; it's lilac-time in London!) But buy a bunch of violets for the lady, And tell her she's your own true love. There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet And enriched it with the harmonies that make a song com plete In the deeper heavens of music where the night and morning meet, As it dies into the sunset-glow; And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain And there, as the music changes, The song runs round again. And the wheeling world remembers all Once more La Traviata sighs A tale of deeper wrong; Once more the knights to battle go Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time; Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland; Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) Alfred Noyes THE SONG OF HONOR I climbed a hill as light fell short, And sang themselves to sleep; An owl from nowhere with no sound A pair of stars, faint pins of light, To tell how still the valleys lay I heard no more of bird or bell, As wondering men have always done It seemed, so still the valleys were, So pure and wide that silence was I feared to bend a blade of grass, There, sharp and sudden, there I heard Ah! some wild lovesick singing bird Woke singing in the trees? The nightingale and babble-wren Were in the English greenwood then, you heard one of these? And The babble-wren and nightingale Yet, true enough, I heard them plain, As sharp and sweet and clear Had thrust a bough across the sea, I heard them both, and oh! I heard And with the song of lark and wren I heard the universal choir, The Sons of Light exalt their Sire Earth's lowliest and loudest notes, Her million times ten million throats Exalt Him loud and long, And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace From every part and every place Within the shining of His face, I heard the hymn of being sound The song of poets when they write The song of painters when they take The song of men divinely wise The song of all both high and low To some blest vision true, The song of beggars when they throw The crust of pity all men owe To hungry sparrows in the snow, The song of kings of kingdoms when They rise above their fortune Men, The song of courage, heart and will Of men who face a hopeless hill The bells and bells of song that ring From armies bleeding white |